Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog

Cory Doctorow, at BoingBoing, reproduces this great chart, showing the number of people who, after receiving the benefits of a government social program, still believe they are not using government social programs:

He editorializes:

It’s the “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” phenomena writ large: a society of people who subsist on mutual aid and redistributive policies who’ve been conned (and conned themselves) into thinking that they are rugged individualists and that everyone else is a parasite.

While I am second to none in slamming those in the  ”Keep your government hands off my Medicare” crowd, this graph doesn’t exactly say that.  Doctorow says “subsist on” but that’s not really what the chart says.  It just points out that one is receiving a government benefit of any value, not that one subsists on it, or even enjoyed net benefits from it.   To take a specific example, as far as I can tell (I don’t recognize all the items listed), the only one that I have received is the mortgage interest deduction.  Yet, as a crazy libertarian, I would indeed say “I am not on a government social program.”

You can say that’s me being hypocritical, but when you compare the amount of money I gain from that tax credit, compared to the money I pay in taxes to support all those other things that I do not benefit (you can argue that I may one day benefit, or that they provide a protective net) from, it’s hardly fair to say that I benefit from (much less subsist on!) government programs as a whole, as the net benefit to me of them is negative.  In fact, for at least some relatively large section of the population, the net benefit must be negative, in order to balance the other section (those for whom the social program is surely designed) for whom the benefit is positive.  I would gladly forgo that tax credit if I could get out of even one or two of those other programs — social security being top of the list.  The endpoint of this logic is that we would claim that a person who pays 1o dollars in taxes to support “government social programs” and only receives 2 dollars in benefit from them is a hypocritical jerk for not thinking they were beneficiaries of these programs. (more…)

It’s always good to have a story, especially one that upholds your political beliefs.  So, imagine my reaction upon reading Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.  I don’t know if Taubes himself has any leanings in the direction, but his book is the most compelling libertarian story of the past 50 years.

There are some basic principles of the libertarian critique of governmental policies designed to solve Pressing Problems.  These are, that those government policies often:

• mis-diagnose the problem
• makes decisions based on political realities instead of scientific ones
• crowds out competing (and potentially more accurate theories or solutions) either directly, by criticizing them, or indirectly, by denying them funding
• end up making the problem worse, or exacerbating a different problem via unexpected side effects
• cause a legion of special interest groups of corporations to arise to take advantage of (as well as reinforce, through their own interest) the government’s potentially wrong decision

If you’re not particularly disposed to these ideas already, this all sounds like wishful thinking about government incompetence.  Yet this is exactly the story presented by Taubes as the history of the fat vs. carb nutrition debate in the US over the past 50 years.

To sum up, without all the science (read the book, it has all the data you need), the story goes like this: about 50 years ago, a few prominent scientists, particularly Ancel Keys, decided, based on incomplete evidence, that fat was the cause of heart disease, and that carbohydrates were a good replacement for it in our diets.  Unfortunately, not only was the decision premature, it also was wrong, and here’s the most important part: it was wrong even based upon the evidence they had at the time — they simply ignored or dismissed it.  This isn’t a case of science improving and rendering an old government policy wrong, this is government policy making the wrong choice despite the evidence.

The anti-fat movement (led by Keys) then convinced the government and the media of the correctness of their case, which was then enshrined as policy by a government panel: fat bad, carbs good.  This is partly why the food pyramid’s base, the largest section, was all carbohydrate-rich breads and pasta.  The low-carbohydrate movement (the opposition of the anti-fat movement), despite having an increasing body of evidence that stated that fat was not bad, and carbs were not good (each subsequent study failed to prove the anti-fat hypothesis), were pushed aside, labeled as cranks or corporate stooges of the companies that produced high-fat food.  Billions of dollars of NIH funding flowed into anti-fat research, food manufacturers touted the heart-friendly effects of their products, and groups like the CSPI arose to plug anti-fat agendas.  Government policy and millions in advertising now set, Americans duly changed their diets to become more “healthy” — ushering in a wave of all the “diseases of civilization” that low-carb advocates predicted: diabetes, obesity and various forms of cancer.

Then, once the obesity epidemic (if not directly caused by the high-carb policy, certainly exacerbated by it) became the new threat, established policy and scientists blamed it on fat as well.

You probably could not invent a story that fit the libertarian critique so well.  Confirmation bias alarm bells went off the entire time I was reading; but the Taubes book is exhaustively researched and annotated — not just with the data (often based on studies that examined the results of low-tech societies, which ate mainly meat and other high fat diets, transitioning to the higher-carb diet of Western societies, and their subsequent explosion of diabetes and obesity — and cancer) but with the specific charges leveled at each by the anti-fat movement in an effort to erroneously discredit them.  Some people will write a book based on the results of a single paper, and present its conclusion as definitive proof.  This book presents the results of hundreds of papers and studies, all of which disprove the anti-fat hypothesis or support the low-carb one — every one dismissed and ignored.  It is also a devastating critique of academia, which, once a theory was established as the conventional wisdom, had no interest in examining data that might undermine it.

To recap: the government picked some bad science and enacted incorrect policies based on it, which damaged the health of millions of Americans, costing us billions of dollars in healthcare bills, millions of lives (here I merely repeat the government’s claims about the damage of the “obesity epidemic”) and did little to actually prevent the problem for which it was designed.  They suppressed, ignored and slandered those who disagreed, who had the data on their side both at the time, and today.  Then, when the damage reports came rolling in from their actions, promptly demanded that they were the only people capable of fixing this problem, and confidently prescribed the exact same medicine which had caused the problem in the first place: the low fat, high carb diet*.

