Frontpage Feed
Community Feed
The Idea Market Feed
The 'Verse Feed
Welcome to The Distributed Republic, a blog community started by the members of the original Catallarchy blog. We blog from a classical liberal viewpoint on a variety of topics. Feel free to start your own blog by registering on the sidebar. There are no broad restrictions on viewpoints as long as a civil tone is maintained.
Currently you are viewing the main page of the blog. The reader blog aggregator can be found here.
Probando...
Submitted by Randall McElroy iii on Wed, 2009-01-07 18:20.Habría interés en entradas en castellano? Los únicos países cuyas noticias leo a menudo son México, Uruguay, y un poco de Argentina, pero se me hace que los temas del desarrollo económico y de la prohibición de drogas son los más importantes--salvo la guerra--en el mundo actual, y América Latina es uno de sus mejores escenarios.
Por favor, diganme aquí. A ver lo que podemos.
Speaking of Tax Rates...
Submitted by Brandon Berg on Wed, 2009-01-07 01:36.While writing my last post, I got to wondering where the pre-Reagan top marginal rate of 70% kicked in, so I looked it up. In 1980, the top marginal rate of 70% (50% for wage income) kicked in at $215,400, which is equivalent to roughly $550,000 in 2008 dollars. That surprised me; I had always thought it was much higher than that.
There was also significant bracket creep due to the high inflation of the '70s; in 1965 the 70% bracket kicked in at $200,000, or over $1.3 million in 2008 dollars.
Synergy!
Submitted by Brandon Berg on Wed, 2009-01-07 01:22.An interesting property of a capital gains tax that isn't adjusted for inflation is that it can, in times of high inflation, turn gains into losses after adjusting for inflation. For example, suppose that inflation in a particular year is 7.6%. If you earn an 8.6% return on your investment and face a capital gains rate of 39%, then your nominal return, post-tax, is only 5.2%, which is a real loss of greater than 2%.
This is not merely theoretical; the numbers I gave are for 1978, when inflation was 7.6% and 6-month CDs returned 8.6%. There were similar results for other years around that time. And actually, I think a 6-month CD might be taxable as ordinary income, which would mean an even greater real loss for people in the higher brackets.
If investment income were indexed to inflation, this would not be possible, as you would only be taxed on your returns above and beyond inflation. I would propose that all investment income be adjusted for inflation, but it would be unwise to give the government any further incentive to understate inflation. I think the wisest course is to abolish tax on investment income altogether, especially given the nation's dismal savings rate.
By the way, what would be the correct word to use if I wanted to give this post a non-ironic title? Is there a word that describes two bad things which combined are worse than the sum of the parts?
Obama "a calculating manipulator of the first order"
Submitted by Randall McElroy iii on Mon, 2009-01-05 14:18.While a bunch of wild-eyed "progressives" begin to see the first signs that Barack Obama is not quite what they'd hoped for, the brilliant Arthur Silber pulls no punches. I'll be interested to see how committed to ideals many of Obama's supporters are when it becomes clear that the new boss is pretty much the same as the old boss.
Proudly pragmatic
Submitted by econoholic on Mon, 2009-01-05 11:29.What did David Masten mean by this?
I do not believe it is any secret that I am philosophically against government...
When we make a decision pragmatically, we consider the potential costs and benefits of different options and choose the best course of action based on that consideration.
A decision based on philosophical grounds can only differs from pragmatic decisions when we expect the decision to leave us worse off.
The fact that philosophical bents in any direction are empty is easily shown by asking people to justify them.
**** has all sorts of problems with it. So, we must appeal to it only as a last resort--if ever.
Something else you may hear is this.
**** is the best thing ever. We should harness its power wherever we can.
Almost everyone's philosophical leanings boil down to combinations of these forms. In other words, people argue for their philosophies on pragmatic grounds. (If you don't believe me, please provide a nontrivial, non-pragmatic justification for libertarianism over socialism or vice versa in the comments.)
Pragmatism is the ultimate adjudicator among philosophies. If libertarianism is a good philosophy, it is only good inasmuch as it serves as a closer approximation of pragmatism than other non-pragmatic philosophies.
Scientists as Policy Advisors
Submitted by David Masten on Mon, 2009-01-05 02:01.Many non-economist science bloggers have hailed Obama's appointments of scientists to key positions within his administration. But some people, including economists, have been a bit more hesitant about at least one appointment. Likewise I am not so sanguine about the appointments. Yes, it signals that Obama wants the best scientific information to guide his policies. But, is it enough? How many of those scientists are actually good policy wonks? Do any of them acknowledge how important the science of economics is to their policy proposals? There are unfortunately too many otherwise good scientists who have no knowledge of economics but are otherwise more than happy to make pronouncements on economics.
I hate to pick on Ethan Siegel over at Starts With A Bang! since he does really good work there. But, he also just happened to give me a perfect example. In "Can the Moon Help Solve Earth's Problems?" he asks:
How many humans can the planet support before we need to either reduce the population or expand to other worlds?
Ethan seems to claim we are near or approaching the limit:
We’ve already talked about how forests and wild places are needed to remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and reverse global warming, but let’s put that aside. We’ve got lots of arable land on this planet, and as the population goes up, more and more of that land is needed for farming, to feed the world. In order to do that, we need fewer forests: ...And we need to take that land and turn it into farmland for production of staple foods: ...The Earth currently produces staple foods (rice, grains, cereals, potatoes, etc.) in quantities of 2,264 million metric tonnes per year, enough to feed about 10 billion people assuming everyone eats a 2,000 calorie-per-day diet. ... So assuming we want to do the following:
* Keep our forests,
* Continue reproducing, and
* Continue feeding ourselves (and eating the good food, too),what are our options? We clearly need more land, and we clearly can’t take any more from Earth, as we need more wild places and forests to help repair the damage that’s already been done. Where should we look?
Mu. The big problem an economist sees is the use of current food supply as different than food demand. But price theory is very clear: Supply equals demand in a clearing market. Food is a clearing market, even adding in various nuances such as political distortions of the market, transaction costs, and so forth. This factoid is worthless for calculating carrying capacity. There are a number of things that should be considered in calculating carrying capacity of the Earth.
