Disqus - Latest Comments for John Markley

Re: Must… Destroy… Milton Freedman

John Markley — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:59:22 -0000

Excellent post. I’ve long considered McCain my least favorite Republican, and that Weekly Standard article is a nice reminder of why.

I think you’re right about the adolescent quality of this sort of conservatism. It’s like some rebellious kid who thinks that normal bourgeois adult stuff- earning a living, taking care of your family, enjoying day-to-day life- is for squares and sell-outs. Though in defense of adolescents, the ones I’ve known usually express this sort of sentiment by getting something pierced or going to an arts college, rather than, say, burning down Iraqi cities and calling for universal conscription.

The Weekly Standard article is also a useful reminder of how little neocons have strayed from their roots- neoconservatism is still liberalism’s thuggish little brother. (Which would, I suppose, make “national greatness conservatism” liberalism’s juvenile delinquent nephew.) The article is an outstanding distillation of what standard liberal commentary on the subject is like: The idiotic oversimplifications and distortions of what economists believe, the insistence that having good-willed people in office is all that matters, the ridiculous pretense of having no ideology, the belief that depriving people of economic freedom is a purely technocratic question with no moral content, and of course, as you pointed out, the contempt for the idea of people seeking individual success and fulfillment instead of gloriously dissolving themselves in some collective moral crusade. Make the language a little more gender-inclusive, replace “McCain” with “Obama,” remove the disapproving reference to pornography, and throw in the word “compassion” a few times and you’ve got something your average Democrat would whole-heartedly endorse.

Re: David Brooks and the Infrastructure of Technocratic Control

John Markley — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:08:24 -0000

Ben A said,
"Is it your position that every department of social services is a net negative on the lives of the children they remove from abusive families? If not, why do you think other, less invasive interventions are doomed to failure, or a doorway to oppression?"

I have no idea what Wilkinson thinks, but framing it this way distorts the issue. If we were discussing the issue of whether or not police are excessively violent and aggressive, it would be missing the point to ask, "Are you saying police use of force is a net negative for society every time a policeman subdues someone who is about to commit murder?"

Of course social service departments are not a net negative if you only count the cases where they succeed- that's true of anything. The relevant question is not whether "every department of social services is a net negative on the lives of the children they remove from abusive families," but whether such departments are a net negative or positive in total, which includes the times when they screw up. Are such departments a net negative for children mistakenly removed from non-abusive homes, or children physically or sexually abused by foster parents, or parents who lose their children because of a mistake by the government's investigators? Most likely, yes. Does the harm caused by such incidents (and any other costs associated with these programs) outweigh the good done when the government gets it right and saves an abused child? I have no idea. Strengthening these agencies may be a good idea, but we won't know if we don't count costs as well as benefits.

Re: The Hazards of “Libertarian Paternalism” and Political “Choice Architecture”

John Markley — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:00:43 -0000

Great post! You express my own reasons for distrusting "libertarian paternalism" much more effectively than I could myself. The first thing I thought when I encountered this idea for the first time was precisely, "How will it affect the culture if government control is considered the default for everything, and independent choice is something you have to specifically ask for?" It gets even worse if people are told that such a system is "liberty."

Another problem is that it would be trivially easy for the ruling "choice architects" to put their fingers on the scale by making the procedure for opting out of a given default rule as lengthy, burdensome, and difficult as possible. You could impose significant nonmonetary costs on people who want to opt out, and still insist that the system is libertarian.

Re: Wherein I Do Not Accept Crispin Sartwell’s Challenge

John Markley — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:15:47 -0000

"Sweden vs. (the artist formerly known as) Somalia. No contest."

Free State Iceland vs. Nazi Germany. No contest. Hell, Somalia vs. Pol Pot's Cambodia. No contest. I could go on all day.

Cherry-picking is a double edged sword.