How is this not the centerpiece of the libertarian argument for a less-activist government?

* – to be fair, they also advocated good things, such as an increase in exercise, and a decrease in the consumption of sugars and soda.  The latter again points out the crazy logic of advocating high carb diets: those carbs roughly translate into the same end result in your body as the sugar.

Since Gary Johnson is now running for president, this occurred to me: how has no one done a study on the effect of medical marijuana dispensaries (which are now quite common in some states) on the illegal pot trade?  Does it hurt their business?  Does it cause them to alter their prices, or quality?  Do they compete with the dispensaries, or do they just open one themselves?  Do they try to occupy a different market segment?  This seems like economics study gold.

Alternatively, if someone has done this study, let me know!

Everything Tim writes here is great, as are Mr. Yglesias’ deregulation posts, by extension.  I babble a lot in Tim’s comments, but if you want to read my rambling, badly punctuated inanity here as well, well, you’re in luck:

These types of de-regulation are both libertarian and liberal, and both factions should support them. And I definitely, 100% agree that people who support them should express themselves on liberal principles, because like you said, there are genuinely liberal principles involved.

But I’ve been reading the “is Cato topping off your paycheck??” comments at Yglesias’ site, and there are literally people there who wrote many paragraph treatises on why it would be a terrible blow to humanity if DC tour guides were unlicensed. (or barbers). I think there must be something more at play than just “well, evil right wing people like de-regulation, so it must be bad in all cases” because the “we must make rules to make things better” phenomena is so widespread, even amongst those evil right wingers. As far as I can tell, only a small number of “right wing” people even think about deregulation at all — only the especially crazy policy people.

The average person, right left or otherwise, accepts the idea that laws work as designed; that if a law is on the books to Improve The Quality of DC Tour Guides by X, Y and Z methods, that it does so, and has such a status quo bias towards it that unless there is some personal harm that comes as a result of it, will not support overturning it. I think if you copied the same Yglesias’ post on the average right wing site, saying that “Nasty Liberals Support Unsafe and Unclean Barbers!” most people would agree.

Even say with prohibition, the king of all dumb regulation – that most people are actually against, I absolutely guarantee you that the vast majority does not oppose it because it was a stupid law that caused a great deal of unintended harm, but because it is opposed to the status quo of legal alcohol today. And therefore adopts the opposite stance on pot prohibition.

For almost every single person, every part of their daily life is “regulated.” If you don’t like X at home, you tell your kid its a rule they can’t do it. If your bosses doesn’t want you doing Y, they make a rule about it. Every interaction with a software company or telephone provider or bank comes with multi page contracts outlining the regulatory environment and hoops you must jump through. And the absolutely only time people object is if the rule personally affects them, and even then, they don’t say “there are better ways to achieve the goals of this rule” but rather “change that specific rule so it stops bothering me.”

Is there any surprise that people that people would apply the exact same methods and principles that guide their daily lives to the political sphere?

Seriously, go read the comments at Yglesias’ site.  People who don’t live in DC, haven’t ever taken a tour there, and don’t know anything about the situation are confidently explaining their regulatory schemes for that market.  I don’t know anything about it either, but I’m not advocating rules for it, either.

Edit: goddamn it, I capitalized the Central Atlantic Treaty Organization in Tim’s comments again.  -10 libertarian points.

Stop having pointless debates.  Bryan Caplan seems to inspire a lot of them!

Bryan:

The fact that Nigerians and Bolivians don’t spend more of their hard-earned money on education is a solid free-market reason to conclude that additional education would be a waste of their money.

Conclusion: everywhere is over-educated.

Tyler Cowen:

If I think of the Mexican village where I have done field work, the education sector “works” as follows.  No one in the village is capable of teaching writing, reading, and arithmetic.  A paid outsider is supposed to man the school, but very often that person never appears, even though he continues to be paid.  Children do have enough leisure time to take in schooling, when it is available.  I am told that most of the teachers are bad, when they do appear.  You can get your children (somewhat) educated by leaving the village altogether, and of course some people do this.  In the last ten years, satellite television suddenly has become the major educator in the village, helping the villagers learn Spanish (Nahuatl is the indigenous language), history, world affairs, some science from nature shows, and telenovela customs.  The villagers seem eager to learn, now that it is possible.

That scenario is only one data point but it is very different than the “demonstrated preference” model which Bryan is suggesting.  Bolivia and Nigeria are much poorer countries yet and they have dysfunctional educational sectors as well, especially in rural areas.  Bad roads are a major problem for “school choice” in these regions, just as they are a major problem for the importation of teachers.

Conclusion: lots of places have bad education.  But here’s the thing.  Cowen is very smart, and I don’t mean to disagree with him lightly, but surely he’s missing the point here.  If the existing (and that’s the key here) education is poor, then that just fits in with Caplan’s model of people saying “well this education isn’t worth it, so I’ll buy food/housing”, or in Cowen’s Mexico case: “I’ll get satellite tv and get entertainment and education!”  But that’s the exact point: Cowen and Caplan are using two different definitions of “education.”  Which is precisely why Cowen says this:

I consider most countries in today’s world to be undereducated.