First, is the land being cultivated being completely used? No. A significant amount of cultivated land is laying fallow each year in the U.S. I have heard estimates that the U.S. alone could feed the entire world with just the land currently cultivated. In the rest of the world, the yield per acre is nowhere near as high as in the U.S. and Canada - not because the soil or climate is better in North America, but just because it is not necessarily economic for farmers in other places to use the latest, greatest farming methods and tools. As developing nations further develop, the yield per acre of farmland will greatly increase.
Second, there is no evidence that yield per acre is anywhere near a maximum, even in the U.S. and Canada. The amount of cultivated land in the U.S. has actually been shrinking for a long time, yet total yields are still increasing.
Third, what about the land that is currently not arable but could be made so? What about using the oceans and seas for growing food?
Last but not least: what new developments - inventions, improved methods, whatever - will come along in the future that makes the whole thing moot? I won't even make a guess at the possibilities. The only thing I know is that as long as we have relatively free markets we'll get unpredictable new technologies.
My best estimate is that humanity will have to worry about the Sun's upcoming mid-life crisis long before we have to worry about population problems. Fortunately we have a few hundred million years before that becomes a problem.
Anyway, that was just to point out that a perfectly fine scientist should not be in a policy leadership role. On the other hand, I'd like to think that a rocket scientist with an interest in economics and political science would be perfectly fine for the job. So a scientist in a top policy role can be perfectly fine, but there is no guarantee. We need to look at each of them individually before we get excited.
I do not know enough about most of the appointees to really form an opinion on each of them individually. One that does stand out is John Holdren. In 1980 Holdren sided with and assisted Paul Ehrlich in establishing the terms of a bet with Julian Simon. The bet was whether certain commodity prices would go up or down over a decade. Simon handily won the bet, but as best as I can tell, Holdren did not and still does not accept that the reason Ehrlich lost was that Simon and most economists were and are right about the basic concept that on average each person creates more goods than that person consumes. Or to say it in a slightly different way - Holdren does not accept that on average, each additional person in the world makes all of us better off. And that is very dangerous.
We now have in our hands—really, in our libraries—the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next seven billion years.
(Simon "The State of Humanity: Steadily Improving" 1995)
Different Libertarianisms
Submitted by Jacob Lyles on Sun, 2009-01-04 21:09.To the uninitiated all scotch tastes the same: like a mixture of coal, moss, and wood-shavings. However, the more experienced palate starts to notice subtle distinctions between vintages. The kind of wood used in the storage barrels, the weather in the area where the liquor is made, and its age all contribute to its flavor. Some scotches have overtones of heather and honey, some are smoky, some are earthy. Laphroaig makes a malt that tastes like bacon. With enough experience, a person can become a connoisseur and discover that he likes certain varieties of scotch, but not others.
Libertarianism is like scotch. When a new person is first exposed to the movement, he might think that everybody agrees on a set of principles and generally gets along. However, it is not long before he hears the word "Kochtopus" or gets laughed at for sporting a "What Would Ayn Rand Do?" armband. Our new activist begins to suspect the existence of the dark undercurrents and rivalries that color our people like a Jackson Pollock painting.
I have been around libertarians for almost a decade, and petty factional disputes are old news to me. If the mangled body of Ed Crane ever washes up in the Potomac River, I can give the police a short list of suspects. However, recently I began to notice something far more important and interesting: there are sharp philosophical differences and many incompatible ideas in the traditional libertarian cannon.
Libertarianism is like a piece of legacy software that has been patched over and over but never rewritten - a sprawling, contradictory, and sometimes surprising mess. This unsettles me. Becoming a libertarian in my formative years, it has since become part of my self-identity. But what does it mean when I call myself a “libertarian”? I am still not sure. And thus began my current odyssey in libertarian hair-splitting and navel gazing.
But this hair-splitting is important. One half of the hair is a completely different color from the other. Subtle differences in ideas can lead to large differences in how we think human society should be organized. And it is hard for me to see how people with vastly different visions of the ideal world can form part of the same movement.
My previous post on structural libertarianism versus policy libertarianism is the first part of this odyssey. I mentioned my preference for the structural vintage of libertarianism over the policy variety as the one with (barely) more practical potential. However, before anyone else jumps on the structuralist bandwagon, I should give fair warning about its faults.
The main problem with structural libertarianism is that we are heading away from the libertarian mainstream, and maybe away from libertarianism altogether. Consider the doctrine of universal rights. It states that every individual has the right to a certain degree of autonomy, at all places and at all times. It is hard to find a more central doctrine of libertarianism.
But now consider another popular libertarian idea – federalism. Federalism states that small, local communities should be able to set their own laws and policies. Advocates of federalism argue that this will create better-managed governments that more closely reflect the will of the people living under them.
But if we are to adopt federalism, then we must temper our support for universal rights. The tension between the two ideas is clear: under federalism, the laws of an area will only be as libertarian as the people living there. The libertarian's dream of a free-loving pothead utopia might be realized in Massachusetts, but I'm pretty sure that holding hands with a member of the same sex in Utah would carry a jail sentence if the federal government didn't prohibit it.
Most structural libertarian ideas involve some degree of political decentralization and suffer from the same drawback: they will create conservative theocracies. It's a profitable market niche - there are tens of millions of conservative Christians in the United States alone. If Utah were allowed to outlaw premarital sex, its property value would shoot up due to demand from evangelical fathers with pretty daughters.
So if you have something against theocracies, and most libertarians do, then maybe structural libertarianism isn't right for you. Maybe you should send your resume to the Ron Paul 2012 campaign after all.
Federalism and other structural libertarian ideas are not sold on the fact that they support universal rights, because they don't. Rather, they claim to produce governments with incentives to create better policies, or at least policies that people like. Instead of governments with incentive to produce as many wars and pork projects as possible, we might be able to create governments that try to produce the most appealing places for its customers, its residents, to live. On average, I think that rights will be better protected under most decentralized schemes, such as market anarchism. This is especially true for unpopular commercial rights like freedom of contract. But there will be theocracies, and probably racist states. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were states that only admit people with over a 1500 score on the SAT.
