The Washington Post is out today with a package of articles attacking Facebook, with one piece bannered “Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation.”

It turns out that the social media giant’s earlier algorithm gave all of its reaction emojis other than “Like,” such as “Love” and “Care,” five times the weighting. That makes some sense, since the less often chosen emojis send a stronger signal of reader interest than does the default “Like.” If you read down, you discover “Love” was used about 25–30 times as often as “Angry,” making its influence far greater in the promotion of posts. “Angry” was in fact the least‐​used of the emoji set. (Following further policy changes at Facebook, “Angry” now gets a zero rating — i.e., no boost for the content — while other emojis have been downgraded but still add more weight than “Like.”)

Meanwhile, complaints have been heard that the online front page, recommendation engines, etc. at large conventional‐​media outlets often disproportionately select for stories and headlines that stir outrage because they result in more click engagement. Checking the Washington Post’s online front page just now, for example, I notice a “Don’t Miss” promotional feature in which all but one of the first five headlines offered for clicking, on topics from “bitter confrontations” in “normally peaceful Montana” to police shooting practices, might stir fear or outrage (perhaps justified!) among readers. (The fifth story was about outsize Hallowe’en decorations on front lawns.)

The result: reporters at these media outfits can invest a lot of effort in a well‐​done piece that sinks to the bottom, or fails to make the online front page at all, because it can’t be promoted in such a way to get anyone angry. And in general, pieces that don’t get read don’t result in career advancement.

In short, Facebook and politically aware media outlets like the Washington Post face feedback loops that create not‐​dissimilar incentives, but the Post invites us to get upset only about Facebook’s.

“The fateful errors of popular monetary doctrines which have led astray the monetary policies of almost all governments would hardly have come into existence if many economists had not themselves committed blunders in dealing with monetary issues and did not stubbornly cling to them.”

—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action.

I was chatting on the phone last week with Peter Coy, who was working on an article about money for The New York Times Magazine, when he mentioned the old, three‐​pronged textbook definition of money: you know, the one that says money is a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. It’s the first thing most econ students learn about money. For many, I suspect, it’s all they remember.

Which is a shame, because it’s wrong.

In this post, I explain why it’s wrong. I trace the mistaken definition to past economists’ careless reading of that definition’s locus classicus, in William Stanley Jevons’ great work, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange. I next show how Jevons’ actual understanding of the meaning of “money” was shared by Carl Menger and later Austrian‐​school economists. I conclude with a plea for dispensing, once and for all, with the three‐​part textbook definition of “money,” in favor of the definition Jevons favored all along.

Some critics of marijuana legalization point to studies suggesting that regular use might increase the risk of mental illness or suicide. In 2013, research by Anderson, et al found no such relationship in states that had legalized medicinal marijuana. My colleagues Jacob J. Rich, Michael Schemenaur, and Robert Capodilupo and I did research to see if Anderson’s findings are still valid in 2021. As of 2021, 19 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use and medicinal marijuana is available in 35 states. We performed a state‐​level longitudinal analysis using suicide rates from the National Center for Health Statistics and mental health morbidity rates from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health following the procedures outlined by Anderson et al.

We found that recreational marijuana access was associated with a 6.29 percent reduction in suicide rates for males aged 40 to 49, but no other mental health outcomes were otherwise affected by liberalization of marijuana laws.

The pre‐​print of our study is now available for viewing at medRxiv. It is currently awaiting peer review for publication in a major scientific journal. The pdf of the study that includes the graphics along with the text can be found here.

(Rich and Schemenaur were both Cato Research Assistants in health policy when we began our study and are now working towards their PhDs at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Arizona respectively. Capodilupo was a Cato intern at the time. He is now attending law school at Yale University.)

Statements by the Biden administration about U.S. policy toward Taiwan have taken on a very disturbing pattern. The latest episode occurred on October 21 during a CNN town hall session when the president was asked whether the United States would defend Taiwan from an attack by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Biden responded unhesitatingly: “Yes, we have a commitment.” He flatly misstated what U.S. policy has been since Washington established formal diplomatic relations with the PRC in 1979 and adopted the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) to clarify economic and cultural ties with Taiwan.

The TRA commits the United States only to sell Taiwan “defensive” weapons and to regard any PRC attack on the island as a serious “breach of the peace” of East Asia. It emphatically did not obligate the United States to defend Taiwan with its own military forces. Moreover, U.S. officials over the decades have stated repeatedly that Washington endorses a “one China” policy, and whenever questioned, they have described U.S. policy as one of “strategic ambiguity.”