Cowen means an actual education, a final product — actual knowledge in your brain.  If the school attempting to provide this does it poorly, that is under-education — an insufficient attempt to achieve “education.”  And yes, with this definition, most countries of the world are under-educated, because as he ably points out, they don’t invest much in it, and the quality is poor.  Caplan is using it as “formal education process,” in which case that Mexican village is indeed “over-educated,” because as Cowen notes, that product isn’t very good — so it’s entirely possible that they would be better off spending their resources on things they consider more important.  And those villagers seem to agree, based on Cowen’s description of their purchasing choices.

This entire debate rests on the definition of the word “educated.”  Cowen also lists a large number of other very good points that, while being very smart and relevant to the discussion of education in developing countries, don’t really refute Caplan’s point if we use his definition.  Caplan’s definition may be stupid, and you can definitely say “your definition makes people think that developing countries shouldn’t ever spend on education,” but given the obvious way in which he’s using it, his theory is sound.  Here’s the kicker from Cowen’s piece:

Of course Bryan favors rising wealth and falling fixed costs, as do I.

That’s the point.  Both people want developing countries to get richer, so that they can have more food, more housing, more education.  Caplan is just saying that if apparently people don’t value it much, we shouldn’t provide it to them to the exclusion of things they want more (opportunity cost always being implicit when an economist is speaking) and Cowen believes it is a thing distinct from the actual implementation, and that poor education is under-education.  Both definitions are valid.

James Joyner also disagrees, but he picks a perfect example that illustrates the difference in defining “education”:

Even at lowly Jacksonville State, I had Nigerian students in my classes.   Rich Nigerians.   Their illiterate countrymen aren’t spending more of their hard-earned money on education because they’re wasting it on food, not because they think they’re better off uneducated.

That’s precisely the point of contention.  There is no debate that every single person on the planet values food more than education — or at least, they won’t fail to do so for long.  Joyner is of course correct to point this out.  But if you have to decide between some vital thing like food and education (as Joyner implies that they are, because he says that they can’t spend on education because of the need to buy food) you better choose food — and if you either spend more on education yourself (private education) or someone else comes in and provides it (public or charity education) even though you’d prefer food, you are, by Caplan’s definition, over-educated.  However, by Joyner’s definition of a standard of education that would improve the qualify of life for a Nigerian or Ethiopian, they are indeed under-educated.  It’s almost like different definitions of concepts lead to different conclusions about whether or not one should have more of that concept!

But Andrew Sullivan isn’t really concerned with the definitions.  To him, this is just another sign of crazy extremist libertarians :

Bryan [C]aplan believes that there is no country on earth that is under-educated. Here is where you end up when libertarianism becomes dogma:

Or maybe just where you end up when a number of very smart people define a very complex concept freighted with thousands of years of intellectual baggage in different ways.  Six of one, half-dozen of the other, right?

Every one of the four people above want the same thing: for developing countries to have more resources so they can have more things they want — food, education, housing, whatever.  The entire debate is over the definition of the term “educated,” — and one that can easily be divined by just looking at how the other person is using the word.  But it’s apparently much more productive to call Caplan crazy (I haven’t seen if he has responded to any critics by calling them crazy; yet) — Cowen is of course excluded from this, as he approaches the debate in a professional manner, as usual.  (This is unfair of me, I’m complaining about people assigning bad motives to others by assigning bad motives to them.  Not good.)

Now, for myself, I disagree with Caplan too!  I think using the same word to define “education” in the US and in the developing world obscures much of the important differences between the two situations that need to be considered when making decisions about them.  But he started the conversation, so I’m willing to grant him the privilege of defining the basic terms.  If I want to disagree, I need to focus on that definition — not just use my own and pretend Caplan’s an idiot for not recognizing it.

I want to express my complete agreement with everything here:

But his column, and the libertarian donors he is channeling, make the same mistake (one he astutely recognizes in their case): operating on an inadequately short time horizon. I don’t know if a liberaltarian alliance is ever going to be a reality, or if the project is doomed to fail, but it’s folly to evaluate it based on two years of a single presidency.

[...]

Libertarian donors ought to fund efforts to oppose President Obama in the short term. They also ought to invest in intellectual projects with longer time horizons that only bear on particular electoral and legislative outcomes indirectly.

I feel like Mr. Carney is like someone who, during the early years of the draft during the Vietnam War, bemoaned that no matter how cogent the libertarian arguments for ending conscription were, attempting to convince the people in charge was a futile pursuit.  For many years his pessimism would have been vindicated.  But eventually the libertarian side won, in no small part to the relentless advocacy of explicitly libertarian voices.

I would go so far as to say that despite some very public anti-libertarian policies in the US over the past 10 years, the world wide trends over the past 20 years have had a dominantly libertarian nature, (my opinions on the economic issues here are very influenced by Scott Sumner, and for social issues, any opinion poll you wish to consult) which is, hilariously, something upon which only the lunatic left agrees.

So, lots of people are talking about the traditional conservative-libertarian alliance and wondering: why?  I think one reason this worked for as long as it did is highlighted by things like this:

Earlier this summer, Grover Norquist agreed to join the group’s board and he immediately came under fire for betraying the conservative movement and the same thing has been happening to Ann Coulter, who agreed to speak at GOProud’s Homocon 2010, leading WorldNetDaily to drop her from its own upcoming Taking Back America conference[.]

This would be unthinkable a few decades ago, not that a conservative group would write someone out for being “too gay friendly,” but that any conservatives would have fit that description.  The same situation exists with dozens of other socially liberal issues — from general polls to conservative politicians themselves, there has been a massive (though obviously not as massive as people who already self-defined as liberal) sea change on social issues.  You see Republican politicians saying (and even more telling, implicitly accepting as fact) tons of things that would have gotten them purged as evil liberals years ago.