Re: Please Discuss

John Markley — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:45:13 -0000

grumpy realist said,

"Would all those of you who don’t want to pay income taxes please move to a country that doesn’t have them and STFU….."

Ah, the classic "If you don't like President Bush why don't you move to China" defense, beloved of brain dead redneck warmongers across this great land.

"What Libertarians are really bellyaching about is that not enough of their neighbors have the same view of government programs as they do."

Well, yes. This is what any political group or ideology in a democratic country that does not currently have its program in place is "bellyaching" about. What antiwar activists are really bellyaching about is that not enough of their neighbors have the same view of war and militarism as they do. What socialists are really bellyaching about is that not enough of their neighbors have the same view of government ownership of industry as they do. What members of the organization Stop Prisoner Rape are really bellyaching about is that not enough of their neighbors have the same view of stopping people from being raped in prison as they do. Do you have some sort of point beyond "People who disagree with me should shut the fuck up"?

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

John Markley — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:22:38 -0000

Dain,

I think Wilkinson's proposed "liberaltarianism" is virtually the precise opposite of the "left-libertarianism" of Kevin Carson and the like. Carson wants to bring together libertarians and the radical, anti-statist elements of the left. Liberaltarianism, as far as I can discern, is about bringing libertarians together with the big government, corporate liberal center-leftists that Carson et al. utterly despise.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

John Markley — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:48:04 -0000

ranger_granger,

"Because if there’s any lack of trade freedom in the world, it sure isn’t coming from the U.S.’ end (the millions of tons of dumped Chinese junk on our shores is testament to that)."

You're joking, right?

Re: The World Is Not a Zoo

John Markley — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:08:13 -0000

Good stuff. The "zoo" metaphor strikes me as a very good one. Actually, on one of Russ Roberts' EconTalk podcasts, Michael Munger used the term "human zoo" to describe what he saw as one of the driving forces of opposition among Westerners to globalization and free trade with the Third World: we like having strange foreigners with exotic folkways to gawk at, and that might be ruined if the Exotic Foreigners are allowed access to the same consumer goods Westerners enjoy. There is, as you say, a convergence: outspoken parts of both Left and Right just don't see people from foreign, minority, or non-Western backgrounds as actual individual human beings.

In the United States, the multiculturalist mentality often seems to have an interesting result: White heterosexual Americans, who aren’t perceived to have any meaningful cultural identity of their own, are relatively free to be what they want, whereas anyone identified as a minority is obligated to be “true” or “authentic” to whatever group they are a part of. A curious result for a leftist philosophy.

Re: The Segway of Social Science

John Markley — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:32:16 -0000

Great review. I'm always interested in the language of politics, so I especially liked the part on the linguistic contortions/mutilations that Thaler and Sunstein go though to make "paternalism" sound unobjectionable. (I've occasionally seen conservatives try to take the ugly edge off of "censorship" using exactly the same tactic.)

Re: Like Democracy? Then You Should Love Intractable Ideological Disagreement

John Markley — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:35:58 -0000

Will,

Great post. This line of argument always reminds of alleged psychics who explain their inability to bend spoons or reads minds in front of a witness by saying that their mystical powers don't work when a skeptic is present because of all the negative vibes his disbelief puts out.

Joe Max,

"If your basic political philosophy is that a big government is at best a necessary evil, why would you bother to try to make it actually work and thereby invalidate your own beliefs?"

Should we also assume, then, that liberal/leftist attempts to regulate the private sector are actually intended to cause economic chaos and destruction? I suppose that would actually explain an awful lot.

Re: More on Corruption

John Markley — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:17:39 -0000

"Some good government types think encouraging skepticism of power simply encourages abuse of power by communicating that we expect power to be abused. "

I've always been baffled by this claim (though I can understand its appeal to the primitive belief that sheer will can controls events.) If I ever have a daughter, I suppose I should encourage her to spend lots of time alone in unlit parking lots and always say yes if a drunken frat guy at a party asks if she wants to get away from the others and see his room. Warning her that men can be dangerous would simply encourage violence against women, apparently.