So as we begin to decentralize, we allow the creation of very non-libertarian states. However, we do increase variety. And we probably increase choice. We might have few tolerant libertarian paradises that let you make your own life decisions. But you will be able to choose which decisions are made for you.
There's something libertarian-sounding about a world that increases choice, even if it doesn't guarantee freedom everywhere for everybody. Some libertarians will find that distasteful. Some won't. But it's a controversy that we should probably hash out instead of ignoring.
Commercial of Note
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Sat, 2009-01-03 19:46.Pepsi has a new commercial out that's more iTunes than most iTunes commercials.
Note the use of vivid colors, rotating objects, and motions emphasized with drum beats or guitar strums in an air of simplicity. It comes together with a catchy melody and memorable lyric.
Do as they say, not as they do, or else they will get you
Submitted by Randall McElroy iii on Fri, 2009-01-02 14:54.I can't wait to see how right-wing talk radio hosts dismiss our criticisms of this:
While fiercely loyal establishment spokespeople such as The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus continue to insist that prosecutions are only appropriate for common criminals ("someone breaking into your house") but not our glorious political leaders when they break the law (by, say, systematically torturing people), the Bush administration has righteously decided that torture is such a grotesque and intolerable crime that political leaders who order it simply must be punished in American courts to the fullest extent of the law . . . . if they're from Liberia:
MIAMI (AP) -- U.S. prosecutors want a Miami judge to sentence the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor to 147 years in prison for torturing people when he was chief of a brutal paramilitary unit during his father's reign.
Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr. is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 9 by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga. His conviction was the first use of a 1994 law allowing prosecution in the U.S. for acts of torture committed overseas.
Glenn Greenwald gets in almost all the good points, like "Acts which, when ordered by Liberians, are 'criminal torture' meriting life imprisonment magically become, when ordered by Americans, mere 'aggressive interrogation techniques.'"
Only a few more days until (some of) the faces telling bold-faced lies change.
Via Radley Balko
Oh, *that* capitalist West Germany?
Submitted by Randall McElroy iii on Fri, 2009-01-02 13:40.You learn something new every day: it's only been 25 years since German TV had private broadcasters.
Barack the Magic Negro
Submitted by Brandon Berg on Wed, 2008-12-31 00:46.A few quick points regarding the "Barack the Magic Negro" incident, recently upgraded to a kerfuffle:
1. The targets of the satire are Al Sharpton and a subset of white people, not Obama specifically nor black people generally.
2. The lyric borrows very heavily from this editorial in the LA times, written by a black man. In fact, I would go so far as to say that there's virtually no original material until the last part, which is pure mockery of Sharpton.
3. Magic Negro is in fact a fairly accurate description of the way many of Obama's white supporters view him.
4. Saltsman didn't send out a mix tape to which he specifically chose to add "Barack the Magic Negro." What he sent out was Paul Shanklin's latest album, We Hate the USA, in its entirety.
5. It's disappointing to see so many Republicans jumping on the dogpile. Disingenuously crying racism is the McCarthyism of the left, but I expect better (at least on this one issue) from Republicans.
Think things are bad in the US?
Submitted by Arthur B. on Tue, 2008-12-30 10:56.Economically they may be... the market is tanking, the FED is printing like crazy, entire parts of the country are being nationalized. I do however remain optimistic because the people are still not totally corrupt, they still have a decent moral compass and some remain of respect for property rights. The following story happened in Rennes, in the Bretagne region of France. Should the following happen in the US, I think hardly anyone would support it, and emphatically not the democratic party. In France, this was quite popular...
A few days ago, the AFP published this (my crappy translation cannot even begin to describe the socialist newspeak used here. The substantive "précaires" essentially means someone who can be fired).
According to the police, around 25 people, belonging to a collective of "chômeurs et précaires" - unemployed and people with short-term jobs - grabbed food today, and left without paying for it at the Galeries Lafayette, a French department store, in Rennes.
The activists stuffed their carts with food around noon then blocked the checkout counters, unfurling a banner: "chômeurs et précaires en lutte", indicating their social struggle. After negotiating with the management of the store, which was crowded with Christmas shoppers, they managed to leave with their provisions without paying. No complaint was filed with the police, who went on site but did not arrest anyone.
The AFP contacted the store management who declined to comment.
A look on the activist website is even more eye-popping.
An autoreduction (sic), organized by the "Mouvement des Chômeurs et précaires en lutte de Rennes" - Movement of the unemployed and insecure job holders from Rennes in social struggle - happened at the Galeries Lafayette, in downtown Rennes, Saturday the 20th of December.
Saturday the 20th of December, the MCPL of Rennes made an autoreduction at the food aisle of the Galeries Lafayette.
The purpose was:
- To stop, for a time, the consumption pace during the Christmas season
- To get some eats, that the store management would gladly give us. Playing the negotiation card, we hope that we can't be charged for theft in reunion.
- To put forward the ongoing struggle against the government reforms (a list of French government programs follows, in particular one that makes it mandatory to accept a reasonable job offer at some point or lose your unemployment benefits, and another one that requires you to check in every month for job offers to continue receiving money).Story:
Thirty of us gathered in front of the store, and we entered in small groups. Everyone grabbed a shopping basket and filled it, as he wished with food.
Once our baskets were full, we went to the checkout. The plan was to get three people for each cash register, one behind another with a basket, the first one would refuse to pay and explain our action. We asked to meet the manager and negotiate with him.
All of this while avoiding any kind of violence that could justify arrests. We blocked around height cash registers total. Meanwhile, two of us unfurled the banner "chômeurs et précaires en lutte", while others handled leaflets explaining our actions.
Quickly, a line formed at the checkout. Some of us took the floor to explain our action.
Two security guards from the store came along. They were angry but quickly calmed down. The chief of security called the store manager. The manager chose to let the situation deteriorate rather than immediately start negotiating.
20 minutes after our blockade, first proposal from the manager: "put everything back in the aisles, free the registers and send a delegation to negotiate in my office". AH AH AH AH !!!