So, if you buy the 2-axis version of US politics, conservatives and Republicans have been moving quite a bit to the left on the social axis over the past few decades.  Might this be another reason why libertarians (socially liberal, fiscally conservative) felt comfortable with the alliance?  After all, what defines “social conservatism” has changed a great deal – for the better, in my opinion.   We could imagine that in another few decades, if the opinion poll trendlines on issues like gay marriage and pot use continue, a “social conservative” could find themselves in favor (or perhaps at least grudgingly accepting) of such things.  So maybe allying with conservatives is a-ok, because whatever social policy disagreements libertarians may have with them will probably be resolved (in the libertarian’s favor) in another generation or two.

Now, a  bigger question is: regardless of social issues, is an alliance with conservatives even worth it on fiscal matters?  I’m looking at you, Mr. Bush.

Wait, sorry, that’s step 3!  Conor is trying to figure out step 2, in discussing the political likelihood of a Gary Johnson presidency:

Then the Republican base embraced Sarah Palin, and all the same people who mocked Obama’s celebrity enthused about her star quality. One step forward, three steps back. Gene Healy’s book The Cult of the Presidency (magazine version here) is a great first step in pushing back against this trend. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the right second step is.

I do!  If Conor and Marc (Ambinder) think Johnson would be a good president, and a suitable tonic to the cult of Palin or Obama, they should do the same things everyone else does when they find someone they think would be good for the job.  Start a website advocating for him.  Write articles on their blogs describing his wonderful policy points.  Talk to their contacts in Johnson’s party about him.  Show how he’s better than the other candidates.  Do all the things Ambinder mentions in his post:

Johnson has plenty of tools available to build a grassroots following.  Doing so requires creativity, work, charm, and a bit of luck, but it does not require the media.

Marc and Conor could help do that.  And finally:

People vote for politicians who sparkle, or who harness their anger; politicians who make them proud to be Republicans … or proud to be Americans.

Agreed.  So, for people who prefer Johnson to the alternatives: get to it!  Show how much he sparkles.  Show how voting for him will be an expression of anger at, well, whatever things anger you.  Show how his policies exemplify what America stands for, so a voter could be proud of their choice.  Sure, this all sounds tacky and formulaic, but if it’s works in today’s politics, then go for it.  While you’re at it, play up the non-visceral qualities that appeal to the same people who dislike Palin.

There is a sizable group of people in this country who don’t like Obama or Palin that much — and even more who might be convinced that the parts of those two they do like could also be accomplished by a different candidate.  Maybe a candidate named Gary.  Get to work!

It’s frustrating to see Roger Pilon of Cato, an institution I normally like, buy into the anti-Cordoba viewpoint:

It is the ground where some 3,000 people of all faiths lost their lives in a brutal attack by radical Muslims acting in the name of their religion, however distorted their beliefs may have been. Those who lost loved ones that day, to say nothing of the rest of us, cannot be indifferent to that fact — as those who support the mosque’s location near Ground Zero seem to be.

Yeah, and if radical Muslims were setting up shop, I might be willing to take a harder look at it.  But this is explicitly the work of moderate Muslims who publicly, frequently, reject violence.  There is absolutely no contention that they they’re anything but — and I think that Pilon understands that, because at no point in the three posts on the topic does he attempt to accuse them of extremism, like some other commenters.

This gets back to the concept that moderate Muslims are our greatest weapon (in the comments, Sarah notes that using the term “weapon” to describe advocacy of peace is probably a poor choice of words) against Muslim fundamentalism.  If another ally of ours, such as England (a theocratic state, I might add!), wanted to put up a building expressly dedicated to peacefulness regarding religion, then I would salute it — and Muslim moderates are just as important an ally (if not more so!) in fighting fundamentalism.  I consider our alliance with Muslim moderates to be the ultimate insult that we can level — not to us, or our memory of September 11th — but to the backwards thugs who committed that crime.  The fact that we consider their greatest enemy (Muslim fundamentalists have been fighting moderates far longer than Americans) to be our esteemed allies is a gigantic “fuck you” to their medieval concept of the world, and that’s something that can’t be yelled at them often enough.  Cordoba House is indeed a symbol — that we consider moderate Muslims to be partners in the great alliance against fundamentalism that encompasses the vast majority of humanity.

The only thing I really agree with Mr. Pilon on is this:

After all, the president isn’t, or shouldn’t be, the moral compass of the nation — certainly not this president. [I'd argue that he's no worse or better than any other] But it’s rather late in the day to be ducking out on this one, now that it’s been elevated to the presidential level.

Definitely.  We have a division of powers for a reason — this is, legally, a local zoning issue — and “legally” is certainly the standard by which we should judge whether a president should get involved.  He has no reason or jurisdiction here.  Though I don’t think it’s some great crime by itself, I think we would be all be better off if we exercised a little more restraint about presidential involvement.  There are actual tasks a president should be doing, and I certainly don’t think his execution of them has been so perfect that there is time to spend giving speeches on little things like this.

