Liberty for the People

Absurdist Theatre with Michael Gerson

2011-05-10T05:49:00.001-04:00

Just in case we were starting to miss George W. Bush (what, I’m the only one?), Michael Gerson reminds us that we shouldn't. I think the point he was actually trying to make was different, something about how Ron Paul’s libertarianism is simplistic and evil. But you know how it goes, unintended consequences and hopelessly mishmashed political theory are par for the course when it comes to all things Dubyah-related. Gerson, who was himself a speechwriter for “43,” must be used to this snake turning around and biting him by now. Speaking of mishmashy nonsense, Gerson even turns the “compassionate conservatism” (sigh…) up to 11 in the article, ending with a delightfully trite anecdote about what a humble visionary Bush was. Why, he visited drug addicts in person and told them to stay the course. What a guy! Boy, and to think we might lend our support to someone like Ron Paul this time around. Why, who would write us fluffy articles about handshaking and baby-kissing then?

As to the some-dare-call-it “logic” of the piece, Gerson seems to think that we are faced with a very simple choice when it comes to drug policy. Either a. we callously ignore the suffering of drug addicts, or b. we magically fix them by passing laws against the substances to which they are addicted. Yes, it is apparently as simple as that.

Not that this needs to be pointed out to reasonable people, but for those having a bad thinking day let’s make sure we get it. Ron Paul (and most libertarians in general) believes that it is bad for government to micromanage our lives because, IN ADDITION to it being a simple violation of morality to paternalistically control people, it also DOESN’T WORK.

If you understand that the libertarian view contains both prongs like this, both the "it's immoral to not let people be free to make their own decisions" prong, as well as the "government's screw things up and make them worse than they found them" prong, then it is easy to see that Gerson's entire article is an exercise in pointless shadow-boxing. It is not callous to oppose drug laws, because DRUG LAWS DON'T HELP ADDICTS. See how that works? See how it has nothing to do with "social darwinism?" We did enjoy the 9th grade essay by Mr. Gerson's precocious son, though (well, that's what I assumed it was, to be charitable to Mr. Gerson as a writer). "Some people think everyone should be on their own, but that's not right. Because we should help people." Brilliant analysis, this.

Prohibition doesn’t work (I seem to recall the United States sitting through that lesson already, but I guess we have to repeat the grade). On the flip side, legalization does NOT lead to an increase in drug use, if the examples of the Netherlands (not technically “legalization” so much as an official policy of looking the other way when people possess small quantities of a drug) and Portugal are to be believed. In both countries, actual drug use has declined. But who cares about such details when there is a paramilitary police force to throw billions of dollars at, right? (Government is not the solution….what? say again?) Who cares what works and what doesn’t, when it makes us feel so good and caring to say that we love the poor people who are addicted to drugs, right? (The problem with liberals is they don’t like to actually think about their policies, they just like to feel good….what? say again?) We love them so much, in fact, that we are willing to force them to feed their habit more expensively (raising crime) and more dangerously (black markets and gangs and cartels, oh my) (Liberals don’t understand economics, and basic supply and demand…what? say again?).

And, if we catch them actually possessing the stuff to which they are hooked, we show our sincere love for them by LOCKING THEM IN A CAGE. (Drug legalization ignores the suffering of addicts; we have to love them by making them suffer even more...what? say again?) Aren’t we awesome?

Gerson lectures us pretentiously about how “nuanced” the proper “conservative” position on drug policy is, but he’s responding to a strawman (a gimpy strawman) of libertarianism in the first place. This is an impressive feat, describing the position of someone you disagree with in a ridiculously simplistic way, and then claiming that your position is by contrast so much more nuanced and multi-layered. Sophisticated, you know. Again, don’t be too impressed: Gerson has had lots of practice at doing this kind of thing, given the speeches he used to have a hand in writing.

Gerson is nuanced and sophisticated because he believes that if the government doesn’t pass laws, then basic social institutions like families and churches will not be able to do their thing. We are helpless without he government, see. If you ain’t for laws, then you ain’t for helping. Got that? See how reasonable it is? If only libertarians could be so sophisticated.

Conservatives in the “Tea Party” these days are opposing Obamacare because it will make things worse in our health care system. They oppose corporate bailouts and stimulus packages because they make our economy even worse than it already was. They oppose cash for clunkers and cap and trade because they make us suffer even more without jobs and without affordable transportation and energy without doing anything appreciable to actually benefit the environment. Ron Paul’s position on the drug war is that it has ALSO, just like these other hated policies, MADE THINGS WORSE. It creates more drug addicts, it makes their lives even more difficult, it does nothing to solve the problem of addiction, it hands power to gangs and black market operators, it empowers foreign cartels who supply the drugs, and it increases the authority of police agencies to search, harrass, and hinder the common people. Does that compute? Is anybody home?

Oh, but he must not care about the poor addicts, since he doesn’t want to lock them in cages and unleash warring gangs upon our inner cities. Why, doesn’t he know how simplistic he is being? It all reminds me of that time that Hitler signed Indiana Jones’ book. That guy always made time, didn’t he? What a sweetie-pie.

(Pre-emptive note: I said this was ABURDIST theatre, didn't I? I'm not "playing the Hitler card." I'm just being deliberately absurd, as is evinced by the fact that I'm using an Indiana Jones movie as my anecdote.)

Don’t like that we break legs? Then we’ll stop giving you crutches!

2011-05-04T15:42:00.001-04:00

The mafia says to a neighborhood, “If you pay us ‘protection’ money, then we can keep your homes and shops safe.” Now, if a shopkeeper argues that this entire arrangement is immoral and that it is a net loss to society to cause businesses to operate under such conditions of extortion payments, then the mafia responds by refusing to offer any “protection” to this malconent. “Oh yeah, well we’ll see how you do when we’re not there to protect you.”

Please note, how the shopkeeper responds to this new level of stress has nothing to do whatsoever with the truth or validity of his argument. Of course, faced with continued threats and extortion (or worse), he very well may acquiesce in the end to the mafia’s system. He may decide to pay them protection money. But this does not make him “inconsistent” for arguing against that system. Nor does it make him immoral or a “coward.” (Google Aristotle, please!).

Frame It!

2011-05-04T14:56:00.001-04:00

Libertarians believe that all people should be free. Free from any kind of aggressive violence against their persons or property, of which the state is just one enormous organized example. Now along come the supporters of big government to offer a retort, but this is no ordinary dispute. We must recognize that those who favor big government are not being merely academic; they are arguing directly for the imposition of force upon people, people who have not forced themselves upon anyone in kind.

So, this is not a collegial discussion among policy wonks. Rather, in a well-used analogy, it is much more like a disagreement between two wolves and a sheep over what’s for dinner. When the wolves say “You are!” to the sheep, this is not a collegial and dispassionate response to the poor sheep’s earlier argument of “Please don’t eat me.” They are very much WANTING to eat him. They intend to cause deliberate HARM to the sheep.

Get that, and you start to get it. Lose sight of it, and it’s pointless to debate the details of particular policies.

Paul Begala Uses Easy Logic to Defend the Bullies

2011-02-20T21:32:00.001-05:00

I didn’t know that Paul Begala was back in school, but it appears that he has now completed about a week of a college-level class in Logic and he is VERY excited to come home and tell us what he has learned. Apparently, particular premises support particular conclusions! But, very sad to say, apparently most people do not live their lives out of a constant sense of awareness regarding underlying ideology, and so most people are not logically consistent with their underlying premises at every moment of their lives. This is not particularly shocking to normal people, I know, but you have to admire a new student’s zeal and ignore his poor aim. He has now learned some basic concepts of logical argumentation, and so he can point out the inconsistencies in other people! In this article, he’s going to do it with libertarians! Watch!

Are you watching?!

“Yes, dear, we’re watching…”

And now Paul Begala slides down with his feet high in the air, not even slowing himself down with his hands this time. <a href=”http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-15/paul-begala-its-time-to-defund-kentucky/#”>Wheeeee!</a>

His snark-meaning is to poke fun at Kentucky in particular for being a “welfare queen” state due to how much federal spending it receives compared to other states. His logic-meaning is that, since people both decry big government but accept its “benefits” at the same time, obviously they are wrong to decry big government. Or, in any case, they ought to be forced to be “consistent” and not receive the benefits any more. The logic-meaning is our focus here, since it is the support for the snark-meaning.

First, a reminder of Americans say they want smaller government, but they have a hard time accepting cuts when it is their ox that is gored. Wow, what a BRILLIANT insight into human psychology! Did anyone know this before four days ago?? What a service Begala has done here.

Yes, logical inconsistency is a real problem among human beings. The proper way to respond to it, though, is to engage in clear thinking about proper principles, and then about the implications of those principles, whatever they may be. Over time, persuasion and cultural shifts in opinion might bring most people to see the consistent position for what it is. In the meantime, because human beings are, you know, human beings, there will be plenty of inconsistency out there. You may point this out, and you may use provocative reductios because those are often effective to shake people out of their inconsistency. But the very fact that there is inconsistency does not prove that you are correct. Very basic principles, probably taught in the second week of logic class, and now we can all move on and have a nice discussion.

Or, you can play a game of “gotcha.” You can say, “Aha! The Braves player just struck out. Therefore the Reds are better!” Paul Begala chose the low-hanging fruit. Here’s the newsflash: most people are not ideological purists (they have other things to do. This being the case, if you want to write a mocking article about other people’s bad thinking, then the failures of average men to live consistently with some principle or another are always easy pickin's. Why, since this is a fetish issue for many of the editors at major newspapers (“Tea Partiers are rubes!!!”), you can probably even get it published! And I’m sure your blackberry will blow up with attaboys from the rest of the Greek chorus that makes their living, fame, or fortune by saying “Government is Good.” Well done, brave sir, well done.

But what about the logical concern Begala raises? Aside from the general fact that people are indeed inconsistent sometimes because you’ve never got it all figured out until you do (are you there yet?), the government actually makes this problem worse. (You knew this was coming, right? Good for you!) People, especially those with fewer options to begin with (i.e., the poor, you compassion-happy do-gooders!) feel pulled all the time to give in to various conditions that act upon them as external constraints to their own private wills. Sometimes the “courage of your convictions” is a luxury good; the government guilds have made it so.

Why? Because the government deliberately intervenes in the economic activities of the people, hampering productivity and reducing the quality of life for all but the politically well-connected. In this situation, is it really that surprising that a Vietnam vet might worry about losing his VA benefits, even as he knows in his gut and argues passionately with friends that government is the cause of our troubles? Does it truly call for mockery when a senior citizen demonstrates only an incomplete recognition of the full extent of the problem and writes “Hands off my Medicare” on a sign at a Tea Party rally?

Or should decent people be less worried about the logical consistency of those trapped in the fog, and more worried about the bastards running the fog machines? Yeah, thanks.

The proper response to Begala’s argument is to get a nice big view of the actual logical situation that the people who want to rollback government are in. In the memorable analogy of the late Harry Browne, what Begala calls “benefits” of the government are actually a case where the government has first broken your leg, and then offers you a crutch. The poor who are hurt the most by government policies in the first place are offered “welfare,” medicaid, food stamps, assistance with their heating bills, etc. But these are simply meager “offsets” to the very real costs that the poor incur simply from having to exist in the government’s interventionist system in the first place.

But the net good of society would definitely be increased, according to libertarianism, if we discarded the entire system. Of course, the people whose lives and fortunes are derived from working for the government are against such a reform. The break legs-give crutches system is supported, surprise surprise, by both the government agents who break the legs, and the ones who hand out the crutches.

So, when the government finds out that some people are starting to question the “break leg-give crutches” system, it then—so compassionate is the government, remember—threatens to take away the crutches!

Verrry compassionate, guys. We see your point now: if we object in principle to the horrid system you have wrought, you will force us to continue to live with the system’s ill effects while depriving us of even the meager “benefits.” That will prove your point, won’t it?

The snarky argument about Kentucky’s particular ratio of taxes-out to federal-spending-in is really addressed by the same considerations already brought up, but we can also respond with a little snark of our own. If Begala really thinks that it will “teach us a lesson” if we had to live without this federal spending, because then what would our poor people do, then he obviously is the real intellectual hypocrite here, given the liberal claim to value multiple voices in debate doesn’t really fit with the fact that Begala has apparently never actually understood what libertarians actually believe (he thinks we are AFRAID of the government stopping these programs?) To this we can only say, “Please, Begala and the officials who listen to him, throw us in that briar patch!”