Meanwhile, discussions get heated with some consumers who do not support us, mostly old people and bourgeois from downtown. A few reactions: "you're taking us hostage", "my cat's hungry", "you don't know what work is, you've never worked", "you've nothing to do here"...
A few supports: "I'm with you, don't give up anything". A security guard talks to us about a man and his child "move along, can't you see you're preventing them to go through". The man's answer: "not at all, and by the way, I support them".
To put it in a nutshell, unusual activity for this store.
After 40 minutes, a member of our collective takes his walky-talky to discuss with the manager. He becomes more reasonable and agrees to come down, but he does not seem ready yet to give in to our demands. He comes down and gives conditions which we seem unacceptable to us : for example, he wants us to take a value brand foie-gras instead of Fauchon foie-gras (N.B one of the most expensive brand), that we free the counters and go settle this discretely in a small room, away from the clients. We jettison ballast by offering to take only 10 baskets out of twenty. The talks are moving fast, we feel the situation is going to unlock.
Last disagreement, he wants to check the article in the registers, something we refuse to do thinking it can be used against us. He eventually gives in and we leave with 10 bags of eats.
Intense moment of joy among us, we leave victorious from the store, with 10 bags of eats, checkout blocked for an hour, everything without a glitch. The cops were indeed called but remained discreet. We saw to national cops and a member of the RG (Renseignements Generaux, an internal intelligence service). To this day, the store manager has not filed a complaint.
We will redistribute the eats to unemployed in front of the unemployment bureau in Rennes starting Monday morning.
Let's spread this practices, let's get organized!!!
If you are interested by our movement, contact us by email mcpl2008@gmail.com (go spambot, go)
Our reunions are held 22, Bellevue street, Mondays at 6 pm. The next one will be held on the 5th of January.
Double Standard
Submitted by Brandon Berg on Tue, 2008-12-30 04:25.It's an article of faith on the left that big government is less dangerous than big business because while both have power, government power is accountable to the people via the ballot box. There are a number of strong counterarguments to this, with which I'm sure most of our readers are already familiar.
It recently occurred to me that there seems to be a large overlap between the people who make this claim and those who believe that the reason some CEOs have what they consider to be excessive compensation packages is that they've wrested control of the boards of directors from shareholders.
These two beliefs strike me as inconsistent. In any large corporation, the average shareholder, weighted by percentage of ownership, is far more sophisticated and owns a far greater share of the company than the average voter. If shareholders can't even keep the management of their firms from raiding the company coffers, then how can voters possibly be expected to do any better at holding politicians accountable?
Governmental
Submitted by David Masten on Sun, 2008-12-28 20:07.Since astronomical distances are generally less than about 10^10 light years and U.S. federal government debt is on the order of 10^12 USD and will soon be 10^13 USD, then the term "governmental" ought to be used to refer to very large numbers.
Example: The current estimate for the auto industry bailout is merely astronomical, while the cost of the financial industry bailout is governmental.
Philosophy and Pragmatism
Submitted by David Masten on Sun, 2008-12-28 19:57.I do not believe it is any secret that I am philosophically against government, and thus can be described as an anarchist. But I do want to point out a feature of my anarchist beliefs that dramatically differs from the popular perception of anarchism - institutions matter. There must be sufficient institutions for resolving externality and public goods problems, including laws, defense, and controlling pollution.
I wrote:
Philosophically I'd rather NASA did not exist (that classical liberal desire for less government). On the other hand between the public goods problem of basic scientific research and a desire to get the best value for my tax dollars I do not want to see NASA gutted.
I can conceive of institutions that solve the public goods problem of basic research that are better than NASA, NOAA, NSF, and any other government science funding agency. I am even more confident that better institutional solutions than I can conceive could exist. But those institutions do not exist today. The institutions we have, while far from perfect, are better than nothing. Pragmatically then, NASA as a provider of a true public good falls pretty low on the priority scale of government programs that need to be axed. Private goods that are being provided by government are far better targets. One example of a much higher priority target is privileges granted to certain financial and industrial institutions. These privileges do nothing to help the general welfare over the long term and when the piper brings the invoice (he already did and it is due!), the costs are astronomical.
[Correction. On re-reading the linked to post I realize that I made a big error. The dichotomy is legit. But the rest of my point is somewhat useful.]
Related to this, Jacob Lyles commits the fallacy of the false dichotomy. He talks about the structural libertarianism and policy libertarianism as if one must choose between them. has a post or two on policy vs. structural libertarianism. I prefer think of it in a different way: structural libertarianism and policy libertarianism inform each other. David Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and others have proposed some good libertarian structures, Patri offers up a way make those structures possible. But there are policy decisions within the confines of the current political reality that also need to addressed. Related to sea- and space- steading are modifications and interpretations to various treaties dealing with the Seas and Space. General economic conditions need to be addressed to give us enough prosperity to make these schemes possible. Reform of various regulations has further practical implication on various aspects of development. Then there is the simple economic and political reality that not all the desired structural changes can be done at once - policy libertarianism helps us sort through what areas to work on first.
Structuralism 2
Submitted by Jacob Lyles on Sat, 2008-12-27 18:28.In my previous post I attempted to differentiate between Policy Libertarianism and Structural Libertarianism and explain why my interest lies with the latter. Looking back, I realize that I railed on policy libertarianism quite a bit but I didn't explain why structural libertarianism is so interesting. In this post, I hope to correct that shortcoming by quoting some passages from the modern SLs that caught my attention. Then, hopefully before my classes resume, I will get around to discussing the drawbacks of structural libertarianism, and why we might want to reject libertarianism altogether in favor of a more utilitarian theory of politics.
I apologize for going back to the same sources over and over again, but as there are few structural libertarians in modern times and the old SLs didn't keep blogs that I can easily copy and paste from. I am lazy and they are serviceable, so that is what we get.
...[I]t is hard to avoid noticing two basic facts about the universe. One is that libertarianism is an extremely obvious idea. The other is that it has never been successfully implemented.