But when it comes down to it, I don’t want to convince conservative opponents of Cordoba that they should merely be allowed to build, though I respect those who are willing to allow it based on principles of property rights and religious freedom, I want to convince them to enthusiastically support it, for the precise reason we all hate violent fundamentalists.  For the past 9 years we’ve actually sent thousands of our soldiers into battle, some losing their lives, alongside moderate Muslims who categorically reject the extremism of idiots like Al Qaeda.  Whether or not you think that specific policy is a good idea, we are actually sacrificing lives to achieve the triumph of moderation over extremism within Islam.  If we can ask men and women to lay down their lives for the idea that moderate Muslims are our allies, we should be able to accept a far smaller burden (if the construction offends you) ourselves — nor should we hesitate to stand beside those who are already the epitome of that idea’s victory.

Edit: as Cato is not a monolithic organization, here is Christopher Preble with a much better viewpoint.

Edit 2: I decided that “CATO” should be the mythical Central Atlantic Treaty Organization.

When objecting to regulations of businesses, libertarians often point out that just because the intent is to put wise and noble regulators in charge, that doesn’t always happen.  And sometimes, those regulators may end up being people that advocates for that regulation may not like at all.  Here’s one case:

The developers’ [of Cordoba House in NYC] landlord is ConEdison, the power utility serving New York City. While ConEd is a private company, it is subject to regulation by New York’s Public Service Commission. Republican candidate for Governor Rick Lazio has pledged to appoint PSC members who would block the sale of the property [to Cordoba House].

This is not a damning argument against regulation of this power utility — but rather it’s just an example of how regulatory power, though granted with the best of intentions, can often be used for less than noble goals.

Reihan Salam was talking at Tim’s site (using a dandy inline chat called Envolve) about liberaltarians and conservatarians.  In discussing this, one of the most interesting things (to me) that came up was the debate over how to approach those you disagree with.  The specific instance was the mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks.  While (I think) everyone was agreed that it should be allowed, the two basic positions on how to approach those who didn’t were as follows:

1) Vinegar.  Stigmatize bad beliefs — call those opposed to the mosque bigots.  The thought being that you don’t want to establish that such bigotry is an acceptable position.  I assume this goes along with the idea of “moving the goalposts.”

2) Honey.  Don’t call them bigots, instead try to show them that the position you take embodies some of their basic principles.  Just insulting your opponents might just cause them to retreat to the echo chamber.

(more…)

This is how it should be done:

I am curious about the modern liberal take on autonomy and credit.  Let’s say that two gay men, of unknown health status, want to have informed, consensual, unprotected sex.  Should the law prohibit this?  I believe the answer is no.  [...]

The unprotected sex is riskier and less prudent than borrowing money at an annualized rate of two hundred percent.  Why prohibit one and not the other?

That’s precisely what I think of when I hear “liberaltarian:” showing how libertarian policies can exemplify liberal values.  And perhaps more importantly, showing not just that those liberal values are a welcome side effect, but indeed the purpose and justification for the policy.

If the general public is so opposed to libertarian ideas (not disputing that), what would a theoretical libertarian politician’s platform look like?  Could you assemble a list of cogent talking points that fulfilled the following:

• amenable enough to either the D or R party, so you could run as one.  Independents/3rd parties don’t win, ever.
• libertarian enough to actually help, so you could point to concrete benefits later on.
• moderate enough to not alienate too many people.  i.e. legalization of pot, instead of all drugs.

I think the idea would be to pick a political venue where the pressing issues had popular, libertarian-esque solutions, then run there on those issues — and basically punt on any others.  My off-the-cuff pick would be something like a mayoral race in a failing, debt-ridden city.  Can a mayor legalize drugs or set up school vouchers?

So, suggestions?

… of the “Where Do Libertarians Belong?” debate:

Is social conservatism worse than less-free markets?

Brink Lindsey: Yes.

Jonah Goldberg/Matt Kibbe: No.

(more…)

Two of Tim’s posts on immigration at Megan McArdle’s site have received a, uh, large response — mainly anti-immigrant.  Other than the people who are purely against new people coming to the country, the main argument that seems to be advanced against immigration is that they would cost us more (in terms of welfare or entitlements) than the benefit they would bring.  I’m not so sure that’s true, as studies have a historically difficult time separating out this data — estimates range from huge costs to huge benefits — but they seem to be convinced of it.

But it’s obviously true that there are some current Americans who get more in entitlements than they contribute in productivity or taxes — the argument just claims that we must help them anyway, as we have an obligation to them.  That’s fine — but no one argues that we have such an obligation to those who currently reside in other countries.  Obviously, if many of those people in those other countries emigrate here, some of them will be in that category.  And, equally obviously, if we truly let in an unlimited number of people, we wouldn’t be able to pay for it.  (Now, I’m not sure that there are even that number of people who are willing and capable of coming here, but we’ll grant it.)

So here’s the bargain I propose to those making this argument:

1. Increase legal immigration quotas to something like 2 million a year.
2. Radically reduce the legal immigration procedure (get rid of the checks for sham marriages, that sort of thing) to only check for crimes committed here or in another country.
3. Ask that all illegal immigrants voluntarily “deport” themselves to their nearest embassy or consul, where they will apply for immigration or work permit, and it will be quickly granted under the new easy process.
4. As part of the new process, new citizens would be ineligible for say, the most costly entitlement programs:  Social security and Medicare seem to cost the most, how about those?  Also, they wouldn’t pay taxes into them — and that would be exactly how you monitor who would be eligible, by cross-referencing taxes paid.  We already have lots of means-tested programs; this would just be another check on the list.
5. Then you can do whatever you want on the border.  Build a wall or a moat or whatever.

