Disingenuous Hair Splitting

When I was learning economics, monetarism was on the wane. The 1981 recession brought forth a big change in velocity that did not conform to the standard model of monetarism, which is that MV=PT, and that the growth in V was relatively stable. Yet, I came in contact with several monetarist economists eager to save the theory, by saying that 'money' was not M1, but rather, M2, or monetary aggregates per capita. Hair splitting did not save the quantity theory, rather, it was a typical tactic by true believers to save a bad idea (of course, at a log level the quantity theory still works very well).

I was reminded of this when watching economist Glenn Loury debating legal scholar Amy Wax on Bloggingheads about Amy's new book, Race, Wrong, and Remedies. Her argument is basically that regardless of why blacks are currently socially disadvantaged, they must make changes necessary for them to improve their situation, such as getting married before having children, not committing crime. America cannot do these things for them, so using 'remedies law' she basically says black culture is the key to improving black America. Glenn's big criticism of her point was classic hair splitting, using highfalutin diction with banal casuistry, so that if you actually understand what he says, he does not have a coherent point.



This is the Jackie Chiles school of speaking, made famous by lawyer Johnny Cochrane and academics Michael Eric Dyson and Cornell West. It's kind of funny once you see them start talking faster than they are thinking because their arguments go into dead ends, forcing them into bizarre run-on sentences because they are hoping to stop after making a point, but one rarely arrives.