This does not prove anything. But what it suggests is that libertarianism is, as its detractors are always quick to claim, an essentially impractical ideology. I would love to live in a libertarian society. The question is: is there a path from here to there? And if we get there, will we stay there? If your answer to both questions is obviously "yes," perhaps your definition of "obvious" is not the same as mine.
The basic idea of formalism [the author's SL philosophy] is just that the main problem in human affairs is violence. The goal is to design a way for humans to interact, on a planet of remarkably limited size, without violence....
The key is to look at this not as a moral problem, but as an engineering problem. Any solution that solves the problem is acceptable. Any solution that does not solve the problem is not acceptable.
Is it possible to design a structure of government which will be stable and predictable? Hopefully, of course, stably and predictably benign? History affords no evidence of it. But history affords no evidence of semiconductors, either. There is always room for something new.
The key is that word should. When you say your government "should do X," or "should not do Y," you are speaking in the hieratic language of democracy. You are postulating some ethereal and benign higher sovereign, which can enforce promises made by the mere government to whose whims you would otherwise be subject. In reality, while your government can certainly promise to do X or not to do Y, there is no power that can hold it to this promise. Or if there is, it is that power which is your real government. Your whining should be addressed to it.
The neocameralist [another SL philosophy] structure of Patchwork realms, which are sovereign joint-stock companies, creates a different kind of should. This is the profitable should. We can say that a realm should do X rather than Y, because X is more profitable than Y. Since sovereign means sovereign, nothing can compel the realm to do X and not Y. But, with an anonymous capital structure, we can expect administrators to be generally responsible and not make obvious stupid mistakes.
Given the choice between financial responsibility and moral responsibility, I will take the latter every time. If it was possible to write a set of rules on paper and require one's children and one's children's children to comply with this bible, all sorts of eternal principles for good government and healthy living could be set out.
But we cannot construct a political structure that will enforce moral responsibility. We can construct a political structure that will enforce financial responsibility. Thus neocameralism. We might say that financial responsibility is the raw material of moral responsibility. The two are not by any means identical, but they are surprisingly similar, and the gap seems bridgeable.
When we use the profitable should, therefore, we are in the corporate strategy department. We ask: how should a Patchwork realm, or any financially responsible government, be designed to maximize the return on its capital?
Given how far all current governments stray from the libertarian vision, it is natural that some of us have considered designing or even founding a new nation. In doing so, we sometimes assume that the major failing of present nations is the mental attitudes of their residents. Thus to ensure that a political system works, we merely need to start with libertarians. This is incorrect, because much of what we don't like about current states stems from the behavior of systems - behavior which is to some degree independent of which humans are involved. As an example, the USA started with liberty-minded founders and degenerated anyway.
Continue reading the linked material for their positive visions of government. If you know of anyone else I should read, please let me know in the comments, or at first name dot last name at gmail dot com.
Down with Policy Libertarianism
Submitted by Jacob Lyles on Wed, 2008-12-24 22:51.Libertarian thinkers can be plotted on many axes. Presently, the axis I am most concerned with is Policy Libertarianism vs. Structural Libertarianism.
Policy Libertarians (PLs) include the vast majority of the most visible organizations and writers in the modern libertarian movement: the Reason Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Ron Paul campaign, the LP, the Constitution Party, most libertarian economists (e.g. Milton Friedman), and single-issue organizations like Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. PLs, as their name suggests, focus their energies on inventing and advocating a list of policies that governments should follow. For example, you can find policy libertarians opposing liberal eminent domain laws, fighting for lower taxes and deregulation, supporting cultural tolerance, opposing invasive police searches, and advocating the rest of the familiar libertarian manifesto.
Structural Libertarians (SLs) are much rarer in modern times than PLs, although the opposite used to be the case. Structural libertarians include Patri Friedman, Mencius Moldbug, David Friedman, Murray Rothbard, all libertarian Public Choice economists, Lysander Spooner, and the classical liberals that libertarians have adopted as intellectual ancestors. SLs often have the same moral and policy beliefs as PLs, but they focus their energies on the alternative ways to structure a government and the effect that government structure has on its incentive to adopt good policy. At their most extreme, SLs barely sound like libertarians. Under a market-based government system (a common SL proposal), the architects of Singapore would likely find plenty of customers for a burbclave that is incredibly prosperous and clean, but where communists are sent to jail and litterbugs are viciously beaten with sticks.
The decline of the structuralists and the rise of the policyists is a phenomenon that should interest us. It is a by-product of general political trends in the modern western world. Simply: democracy has won. Democracy is considered to be righteousness and goodness and freedom, all else is tyranny. Didn't the American colonists risk their lives and fortunes to institute democracy and overthrow monarchy? And wasn't America the shining example on a hill, leading the rest of the world into a democratic century?
Today all competing political ideas acknowledge this. Conservatism, libertarianism, liberalism, environmentalism, socialism, and nationalism are all strictly policy movements. Since our government structure is assumed to be sound, they focus on advancing their agendas through electoral politics.
But what if democracy is not the impartial "marketplace of ideas" that moderns assume? What if liberal democracy contains its own unwholesome incentives and biases? In other words, what if the game is rigged?
This is why policy libertarianism seems like a weak and incomplete philosophy to me. Presumably if libertarians believe that libertarian policies are just and beneficial, then they would want to live in a world where those policies are implemented. However, if the incentives of the political system are stacked against libertarianism, then their efforts advocating libertarian policies are futile. No amount of pamphleteering and blogging will make vast amounts of people act against their self-interest. Quoting Jefferson at housewives isn't going to sway them when Obama Claus is on the television offering free college educations and health insurance. Putting 51% of the country on welfare programs and then campaigning to enlarge the payments will remain a winning strategy no matter how many DVDs of "Freedom to Fascism" are printed.
Policy libertarianism is only valid in a particular time and place, and then only if you have certain beliefs about the political system at that juncture.PL is useless otherwise. If we kidnap Ron Paul and ship him back in time to live under the Bourbon Dynasty in France, what should he do? Presumably he still thinks that libertarianism is as just and wise in Bourbon France as it is in 21st century America. Should he write florid epistles to the king, trying to convince him of the value of universal human rights? Should he try to marry a princess?