Paul Begala, court intellectual for the [insite link]mafia[/link].

But Bureaucracies Can’t “Bargain”

2011-02-17T13:56:00.000-05:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110217/ap_on_re_us/us_wisconsin_budget_unions

The protests in Wisconsin likely represent the kind of thing we’re going to be seeing more of in these scary days. On the one hand, they are the direct result of government’s failure to keep its promises. This is a crisis/opportunity kind of situation. The crisis is that, of course, people protesting in the streets and in the legislative halls on behalf of their own narrow interests are likely to cause other people to want to do the same, and this could very well cause economic disruptions, undermine trust within society, and stoke the fear and uneasiness that are already contributing to our general malaise. At the same time, it is an opportunity, because one of the best times to get people thinking about how government cannot keep its promises is, amazingly, when everyone’s standing around angry over government not keeping its promises.

So, I am not carrying water for any corporate, military, or government interests here. The vast majority of leaders in "business" are whores for the government teat, which is bad. The military is actually the MOST wasteful bureaucracy of them all, and it is not a close contest. I'm against all of that, too. With great passion. I'm only focusing on one particular group of troublemakers here (public unions) because it is newsworthy right now. The entire system of corporate-state monkeyshines needs to be abolished, yesterday. If you want to read me picking on some other subgroup within those monkeyshines, then I would simply ask you to stay tuned. It will happen.

Regarding the public union protests in Wisconsin, I want to offer 4 general points.

1. Bureaucracies Are Not Like Businesses

If government is necessary then so is bureaucracy.

But, no matter what we think of unions in general, clearly there is something fundamentally WRONG with government employees unionizing. Who is the "management" they are battling for higher wages or benefits? Why, it is OTHER employees of the government, of course. There are no "owners" in this scenario. It is one group of taxpayer-supported workers asking other taxpayer-supported workers for a raise. That is, in a word, crazy.

Normally, in the private sector, when workers demand higher wages or benefits, they meet with genuine resistance of some sort because the things they are demanding cost MONEY that belongs to the owners of the business, or to the investors in that business, who are understandably reluctant to part with that money. Whatever we think of business owners and investors in general, it is fundamentally human nature to watch where your money goes. If I'm going to be asked to spend more on something, whether it is my monthly cable bill or benefits for my employees if I am a business owner/investor, then I'm going to ask "Why? Is the benefit worth the cost?" You may believe that business owners are usually too Scrooge-ish in their evaluation of that question; you may believe that they usually SHOULD, for the sake of the public good or whatever, be willing to part with the money necessary to meet their workers' demands. But, nonetheless, the simple FACT that there is resistance is a good thing. Three basic reasons why it is good:

a) It is simply a function of human beings freely making decisions about their own lives and resources, which is generally a good thing (right??). If we live in a free society, then other people are going to say "Well, wait a minute let's talk about this" when you ask for more of their money.

b) Since we really do live in a world of scarce resources, we really do have to make trade offs between one goal and another. Even when a goal is good we cannot simply spend an indefinite amount of resources on it, for there are other goals that are ALSO good and must therefore ALSO be pursued. The resistance offered by business owners and investors to a rise in costs of running the business--whether a resistance to a rise in machine parts, office rents, OR labor costs--is a lever that helps ration the amount of resources we spend on our various goals, allowing us to have more resources left over to spend on other goals that are also good.

c) People in general make better decisions about how to deploy their own resources than do people who do not own the resources.

But in a bureaucracy, all three of these elements of business ownership are removed and are replaced with an entirely incentive system that is actually perverse. Instead of private individuals deploying their own resources as they think best, and thus trying to calculate what expenses really are worth the cost and which are not, in a bureaucracy we have workers who are simply handed a budget of resources, all taken from the taxpayers without their direct input into the matter. These workers then attempt to "manage" these resources in ways that accomplish particular government-chosen goals, and if they run out of money, they petition the government for MORE money in the next year's budget. if some disaster happens on their watch, it serves as a lesson that "we need more funding!" and they can ask for MORE money in next year's budget. Clearly, they have no reason to watch their costs and to try to balance the proper use of things against other goals that could also be accomplished.

And now, to top it all off, we make some of these bureaucratic workers "negotiate" and "bargain" with the mass of their peers over HOW MUCH SALARY AND BENEFITS the latter should receive. The thought process for the bureaucrats sitting in the seat of “management” has to go something like this:

"Let's see, if I agree to their demands than many of my co-workers get a raise (and maybe I myself even get a raise), but if I resist then I will become a pariah. If I agree to their demands, then I can always ask for an increased budget from the government appropriations channels next year. If I hold firm and refuse their demands, then I will gain nothing personally from the money I have saved. Instead, it will probably just be spent elsewhere, or my budget will be CUT if I don't spend all of it. My own income and personal advancement are not tied in any direct way (probably not tied indirectly, either) to how much money I do or don't spend, to my "success" rate in negotiating with the public union, etc."

Is it any surprise that the public unions hereby receive what they demand? And it is all paid for by the taxpayers, by force, who have no direct say in the matter whatsoever. It's not just that this is a moral problem, though it is that. It's that it is simply a bad set-up for a system--it is bad on purely utilitarian and pragmatic grounds. If the goal is to use the scarce resources of society WELL in pursuit of certain goals, then it is hard to imagine a WORSE way to proceed than by taking money from the productive sector and using it to fund another sector, and then pitting one mass of that other sector against a smaller group of the same to determine the outcome of "labor negotiations." It is utter madness, and is transparently so to anyone who does not already have an axe to grind the other way.

2. Spread the Hardship Around

Maybe everything I just said above in (1) is wrong and misguided. But there is still something fundamentally wrong with what is going on in Wisconsin right now, because the fiscal crisis in both our federal and state levels of government (including Wisconsin) is very, very real.

Our economic woes are very, very real. The private sector continues to struggle mightily. Every dollar of government spending, no matter how noble you think the cause is on which it is being spent, is a dollar that has been in one way or another sapped away from the productivity of the private sector of the economy (direct taxing, government borrowing, or (at the federal level) inflating the money supply all have this same pernicious effect, though the mechanics of the harm are different in each case).

In these present circumstances, in which the private job rolls continue to shrink and in which almost everyone is having to cut back in their own personal budgets, and in which the average salary of a government worker is considerably higher than that of a similarly-employed worker in the private sector, exactly how sympathetic are people who do not work for the government supposed to be when they hear that government workers are marching on the capitol to protect their own economic position? Faced with their own struggles, how much solidarity are private sector workers and their families supposed to feel for government employees who refuse to struggle in the same way?

Consider also that the budget crisis in this country is not simply a general problem for which government workers are being blamed as scapegoats. The actual fact is that the majority of the problem, both at the federal level and at the state level, that is going to subsume our economy like a great deluge in the coming years IS payments to individuals in the form of "entitlements" (at the federal level, social security, medicaid, and medicare) or as salaries and pensions to government workers (the dominant problem at the state level). In New York City, the majority of the TOTAL city budget now goes to paying pensions and benefits to RETIRED city workers. Activists on behalf of the environment like to talk about "sustainable growth." This is very much the same sort of issue. Our present rates of spending on salaries, pensions, and benefits to government employees are NOT SUSTAINABLE. We can lament to the Heavens, we can tear our garments and rip out our hair and cover ourselves in ashes, we can wish it were not so; but it IS so.

Government cannot continue spending the kind of money it has been spending, and the great bulk of its "unfunded liabilities" are in the form of payments to government workers (current or retired). This is simply how it is, no matter how noble and good you think that these workers are, and no matter how much you think they might deserve their current compensation. Do the laid-off workers not also deserve well-paying jobs and compensation? But they are having to make do right now. It is not unreasonable to ask government workers to do the same.

The entire economy is circling the drain, the private sector is groaning in the pains of a stillbirth, and EVERYBODY must make sacrifices. I thought we were all in this together. Apparently not, is the message being clearly sent right now to every person in the private economy by the workers currently in the public sector. Again, what reaction do these public employees really expect from the rest of us?

3. The Political Mood Appears to Have Changed

The very fact that the state government itself, the state government of a historically "blue collar" and heavily unionized state like WISCONSIN no less, is on the verge of passing these reforms speaks volumes to how bad things have gotten. In the fog of the rhetorical wars, we lose sight of the fact that not all advocacy groups are created equal. Sure, there are "taxpayers" groups in every state, many of which employ lobbyists and have some organizational power. But these groups are always, by their very nature, cobbled together and reactionary. A software engineer in Milwaukee and a small business owner in Stoughton are hardly capable of mustering the resources from their own private savings to become a formidable political force. They have, frankly, other things to do, and their own interests do not coincide on any day-to-day basiss that would cause them to pool their efforts aggressively and with focus. But public sector unions, on the other hand, are as large and organized a political lobbying force as can be imagined. This is not a moral judgment, but a simple statement of fact. When it comes to who has all the political advantages and the ears of most legislators and other brokers in the halls of power, the unions have the average taxpayer beat up and down the field. And yet the unions want to play the victims, they want to tell us to ignore the giant war chest behind them and the glistening armor they wear, and to think of them instead as humble Davids. But they are not. The Davids here, for better or worse, are the common people who do NOT have the poltiical-connections of a labor union or other capital-intense special interest group behind them, but who have STILL managed, at long last, to convince these lawmakers that something has to change. Enough people have finally weighed in on their lawmakers as individuals to have overcome the constant pressure of the unions, ever present for decades. The unions now roar, but the rest of the people were roaring already. The politicians heard them, finally.

So, in the midst of this economy things have finally gotten to the point where the largely-unconnected are being heard to say "No more, please!" And in response to this the unions are saying "Hey, we're entitled to what we've always gotten!" This is an incredibly tone-deaf response from the public unions. They are badly misreading the mood of their fellow citizens, and the way the political winds are (finally) starting to blow.

Of course, fiscal sanity is not likely to ever be restored. I doubt that any politicians will at any point do anything remotely close to being good enough to actually prevent the black hole from consuming us. But the patience of the people for sitting around and giving the politicians years to hem and haw and not even take the problem seriously, are likely over. Something that LOOKS like results are going to have to start coming, and quickly. Right now the Wisconsin legislature looks like it's trying to bring some kind of results, and the public unions look like they are pretending that the problem doesn't even exist. Things can just go on as they have been going on. The general public is not going to accept that explanation any longer. If you are a public employee, then by all means figure out how to deal with that truth in a way that gives you the softest landing possible, but one way or another you MUST indeed deal with it. It is happening whether you like it or not, and reality is not politically correct enough to care about whether the noble public servants were ready when the car hit the wall. Their nobility will not keep the physics of the crash from doing its damage.

4. Using the Kids is Wrong

For the love of God, don't drag the students into this. Every conscientious parent in America who still has their children enrolled in "public" schools should note that the teachers to whom they have delegated the responsibility for educating their children apparently believe that their children are little more than political pawns to be used as support for their own cause.

I’d like all public school teachers who teach high school civics or U.S. history to write a brief essay comparing this behavior to the mindset the Southern states in the debate over the “3/5” clause at the Constitutional convention. When you want to use someone else's numerical population to help your own political and economic position, while not caring for their own concerns as individuals, then that's a pretty crappy attitude to have towards your fellow human beings.

The fact that slavery was obviously much worse on a moral scale doesn't mean that this is different in kind. It is a difference of degree, but it is the same sort of political move in kind.

If this 4th point makes you really angry, I understand. But I'd really rather you focus on (1) - (3) if you respond, as those are far more substantive in dealing with our actual situation right now.

Pre-Existing Conditions and the Arbitrariness of Forced Charity

2011-02-01T15:49:00.001-05:00

Even among those who were outraged at the passage of “ObamaCare” last year, it is common to hear that “of course” we should provide coverage to those who have pre-existing conditions. Indeed, and completely unsurprisingly, this has been a common feature of the rhetoric of BOTH parties throughout the unpleasant discussions of the last two years. The vast majority of Republican talk of alternatives to ObamaCare indicate a desire to KEEP such a provision in whatever new legislation were to be crafted. Even among those GOP pols who are reputed to be strong advocates of the “free market,” it is more common than not to hear them say that pre-existing conditions ought to be covered.