Biden’s statement eliminated any hint of ambiguity. More accurately, it would have done so, if members of his administration had not spent the next several days scrambling to “clarify” his comment and insist that there had been no change in U.S. policy. “He wasn’t announcing a change in policy nor have we changed our policy,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “We are guided by the Taiwan Relations Act.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also insisted that the United States remained committed to the one China policy and the provisions of the TRA.

Sending such mixed messages angers Beijing and sows dangerous confusion in a volatile region of the world. Moreover, it is not the first time that the president and his advisers have not been on the same page about U.S. policy toward Taiwan.

During an August interview with ABC News, host George Stephanopoulos asked Biden if Washington’s allies could still rely on U.S. protection in light of the disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden responded by stating, “We made a sacred commitment to Article Five that if in fact, anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond.” The same alliance had been forged with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, he added.

Insisting that Washington’s vague security relationship with Taiwan is the same as the explicit U.S. defense obligations specified in the North Atlantic Treaty and the bilateral treaties with Japan and South Korea was wildly inaccurate. On that occasion, as with the October episode, Biden’s advisers worked to walk back the president’s indiscreet statement. The next day, U.S. officials rushed to assure Beijing and other countries that U.S. policy toward Taiwan issue had not changed, despite Biden’s comment.

The Biden foreign policy team has been disturbingly gaffe‐​prone regarding a host of international matters. However, sending mixed messages on the ultra‐​sensitive Taiwan issue is intolerable. If the president wishes to change U.S. policy from one of strategic ambiguity to one of (belligerent) strategic clarity, he needs to make his advisers aware of that shift, so that they stop contradicting him.

However, such a monumental policy change should occur only after a rigorous public debate about the increased risks of a war with China, and after explicit congressional action to revise the TRA. If, on the other hand, Biden simply is guilty of verbal incontinence, he needs to stop talking about Taiwan entirely.

Last week, Senate Democrats removed from their appropriations bill a provision, known as the Harris rider, that effectively prevents D.C. from legalizing marijuana sales and distribution. Confusingly, this proposal, presented before the Senate Appropriations Committee, is different from President Biden’s own budget bill, which still features the Harris rider.

In 2014, D.C. voters approved a ballot initiative legalizing cannabis sales, possession, and consumption for recreational purposes. Congress responded with the Harris rider, which bars the District government from enacting the law. The legal details are messy, but, as a result, the sale, purchase, and public consumption of marijuana remain illegal in D.C., even though possession, cultivation, and personal use are currently legal under District law.

Removing the so‐​called Harris rider would be a welcome and long overdue measure. Federal marijuana prohibition has never made sense, and outright legalization at the federal level would be the first‐​best policy. Short of this, however, removing the Harris rider is a good step forward.

As we have noted before, ample data on state‐​level legalizations show no clear departure from pre‐​legalization trends when looking at outcomes such as cannabis consumption and prices. Effects on crime, suicides, and traffic accidents are either small or unclear.

So legalizing recreational marijuana sales in D.C. would probably have minor effects. But it would bolster tax revenues and increase product quality, making marijuana safer for consumers. Not to mention expanding personal freedom.

I recently learned that Anthony Downs, one of the greatest political economists of the twentieth century, passed away on October 2. Like my George Mason University colleague Tyler Cowen, I do not understand why this sad news has attracted so little attention. The only obituary I have been able to find is this one posted by the funeral home that is handling Downs’ funeral arrangements.

Perhaps his passing has been ignored by scholars and political commentators because there is so much else going on in the news. Whatever the reason, Downs deserved better. He was one of the greatest political economists of the 20th century and helped lay the foundations for public choice theory, and much of the modern economic study of voting and democracy.

Downs’ most influential work was his 1957 book, An Economic Theory of Democracy, which was a pathbreaking application of economic theory to the study of democratic political systems. In that work, Downs developed the theory of “rational ignorance” to explain why most voters know so little about politics and public policy.

The reason for their ignorance, Downs suggested, was not that voters are stupid, but that they have little incentive to devote more than minimal time and effort to seeking out political information, so long as the odds of an individual vote changing the outcome are infinitesimally small (as is true in all but the very smallest elections).