Or suppose we send Ron Paul to live under a government run by evil robots that grow humans in vats and then suck out their life force to power their machines in some physics-defying green energy scheme. Likely Ron still thinks the evil machines should respect his property rights and freedom of speech. I don't see how Ron's beliefs matter very much. He is going to have to hire a damn good lobbyist to overcome the sway of the human-vat-maker union.
Under an incompatible government structure, policy libertarianism is an impotent philosophy. As soon as your faith in liberal democracy wavers, PL looks naive. It's as useless as a lawn ornament. It's gazelle trying diplomacy with lions.
My faith in democracy is at a low ebb, so I think structural libertarianism should be given more thought and policy libertarianism less. As one of the 200 million most influential people in America and one of the 20 most influential writers on this blog, I hope I can lead the libertarian discussion in that direction.
New Administration, New NASA?
Submitted by David Masten on Wed, 2008-12-24 04:03.Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy wonders if the new administration will gut NASA. Philosophically I'd rather NASA did not exist (that classical liberal desire for less government). On the other hand between the public goods problem of basic scientific research and a desire to get the best value for my tax dollars I do not want to see NASA gutted. On the gripping hand, NASA needs some serious change or it will soon be completely irrelevant and thus deserve to be gutted.
NASA is currently headed for extinction. It is concentrating on a large program that is ostensibly for achieving the goals outlined in the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE). Yet the architecture only superficially achieves those goals, and in fact is antithetical to the full VSE. On the surface the VSE is about going back to the Moon and then going on to Mars. The full purpose of the VSE is to establish a permanent human presence out in the solar system. Constellation, specifically the Ares I/V portion practically guarantees that rather than a permanent human presence we will only get small, short term visits to the Moon and maybe reach out to Mars in some nebulous future. With only few exceptions, the non-NASA aerospace industry sees Ares as a waste of good funds. Delta IV, Atlas V, and Falcon 9 can get both people and cargo to ISS and with an architecture that uses on-orbit assembly and propellant transfer can actually deliver much higher mass to and from the Moon than the current Constellation architecture. Some industry insiders believe that on-orbit assembly and propellant transfer are a requirement for any long term human presence beyond low earth orbit.
Further, post-Apollo NASA does not have a good record of developing and operating launch capability. Granted the Space Shuttle has a lot of politician designed features (bugs) that NASA must work with, but as both the Challenger and Columbia incidents showed, NASA's culture is a far worse problem. In the meantime, science and advanced technology research, where NASA is actually good, are be neglected and cut.
It is this background that the Obama transition team must deal with. Obama has sent very strong signals that good science will be a priority in his administration. The economic reality is that it will have to be done with less. Within NASA there is an excellent opportunity to get much more science with much less budget, and this is why Mike Griffin is stressing out. Cut Ares and NASA can get a lot more science, even with a dwindling budget. Add in the fact that several key NASA supporting legislators will not be returning to Congress - it is a wonder that Griffin isn't postal yet.
From what I know of the situation, I expect that (Congress allowing) NASA is going to get a makeover. Constellation and returning to the moon will be cut back and the remains will be re-architected. SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, and possibly other private launch providers will be encouraged to be the Shuttle replacement. And the various parts of NASA that have recently been cut will have funding restored or even increased. All of this would be a Good Thing.
Growing Slums for Fun and Profit
Submitted by Brandon Berg on Tue, 2008-12-23 22:02.Commenting over in TJICistan, Jered tells a delightful anecdote:
Here’s an interesting “gaming the system” that I heard about last week: A [friend of a friend] lives in Hawaii. Property there is, as you can imagine, at quite a premium. There’s a nice neighborhood of upper-middle-class homes with small yards and fences that a developer would really like to buy, bulldoze, and build on. How to go about it?
Apparently he first bought one house at market value when it was for sale. He then tore down all the fences and rented it at far below market rates to what might be called “white trash” in other parts of the country — to tenants who don’t have the lawn mowed, leave rusted, disabled cars in the yard, etc. This upsets the neighbors and lowers their property values until the point where some of them sell to the developer at a lower price, which he then rents the new properties at below market value...
It’s a clever concept and I can’t see anything illegal about it, but it sure is slimy.
When I'm rich, I'm going to do this in the most left-wing neighborhood of whatever city I happen to be living in at the time, just for the sheer joy of watching lefties twist their tongues in knots trying to find a PC way to say that their new, less-fortunate neighbors are a blight upon the community.
Of course, for extra cognitive dissonance, and because I'm an equal-opportunity slumlord, I will not rent exclusively to white trash.
If I can make some extra money on the deal through regentrifying after I've had my fun, so much the better. Coinvestors welcome.
Simple Indeed, or The Audacity of Cluelessness
Submitted by Brandon Berg on Tue, 2008-12-23 21:52.The International Herald Tribune showcases the astonishing cluelessness of people who are presumably among the best and brightest of Obama's supporters:
When a dozen consumers gathered over the weekend to discuss health care at the behest of President-elect Barack Obama, they quickly agreed on one point: they despise health insurance companies.
They also agreed that health care was a right; that insurance should cover "everything," not just some services; and that coverage should be readily available from the government, as well as from employers.
"We have to keep the momentum going," said Hijane, 34, who was a volunteer in the Obama campaign and is active in women's health advocacy. "We are not lobbyists. We are simple citizens."
Truer words were never spoken. For example:
Li said she and her husband "had a few surprises" when they started shopping for a better health insurance policy on their own. "If we wanted a baby," Li said, "insurers would not cover the maternity care if conception occurred within six months after we purchased the insurance. We were shocked."
In many cases, the standard individual insurance policy does not cover maternity care, though such coverage can be bought for an additional premium. Even then, some insurers stipulate that maternity benefits will be available only if a woman waits for a certain amount of time before becoming pregnant.
The purpose of insurance is to pool risk. Consumers pay a modest premium in exchange for a promise by the insurer to cover unexpected catastrophic expenses. Pregnancy, as a condition which is typically induced voluntarily, is not an insurable condition. Granted, an abnormal pregnancy or birth which entails unusual expenses is insurable, but this is presumably not what Li is talking about. I'd be surprised if insurers refused to cover any non-preexisting complications of pregnancy, except due to unintended consequences of government regulations.