It is popular with the public and with the politicians alike. This is unfortunate, because it is utterly wrong-headed. It is an understandable wrong-headedness borne of a noble intention, but intentions don’t turn error into truth. Even more importantly, it does not fulfill the law of love to harm others, even if your intentions for doing so are noble. If you didn’t realize that by calling for a law requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, that you are in fact causing undeniable harm, then please read on. Our concern here is for the people, remember. We are all about compassion here, but compassion is underwritten by liberty. Read on to see why.

The Social Benefit of Insurance in Two(ish) Paragraphs

The entire point of insurance as an economic institution, that which makes it a socially-beneficial financial phenomenon, is that it allows people to manage their risk. In a world of inherent uncertainty, this is a highly valuable service, indeed! Because there are many things which might befall us, despite our best efforts, we seek out a way to protect ourselves from the full consequences of an uncontrollable catastrophe. This is done by pooling our risk in together with a large number of other people who are also desiring to protect themselves in this way. For a small premium (much, much smaller than the costs we or our families our businesses would incur if exposed to the potential catastrophe with no protection), we are guaranteed to be “made whole” if we happen to be one of the “unlucky” ones to suffer the catastrophe. Those who are lucky not enough end up not receiving any insurance pay-out at all, in effect subsidizing the unlucky ones. But the small amount they paid out in premiums is a cost they are happy to have foregone, simply for the knowledge and comfort that they were protected against the risk that was ultimately beyond their control. This is all to everyone’s benefit, both the great majority of insured who pay premiums over the years while never receiving any pay-out, and certainly to the minority who does end up needing the pay-out.

It’s pretty cool, right?

Now, people who invest money in insurance companies, or banks who take the money of investors and loan it to insurance companies, or actual owners of insurance companies who pump their own money into such a venture, are all engaging in entrepeneurial activity just like someone who owns a local Taco Bell franchise or a day-trading firm. Some people invest in lumber companies, others invest in insurance companies. It is just one business venture among the millions that a person with capital to invest could invest in if they so chose.

What About Someone Who Doesn’t Have Insurance and then Gets Sick?

Now, admittedly, the institution of insurance does not in any way create a utopia in which no person is ever left without coverage for their risk. But, of course, this is to be expected. In a free society, everyone assesses the risks they face themselves, and it is up to them to determine which risks are serious enough to require them to protect themselves, as well as to decide upon the best way to gain that protection. If a person decides, for whatever reason, not to carry insurance against a particular kind of risk (fire to their house, the loss of their ability to work, a health calamity), then they are choosing to absorb that risk themselves. If they have sufficient wealth, then they are simply deciding to allow the catastrophe to deplete their own savings, should such an event occur. if they do not have wealth sufficient to “make themselves whole” in the event that the risk should befall them, then they are simply accepting the risk in all its full force as something which would bring themselves, their family, or their business to ruin if it should occur, or else they are hoping to obtain charity from others to assist them in such a case. All of these approaches are legitimate ways for a person to assess and deal with a particular risk that they perceive. There is nothing more moral about any one of them over any other, and different people will find one or the other to be best for them. Most people, in fact, choose each of these three responses to different kinds of risk within their own lives. Some do not bother with flood insurance at all, use savings to pay for dental visits, but take out a life insurance policy to assist their families in the event of their sudden death.

OK, so what about a person in the third scenario, who does not have insurance protecting them from a health calamity, but who also does not have sufficient wealth to help themselves in such an event, either. What happens if such a person then falls sick? Clearly, they are left to either “absorb” the full cost of the calamity (i.e., suffering with the illness in all its effects), or they might solicit charity from others.

Now, it is understandable that we find this scenario unpleasant, even though the person chose not to have insurance of his own free will and took the risk under no compulsion. As human beings capable of a full range of sentiment, we empathize deeply with someone in this predicament. The mere fact that they chose to take the risk does not mean, for most of us, that we’re happy that they “lost” their bet. We don’t want them to suffer. It is never fun to watch another person suffer. (And, remember, it is not as though the person acted immorally when he chose not to take out an insurance policy. As a general rule, there is no a priori reason to think that this decision was anything but the best balance of his various goals and values that was available to him. He didn’t do anything wrong in taking the risk; some amount of risk is always unavoidable in this life.) So, naturally, we might wish that something could be done to help this person.

So Why Not Just Make the Insurance Company Pay His Expenses Anyway?

So, supposing that we really are compassionate human beings, but supposing also that we are human beings who unfortunately have not become well-acquainted with economic law, we might come up with the following bright idea?: “I know! Let’s just force an insurance company to help him anyway!”

There are severe economic problems with doing this, but we are leaving those completely to the side here. Here we are focusing on a particular moral problem instead. To be clear, this solution in and of itself, regardless of whether it proved successful to help the man or not, is immoral because it constitutes theft from the insurance company that is forced to pay (and, indirectly, it is also theft from the insured clients at that company, and any investors in that company who provide it with additional capital beyond that provided by premiums). This is a real problem that has no solution if you try going this route (it is wrong to force someone else to provide charity). But even that is not the problem I’m drawing our attention to here. Instead, it is a different moral problem—that of arbitrariness. This is a bad policy on moral grounds, in addition to the moral problems with legalized mugging, because in the end it is entirely arbitrary.

We are tempted to think that the policy at least “makes sense,” in that if someone is going to be forced to pay for another person’s medial bills, it ought to be the company that is already in the industry of paying for people’s medical bills. But this actually wrong thinking.

First, returning to the nature of insurance as described above, we need to realize that forced charity is a completely different kind of economic interaction and “service” altogether. If a company is forced to pay for the expenses of someone who has not previously pooled their possible future risk into the company through a contracted agreement to pay premiums, then that is not insurance. If a person is not trying to manage their risk of a incurring a future expense, but is instead trying to get someone to pay for their expense after they have already incurred it, then that is not insurance. The companies might still have "insurance” on their business cards, but they are no longer providing anything like insurance. Instead, they are providing charity, and that by force.

Now, if we think about this for a moment, we should realize that this policy is completely arbitrary in that it essentially singles out a particular company (or companies in a particular industry) to be the one forced to provide this charity. Even ignoring the moral problem with doing this kind of thing in the first place, there is no way to justify doing it to these particular companies, and not to others. The desire to help a child with cancer is a noble one. But why should the burden of providing the charity fall entirely upon one particular entity, the former "insurance company?" Remember, those people who invested in the insurance company did not invest in their business for the purpose of giving charity to sick people, any more than an owner of an Italian restaurant or a trucking company did.

It SEEMS at first blush, perhaps, that there is some "logical" connection to making it be the insurance companies that pay for sick people with pre-existing conditions, since insurance companies are already in that general industry of health care service. But, in reality, when we realize how completely different coerced charity is from insurance, there is no logical connection at all. It is completely arbitrary. We could with just as much justification pass a law saying that all people with pre-existing health conditions have their bills paid for by, say, car companies. Why not?

You aren't an evil obstructionist who wants these people to die, are you?

When change will really come

2010-11-03T20:30:00.002-04:00

The Tea Party has been an interesting phenomenon. It has some deep and genuinely libertarian roots, but it also has many other influences. At the same time, the suits and ties have tried to steer it into little more than "W was better than Obama," a sentiment which, if every actually spoken, will immediately plunge our soul into the darkest of despair. Not the particular opinion of who is better, but that we would even waste time on the question.

(Is there nothing better?)

Those of us who admire The Statesman (peace be upon him) know two things about libertarianism in America: it has come a long way in recent years, and it still has a long way to go. There are many encouraging things about the current upswell of voter anger against the Obama regime as exemplified in the Tea Parties and so forth, but there are also many causes for caution. The truth is that most people who say that they want "smaller government," or even that "government is not the solution, it's the problem," or that they are "taxed enough already" are not anywhere remotely close to consistent intellectual defenders of freedom over and against the state. Most of them have many areas in their own thinking in which they have no problem with the government being large, in which they seem to think that the government is actually a source of good and correction for wayward markets or individuals, etc. That these inconsistencies are often blatant is really not surprising, for this is often how human nature works.

But what is important is not that humans think inconsistently as humans are often wont to do, but that they find a way to mature and come to a more stable place eventually. The more rabid supporters of the Tea Parties and the radio talking heads scoff at the notion that this is all just a temporary wave of "anger" that will subside, but history bears that out. I hope it is different this time, but for that to be the case certain things have to happen. The Tea Party is going to have to grow up. This will entail at least the following:

1. Liberty and what it entails has to be fully embraced by these advocates of small government and these organizers of Tea Party rallies and, hopefully, by the freshmen Congressmen and women who have ridden their sentiments to Washington. This means that a large majority in the Tea Parties themselves have to come to terms with what freedom really means, not just as a slogan against the most recent threat of higher taxes of the latest government "takeover" of this or that, but in terms of true, abiding freedom for every person to enjoy their own life, liberty, and property apart from coercive interference. This, and nothing less, must become the animating force and point of view of these people who are advocating "change" in government, or else the change we get will really just be more of the same.

A few particular issues that spring immediately to mind are:

War, foreign policy,and military spending;
Property rights vs. "stimulating" the economy through cronyism;
Encouraging and enabling those with traditional social values to succeed and prosper by removing obstacles to their own free choice of lifestyle vs. using force to gift them with an unnatural advantage;
Immigration

On each of these questions, the current conservative-libertarian hybrid is blatantly nonsensical. For liberty to reign, she must be allowed to speak into these issues in a way that is clear and firm. Otherwise this is all a waste of time. Clarifications of these and other issues will be the subject of various future posts.

2. Distraction issues must be abandoned so we may focus on the real things that need to change first. The three clearest examples of purely distracting wastes of time that currently beset the Tea Party are:

Term Limits
Opposition to "Earmarks"
The Fair Tax

All three of these are wrongheaded-but-kinda-cute on their very best day. On most days, however, they are utterly counterproductive and betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what issues are truly at stake. For more specific reasons why these are useless distractions at best, see forthcoming posts.

3. And here, a word about where we are hopefully going. It is not nearly enough to replace a good chunk of Democrats in Congress with Republican counterparts. The vast majority of incumbents in both major parties have to go. The whole rotten plant must be uprooted and pruned. Period. If your Congressman is not on a very short list of acceptable candidates who will fight for liberty, then it is time for serious soul-searching. No hemming. No hawing. No ifs, ands, or buts. If we are really making something change in the way our society is governed (as in: we are decreasing the amount of government in our society), then we have to recognize that most of them are bums (except his eminence). Some will say that they are "born again" and that they are now ready to fight for genuine liberty, if that's where they think the political winds require them to go. But this is not enough. It is not enough to say the slogans. It is not enough for the suits and ties to show up to the party once it's in full swing and say that they "knew it would be a hit" all along. It is not enough for these rascals to say that they get it now, and will do better in the future. They must show immediate signs that they really do "get it" now, otherwise they must go.

If we say we can't win that way, that we must support the establishment candidates, then we aren't there yet. Maybe that's just the way it is (probably). But we need to be clear on what "there" will look like when we get there. It means we do not give a flying flip anymore what any of the commentators or experts or party insiders say about who can or cannot win. Run a candidate we agree to vote for, or we stay home. We can live with two more years of someone horrible, because that's what you've been giving us anyway. If you want us to come out and vote for you, then you must be someone who is a self-conscious articulater and defender of the freedom of the people. Not certain favored, well-connected, or corporate interests (though all of them are real people, and are welcome to freedom along with the rest of us). If you cannot tell the difference between these two things, or if you are not willing to defend the one and reject the other, then you are done. This is not a negotiation. Run these tired, crappy candidates who really just want to rule and have decided that they can spout one liners that "conservatives" like more than one-liners that "liberals" like, and you are going to get a tired, crappy result.

In other words, It's not about this election. It's about moving the whole country towards liberty. This takes time, and that's okay. Every election is an opportunity to help things move in the right direction. When that happens, great! When it can't, there are other things we do to move liberty forward. But the soul of liberty is not for sale. Yes, I heard you say that "this is the biggest electino ever." You said that last time, too. Is someone running who will abolish the entire federal government TOMORROW? No? Then this is not the biggest election ever, and we are free to make some decisions about the best strategy for managing our time and resources to move forward.

Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to be gung-ho for a GOOD candidate in a political race. Other times, it is to withdraw from the political process altogether (including voting), and refuse to give the ruling class the legitiamcy they so crave. Wisdom is needed to know the times and choose the proper path.

Put it in Context, Please!

2010-11-03T12:53:00.002-04:00

Welcome back to Liberty for the People, to the very few of you who ever noticed us (pretentious website use of royal we, holla!) several months ago. We are back now, and plan to stay and be regular. The election last night is a worthy catalyst for standing more confidently astride the blogosphere.

Why is last night a catlyst for a fight for greater liberty for all people? It is all about context. Something a bit later on about where liberty really stands within our country at this time,and where it stands even within this supposed victory for small government that transpired at the polls yesterday. But for now, a quick reminder that, wherever she stands, she needs defenders to push her flag much farther up the hill. Wherever we are, we've got a ways to go.

Getting there invovles many steps, but the broad outline has to look something like this:

1. Stop momentum of current political majority.
2. Reverse the more recent assaults and molestations of liberty.
3. Make actual positive progress towards a more libertarian society.

These are political goals specifically, of course. Liberty must continue to advance through non-political means (such as persuasion of hearts and minds, etc.) But, as far as stopping the abuse of one (large) subset of the population by another is concerned, there are political things that must take place b/c the assaults are enacted through political means in the first place.

So, context for last night. What was the GOP victory last night, really? In the best possible world, it was nothing more than Step 1. That assumes that the two parties truly are representatives of significantly different political systems of value and policy, which is a highly tenuous proposition. It is at least equally likely that the two parties, together, constitute a ruling elite that is pursuing the same over-arching goals, and really last night halted no momentum whatsoever as far as that larger two-headed beast is concerned.

If this is all too conspiratorial for your taste, so be it, but Step 2 is still a long road to walk, uphill all the way. Will the newly-elected Republican majority in the House and the stronger influence of Republicans in the Senate (particularly when combined wtih "blue dog" Democrats in the Senate who are wary of losing their own seats in generically conservative states in 2012 or 2014) truly be of good effect in reversing "ObamaCare" and the like in the next few years? That this remains to be seen is an extreme understatement.

This is not meant to poo-poo what might be a genuine glimmer of hope for the future. Not at all. But we have to face the trials and problems that remain squarely and soberly. Many who have been involved in the "Tea Parties" and many in the order of conservative talking heads are out there today talking about continuing to build on the momentum, this is only the beginning, etc. Again, more on that in another post a bit later, but we absolutely have to be clear on what it IS, precisely, that we are trying to press on towards. The GOP victories last night represent momentum towards WHAT goals, exactly? Repeal of ObamaCare and the like is obviously part of the answer, but there must be more.

What are the principles we hold dear which animate these particular drives to "repeal the bill?" There is a lot of talk about "small government" right now, about the inherent inefficiencies and injustices of government management, but this talk has been heard before. For the sake of the people, there must be more.

Who's Afraid of the Real Rand Paul?

2010-06-07T15:27:00.003-04:00

GALiberal, whose regular website is crisp and clean after its new design, is also trying to get another website going. A website entirely devoted to "bringing down" Rand Paul. It is one of his "personal missions this election cycle," in fact. Ah, buddy, it's good to have personal missions. When you find a cause that just cries out for someone with a good mind and strong typing skills to step into the breech and do the Lord's work, well there is nothing quite like it, is there?

Of course, a word of caution here: that "good mind" thing really is a prerequisite. Without it, your efforts to expose corruption or irrationality in someone else might only end up exposing your own brain fail. And when you have made it your own personal mission to display your illogic and picked nits to the world, then it is hard to feel sorry for you. So, please GALiberal, step away from that cliff. It was just a fun media cycle for your side. It was a heady week. It was glorious. Now it's over. Get over Rand Paul. He's far more rational than you give him credit for, and he has a pretty good idea of what he is doing (as his own interview with the indominatable Walter Williams on Limbaugh today made clear).

If you are really going to go forward with this silly work of yours, trying to expose a small-government politician for actually having--shock!--small-government principles, then you are only making my own blogging schedule very, very easy to fill out. It will go something like this, on a day-to-day basis:

-Come up with something brilliant and subtly reasoned about a major libertarian issue of the day (ouch my brain!)
-Come up with something brilliant and subtly reaoned about a current political race (ouch my brain!)
-Come up with something brilliant and subtly reasoned about the interplay of Christianity and libertarianism (ouch my brain!)

OR,

--Just read the latest post on The Real Rand Paul, and pick it apart piece by piece. (ooh, low-hanging fruit!)

I'm going to take the second side of that "or" every day, dude. GaLiberal, there is already plenty of patently silly argumentation on your nascent site. You would be better-advised to simply take the whole thing down. Unless, that is, you really think you've got your finger on the pulse of the American people here (not just the professionally-shocked media class). You really think you've found the Senate race is going to galvanize the wait-til-your-father-gets-home Democrats and pull a November victory out of the jaws of voter payback for Obamacare and the cyclical law of mid-term elections (and in a state that the GOP already owns in national elections and that trends as more anti-Obama than the nation at large, no less). The issue that is going to once-and-for-all show that libertarianism actually wants people to be free, and that's bad. If you really think this is a winning hand, then by all means...

Throw us in that briar patch, GaLiberal. Please.

The Christian Morality of Libertarianism: A Response to Jim Wallis

2010-06-04T01:57:00.004-04:00

1.3

Wallis' Second through Fifth Critiques

Now for the remaining four points Wallis makes in his critique of libertarianism.

2. Wallis argues that the Bible requires us to accept government.

Here I quote Wallis' entire criticism, though I rudely interrupt about halfway through:

An anti-government ideology just isn’t biblical. In Romans 13, the apostle Paul (not the Kentucky Senate candidate) describes the role and vocation of government; in addition to the church, government also plays a role in God’s plan and purposes. Preserving the social order, punishing evil and rewarding good, and protecting the common good are all prescribed; we are even instructed to pay taxes for those purposes! Sorry, Tea Party. Of course, debating the size and role of government is always a fair and good discussion, and most of us would prefer smart and effective to “big” or “small” government.

The quickest response here is simply to request that we do a public word study of the Greek words Paul uses here for "civil authorities." Does this necessarily refer to a violence monopoly? That is, of course, a feature fo most historical governments and societies (they had such a monopoly), but whether that historical feature is what Paul is concerned with in this pasage is another matter.

If we had an anarcho-libertarian social order, there would still be plenty of "governing authoriites" for Christians to obey. Nobody needs to worry about that.

That quick answer aside, it is interesting that Wallis' own argument sure makes the government sound very limited in terms of what it can legitimately do. Does Wallis honestly think that the average Tea Party advocate refuses to pay taxes for "preserving the social order, punishing evil and rewarding good, and protecting the common good?" The problem, of course, is what we mean by "common good." If the "common good" is being used as a generic all-encompassing allowance for whatever allegedly beneficial thing the politicans get it in their head to do (similar to how progressives read the "general welfare" clause in the Constitution), then I hate to be the one to say this but Romans 13 is being used as pious fodder for things that Paul was never intending to say.

In any event, Wallis continues by discussing the possible abuses of state power:

Revelation 13 depicts the state as a totalitarian beast — a metaphor for Rome, which was persecuting the Christians. This passage serves as a clear warning about the abuse of governmental power. But a power-hungry government is clearly an aberration and violation of the proper role of government in protecting its citizens and upholding the demands of fairness and justice. To disparage government per se — to see government as the central problem in society — is simply not a biblical position.

Governments are not normally power-hungry, got that? Businesses and corporations are power-hungry, of course, but governments are not. People in government are, except for a few aberrations, historically humble and genuinely altruistic public servants. The tension between this statement and what Wallis says about human nature in his next critique is obvious. Come and see:

3. Wallis says that human fallenness makes the free market do bad things that must be corrected with governmental force.

3. The Libertarians’ supreme confidence in the market is not consistent with a biblical view of human nature and sin. The exclusive focus on government as the central problem ignores the problems of other social sectors, and in particular, the market. When government regulation is the enemy, the market is set free to pursue its own self-interest without regard for public safety, the common good, and the protection of the environment — which Christians regard as God’s creation. Libertarians seem to believe in the myth of the sinless market and that the self-interest of business owners or corporations will serve the interests of society; and if they don’t, it’s not government’s role to correct it.

Yes, more or less, this is what libertarians believe, except that part about it being a "myth." And "sinless" is a bridge too far. But it is nice that Wallis recognizes the basic claim we make that individuals being free enhances society as a whole (though go back and read his first critique in light of this one: what was the point of making that first criticism at all, if he knows what the libertarian position actually is?)

The market simply brings it about so that scarce resources are allocated to those uses most valued by consumers. That's it, economics in a nutshell. Since consumers are sinners, of course any Christian has to agree with Wallis that not all uses of resources in the free market are moral or proper. But it is good to recognize what the real problem is in such cases. If the free market allows, say, prosperity for pimps, then that is because a good number of people in the society value the "service" pimps (or, more accurately, their personnel) provide. Christian libertarians are not Pollyanna about this. We pray for consumers' tastes to change. But, we also oppose government intervention in the market, because that cure is in our opinion worse than the disease. So far so good, and Wallis represents us fairly enough.

But notice the inconsistency here that I drew attention to above. Wallis says that power-hungry governments are an "aberration" and that the noble calling of government is by-and-large operational. But now when it comes to the market it seems that problems are everywhere. Wallis is trying to set the issue up in just a certain way, but in the end the arbitrariness is a problem that cannot be overcome. We could easily switch out a few terms and repeat his own criticism of the market back to him as an anti-government screed. Such as, "The anti-libertarians' supreme confidence in the force monopoly in a given territory is not consistent with a biblical view of human nature and sin. The exclusive focus on market failures as the central problem ignores the problems of other social sectors, and in particular, the state. When free decisions by indiviual resource owners are the enemy, the state is set free to pursue its own self-interest without regard for liberty and rights, the actual plight of the people it claims to serve, and the protection of a society's economic well-being--which Christians regard as God’s blessing. Non-libertarians seem to believe in the myth of the sinless state and that the self-interest of bureaucrats and career politicans will serve the interests of society; and if they don’t, it’s still no reason to give liberty a try instead of the state."

The real issue for Christians is that all people have sinful natures and are fallen into the ways of death. This means that you can find sinful people and sinful results in any walk of life, whether business, church, family, or state. But the debate we should be having as Christians who are trying to formulate a good political theory is how to minimize the scope that this human evil has to do its damage within society. With the debate framed this way, there are very good reasons to embrace decentralization and market freedom as optimal arrangements for minimizing sin's impact over human affairs. The ability of particularly bad sinners to ruin large swaths of the society are minimized in a decentralized arrangment. Furthermore, in a market, the primary way for an ambitious person to satisfy their greed is to find a way to serve the desires of other people. The fact that some of these desires are sinful does not negate the fact that most desires are for things that Biblical morality considers perfectly legitimate. The net result of greed and other sinful motivations in a free market, then, is the development of a widespread division of labor in which sinners have to work to empower themselves for their sinful desires. And in the course of so empowering themselves, they bring about more power in the daily lives of other people in society (power to choose fruit at the grocery store, to choose an ipod or a bicycle, etc.; these are morally benign choices and most choices are like this). Adam Smiths' invisible hand argument, though too deistic for Christian standards (though that is easily fixed), is nonetheless an intriguing and plausible explanation of how it is that individuals trading in their own self-interest actually end up benefitting the entire society.

If we consider the state, there are no such natural structures in place that turn selfish bureaucratic and political energy into positive societal results. If there are, I'd like to hear about them, but the historical trend is that people with power and influence go to great lengths to maintain their power and influence. Bureaucracies and governmental agencies do not force people to channel their ambition into productive work. Instead they are set free to figure out how to advance within the system, how to get more money sent their way, etc. The noble purposes of most governmental agencies are real, but as Christians we know that God is unimpressed with the fancy mottos on our seals. The more money and power we give to the state to take care of problem x, the more money and power it seems to need, and problem x never does go away (at least not without new problems y and z popping up in its place).