Rational ignorance has been a central component of analyses of voter knowledge ever since then, not only by economists, but also by political scientists, philosophers, legal scholars, and others. My own book, Democracy and Political Ignorance, is just one of many later works that owes a great debt to Downs. The same is true, also, of my work on “voting with your feet,” such as Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.

Economic Theory of Democracy also includes several other major innovations, including insightful discussion of information shortcuts as a tool for overcoming voter ignorance, crucial advances in the application of the median voter theorem to analyses of electoral competition, and much else. In a single book published before he turned 27, Downs achieved far more than most scholars accomplish in a lifetime.

And he didn’t stop there. In later years, Downs turned his attention to housing and urban policy, and published influential analyses of bureaucracy, rent control, housing shortages, and traffic congestion. On the latter issue, Downs was a leading advocate of peak‐​hour congestion pricing, which (in part thanks to him) most experts now recognize as the most efficient solution to the problem of traffic jams. In 2010 he spoke at a Cato Policy Forum on traffic congestion.

For many years, Downs was affiliated with the Brookings Institution, the prominent liberal Washington, DC, think tank. That position enabled him to combine economic theory with policy‐​relevant research.

Downs was considerably to the left of me, and I differed with him on some of the implications of rational ignorance. Among other things, I think he was overly optimistic about the extent to which the negative effects of ignorance could be forestalled by information shortcuts of various kinds. I was more in line with many of his policy ideas on housing and transportation.

But, agree or disagree, there is no doubt Downs was one of the greatest contributors to our understanding of the political economy of democracy, and also a major scholar of housing and transportation policy. He will be greatly missed.

In closing, I would like to extend condolences to any of Anthony Downs’ family, friends, and colleagues who might read this.

Cross‐​posted from The Volokh Conspiracy.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just announced that they have encountered 1,431,179 people out of 1,960,519 total enforcement actions in FY2021 along the borders of the United States. When it comes to immigration enforcement, the two components of CBP are the Office of Field Operations and the Border Patrol. Relative to the 478,648 individuals encountered by CBP in FY2020, the number of individuals encountered is up by a factor of three in FY2021. Although the number of individuals encounters by CBP rose enormously in FY2021, the rate of criminals among them dropped to new lows.

CBP defines criminal noncitizens (they used to be called criminal aliens) as individuals who are not U.S. citizens and who have been convicted of crimes here or abroad if the conviction is for conduct which is also a crime in the United States. The CBP data also include noncitizens and U.S. citizens who are arrested as a result of being wanted by other law enforcement agencies. So as to not exclude any criminal illegal immigrants through unintentional omission, this blog post counts all apprehensions of criminals by CBP as noncitizen illegal immigrants. This results in an overcount of illegal immigrant criminals, but it’s better to make errors that overcount illegal immigrant criminality rather than errors that undercount it. In 2016, about 6.4 percent of all illegal immigrant individuals encountered by CBP were criminals. In FY2021, only about 1.9 percent of illegal immigrants apprehended by CBP were criminals (Figure 1).

The absolute number of criminal illegal immigrants encountered by CBP also fell from FY2016 to FY2021, but not in every year. In FY2016, CBP encountered 38,758 criminals out of approximately 607,761 individuals encountered. In FY 2021, CBP encountered 28,213 criminals out of 1,431,179 total illegal immigrants encountered. During that time, the number of illegal immigrants encountered by CBP increased by 236 percent and the number of criminals encountered fell by over 27 percent. In some of the intervening years, the absolute number of criminal illegal immigrants rose, but it generally trended downward.

It’s remarkable that such a vast increase in the number of illegal immigrants apprehended in FY2021 included a lower percentage of criminals than earlier years. Perhaps the supply of criminal illegal immigrants seeking to enter the United States is relatively inelastic and massive changes in the number of individuals seeking to enter unlawfully or ask for asylum are non‐​criminals. In other words, reforms in U.S. immigrant policy that could attract more illegal immigrants or changes in foreign conditions that prompt mass migration do not seem to much affect the flow of criminals. 

Many Americans want to keep the border closed, increase harsh border security methods, or restrict asylum because they fear that those encountered are criminals. Based on data supplied by CBP, the criminal illegal immigrant proportion of all encounters along the border are lower in FY2021 than in previous years despite the large increase in the number of encounters. Illegal immigration is a serious problem that imposes high costs on Americans and migrants, but it does not pose a serious criminal threat.