The Sabbath (Book Review)

The Sabbath by Abraham Heschel tip-toes the line of soul and mind. The dream-like prose is packed with zeal for a day he calls, "a palace in time":

The seventh day is a mine where spirit's precious metal can be found with which to construct a palace in time, a dimension in which the human is at home with the divine; a dimension in which man aspires to approach the likeness of the divine. For where shall the likeness of God be found? There is no quality that space has in common with the essence of God. There is not enough freedom at the top of the mountain; there is not enough glory in the silence of the sea. Yet the likeness of God can be found in time, which is eternity in disguise.

According to Heschel there are two divisions of the world: space and time. We are well acquainted with space, creating and toiling, but, we are less familiar with time. First, we start with space. Our endeavors in space can help us understand God as Creator. For example, I built Adirondack chairs the other week, therefore, I created on a much smaller scale. Furthermore, I can tell you, there is satisfaction in the toil and I feel a connection to the chairs built. In this sense, with this small metaphor I gain insight into God. Yet, as Heschel points out the likeness of God is too grand to be captured in an object.

What Heschel spends much more pages writing about is time. Writing about the nature of time Heschel looks to the Bible and ancient rabbis. Genesis 2:2 reads, "On the seventh day God finished his work," Exodus 20:11 reads, "In six days the Lord made the heaven and earth." Wait a minute . . . He made the heaven and the earth in 6 days but finished on the 7th? The rabbi's resolved this by stating that menuha was created on the Sabbath. Menuha is not an object like my Adirondack chair that can be grasped, rather, Heschel states menuha means something akin to "tranquility, serenity, peace, and repose". God created an architecture in time and menuha is the special attribute of the seventh day.

The fact that God blessed the seventh day, and not the other days, should hint that the seventh day is special. What this means is that time is not homogeneous ---some time is different than other time. What I take this to mean is, there is time for creating and time for remembering that we were created. On the seventh day we remember our relationship with God, that remembrance is a refuge from a fury of sound and distraction. What is more, this remembrance carries us through the rest of the week.

Heschel regales the reader with stories of Jewish people practicing the Sabbath and embracing the day with vigor and longing. There are many stories that could be presented here, but, I will share only one,

Rabbi Solomon of Radomsk once arrived in a certain town, where, he was told, lived an old woman who had known the famous Rabbi Elimelech. She was too old go out, so he went to see her and asked her to tell him what she knew about the great Master. ---I do not know what went on in his room, because I worked as one of the maids in the kitchen of his house. Only one thing I can tell you. During the week the maids would often quarrel with one another, as is common. But, week after week, on Friday when the Sabbath was about to arrive, the spirit of the kitchen was like the spirit on the eve of the Day of Atonement. Everybody would be overcome with an urge to ask forgiveness of each other. We were all seized by a feeling of affection and inner peace.

This book gave me a passion and appreciation for the Sabbath that I did not have before reading this book. Heschel (below) at one point asks, ". . . is there any institution which holds out greater hope for man's progress than the Sabbath?"

This is a great question. Given the level of pressure and stress, which negatively impacts many people's lives, it would seem we need to learn the discipline of rest. Not merely diversion but a palace in time that anchors our identity as image bearers of God.

Symbiotics, I mean, Economics

Earlier this week a package arrived. It was heavy like a box of rocks but contained about twelve books and a large packet of reading material. The Mercatus Center holds its first meeting for the Adam Smith fellows in mid-October and there is quite a bit of material to digest before we meet. So, I thought the blog would be an opportunity to (A) Pass along what I am learning, and (B) Serve as a repository so I don't forget what I'm learning.

This post will be a brief discussion of the first two articles in the packet Lord Lionel Robbins on "The Significance of Economic Science" circa 1935 and a later 1964 vintage by Nobel-Laureate James Buchanan called "What Should Economists Do?". In historical context both of these articles have important messages about economic method that are still relevant for modern discourse.

Robbins' central point was that economics is incapable of conducting interpersonal comparisons of utility. Other scholars at the time were using the law of diminishing marginal utility as justification for the redistribution of wealth. While Robbins upheld the belief that we could measure marginal changes for an individual he eschewed the notion that we could compare between individuals.

For example, at the extreme, there are two brothers, one named Rich N. Come and the other named Noel N. Come. Robbin's contemporaries said that Rich received less satisfaction from $1 more money than Noel received from that same dollar. Thus, the government could transfer wealth from Rich to Noel because that would result in higher social utility. However, Robbins' main point is that this justification relies on knowledge of the magnitudes of utility. In fact, there is no science that can accurately obtain such magnitudes.  Side Question: Does the literature on happiness and advances in neuroeconomics hold out hope for measuring such things? (To be discussed later)

Additionally, Robbins attempted to make a sharp distinction between (1) The objective function and (2) The economical way in which that objective is obtained. As economists Robbins said we have no way of knowing what is the best objective: more equal distribution of wealth, more meritorious distribution of wealth, etc. But, given a particular objective we should be able to talk about the lowest cost way to achieve that goal. He writes, "Without economic analysis it is not possible to rationally choose between alternative systems of society".