But such theorizing ignores the practical issues that the public sector has to solve. Should big oil companies like BP simply be allowed to spew oil into the ocean? And is regulating them really un-American? Do we really want nobody to inspect our meat, make sure our kids’ toys are safe, or police the polluters to keep our air clean? Do we really want owners of restaurants and hotels to be able to decide whom they will or won’t serve, or should liquor store owners also be able to sell alcohol to our kids? Given the reality of sin in all human institutions, doesn’t a political process that provides both accountability and checks and balances make both theological and practical sense? C.S. Lewis once said that we need democracy not because people are essentially good, but because they often are not. Democratic accountability is essential to preventing the market from becoming a beast of corporate totalitarianism – just as it is essential for the government. And God’s priorities should determine ours, not the priorities of the Chamber of Commerce.

Next to being accused of abandoning the poor, libertarians are also accused of being impractical. I'm glad to get this out in the open like this, it's very therapeutic. This claim is simply false. There is nothing "impractical" about saying that people should be free, and that when they are free their own individual efforts to manage the resources they control will aggregate into a society with well-managed resources. Of course, it often seems that progressives simply define "well-managed" so that certain things never happen at all. No "oil spewing." No "polluting." No bigoted behavior from business owners. But the truth is that this is just a fundamental principle of economics: life is about trade-offs. If you want to eliminate all bigoted behavior from business owners, or oil from ever spewing from the ocean floor after an industrial accident, etc., then you have to adopt a certain theory of property, and it is a theory that produces less than impressive results in the real world. (What on earth is "practical" about thinking that people's lives will improve in your society at the same time that you use force and intimidation to constrict and hinder the efforts of the very people who make the things that improve people's lives?)

Is drilling for oil worth it to society? That all depends. Can those who invest in doing the oil make a profit selling what they get, even taking into account the "external" costs like pollution and environmental damage through accidents like spills and the like? In other words, if a company adds up all of its costs in drilling for oil, and it must include in these costs the money it has to pay to fix any damage it does or that it pays out to victims of its damage when the damage cannot be remedied, then does its selling price for the drilled oil exceed all of these costs? If so, if the company is profitable, then this is consumers' way of telling the oil compnay that what it does is worth it.

But perhaps this oil spill really has revealed something about the true costs of oil drilling that BP had simply not properly counted on. Perhaps oil spills every so often are unavoidable if you are in this line of work, and perhaps they are so expensive to "fix" that this actually makes the whole enterprise of drilling for oil unprofitable (that doesn't seem to be the case, but let's pretend). Well, in that case, then the failure to turn a profit really means that the people in the society are telling the oil driller "We do not value the oil you get in this way enough to justify the resources you are using up getting it." And in that case, BP will go out of business all on its own, and the economy in general will start funnelling more resources to other ways of producing energy than deep-sea oil drilling.

Now, even if you dislike that free market explanation of such things, what is the explanation for how bureaucracies and governmental force solves these problems? I do want someone to inspect the meat I buy, but I trust private investigators to do that work just as I trust Consumer Reports to tell me how safe a new model of car is. Inspectors do not have to come from the state. Again the distinction between social order and social order imposed by a government force monopoly rises to the top. I don't want BP to wantonly spew oil into the ocean, but then again, BP doesn't want to do that, either. Is this really why we "need" the state, to keep companies from throwing away billions of their own accumulated capital fixing avoidable accidents? As for these kind altruists who "police the polluters to keep our air clean," how is that working out? Have we seen an eliminatino of pollution in our time? Or have we seen instead a mere shifting in the kinds of pollution that are allowable, and in the kinds of people who are "allowed" to pollute?

Wallis wants "democracy" to rule over the market, but this shows how little he has thought about what the market actually is. The market already is a "democracy." When people decide what to do with their own scarce resources, they are "voting" on the kinds of things that society needs to have. We do not need to look to an external force outside of the market to come in an impose "democracy" upon it. For one example, reality television does well not because we need democracy to come in and tell us what to spend our time and money on. It's because we already have a democracy in which people vote with their time and moeny, and the people have voted. If a busybody who hates reality television now advocates for a state-coerced solution to this "problem," then let us call that what it is. And it is not "democracy."

But speaking of trade-offs and the basics of economics...

4. Wallis thinks that the when the strong trade with the weak, they are oppressing them.

The Libertarian preference for the strong over the weak is decidedly un-Christian. “Leave me alone to make my own choices and spend my own money” is a political philosophy that puts those who need help at a real disadvantage. And those who need help are central to any Christian evaluation of political philosophy. “As you have done to the least of these,” says Jesus, “You have done to me.” And “Blessed are those who are just left alone” has still not made the list of Beatitudes. To anticipate the Libertarian response, let me just say that private charity is simply not enough to satisfy the demands of either fairness or justice, let alone compassion. When the system is designed to protect the privileges of the already strong and make the weak even more defenseless and vulnerable, something is wrong with the system.

Certainly, there are different strains of libertarianism. But I'll bet Wallis has been around long enough to know that not all libertarians are Ayn Rand devotees who wax philosophical about the "virtues of selfishness." One definitely does not normally hear Christian libertarians argue in that way. The truth is that one of the fundamental draws of a free market is precisely that it empowers the weak vis. a vis. the strong. Who is Jesus going to say "I was naked, and you gave me nothing to wear" to? A wealthy person who, despite his own natural superiorities in both intellect and skill, nonetheless does not wish to produce all of his own enjoyments, and so trades with others? Or a Soviet kommissar who met a quota for steel production by converting a factory that used to make food?

We all need to review the law of comparative advantage. (3, 2, 1, google!) A doctor might be the best sewer in town, a real man of many talents, but instead of "hogging" all the surgery business and all the tailoring business to himself, he is going to focus on the real moneymaker (surgery), and let someone else work at sewing. And, when a much poorer man produces clothes, even clothes that are inferior to what hte doctor could have made himself, he will happily trade some of his money for those clothes because it is to his advantage to not have to worry about making his own clothes himself. On the other side of the transaction, a person with significantly fewer skills than the doctor, is able to trade and benefit from that trade. So everybody wins, rich and poor alike.

Now, if only we had a clear contrast to this kind of mutually-benficial process, so that I could make my point stick? If only there was a place whwre, unlike in the market, the wealthy (or their hired agents) come to convince the people with political power to give them advantages, no matter the effect this might have on competitors or on other industries? Of course, there is such a place, Washginton, D.C., and as soon as it becomes a place where the strong do not oppress the weak, someone please let me know.

5. Jim Wallis thinks the Tea Party specifically (and by implication libertarianism in general?) is too white.

No blockquotes on this one. Little needs to be said about this disappointing argument. The fact that Wallis seems to think that the racial composition of a gathering indicates that people in that gathering hold a particular set of doctrines about racial superiority, is an embarrassment for Wallis. Somehow I think the Tea Party (and, more importantly, anti-government political philosophy) will march on.

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To recap, in reverse order, libertarianism is not racist. Rather than trampling the weak undefoot, the free market allows strong and weak people to interact in ways that are mutually beneficial. The free market can provide many more things than Wallis gives it creit for. The Bible nowhere tells us that society has to have a coersive monopoly in order to functino. Finally, individual freedom does not conflict with the good of society as a whole, but rather reinforces it.

The Christian Morality of Libertarianism: A Response to Jim Wallis

2010-06-02T01:16:00.005-04:00

Part 1.2

Wallis' First Critique

Moving on to consider the five criticisms of libertarianism that Wallis offers, there are a lot of things that could be said but I am going to try to keep my comments brief (by my standards, anyway) so that the dialogue can continue (figuratively or literally). This first point requires more words than the others, though, so I ask you to bear with me.

1. Wallis pits "individual choice" against the social good. To the tape:

The Libertarian enshrinement of individual choice is not the pre-eminent Christian virtue. Emphasizing individual rights at the expense of others violates the common good, a central Christian teaching and tradition. The Christian answer to the question “Are we our brother’s keeper?” is decidedly “Yes.” Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God and love our neighbor. Loving your neighbor is a better Christian response than telling your neighbor to leave you alone. Both compassion and social justice are fundamental Christian commitments, and while the Christian community is responsible for living out both, government is also held accountable to the requirements of justice and mercy. Both Christians on the Right and the Left have raised questions about Libertarian abandonment of the most vulnerable — whether that means unborn lives or the poor.

The primary fault with this criticism is that it assumes that government and social order are the same thing. This is the flaw common to so much pro-government argumentation and which we discussed in the previous post. Saying "yes" to being my brother's keeper, and loving my neighbor, are indeed the only Biblically-faithful responses to separation between us. But what do these things have to with government? As a libertarian, I do not want my neighbor to leave me alone; I want the government to leave me alone so that I can help my neighbor all the more. Our duty to live out justice and mercy among our brethren in no way requires us to want to use the illegitimate power (to our mind) of government to do it.

Furthermore, Wallis' argument itself is rather muddled here. What sort of thing does Wallis have in mind, for example, when he worries about the fallout from "emphasizing individual choice at the expense of others"? What would it even mean to do this? If he means that my individual choice causes actual harm to another individual or group of individuals, then no libertarian would ever approve of individual choice in that sort of case. Any first year philosophy student can identify "the libertarian principle" in political philosophy, that individuals should be left uncoerced to make their own decisions in all matters that do not cause harm to other individuals. This is an essential claim of the libertarian position.

What Wallis seems to mean here is that it is wrong to allow individuals to make their own choices when those choices produce results that come "at the expense" of other individuals. Here again, however, we really need have no disagreement. Libertarians emphasize individual choice as the best means to actually accomplish widespread empowerment and improvement in the quality of life for all people in a society. Liberty is for the people, not a competing value that ignores them.

This point is frequently missed by non-libertarians, as though libertarinas over the last two centuries have simply been struck dumb whenever the poor have been brought into the conversation. We see this in Wallis' use of an old familiar argument, what we might call the argumentum ad prophetos, appeal to the prophets. The Old Testament prophets tell God's people to care for the poor and needy, the widows, etc. And here Wallis rests his case, apparently thinking that Christian libertarians have never considered these verses. (We have been too busy, of course. Hundred-dollar bills do not roll around in themselves, after all.) But where do these same prophets ever tell us that a social institution with monopoly power of force in a territory (i.e., a government or state) is the God-approved way to fulfill this command? Where do the Scriptures tell us that if you aren't advocating that the government do it, then you are disobeying God's command to do it?

Furthermore, how many of the "poor and needy" do governments truly help (when all "the things that are unseen" are also weighed in the balance, if that were possible)? More seriously, how many new additions to the "poor and needy" does the government create through its economically-mangled policies?

Now, conceptually, libertarians might simply be wrong when they worry that government intervention actually has unintended consequences that ends up hurting the poor and needy more than it helps, and that it even turns some formerly non-poor-and-needy folks into poor-and-needy. In a "dialogue," this can be discussed critically by reasonable people. But frankly, we should be a little further along in this conversation by now. Libertarians have been answering the proof texts about helping the poor for a long time now. We have argued directly to the point of how the needy and destitute are best cared for, what kind of social system best provides for their being cared for, etc. Our view, again, is that government intervention in the market actually hurts far more than it helps. It makes society as a hole poorer, which means it hurts the poorest people most of all (since they are most miserably effected by any drop in living standards). Furthermore, the policies directly hurt poor workers and consumers who are not the direct recipients of the aid or "protection". (Tarriffs on imported steel help steel workers, but hurt every other worker and consumer who works in or buys things produced by the steel industry.) And further still, assistance programs create warped incentives that contribute drasticaly and tragically to the break down of the family, and which trap the poor (especially poor young men) in a "cycle of poverty."

Now, I'm not defending these claims in any detail here. The point is just that they are well-known claims of libertarians, and they direclty relate to the question of caring for the orphans, widows, and impoverished in our communities. But left-leaning Christians (and some "crunchy" conservatives as well) do not seem to reflect upon or absorb this libertarian response at all. Instead they usually treat us to another lecture about how we make liberty "too important" in our system and how it causes us to "miss" these other important things, like helping the poor. If I were the sort to become frustrated by such things, I would find it frustrating that we continue to be patronized like children who just haven't thought our argument all the way through, when in reality our argument does, well or poorly, respond to the "help the needy" argument. It is non-libertarians who simply seem uninterested in having an actual dialogue with us on this issue.