More generally, it reminds me of the old Stalinist propaganda that would blame all the failures of the Soviet system on legions of fascist or Trotskyite “wreckers” who were supposedly sabotaging the economy at every turn. The idea that the system itself had serious problems could not be contemplated.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

John Markley — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:05:47 -0000

Paul G. Brown,

Generally, the idea of vouchers is to give people more choice in which school their child attends, not provide them with the option to voluntarily donate more to the government schools, on top of what they already pay in taxes, in order to (hopefully) improve them while continuing to protect them from meaningful competition. If a restaurant in my town is unsanitary, being allowed to bring in a cleaning crew at my own expense is not the same thing as being able to take my money and spend it dining elsewhere.

This is a basic distinction. Someone who chooses to characterize support for vouchers as "boo yarr suxx0r5 we get to fire teecherz!" is the last person to be in any sort of position to chastise someone else for their supposed failure to offer "a serious response to the issue."

Re: Libertarian Democraphobia

John Markley — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:40:04 -0000

After reading the comments here, I'm once again struck by how frequently attacks on libertarianism (especially though not exclusively those made by liberals) seem to incorporate some variant of "haha you're a loser/nerd/virgin." Then again, given the similarities in their reasoning ability, emotional maturity, and moral development, the fondness of so many American liberals for the sort of insults tossed around by 8th grade bullies seems quite appropriate.

Re: What’s Wrong With Empathy?

John Markley — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:37:12 -0000

This post seems either astonishingly naive or breathtakingly cynical. It reads like something written by an alien who has been given an English dictionary but has been denied any knowledge of what American political factions are like or how they use language. When John McCain was attacking self-interest and material prosperity and carrying on about "sacrifice," "service," and "a cause larger then yourself," and so on, did you think he just meant that you should give a few bucks to the local soup kitchen?

Re: The Party of Nixon

John Markley — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:31:40 -0000

"Will, this line of attack on the Republican Party strikes me as a little odd coming from a libertarian. Isn't national security supposed to be one of the few legitimate concerns of the federal government? On a libertarian view, being the party of national security *and* limited government ought to be a good fit."

Sure, but it helps if the "national security" measures a party is promoting actually promote national security, and do so effectively enough to make the costs and other trade-offs worthwhile.

Re: The Path to Corporate Welfare is Paved with Essential Legislation

John Markley — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:23:31 -0000

Great post. This point can't be emphasized enough.

Re: Whereof Game Theory Cannot Speak….

John Markley — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:11:03 -0000

"Consider the library at Alexandria, which contained much of the ancient world's knowledge but was burned down, causing its contents to be lost to history. Now, I would say that I--as a person living in 2009--value that library far more than any person valued it when it was still around."

This is a rather poor example, considering that 1. most people in 2009 likely have no idea what the library of Alexandria even was, and would not much care if they did know, and 2. I seriously doubt those of us today who do lament its loss suffer any sort of serious distress from it.

Re: Fed Independence: Too Important to Verify

John Markley — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:30:01 -0000

"...and seem to have arrived at that position not through good-faith reasoning but instead through ideology and conspiracy theory."

By this standard, every political position ought to be suspect. Everyone reaches positions via their ideology, since everyone has some mental model of social and political cause and effect. and of what's good and bad. Ideologies themselves may be more or less reasonable and accurate, and arrived at for good or bad reasons, but the idea that someone can come to political positions through some sort of nonideological "good-faith reasoning" (or "science," or "prudence" if you want the conservative version) is a dangerous, self-flattering fantasy.

Re: For a 9/10 America

John Markley — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:53:17 -0000

Gil,

"Isn't it akin to someone who gives money to an investment firm and then doesn't take any notice as to where the money is going?"

If giving money to an organization voluntarily and surrendering it due to threats of force are "akin," sure.