So how about it?

Potential liberal objections: “But what if one of the immigrants really needed one of those programs?  Would we just let them suffer without it?”  Well, right now they live in a country where they don’t have that anyway — and yet I’ve never seen anyone advocate extending that program to people in other countries.  Is it maybe because you really only care about people suffering close to you?

Potential conservative objections: “But what about all the local public services that they might use?”  Okay, but now they’re legal immigrants, and on the books.  You can tax them for it just like everyone else.  Local gov budgets went up a bunch over the last 10 years, and it wasn’t for providing more essential services.  The budget is there, figure it out.  Especially in places like California.  Come on, you know you love making fun of budgets in California.

“This is just like amnesty!  I want to deport people back to Mexico City, THEN make them apply legally!”  Okay, if you really want to, but remember that’s going to be on our dime to pay for their transportation, so if you’re trying to minimize the burden, this seems like a strange point to be stuck on.

Potential libertarian objections: “But our budget is already hugely unbalanced, won’t this make it worse?”  Not a bunch, and honestly no amount of immigrants is going to radically change that math.  It needs to be fixed one way or another whether or not we have more or less immigration.  I’m not optimistic it actually will be, but even if immigrants make it worse I don’t really care if the budget explodes in 2015 as opposed to 2016.

Because I didn’t complain enough the last time some libertarian person had a minor disagreement with what everyone considers to be established historical fact, reality decided to make me have to sit through another one.  At least this one is higher profile, I guess.  Hurray.  I’ll come back in a week when people are talking about things that matter.  I have to agree with this entire paragraph from Mr. Cockburn (via Hit&Run):

Here’s Maddow, brandishing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as though this is the only matter worth considering in the forthcoming race between Rand Paul and the Democrat, an awful neo-liberal prosecutor, Kentucky’s current attorney general, Jack “I’m a Tough Son-of-a-Bitch” Conway. Between Conway and Paul, which one in the U.S. Senate would more likely be a wild card – which is the best we can hope for these days – likely to filibuster against a bankers’ bailout, against reaffirmation of the Patriot Act, against suppression of the CIA’s full torture history? Paul, one would have to bet, and these are the votes that count, where one uncompromising stand by an outsider can make a difference, unlike the gyrations and last-ditch sell-outs of Blowhard Bernie Sanders, no doubt a hero to Maddow and Goodman. Liberals love grandstanding about what are, in practice, distractions. You think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is going to come up for review in the U.S. Senate?

Yeah.  He has the same response I have: “who cares?”  I don’t know if I really like Rand Paul (Cockburn obviously doesn’t) but I think that his stated views, even including the ones I disagree with, would make him a much better addition to the Senate than his opponent.

But I’ve got another response: an analogy.  If Paul’s opposition to laws restricting racist association today means that he would’ve opposed the CRA, and therefore is a horrible racist that we should oppose, then what should we make of modern gun control advocates?  In the past, racist Southern states and towns used gun control laws to take weapons away from blacks who were using them to defend themselves against the KKK, or just violence in general.  Does that mean that modern gun control activists would have snatched those weapons out of their hands and left them to be killed?  Does it mean that they are horrible racists today?  Of course not.  Things have changed.

There certainly are lessons to be learned from analyzing the past, but there are also important lessons to be learned today — and like I said before with the 1880 women’s rights issue — not learning those lessons can still cause incredible damage.  Like Cockburn says:

Between Conway and Paul, which one in the U.S. Senate would more likely be a wild card – which is the best we can hope for these days – likely to filibuster against a bankers’ bailout, against reaffirmation of the Patriot Act, against suppression of the CIA’s full torture history? Paul, one would have to bet, and these are the votes that count, where one uncompromising stand by an outsider can make a difference[.]

Don’t let the question of “what would Candidate X do if he or she had a time machine” get in the way of “what will they do on the major issues today?”

I can’t even read my normal sites without coming across some pointless discussion of libertarian theories about 1880′s women’s rights, all of which inspired by literally a single word in an excellent David Boaz piece.  I don’t mean that women’s rights are pointless — only that a wide-ranging discussion about the 1880′s incarnation of them, when every single participant agrees that they have no desire to return to the policies of 1880, (maybe “Hot Tub Time Machine” should have time-traveled to the 1880′s instead!) is stupid.  The debate is literally, actually, about how much people don’t want to go back to then.  Some really really don’t want to, some only sorta don’t want to, some really really really don’t want to.  Gripping stuff, I know — especially since Mr. Caplan, who touched it off, doesn’t even advocate any modern policy changes (as far as I can tell?) as a result of his crazy beliefs.  I’ll be the first to admit I love rehashing some old historical debate — I got yelled at for slandering some silly old JFK speech right here — but this is going overboard.

So this debate, then leads at least one non-libertarian to conclude that libertarian ideals, when taken to the extreme, will lead to feudalism. Okay.  I consider myself libertarian, but honestly — I don’t really care if extreme libertarianism leads to feudalism because I don’t want extreme libertarianism.  I assume, like the South Park creators, that any ideology taken to an extreme will lead to bad results.  But none of this matters a whole bunch.  The conclusion of the Crooked Timber post, I assume, is that we shouldn’t listen to libertarians about regular policy things, because what’s the point of merely providing a critique of some dystopian libertarian feudal society or how they think about 1880 marriages?  That last part is supposed to be rhetorical, but I guess in light of how many people actually are debating this, maybe I’m wrong!