I realize this sounds a bit grouchy, which is not my intent. What I am trying to communicate is simply a genuine sense of rhetorical disenfranchisement that Christian libertarians often feel when interacting with their non-libertarian co-religionists. We are always assumed to have so much explaining to do, and even when we do that explaining, we are largely ignored. These are not new issues. Jim Wallis did not just wake up this week and realize that the Tea Party required him to learn about this new libertarianism thing the kids are all talking about. I am not rebuffing the dialogue; I'm just pointing out some of the frustration from my side of the aisle with hte way these dialogues have been handled in the past. And Wallis unfortunately repeats this mistake here in his first critique.

The Christian Morality of Libertarianism: Responding to Jim Wallis

2010-06-01T15:46:00.006-04:00

Part 1

Anti-Government ≠ Anti-Society

Before offering 5 criticisms of anti-governemnt political philosophy, Jim Wallis defines libertarianism in the following way:

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds individual rights as its supreme value and considers government the major obstacle. It tends to be liberal on cultural and moral issues and conservative on fiscal, economic, and foreign policy. This “just leave me alone and don’t spend my money” option is growing quickly in American life, as we have seen in the Tea Party movement.

I'm not sure what he means by it, but since it doesn't come up again in Wallis's post, we'll let it slide that he here classifies libertarian foreign policy as "conservative." I think the basic characterization of anti-government political philosophy offered in this paragraph is fair. We do need to look more closely, however, at the snarky paraphrase "just leave me alone and don't spend my money." This phrase scores some rhetorical points for Wallis' point of view (people are supposed to look after one another, and not strive to be isolated hermits). But it also scores some rhetorical points for the anti-government view, if we just look at it a little sideways.

When a Tea Partier says "leave me alone," he is not muttering into his long beard as he chases rascally kids off of his lawn. This is not some abstract commitment to "aloneness" in general. Rather, the anti-government political theorist is demanding to be left alone in a particular kind of way, or to be free from interference from a particular kind of group or institution. It is, after all, an anti-government sentiment that animates the libertarian, not an anti-other-people sentiment. In other words, we must remember that we are here talking about political philosophy, not social philosophy in general. A person can believe in having a well-ordered society, and can support various kinds of social institutions and influences upon individuals, and so forth, while still rejecting government as a legitimate form for this order to take.

In other words, "social" and "political" are not co-extensive terms. But most people today, including political philosophers, move seamlessly from one to the other, and thus read anyone who is against the government as being somehow against society. This followeth not.

This faulty assumption goes all the way back at least to Aristotle. Politics is the highest and most important science, Ariaatotle tells us, becasue man is a social animal. Of course, this connection is rooted in the etymology of the words. The polis or city is clearly a social arrangement of human beings living together, and so our word "politics" (things pertaining to the city) might seem to be nothing more than a synonymn for society. But, of coure, in actual use (both in Aristotle and up into our own day), "politics" actually refers to the laws and officers that pertain to a particular kind of social institution: the government. So, libertarians want the government to leave them alone, yes, but this is not the same thing as a grouchy misanthrope doing his own Jeremiah Johnson in the woods.

Libertarians are actually quite clear as to what exactly they find objectionable about government, and so there is no reason for our dialogue on this point to be needlessly vague and generalized. "Government" is, in its essence, an institution that claims a monopoly power over the use of violence within a given territory. That kind of social institution is the one libertarians object to, and not any notion of social interaction or heirarchy per se. In fact, the free market itself, their defense of which is so often used to berate libertarians about their supposed "individualism," is truly an amazingly interactive matrix that enhances rather than hinders human social relations. The free market is a non-negotiable feature of a stable and civilized society, which is why libertarians like it so much. It is not "atomistic individualism" run amok, but a respect for mutual growth and improvement for the entire human race. But more on that in the next post.

The other part of Wallis's caricature of the small-government position that needs our attention is the phrase "don't spend my money." Attached to "Leave me alone," this phrase sounds greedy and anti-social. Which is Wallis's purpose in using it. But in most ordinary contexts, what on earth is wrong with a person saying that they do not consent to someone else spending their money? Assuming that Jim Wallis grants that there is a legitimate right to private property, then surely he will acknowledge that it is not ordinarily a moral or noble behavior to simply expropriate someone else's wealth and spend it on your own desires, even if those desires themselves are noble. Surely Wallis does not approve, for example, of a person taking ten dollars out of their friend's wallet and giving it to another friend. And if the proper owner of that ten dollars said "Hey, don't spend my money!" we would not simply think that they were being greedy little scrooges.

Which brings us back to the government, which is the elephnat man in the room when it comes to arguments about spending other people's money. For some reason, Jim Wallis and countless other political theorists throughout history have thought that it is okay for governments to take a person's money, by force, and to spend it on their own purposes, even though this sort of behavior is strictly forbidden by all decency and Christian morality in the everyday lives of "normal" people. Something about the government is special for Wallis (and these countelss others): it gets to do things that "mundanes" cannot do. It can kill those who have not aggressed in any way, and it is not murder. It can take possession of the property of others who had a legitimate title, and it is not theft. It's not my design here to argue against this, but I do want everyone to see it clearly. Because if the libertarian philosophy can be paraphrased as "leave me alone and don't spend my money," then the pro-government position can be paraphrased as "bow to your masters, who are different than you somehow." So long as we agree that our basic difference can be characterized in this way (freedom from a particular kind of social institution vs. that social institution getting to do violent things others cannot) as an alternative to Wallis's more simplistic dichotomy of righteous philanthropists vs. greedy hermits, then we can move forward.

The Christian Morality of Libertarianism: Responding to Jim Wallis

2010-05-28T00:38:00.005-04:00

Part 0

Jim Wallis, Rand Paul, and the Debate We are Suddenly Allowed to Have

Jim Wallis wants to have a dialogue with “Tea Party Libertarianism.” I welcome this dialogue, especially as it regards Wallis’ main goal, which is to discuss libertarian political theory vis a vis Christianity. Is Libertarianism consistent with Christian morality? The purveyor of “God’s Politics” wants to tell us how it falls short.

This is a worthy conversation to have, and is incidentally one more piece to be entered into evidence in support of Marcus Carey’s “all part of the plan” optimism about Rand Paul. I am already a fan of Paul, of course, but I have been on the fence as to whether anyone can really be as savvy as Carey’s interpretation of his campaign tactics would imply. But now I am on the verge of falling off that fence and rolling around in the grass. Rand Paul has gotten the whole freaking country talking about the role of government in our daily lives, even regarding sacred cow issues such as racial discrimination. In the midst of getting the vapors over Rand Paul’s undeniably reasonable (even if controversial) points about government overreach, the progressives are unwittingly putting a debate on government overreach on the agenda, front and center. Sunday Paul withdrew from Meet the Press, and so instead they had a panel of people talk about…the proper role of government. Genius? You be the judge.

And now Jim Wallis feels the need, in light of all the press that Paul (and the Tea Party in general, to some extent) has been getting, to take up the issue himself. An opportunity to discuss the virtues of anti-government political philosophy in the presence of leftish Christians who may have never heard it well articulated? This is all to the good. It is another opportunity for God’s Word on matters of politics to be brought to light.

The fact that I mention the Bible as coming to bear explicitly in a political debate is itself a very unconventional opinion to hold, it might seem. Indeed, we can already hear the cries of “Theocracy is coming! Theocracy is coming!” from concerned citizens of the left. This is another reason why I am thankful to Mr. Wallis for initiating this discussion, because by doing so he has diffused most of this fearmongering in advance. The intellectual hypocrisy in our culture regarding church-state issues is astounding. People on the left are allowed to be as explicitly religious as they wish to be, and it is prophetic. People on the right (or libertarians) are often treated like aspiring theocrats if they quote word one from Scripture. Jim Wallis, as a man of the Left, is able to reach out and give someone on my side of the issues some cover here. After all, in the funky logic of politically correct rhetoric about church-state relations, Jim Wallis is allowed to claim Biblical authority because he is already defending the “right” positions. I of course am not defending the proper positions at all, which means I would not normally be invited to the picnic and certainly I would not be welcome to get out the Bible to defend my positions. But in this case I am here because Jim Wallis invited us all to come along, and so while I might get a few strange looks I’m going to make a go of it.

So, my first point here in Part 0 is that Jim Wallis is to be thanked for making it okay for a politically-minded Christian to explicitly appeal to Scripture as his authority again. But of course, this is something that conservative and small-government Christians have been happily doing for decades, just without any approval or recognition from the academic guardians of acceptable debate. But our obscurity here does not negate our experience with the debate. And so we must also warn Mr. Wallis, we are at this point very familiar with the typical fallacies that plague this debate. While we are not often allowed to have the debate out under the lights like this, we have indeed had the debate many times in less public settings and we know how to play all the funny angles in the outfield wall.

I find libertarianism to be morally satisfactory by the standards of Christian faith and practice. But Wallis finds it unsatisfactory, and so we go to the substance of that judgment in the next post.

Fundamentalist-style Roman Catholics are so much fun

2010-05-04T11:17:00.002-04:00

Thomas Storck is a noted current defender of "distributism" in Catholic circles. Distributism, of course, is the sincere but unfortunately completely false economic theory put forth by such brilliant Catholic writers in the last two centuries as Hillaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. It is never fun to disagree with such men, especially Chesterton. But alas, wrong is wrong, and distributism would lead to widespread death and starvation of people who under capitalism have no such troubles. This is bad enough, but thinking it is God's will that we do this makes it much worse. I personally would rather be herded into the jungles by Pol Pot's goons than told by Catholic authoritarians that they are only seeking my betterment through righteous adherence to God's design of my nature. God's design of our social natures is that the entire system of production be artificially limited to that which can be supported by villages and guilds, romantically conceived of course, and that all people who cannot find a place within that structure simply do not need to exist. We somehow fulfill our social purpose as human beings and achieve aesthetic, moral, and social fulfillment through deliberately restricting ourselves and our neighbors from enjoying the full array of material blessings that God makes available.

But, in any ase, let's count the ways in which Dr. Storck goes wrong in this quote (and I apologize for even appearing to defend Samuelson, but that is the example Storck chose to use and even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while). To the tape:

From the standpoint of sane and realistic economic thinking, Austrian economics is simply a variety of the same kind of economic thinking that produced the current neoclassical synthesis. Such thinking is not grounded in reality. It looks on the economy as largely a self-regulating machine, whereas in fact, it is relations of power, and the existence and shape of various institutions and customs, that primarily determine economic outcomes, e.g., how high wages are or what profits corporations will receive or what CEO salaries will be. If you look at papal encyclicals, you will see an understanding of how an economy works that is very different from that of most of our economists. This is particularly clear in the encyclicals of popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. They understood that the rich oppressed the poor and the poor needed aid, either from government or from their own collective efforts or both, to protect themselves from exploitation. The notion that wages, for example, are primarily determined by the law of supply and demand is utterly foreign to Catholic thinking as contained in the papal social encyclicals.

In order to highlight the contrast between these two approaches, let me take Paul Samuelson, author of an economics text that has been used continuously since 1948 and has been translated into numerous languages. In fact, it's probably the most widely-used economics textbook in the world. He writes that "Wages are really only the price of labor; rents are similarly the price for using land. Moreover, the prices of factors of production are primarily set by the interaction between supply and demand for different factors - just as the prices of goods are largely determined by the supply and demand for goods."

But the social teaching of the Church has a different understanding of this. For example, Pope Leo wrote in Rerum Novarum (1891) that a worker who receives less than a living wage "because an employer or contractor will give him no better...is the victim of force and injustice." Leo XIII understood that in economic relations human freedom, and thus the abuse of human freedom which allows for injustices, has plenty of room to act. The economy is not some self-regulating machine in which prices and wages are determined solely by mechanical laws of supply and demand. Market forces are real, certainly, but they are never the only factor in determining economic outcomes, and often not even the most important. But when one group of men has power over another group, very often the first group will abuse that power. Thus there is always the possibility of injustice among sinful men.