Buchanan uses Robbins' arguments to discuss how economists have been obsessed with the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends. Briefly, he discusses how his contemporaries got around Robbins' problem of interpersonal utility comparisons. These people created mathematical constructions called "social welfare functions" to arrive at aggregate levels of utility. While Buchanan understands the reason economists have focused on allocation he endeavors to suggest that economists would gain greater insight about human nature through studying the process of exchange ---not outcomes alone.

One passage I found particularly interesting, and summarizes his thoughts nicely, was his discussion about the name "economics". Buchanan writes, 

"Were it possible to wipe the slate clean [change the name economics to something else], I should recommend . . . "symbiotics" . . . Symbiotics is defined as the study of association between dissimilar organisms, and the connotation of the term is that the association is mutually beneficial to all parties. This conveys more or less precisely the idea that should be central to our discipline. It draws attention to a unique sort of relationship that which involves the cooperative association of individuals, one with another, even when the individual interests are different."

In 1964 Buchanan made arguments that our focus on outcomes was leading us to become a backyard of mathematics. However, when we focused on the process we learned something useful. How are human actors considering costs and benefits? What social or legal rules are salient in their decision-making process? What social or legal rules will people invent to overcome problems? For example, Buchanan said that the free-rider problem in public goods provision could be overcome through the creation of a constitution that had coercive power. He thought this was an economic action where at least a subset of people were able to pen a mutually beneficial agreement. This was symbiotics. 

Since Buchanan wrote this article there has been some progress towards becoming a process-oriented rather than allocation-oriented science. I will expound on this in a future post.  The question I'm asking myself now is, "Why did the Mercatus Center want us to read these?" I think that the overall goal is to get us to think about the market as an emergent process rather than something that is "in equilibrium". Such a framework for thought would put emphasis on institutions as well as entrepreneurial action (either new products or via collective action). In essence, focus on the process puts humans, not allocations, at the center of economics. I think this will prove to be a useful window through which we can look at the world.

This is not esoteric economics but matters in the following sense. If we are a science that focuses on outcomes without much regard for the process in which outcomes happen we will be less attuned to opportunity costs and unintended consequences, two things we profess to teach our students (and on this blog we have professed could help make the world a better place). More to come.

Christians and Merit

"Serious Christians have to struggle continuously against the temptation to view 'merit' uncritically."

Read more, much more, at this wonderful essay by Walter Russell Meade.

Thanks to Instapundit for the tip.

Elinor Ostrom

There was sad news this morning that Nobel laureate political scientist Elinor Ostrom has passed away (she won the prize in Economic Science in 2009). Prof. Ostrom pioneered a fusion of field-based, almost anthropological, research with the experimental methods of her colleagues at Indiana, notably Prof. James Walker, to teach us much about how real people solve real commons dilemmas problems. She wasn't a Polyanna; common dilemmas indeed are problems and sometimes failures occurs. But she also documented the ability of people with local knowledge and local institutions to do much more than those textbook models which read something along the lines of "this is market failure... the government must intervene to fix the problem." She called the focus of her model "polycentrism." You can find her biography and her Nobel Prize lecture here.

We Will See Clearly

Motivations matter. There was a story from an experimental economics lecture that illustrates this point well, 

Consider these three scenarios: 1) I trip and spill a hot cup of coffee on you, 2) I walk up to you and toss a hot cup of coffee on you, 3) Someone else hits me over the head with a 2x4 and I spill a hot cup of coffee on you. In all three situations a hot cup of coffee has been spilled on you ---but you feel differently and would judge me differently in each scenario. 

What really gets under our skin is the motivation. Yet, it is not easy to infer motivation from conduct and there are also biases we must fight against. For example, in psychology there is the well known Fundamental Attribution Error in which we blame the character (attribute) of someone rather than the circumstances (Here are some examples of attribution error). Most things are mixtures of circumstances and character. 


Today in church we read a passage that I have read many times before (1 Corinthians 13:12), but, never in this way, 

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

I always perceived what would be made complete was my lack of informational knowledge.  Like explaining the presence of suffering in a world with a loving God. Or, asking about dinosaurs. But, our pastor pointed out that the last part, ". . . just as God now knows me completely," suggests something else. We see each other imperfectly. We do not know the hard battles each other are fighting. And, on top of that, we fear that if we were to give the benefit of the doubt they would take advantage -or- things would never get better. When we see things clearly we will see each other as God sees us.