That Li and her husband were "shocked" at the fact that insurance companies were not jumping at the chance to give them free money can only be explained by a failure to put any thought whatsoever into the economics of insurance and health care. This is certainly not a personal failing on their part—no one can be an expert on everything—but they are clearly unqualified to design a health care system, and their attempt to force their ill-conceived vision on the rest of us is grossly irresponsible.
Almasri said that when his infant daughter had severe eczema, she had to wait several months to see a dermatologist in their HMO network. By then, he said, "the symptoms were all cleared up."
I find that hard to believe, but granting for the sake of argument that it's true, I'm perplexed by the implication that this is a problem that would be remedied by socialized medicine. Prompt treatment of non-emergency conditions is not one of its strong point.
Hijane said she had gone from doctor to doctor for more than a year before she got correct diagnoses for premature ovarian failure and celiac disease, a digestive disorder.
A shame, to be sure, but I'm not sure I see how the revolution will improve doctors' diagnostic skills. And under a socialized system, it's unlikely that she would have been able to see as many doctors as she did. The fact that the status quo is not perfect does not in any way imply that what she's proposing will be an improvement.
The Obama transition team did not ask people how a new health care system should be financed, but several people here said that individuals and businesses should have to pay a small health care tax — some preferred to call it a "contribution" — so that everyone could be covered.
Note the inability to call a spade a spade.
"This is warfare for the health care of our country," Chatman said. "The question is, Will money win, or will the people win? If we lose, we'll be a second-class country."
I have been meaning for some time to compile a lexicon of words and slogans that signal a worldview divorced from reality. When I do, "People, not profits" will be the first entry.
Feed the Leeches More Blood - Get Better Leeches
Submitted by Jacob Lyles on Sun, 2008-12-21 03:05.I am doing a personal research project on Singapore and I noticed an interesting bit of information: in 2007, the Singapore government came under criticism when it increased the salary of its Prime Minister to about $2 million. That is certainly very different from the American philosophy on politician compensation, which holds that it should be as small as possible. Our President is paid a salary of $400,000 and our congressmen all make less than $200,000.
On a possibly related note, international organizations regularly rank Singapore as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while the US does a little worse (however, it is still pretty good). I wonder if paying our politicians so little contributes to corruption. After all, there must be some reason why presidential candidates were willing to spend $1 billion this year to get a position that pays only $400,000, or why Rod Blagojevich was offered $500,000 for Obama's senate seat which carries a salary of less than half that sum.
The optimistic take is that the warm fuzzy feeling of public service (or more realistically, prestige) is so powerful that people are willing to sacrifice to get it. The pessimist in me thinks that they do it for non-direct benefits of the job, including future lucrative positions with lobbyist firms and industry groups that they help out while in office.
Perhaps paying politicians more would reduce the incentive for them to deal under the table. When I see the salary of the Singapore Prime Minister, I am reminded of the salary of a CEO. When I see the pay package of our politicians, I am reminded of a college athlete: they are contractually bound to receive a low compensation, but your star center didn't buy those rims with his momma's money.
Our low compensation structure reduces the appearance of corruption (and Americans have something against people that make high salaries), but it increases the probability of actual corruption.
More formally, let's define an action by a government official to be objective when his purpose is to act for the good of society (whether or not he is correct). Then define an action by a government official to be corrupt when his purpose is to use his position for private gain. The principal of good governance would hold that we should try to increase the ratio of objective actions to corrupt actions by government officials.
In this framework, an official should be well-compensated to the point so the utility of corrupt act is small. This is especially true if the cost to society of a corrupt act is large compared to the personal gain of the official. It would be cheaper to just pay him what he would have made by dealing under the table, straight from the public treasury.
Perhaps high-level officials should even be guaranteed public jobs for life to reduce the incentive to lobby for corrupt acts from other officials after they leave office. An ex-official that siphons off $billions for a lobbying firm every year is surely more expensive than one that is put up in an office somewhere in the Washington catacombs, sipping a coffee and bossing around an intern. Perhaps this is the true purpose of Presidential Libraries.
Best of all would be to eliminate the difference between public benefit and private benefit for each official by paying them according to their performance. Many industries have this already, like football quarterbacks. They are paid extra if they throw a lot of touchdowns or if their team makes the playoffs. Unfortunately, I don't know how you would design an incentive scheme for, say, a legislator. Perhaps you could pay them based on net migration to the jurisdiction they legislate for.
It strikes me that in thinking up ways to make government better, I am actually just mimicking the thought process that the compensation committee in a private government-firm would go through in some sort of market anarchy.
Competition matters
Submitted by Patri Friedman on Sat, 2008-12-20 20:36....and just because something is private sector doesn't mean it has competition. Megan McArdle's history of the big three:
In the early 1950s, for various reasons Detroit developed a cozy three-way oligopoly. The UAW developed a cozy monopoly on supplying labor service to that oligopoly. In some ways, the UAW helped sustain that oligopoly. If you're a big company whose quality suffers, you have problems. But if you have a union making sure that labor quality cannot vary across the industry, you don't need to worry that your competitors will make a better car. Detroit competed on styling and power, not reliability or price.
During those years of oligopoly, the Big Three's first loyalty (after their loyalty to management) was loyalty to the union. The worst thing that could happen to a Big Three manager was a strike. Making a car that is reliable is only partly a matter of engineering; it's mostly a matter of extremely tight control over the assembly process. That tight control is necessarily less pleasing to the workers than looser rules. The unions could severely hurt a company with a strike. Whereas the customers? The customers could only go to another company where the same union was negotiating the same loose work rules.
Bobby Darin: A Musical Retrospective
Submitted by Brandon Berg on Sat, 2008-12-20 00:01.It's been 35 years to the day* since Bobby Darin died in an unsuccessful attempt to repair damage done to his heart by a childhood illness. Darin was extraordinarily talented singer—in my mind the greatest popular singer of the 20th century. His stylistic versatility was remarkable—I heard "Mack the Knife," "If I Were a Carpenter," "Things," and "Dream Lover" several times each before realizing that they were all by the same singer, and then only because the DJ told me so—and he had a knack for mimicry, recording several songs with uncannily accurate impersonations of his contemporaries. Though his comparative advantage was in singing, he was also a talented songwriter; I'll point out the self-written songs as we go along.