These kinds of miguided morality plays are so common when people criticize economic liberty, unfortunately. First, notice the assumption that "market forces" reduce the economy to a "machine." This is a meme worthy of a term paper that has almost no grounding in reality. Of course, there have been many philosophical defenders of the free market, and so there have been many analogies and rhetorical strategies employed and many different metaphysical commitments have been present in the various writers. But there is absolutely no requirement that libertarians assume mechanistic de-personalized "forces." None whatsoever. This is a strawman and nothing more. It is a very effective strawman, which is why market critics continue to use it. "You free marketeers turn society into a machine and people into cogs; WE advocate the fulfillment of the HUMANITY in people." Very self-righteous, but entirely false.

This is bad enough in any criticism of the free market, but it is especially unforgiveable in a discussion of the Austrian School. Austrians see "market forces" as nothing more than the results of individual human beings making choices of how to allocate their own scarce resources. The market is entirely personal for Ausrians.

Second, does no distributist like Storck even stop to consider the implications of that terrible quote from Leo XIII? (Since I'm not Catholic myself, I can speak such blasphemies: renewed empathy for Thomas Woods who remains a true blue Catholic in the midst of his own head-against-the-wall discusssions with these authoritarians.) If I own a factory and my profit margin is, say, 1% above the average rate of return for investments in the market, then I'm doing well for myself. If any average investment would earn, say, 5 pennies on the dollar, then let's say that I am making 6. This profit opportunity in my industry draws in competitors, and the production of goods and services in my industry increase, to the satisfaction of great numbers of consumers.

But I am a devout Catholic, unquestioningly loyal to papal infallibililty, and what is more I am convinced that the pope's proper spehere of authority includes pronouncements on economic matters (so, again, Tom Woods' own sensible way of ignoring Leo's nonsense is taken away from me). Now I am shown Leo's dictum about my obligation to pay a "living wage" to my workers. Now, first of all, what exactly is a living wage? If the man who works for me is, in fact, not starving to death, and neither are his wife and children, then is this sufficient? Or am I to pay more?

If we assume bare subsistence is sufficient for a "living wage," then how many factory owners really don't pay a "living wage" anyway? How many workers are starving to death, even while working, and continue to work as they die anwyay?

But perhaps my workers work two jobs to make ends meet. Perhaps my workers are at subsistence, but only because in addition to their job working at my factory they also work somewhere else. Or, more likely in the historical context in which Leo was papal bulling, perhaps my workers have to let their entire family work in my factory. So, not only dad, but mom and the kids also have to work so that the entire family has enough to eat. Is the pope telling me that I am morally obligated to pay Dad enough all by himself so that Mom and the kids can stop working? So, I am to keep paying the same overall costs in wages, but have fewer workers making higher wages per person? Will this not hamper my productivity?

"Yes, perhaps, but that is just the cost God wants you to bear for doing the right thing." Wait, so God is requiring me to remain in my line of business now that I amm no longer making the same rate of profit as I once was? I am now bringing in, say, 4% profits instead of 6%, as a result of the decreased productivity of my labor force. The market rate of interest on investment is 5%. So why don't I just close my factory, and invest my personal wealth in some other line of investment? Is this decision allowed to me, or am I morally obligated by God to continue operating the factory under these new conditiosn, according to Leo?

There is nothing profound or "moral" about any of this. It is impoverishment made simple.

And I'm sure the workers who are now out of work will thank Leo for fighting so hard for them to receive a "living wage."

Making Friends and Influencing People, Part 967

2010-05-04T11:13:00.003-04:00

On Friday, the Lexington Herald-Leader ran an op-ed I submitted on the need for public sector employees to have their salaries and benefits reduced to cover Kentucky's budgetary shortfall. Only a few stone-cold looks at school, so far.

Update (2/24/11): As the link at the Herald-Leader is now broken/for-pay, here's the text of the article I wrote. I don't remember them making any substantial edits for publication.

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As a teacher and public employee, it gives me no pleasure to say this. But fixing a deficit requires serious and difficult choices. It is time, therefore, that the public sector, including teachers, make sacrifices and bear more of our economic burden.

We are simply beyond easy promises that things will be paid for later when the economy recovers. Our economy is failing to recover in part because our government spends too much money. Why are we pinching the hose in the first place?

Government always puts a downward pressure on productivity. It turns out that taking stuff from people after they produce it makes them produce less (this is one of those deep, complicated truths of economics that everyone understands except for professional economists). So now production goes down and the government takes in less—a shortfall. Hands are rung, and officials act as though these things just happen randomly from time to time.

Two billion dollars of unfunded liabilities in the Kentucky budget is two billion dollars of productive work that cannot be put to making things that will benefit our lives, but instead must be devoured by the locust so that we can “catch up.” Every deficit represents a burden in this way. We must work that much harder to produce that much more just to feed the debts government has accrued in our name. In good times, we tolerate this. In hard times, it makes people angry. And it should.

What does this have to do with public employees, including teachers like myself? There are only three ways to fix a deficit—borrowing, taxing, or cutting spending. Borrowing and taxation each harm our economic prosperity even further, as they take even more produced resources from those who produced them. So, the only way to balance the budget in a way that is consistent with prosperity is to cut spending.

But where to cut? Unpopular as it is to say so, there is no way around taking the bulk of it from salaries and benefits of public employees. Public compensation is always wasteful because it does not respond to economic changes the way that private compensation does. When the economy is struggling, there are many dislocations and adjustments to salaries throughout the private sector. Many people have to find new lines of work, retrain in other skills, and adjust their expectations. This is painful, but it is also good in the long run. The economy needs to see jobs that are less productive replaced with jobs that are more productive. We all have more potential to enjoy life by benefitting from the additional things that are produced.

In the public sector, this “creative destruction” is entirely absent. It is politically difficult to institute a pay freeze, much less a pay cut or the unthinkable horror of job eliminations. The end result is that the public sector continues to expand and hog more resources unto itself, even as the private economy suffers losses. More and more wealth and power are concentrated in the public sector, and, surprise surprise, we don’t want to let it go. Who would?

Well, it is time to do so. I volunteer myself and all of my colleagues in the public sector. We have no right to complain when the very taxpayers who pay our salaries are suffering. We must not be like the teachers and other public unions in New Jersey, who are fighting what is good for their state as a whole. We must suffer alongside our neighbors, so that we can all benefit together when the pain of this recession is truly over. So please, Kentucky: cut our salaries and benefits as needed to end the deficit and help our fellow Kentuckians!

-Dr. Xon Hostetter has a PhD in philosophy and teaches at Crawford Middle School in Lexington.

Trey Grayson Would Never Have a Strange Idea

2010-03-14T18:42:00.004-04:00

Trey Grayson is a man of the people. He doesn't seem to know it, but that's of no importance. Whatever his intentions, the people of Kentucky benefit from Trey Grayson's campaign for the U.S. Senate. For the prime example, consider Grayson's recent decision to allow supporters to put up free advertising for his primary opponent, Rand Paul. Indeed, many of the quotations attributed to Paul (or to his father, Congressman Ron Paul) are simply excellent illustrations of a careful and considered thinking process that looks to benefit the people of Kentucky above all else. In this grand gesture, Grayson has helpfully pointed Kentucky voters to some "strange" ideas that they will no doubt agree make Rand Paul stand out as a candidate of depth and character.

To be sure, there are a few items on that list that are worded so as to sound negative ("ineffective legislator," because he will follow in his father's footsteps and be another "Dr. No"), but that's just for show. We know what Grayson's really up to, and I'm sure Rand Paul's campaign is very thankful for this beneficence from the man they are already beating by double-digits in the polls.

But Trey Grayson also wants us all to know that he stands out, too. And indeed he does!

First, we need to be very clear here: Trey Grayson would never have a strange idea. He would never think the thought that wasn't supposed to be thought. He would never ask a question that isn't supposed to be asked, and he would never give an answer that wasn't already the conventional, accepted answer.

Of course, if an idea is already conventional, or if it has recently come to have overwhelming popularity, then Mr. Grayson will happily appropriate it for his own uses. He is just that smart and daring of a politician. Hence, his "just spend less" radio ad and campaign stump speech (which he clearly decided was the only major plank of Rand Paul's platform that he could co-opt).

If you have missed the depth of his planning here, if you still do not respect his genius, remember this other standout quality of Grayson. As his anti-Paul also makes clear, Trey Grayson would never, ever, criticize Mitch McConnell. This speaks for itself as to Mr. Grayson's depth and the people he knows how to impress. His is certainly a resume that leaves an impression. Grayson will advocate with great zeal during a campaign that the government "just spend less," and yet he would never, no not ever, be so ungrateful to the political powers that groomed him as to criticize them for their past decisions to, ahem, NOT just spend less. Criticizing the in-power Republicans is bad. But increasing government spending is also bad. In the hands of lesser mortals, these two claims are mutually contradictory. But that is Grayson's conventional genius!

But, do not worry, Grayson's brash willingness to juxtapose incompatible positions does not change the fact that he is a politician. Grayson may be an appropriator of ideas whose time has already come, but he will, again I repeat, never have a strange new idea of his own. We can't have those, and Grayson would never give them to us. In fact, it is safe to say that Grayson has never even been acquainted with a strange, new idea. Such things are, rest assured, the farthest from his mind.

Grayson would neverask difficult questions of political economy, or about the wisdom of past policies that were favored by past generations of movers and shakers. Much less would he ever attempt to answer such questions even if they were asked. For see, he knows in his well-trained mind that such ways of speaking are always risky. What if people don't understand the answers you are giving to these deeper questions? What if people (horror of horrors) disagree? What if you are remembered for saying something that others found to be disagreeable? Instead, Trey Grayson raises eyebrows. His own. Grayson is shrewd enough to allow his opponents, to ask all the difficult questions, and to formulate all of the provocative and controversial opinions on policy, and then he simply stands by and pursues that most noble calling of acting shocked and hoping the people get the joke along with him. Then he, brilliantly, expects to rise in virtue of being the one who does not have any strange, new, or provocative ideas to speak of.

Trey Grayson is definitely no radical. He is not in any significant sense different from what we have come to expect from a professional politician. He is conventional in every way. This image will no doubt produce powerful results in the May primary election, but in the meantime let us celebrate some of its manifestations in the here and now. For one, consider Grayson's campaign strategy thus far. He knows as well as any politician in the history of this country that it is not what you actually believe, but what you can get voters to THINK you believe. So, if the voters want smaller government throughout their lives and less federal reaching into state and local affairs, then Trey Grayson will play the standard-issue card for campaign rhetoric. But, on any issue that already has political sway, on any issue that is already "the way things are done" in American politics, Trey Grayson would never dream of giving the people of Kentucky anything different than they have already been getting.

Tray Grayson would never question the wisdom of the federal government's established policies regarding the "war" on drugs, the war on "terror," and abortion ("every four years or so, make 'em think you care). Instead, he will always fight to be on the conventional side, the side that changes its approach not a whit from what we are already used to. As his exposure of what was never hidden (Rand Paul's "strange ideas") makes clear, Grayson is exactly what Kentuckians have come to expect in a politician. And he really, really wants your vote.

Let's all wish him the best of luck.

Okay, Okay.

2010-01-06T01:02:00.002-05:00

So, I went and got Lew Rockwell (one of the top 10 resources the United States has left) to publish my analysis of Michael Bloomberg's climate change silliness. You can read it in a slightly edited form here.

2006, 2010, Yada Yada Yada

2010-01-01T19:07:00.003-05:00

The following is a combination of two posts put up on ye olde blog back in November, 2006, following the Democratic victories that lame-ducked Bush II for his final two years in the White House. I hope it reflects just a bit of the attitude that I have generally brought to the R-D tug-of-war, and that I continue to bring.

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Assuming the close apparent wins in Montana and Virginia hold up, Democrats will control both houses of Congress come January. I don't have a lot to say about this, except that I shed no tears for the ousted Republicans.

Oh yeah, one more thing is that it will be greatly entertaining, in that cynical "too cool for school" kind of way, to watch the two parties switch to the opposite sides of the net over the next few months. Republicans will become the party of the loyal opposition, and the Democrats will be tamed and tempered by the new power they have. Howard Dean was already on CNN last night predicting that Democrats won't actually try to leave Iraq immediately. No sir, can't have that! There will, eventually, be some scandals involving Democrats, which Republicans will hypocritically try to exploit for all they are worth and which Democrats will, equally hypocritically, try to downplay.