We should be people that refuse to live in fear, but, instead pick the path of love. And, we should know that whatever sufferings we endure from love are not in vain. I want to close with a beautiful and poignant part of Rick Joyner's book The Final Quest:

I looked at the old eagle, and for the first time I noticed the scars amid his torn and broken feathers. However, the scars were not ugly, but were lined with gold that was somehow not metal, but rather flesh and feathers. Then I could see that it was this gold that gave off the glory that emanated from the eagle, making his presence so awesome.  

“Why did I not see this before?” I enquired. 

 “Until you have beheld and appreciated the depths of the treasures of salvation, you cannot see the glory that comes from suffering for the sake of the gospel. Once you have seen it, you are ready for the tests that will release the highest levels of spiritual authority into your life. These scars are the glory that we will carry forever. This is why even the wounds our Lord suffered are with Him in heaven. You can still see His wounds, and the wounds that all have his chosen ones have taken for His sake. These are the medals of honor in heaven. All who carry them love God and His truth more than their own lives. These are the ones who followed the Lamb wherever He went, being willing to suffer for the sake of truth, righteousness, and the salvation of men. True leaders of His people, who carry genuine spiritual authority, must have first proven their devotion this way.”     

First Day at ASREC: First Session

I think I should start writing up some summaries of the papers we saw at ASREC. The papers were overall very interesting and the people were a delight to talk to. The presentations that Mark and I gave were well attended and it was surreal to present with a Nobel Prize winner in the front row. Chapman University has a gorgeous campus and I hope to be going back there for the ASREC graduate student workshop in June. Without further ado here are some very brief summaries of the papers on the first session I attended.

Entry into Local Religious Markets (did not see an online version): (using late 19th century data from Scotland): attempted to track the likelihood of an additional church entering a geographical region given N existing churches in that region. He calculates the likelihood of entry at various levels of N and has a rich set of controls, down to details such as "Does the congregant speak Gaelic?". One of the interesting things he found was that there was more entry by the Free Church of Scotland because of the cross-subsidization from rich churches in the city to the new rural church plants which lowered the cost of entry. There was an interesting discussion about how greater religious pluralism in an area should make people less religious but that it seems that pluralism actually increases attendance.

Clergy Regulation (did not see an online version): This was an interesting sociological paper where the author Paul Olson was doing semi-structured interviews with pastors from a variety of Christian churches in a small Mid-western town. The regulation referred to an informal regulation among the clergy in this town to not "steal sheep". That is, there was a kind of cartel agreement where pastors could not pursue another pastor's congregants. From an economic perspective we know that cartels are difficult to maintain because there is always an incentive to deviate. Unless, of course, there is some sort of punishment for deviation. The main form of punishment put forth by Olson was social ostracism. (There is a large sociological literature that suggests pastors are lonely people to begin with. In seminary they're often told not to get too attached to their congregations. And, in interviews pastors often claim their ordainment sets them apart, even if they don't necessarily want to feel set apart.). The social ostracism would take the form of excluding people from invitations to the pastor's Bible study. I talked with Olson afterwards and he echoed what I was thinking, this was the central punishment for breaking the cartel. The punishment that all the other pastors raid the deviating pastor's congregation was not the threat because on some level the pastors believed it would be wrong to do that even if that other person did deviate.  

The more subtle question is, "What do you do when a congregant from another church starts coming to your church?". Among the mainline churches there was a strong norm to call the pastor from the other church to inform them that the family had started coming more and more to their church. There was a partial norm among the evangelical churches.

Another interesting point also came out. Targeting a specific person was not kosher, but, doing a mass event where all were invited was fine. This meant that pastors could get people in the door from other congregations then as one of them said (paraphrasing): If the chickens come to the yard of course I'm going to feed them. 

Exporting Christianity (http://irps.ucsd.edu/assets/001/502436.pdf): This was an extremely polished presentation from Gordon Hanson that was looking at which denominations were successful at "exporting Christianity" to countries outside of the denomination's headquarters. The authors used economic modeling techniques from international trade and industrial organization. Think of the denomination headquarters as a franchise and the newly planted church as the franchisee. In these kinds of agreements there are incentive problems. The denomination has a certain way of doing things; however, the pastor of the newly planted church might want to make some tweaks. The authors find that giving the local pastors more authority is correlated (they make a causal argument) with attracting more adherents. The reasoning is that they have more incentive to improve their congregation. Also, the authors find that strict denominations like Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, etc. are more likely to succeed when social service provision in a country is weak. That is, people are more willing to accept the restrictions when they are receiving benefits such as healthcare and disaster relief.   

Five Things I Don't Know About You.

Urban legends are hard to put to rest, especially when statistics are abused.

The U.S. has abysmal infant mortality statistics? Well, not exactly.

The U.S. health care system leads to life expectancies that trail the rest of the industrialized world? Well, kind of, but not exactly.

Here is a very nice myth-busting article by health care expert Christopher J. Conover of Duke University and AEI.