Yet on these regular day-to-day topics — about which many, many writers got distracted from by debates about “coverture” (which I thought was the first part of a symphony, but apparently not!) — libertarians have lots of (non-extreme, but rather pretty marginal) suggestions that are actually really good.  And I don’t say “really good” because I happen to be libertarian, I say that because we have real, actual evidence that they are the right way to go.  Some of those boring positions:

• Maybe we shouldn’t spend so much money invading other countries.
• Putting thousands of people in jail for smoking pot isn’t such a great idea, and no great tragedy will occur if we stop — see Portugal or the Netherlands.
• Budget crises are real, and we shouldn’t just ignore them and keep spending — see California or Greece.
• Immigration is spectacularly good for both the immigrant and the destination country — see, uh, America.
• Maybe the police shouldn’t shoot innocents and non-violent offenders so often.

These are front-line, high profile issues where libertarians are miles better than either major party.  And these aren’t piddling little things either — people are actually dying and suffering because the US pursues the wrong policies on these things.  But no, since libertarians are wrong on 1880 gender issues and their blind allegiance to their stupid ideas will invariably lead to feudalism, we probably shouldn’t listen to them.  Any ideology taken to extremes, will almost certainly cause bad stuff to happen, and despite my beliefs, I don’t think libertarianism is any different.  But here’s why I’m frustrated by this entire debate: all our current belief systems (nobly moderate though they may be!) that have shaped the social system we have right now are causing massive amounts of human death and suffering… this very moment.  Not in the past, not in some future — right now.

And while things are indeed getting better over time, it’s just ridiculous to be focusing on completely irrelevant, 130 year old minutiae, instead of doing the things today that actually allowed us to make it better: fighting against vastly more serious violations of human rights.

From Conor Friedersdorf, ostensibly about Harry Reid, sentence number one:

As Gene Healy’s cult of the presidency continues apace, it is equally remarkable that the legislative branch so often seems unable or unwilling to carry out basic functions proscribed by the Constitution.

The three American branches of government were designed, broadly speaking, such that the legislature would write laws, the executive would, well, execute them (but could veto, and potentially be overridden), and the judicial branch would determine their constitutionality.  This is no longer the case.  The United States, at least at the federal level, no longer has checks and balances.  Your high school civics class is now wrong.

Over the past few decades (or longer), the executive has basically taken the front seat.  The legislature is now a body that merely approves laws crafted (either directly, or their primary intent) by the executive.  The Supreme Court, despite major constitutional departures (suspension of habeas corpus, congressional declaration of war, and so many others) has proven unwilling to fulfill their role.  The United States now more closely resembles the Principate of the later Roman period, where instead of being equals, the wishes of the citizenry, judiciary and legislature were political luxuries the leader courted, but were fundamentally subservient to him when it came to policy.

In practice, the Principate was a period of enlightened absolutism, with occasional forays into quasi-constitutional monarchy; Emperors tended not to flaunt their power and usually respected the rights of citizens (although they never let this fact bind them).

Sound familiar?  At least we don’t have dynastic monarchs, where many of our leaders all hail from the same rich and powerful families?  Oh, right, never mind.

So, since the Supreme Court seems fundamentally uninterested in major constitutional breaches, the only way to suppress executive power has been when the legislature and the citizens are nominally opposed to it — as during the Clinton administration, or last two years of Bush II.  Good work, citizenry!  Unfortunately, this opposition is ultimately political (i.e. Republican vs. Democrat), not constitutional.  As soon as the citizens and congress were suitably aligned with Republican or Democratic presidents, this check vanished.  The fact that “aligned” is shorthand for relatively miniscule shifts in actual public opinion, and that the populace and both parties are actually in practice rather in agreement on most of the constitutional violations, is also worrisome.

So, if old-fashioned, checks-and-balances constitutional opposition to executive power is impotent, we’ll have to rely on that political opposition stuff!  Too bad one of our pathetic political parties is completely prostrate.  Jon Henke, with the other sentence: (okay fine it’s actually six sentences, you got me)

The implication of Hayek’s position is that conservatism can never achieve the vision of genuine individual freedom – it can only oppose the Left.  If that is the case, then who can achieve limited government?  The Compassionate Conservative approach has been tried, miserably (though some, like Douthat and others advocate variations on it).  The religious right seems inclined towards a Christian Democrats approach (Huckabee, et al).  There is the “energetic” and “ambitious” “national greatness” approach advocated by those like David Brooks, Bill Kristol & John McCain.  Libertarians and many independents/moderates are inclined toward a, you know, libertarian approach.

So, we have five potential Republican strategies (I’ll add one at the end):

Compassionate: didn’t work, as Henke notes.

Religious: isn’t going to work.  If it could, then the religious right wouldn’t be on a massive retreat on nearly every topic it cares about.

National Greatness: isn’t going to work.  It will be as popular as it’s centerpiece: the war in Iraq.  Good luck with that.

Libertarianism: obviously my favorite tactic for anyone to pursue, but there are many people on the left who would argue that the recent financial crisis has invalidated this as well — though I would disagree, the fact remains that lots of people think so.

Social: the culture war types, who don’t like rap music, violent videogames, pornography, etc…  This faction has been pretty much getting their asses handed to them for 40 years now.  Not going to work.