And so it goes, a few more trips around the sun, but nothing much will change one way or the other. I imagine that Pelosi's fanboys in the House will try to initiate a few relatively crazy policies, but won't have much success with Bush in the White House.

Heck, if anything, this might give us some gridlock, which I'm all for. If Bush and the Dems come to loggerheads, perhaps very little of any meaning will get done, which would be a good thing.

I'm sure many folks would want to question my contention that the Republicans and Democrats are really just two sides of the same coin.

Difference is a matter of perspective, though. Of course the two parties have to have some differences. And then they have to trumpet these differences as best they can, so that they can convince John Q to vote for their guy and not the other guy. But in the end, the bigger result is that all this pulling and pushing settles into a sort of equilibrium, and the cement for a functional political orthodoxy is poured, and this hardens into a big chunk with a bunch of Rs and Ds sticking out at all angles.

And since this new Republocrat (or is it Democrican?) orthodoxy is, after all, an orthodoxy, there must also be heterodoxies that are not allowed. All sorts of positions that just don't fit as either R or D are never entertained, certain kinds of voices are simply thought too absurd to be taken seriously. Of course, some voices come by this reputation honestly, but clearly there are many outside the newly drawn margins that offer viable conceptions of the good life.

This is what I mean when I say that both parties are essentially the same. I mean that, even in proclaiming their differences, they end up functioning together as one larger system. Right leg, left leg. Step on the buildings. And this larger system ends up functioning as an end unto itself. Career politicians, poll-driven policy-making, the unbounded influence of lobbyists, various forms of corruption, negative campaigning--these things all rise up in a particularly pernicious way because politicians from both major parties are generally more concerned with staying in the system than they are with enacting any real change to that system. For the glory of leadership, they will feed the beast. A beast that tolerates no opposition.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T16:53:00.000-05:00

And may the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding, be with you always.

We cannot afford NOT to prosecute Michael Bloomberg

2009-12-22T19:43:00.001-05:00

Hoping you'll continue to pardon our progress as we get all the drywall up and all the toilets bolted down around here. But we also can't let those who want to enslave have a free pass in the meantime. "Terrible Arguments for Climate Change Legislation" is an impressive genre. I am aware of how hard it is to isolate one particular argument as the worst of all. But Michael Bloomberg, glorious Mayor of the NYC, really did all the work for me this past Sunday. The setting: Bloomberg's interview on CNN's "State of the Union." I'll ~~roll the tape~~ copy and paste the transcript, and see you back here on the flip side. But wear goggles, because the illogic it burns.

[host John] KING: There are some here in our political debate at home who don't believe it is as severe as a crisis as you both say, and there are some who even question the science and question whether this is because of manmade behavior. Address the politics here at home -- Mr. Mayor, to you first on this one -- to those who say the science isn't settled and...

BLOOMBERG: Look...

KING: ... and that government regulation is not the answer.

BLOOMBERG: OK. I mean, number one, the science is clear. But let's just make a simple argument that will convince you to go ahead and do something about the environment.

There's four possibilities, the combinations of we're damaging the planet or we're not damaging the planet and we do something or we don't do something about it.

One of those four combinations is deadly. And if we run the risk that, in fact, there is -- we say there's nothing wrong and it turns out that there was something wrong but we didn't do anything about it, it may very well be so irreversible and have such terrible consequences for people all over this globe, it's not an intelligent risk to run.

First, the obvious philosopher's joke: Blaise Pascal, call your office (though, in fairness, Pascal's argument for the rationality of dedicating oneself to God is more nuanced and much better than this chaff offered up by Mr. Bloomberg). Consider this parallel reasoning, and then wince on behalf of Mr. Bloomberg:

We have four possibilities from the combinations of the following either/ors: either invisible dinosaurs are going to start killing people, or they aren't; and either we do something about it, or we don't. One of these would be utterly disasterous compared to the others (if the invisible dinosaurs really are going to start killing tomorrow, and we do nothing to try to prevent it). Therefore, we MUST start running around like chickens with our heads cut off, RIGHT NOW, voluntarily forfeiting massive portions of our own wealth and forcing others who are slower to see the danger to do the same, so that we can try to avert this disaster. It is simply not reasonable to risk being wrong about this.

There is no logical difference, none whatsoever, between this dinosaur argument and Bloomberg's climate change argument. If Bloomberg's argument works for his conclusion, then the same form of reasoning works just as well for freaking out about invisible dinosaurs. You can literally create this kind of argument for any conclusion you want to draw.

I'll leave a pedantic explanation of the logical mechanics behind this disaster of argumentation for another time, but anyone remotely acquainted with discussions about climate change knows that bad arguments for climate change legislation are the rule rather than the exception. Even so, they are not usually this bad. But please, people of a lost nation, begin to see: the Michael Bloombergs of the world do not care about the consequences of the plans they want to foist upon everyone; they do not even care enough to try to build plausible arguments for those plans. They just want us to agree to forfeit massive amounts of our wealth (and our children's wealth) because they tell us it is for our own good. The politically-connected (along with some well-meaning useful idiots in the cheap seats) are willing to lead the economies of western nations into an abyss (though the politically-connected like Bloomberg will all make out okay, of course). This is precisely why they lie and say that "the science is clear." They are trying to provide some sort of backing for their transparent power grab. But people who say things like "the science is clear" are usually only making one thing clear: that they know very little about how scientific inquiry and advancement actually work (or, more sinisterly, they are making clear that they simply don't care how such things actually work).

Anyway, free people of the world, while you mull it all over, leave your own parallel arguments in the comments if you want. I'll leave with another of my own making:

There are four possibilities: 1. Michael Bloomberg is secretly a serial killer, and we do nothing to stop him. 2. Michael Bloomberg is secretly a serial killer, and we invest large resources into trying to stop him. 3. Michael Bloomberg is not secretly a serial killer, and we do nothing. 4. Michael Bloomberg is not secretly a serial killer, and we invest large resources into trying to stop him from killing people. One of these is unbearably horrible. Therefore....

Update (12/25/09): As it turns out, Bloomberg will be a guest on "Meet the Press" this coming Sunday (12/27). Let's watch him use this argument again. But don't hold your breath waiting for David Gregory to even perceive, much less have the will to follow up to, the horrible nature of the reasoning.

Update #2 (1/1/10): Bloomberg's bit on MTP this past Sunday had nothing to do with climate change. (And, oddly, MTP's live portions were shot in Lexington my former arena before Liberty (MFABL). No idea why that was the case...)

Axioma Prima

2009-06-01T17:08:00.000-04:00

Here is where the basic premises supporting radical economic liberty for all people are laid out. These are quick introductions and expositions, and they are meant to be discussed and picked at. Do so in the comments.

Humans act

The fundamental axiom of economic knowledge is this: to be human is to act. All humans act. All humans always act. All humans are always acting.

The definition of terms: By action we mean the purposeful employment of means to achieve ends that are in accordance with the subjective values of the one acting.

Therefore, if Bob eats a ham sandwich, we may infer the following:

a. Bob is deliberately choosing to eat the ham sandwich.

b. Bob has some end that he desires to fulfill.

c. Bob believes that eating the ham sandwich will facilitate the fulfillment of this desire.

These are the fundamentals of human action, and economics is the study of the consequences of living in a world in which humans act. The science of economics is the body of knowledge comprising the things that are true because humans act.

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The Nota Benes:

i. We do not know for sure what the particular desire or end is which Bob is trying to fulfill. It may be that he is hungry and wants to remove that feeling. It may be that he has a hankering for the taste of ham specifically. It may be that Bob is trying to anger his wife (hopefully not!), who he knows does not like for him to eat ham sandwiches. Or some combination of these. Etc. But whatever the particulars, we know from his action that he is trying to fulfill some end or another.

ii. There also is no guarantee that Bob is in fact choosing a successful strategy for achieving his end (though in this simple case of making a ham sandwich, all systems are probably a go). The axiom asserts purpose for all actors, not omniscience or infallibility.

About Liberty for the People

2009-06-01T15:00:00.000-04:00

There is strength at the base of modern political economy, but the entire structure that has been built is now almost worthless, and must be torn down to the foundation. Political discourse in the West is now dominated by a number of false choices and reflexive repetitions of certain patterns of thought that indicate a diseased mind. For example, it is so often said that those who oppose initiating coercive force in the day-to-day lives of people are "individualists." It is so often said that the rights of the individual must be submitted to the rights of the community, or vice versa. These false choices reveal an enormously mistaken assumption driving much of the occidental political brain: that to serve individuals does not (cannot) also serve society. That individuals can only profit themselves at the expense of those around them, or at least that the individual and collective parties are so distinct that it is always a live concern that they could do so. The vast majority of justifications for the coercive state, from Plato to Aquinas to Hobbes to Locke, are based upon this assumption.

But this assumption is wrong. It is egregiously wrong. Plainly wrong. Embarrassingly wrong.

Society simply is all of its people, living and breathing and praying together. Yearning to be free. The notion that making the individuals who compose society free (better able to flourish) would somehow hamper the society itself is unsubstantiated (though many false conundrums have been invented to try to feign such substantiation). When people are free, the result is mutually beneficial to the great number of individuals in society, and most certainly to those who are the poorest or weakest. If the individuals in society flourish, the society of flourishing people flourishes. This may sound utopian, and in some sense it is; we do not live in a world in which those with power over resources enforced by violence will simply relinquish that power to those who would be free. It is utopian in that wicked men will not simply stand by and let it happen, and the world is always going to be full of wicked men. But it is not utopian in the sense of being impossible, or in the sense of being naively ignorant of true human nature, etc. Quite the contrary, it acknolwedges the fallenness of human nature. The fallenness of human nature is precisely why we can never trust so-called elites to manage society on behalf of everyone else. No person is equipped with the knowledge or wisdom to pull off such a task, and even if they were they would still lack the moral fortitude to carry it out to the good of those they serve rather than to their own good. Only God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, and so He may manage us in any way He sees fit. But it is not for human beings to "manage" one another.

So, if western political theory is this far off the tracks, then what strength do I have in mind as lying at its base? It is this, and nothing else: that God has acted to redeem and to restore humanity to what it was always meant to be, and in Christ this great work is already in the process of being completed. And this is our cause for hope; that God has not left us in our pitiful estate, but has become our redeemer. And this means that God is working in the world, even now, to redeem us from all those entanglements and enemies which wish to see us slaves; whether economic, political, moral, social, ideological, etc. It is for freedom that Christ has died, and if He sets us free, we are free indeed.

Living like these things are really true has always been difficult. God gives us leaders to help show the way and to inspire us to claim the freedom that is truly ours in Christ. It is time for a new Christendom built more explicitly on liberty for the people. Such redemption requires order and law, but not oppression and yoked servitude. We must learn to separate law and state (coersion), order and state (coersion), justice and state (coersion). God does indeed bring us order and call us to live in accordance with that order, but this order does not have to be supplied by a state. In fact, to truly fulfill God's design, it cannot be.

So, think of me not as a new emperor or conqueror or tyrant who tramples the freedom of others, as so many have before (even those who, on the net, brought greater freedom for a time). Think of me instead as a man who has simply found favor in the eyes of his fellow men. As one who wields influence through persuasion, personal charisma, logical acumen, exemplary character. Who, because of this favor, has the power and authority to stand against those who want to bring death, slavery, and destruction to their fellow men and women, and who instead urges the people to be free. And when they are free indeed, they can find justice, order, law, self defense, for themselves. These things happen much more naturally, in God's design, than we ever acknowledge. I am a facilitator, not a dictator.

We who would be free must remain dilligent to discuss these things among ourselves, and to keep the flame of liberty burning. If we are to be free, we must recognize that ideas do indeed "have consequences," and while we wait for a new liberty without any spirit of violent revolution (for this is what the Bible, the ultimate Law, requires of us), the ideas that have been handed to us in and through the living Word of God must be rehearsed, sharpened, and practiced. As we do this, we prepare the way for whatever is to come.

For His glory and honor in all things, and for the freedom that He gives us in Christ,

Justinianus