Darin started off his career as a teenage pop singer in 1956; his first big hit was Splish Splash in 1958, an original composition. About this youthful indiscretion I shall say no more.
His first big hit that wasn't terrible was Dream Lover in 1959, another original composition, and one of the best from this phase of his career.
After that he moved on to more adult-oriented fare, releasing back to back what are perhaps his best-known songs: Mack the Knife, an incongruously upbeat reinterpretation of the murder ballad from the Threepenny Opera, and Beyond the Sea, a similarly reinvigorated English version of the French ballad La Mer.
He continued to sing mostly jazz and adult pop standards through the first half of the '60s, with highlights including excellent covers of Hello Dolly, It's Only a Paper Moon, and his superb version of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, a lightly swinging take on a British classic which had typically been performed at a much sleepier tempo.
In 1963 Darin recorded his own Eighteen Yellow Roses, notable first for its touching lyric—a tale of a jealous lover with a twist ending—and second for his impression of Marty Robbins, who later covered the song himself (the linked video has both versions back-to-back). Speaking of which, he also did a passable Dean Martin in his 1960 Christmas Auld Lang Syne.
In the mid-sixties, Darin began to record folk music. While the songs he recorded during this period are not as well-known as the jazz and pop standards he recorded, he nevertheless cut many of his finest records during this time.
Many of Darin's best folk songs were written by Tim Hardin, the most famous of which is of course If I Were a Carpenter. Others included the lyrically pathetic but musically beautiful Reason to Believe and "The Lady Came from Baltimore" (YouTube doesn't have the Bobby Darin cover, so you'll have to settle for the Scott Walker version or buy the CD).
Darin returned the favor by writing the anti-war Simple Song of Freedom and giving it to Hardin to record first (the song Darin refers to at the beginning of that clip is "If I Were a Carpenter"). Another Darin original from this period was the elegantly understated love ballad Amy, recorded in 1967.
Of particular interest to libertarians are the aforementioned "Simple Song of Freedom" and Long Line Rider, protesting the murders of prisoners at the the Cummins State Prison Farm and the firing and exile from Arkansas of Tom Murton for exposing them. Darin reportedly walked off the set of the Jackie Gleason Show when asked to cut the line "This kind of thing can't happen here, especially not in an election year" from his performance.
And finally, my favorite of all the songs Darin recorded, The Girl Who Stood Beside Me, a spirited yet reverent ode to marital love set against a chorus of bagpipes. Why bagpipes? Why the hell not, that's why.
Of course, Darin recorded hundreds of songs over the course of his career, so a list of this length can only scratch the surface. Post any favorites that I missed in the comments.
*Incidentally, this was exactly three months after Jim Croce, another great musician who died far too young, was killed in a plane crash.
Secular Right
Submitted by Jacob Lyles on Fri, 2008-12-19 20:35.The new blog Secular Right is a sensation in the conservative/libertarian blogosphere. If you like that irrepressible old codger John Derbyshire, and I love me some John Derbyshire, then you will love this blog since he is responsible for its genesis. Secular Right provides such fine fair as this post showcasing contributor Heather MacDonald as she challenges people who refuse to vote for atheist candidates:
Warren would apparently feel more secure if a president said: “After consulting God, I have decided to bomb Iran,” than if he said, “After consulting my advisors, all available intelligence, and our allies, I have decided to bomb Iran.” A Warren defender would likely say that the two statements boil down to the same thing. But if consulting God merely ratifies what a president learns from his human sources, then the consultation is a meaningless superfluity.
No, a properly religious President, in Warren’s view, is presumably prepared to change his merely human-derived knowledge based on what God whispers in his ear. If he is not prepared to revise his conclusions, then his decision-making is no different from that of an atheist.
So why would Warren be so confident that God has spoken to the president and that the president has properly interpreted the message?
If the president of Iran said: “After consulting God, I have decided to bomb the United States,” Warren (and most other Americans) would presumably be utterly certain that the Iranian president had not been taken into God’s confidence. But why? Perhaps Warren is naively ethnocentric. God, in this view, would either never answer a Muslim’s prayers, or would do so only in ways that protect America.
Count me among the people that feel uncomfortable when his political leaders place too much emphasis on consulting their invisible friends.
The Anti-Climax of the Bailout Saga
Submitted by Jacob Lyles on Fri, 2008-12-19 19:57.There was plausible speculation that the auto bailout saga would come to a conclusion this week. Instead, nobody was surprised when the Bush administration decided to follow the path of least resistance and punt. The $17 billion loan provided by the White House is enough to keep GM and Chrysler in business through February, but not much further.
By now we ought to be used to doublespeak from this administration. Apparently, "I believe that good policy is not to dump [Obama] a major catastrophe in his first day in office" means that Bush is okay with dumping a major catastrophe on Obama in his second month in office. "In any scenario that comes forward after this decision-making process, all those stakeholders are going to have to make tough decisions" means that the administration is comfortable forking over taxpayer money without any concessions from the unions or commitments from management.
Since the run-up to the Iraq War, I noticed that you get a much clearer picture of reality by believing the opposite of everything said by a Bush administration official. "Urgent threats" are not urgent and hardly any threat, "vital security measures with responsible oversight that protect the privacy of ordinary Americans" are expensive and useless policies, lacking any meaningful oversight, that violate the privacy of ordinary Americans. And so it goes.
Conservatives were hopeful that a successful long-term bailout plan mimicking bankruptcy restructuring would come from the White House, which would be similar to the deal offered by Senate Republicans and rejected by the unions a few weeks ago. Instead, the Bush administration settled on a band-aid measure that passes the buck to an incoming liberal Obama administration that is likely to be perfectly comfortable letting the unions suck at the national teat with no long-term concessions.
This one last act of spinelessness by the Bush administration is a perfect symbol to remember them by.