The two most tried-and-true of these, Social and Religious, are also the ones that have been most crushingly defeated, and will continue to be so for a long time primarily for the reason Henke also lays out here:

As Kristen Soltis has pointed out here recently, “young voters began abandoning the Republican Party long before Barack Obama was even a serious contender for the presidency. Those pinning the Republican Party’s poor fortunes among young voters on the Obama candidacy miss the source of the problem and certainly underestimate its severity.”

Lesson: Republicans had better become more appealing to young people, because patterns established in youth persist for life. 

Pardon my skepticism, but old religious fogeys who want to go back to a time without all these newfangled socially corrosive things aren’t really going to get many votes in the young people category.  Because here’s the problem: every day a bunch of people who might be swayed by these arguments die.  And a bunch of people who are vastly more likely to ignore them are born.  Unless there’s a really amazing pro-old-religious-fogey propaganda campaign going on here that will swamp these effects, those two positions are total dead ends.  While I like to rag on these two tactics, mainly because I find them distasteful, I’m not particularly fond of National Greatness or Compassionate either — but that’s okay, since they don’t seem to be doing too well.

So what do we have here?  A dysfunctional division of power.  The only remaining check, that of an opposition party, is pretty dead or dying, and even people like me, who really like divided government, aren’t even that sad to see it go.  Even if the Republican party manages to somehow right itself, (as the Democratic party did after its doom was widely forecast only a few years ago) all this means is that things might be okay when the electoral dice roll for divided government (and assuming the two parties actually disagree on the pertinent issues), and not-so-happy when they do not.

Given that what parties seem to do when they have unrestricted power is “expensive things that will get people to like us even more” in an effort to prolong their reign, we can much more briefly sum up the Future of American Politics with only one sentence and zero additional commentary:

How are we going to pay for all of this?

While on one level I realize it’s cool (and humorous) to make fun of the tea parties (am I late on this topic? too bad!), I find the “but they don’t have a plan” criticism to lack punch:

I cannot really come up with a better word than juvenile for the tea parties — don’t protest the taxes unless you can identify the specific cuts in expenditures that you would make to bring the budget into balance.  If you think taxes are bad, then you should think deficits are worse, because they raise the taxes of people who were not represented in the decisions to spend the money. 

First, from what I could tell from the minor amount of attention I paid to them, there actually were lots of anti-spending signs involved.  Some I agree with, some I don’t, some fall into the “protest weirdo” category.  Secondly, if you want to criticize the specific people at tea parties with this argument, that’s fine.  But to imply that this criticism applies to libertarians (the post title above was “Libertarians And Taxes”) in general is kinda nuts.  Libertarians love cutting spending, for better or worse.  If you look around you can find prominent (and not-so-prominent) libertarians talking about cutting nearly everything: the post office, medicare, welfare, social security, military, corporate subsidies, nearly every major department of government, scientific research, public schooling, and just about anything else.  

In fact, of all the political persuasions you can be in America besides “pure anarchist,” it’s hard to imagine any of them talking more about cutting spending than libertarians — certainly “cutting spending” is not featured in either of the major parties’ platforms.  I completely agree with the Friedman quote in Samwick’s piece that there’s no point to cutting taxes without cutting spending, but if we’re going to be tarring people with that brush, libertarians wouldn’t be my first target.

Also, I’m not sure I get why there’s a “I’m not so sure” in Samwick’s statement here: [my bold]

Libertarians and Taxes: From David Boaz of the Cato Institute, who visited Dartmouth yesterday:

Too many advocates of small government still have this lingering attachment to the Republican party,” Boaz said. “It’s like being a battered wife — how long do you wait to leave?

Perhaps the more interesting part of the analogy is, Where do you go when you leave?  Typically, it is not to another partner, but to a period in which you are not in a relationship until you can recover from what just happened and make the changes that are needed so it never happens again. Are the Libertarians doing that?  I’m not so sure.  Consider more of what Boaz said: Boaz described the recent Republican tea parties in protest of tax day as “the revival of a freedom movement.” He also referenced a recent advertisement run by the Cato Institute in several major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times. The advertisement discussed perceived flaws in the economic stimulus package. “Someday, this ad is going to be remembered as the revival of the free market movement,” Boaz said.

It seems to me that an ad pointing out flaws in the economic stimulus package (which is spending) actually does seem precisely like “identify[ing] the specific cuts in expenditures that you would make to bring the budget into balance.”  Certainly even eliminating even the entire stimulus wouldn’t have balanced the budget by itself, but it really does seem like proposing something you think should be cut.  Just glancing over Cato’s website I see quite a few articles that, if their recommendations were heeded, would cut government spending.  Did I really just have to explain that Cato often advocates cutting government spending?  Is this a revelation to anyone?

Finally, if we all agree with ”To spend is to tax” then in addition to demanding that anti-tax people having spending cuts lined up, then we must also demand that anyone advocating spending proposals have tax increase plans to go along with them.  I’m sure any libertarian will agree to this bargain.

… if a governor  decided to legalize marijuana within their jurisdiction, what would be the response from the federal government?  I know for states, the threat of withholding federal transportation money is usually a sufficient threat for whatever behavior one would want, but what other weapons are there?  Can they remove the stubborn governor?  Can they send the National Guard in, a la civil rights-era Arkansas?  What if the governor just instructs the police to quietly ignore drug offenses, and only prosecute “regular” crimes?  I assume setting law enforcement priorities are within their rights.  What if the mayor of a city does the same thing?  What’s the reaction at the state/county/federal level?

To some extent this has been played out with the medical marijuana clinics issue, so I suppose I’m more interested in de facto legalization schemes than official ones.