Disqus - Latest Comments for Micha Ghertner

Re: Social Change Workshop

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 23:02:35 -0000

I'm so incredibly jealous right now. *weep*

Re: Barber at Brookings

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 17 May 2007 12:49:30 -0000

Any chance the event will be recorded? I'll even settle for audio only. If not, please post a good summary!

Re: The Paid Vacation Laffer Curve

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:09:31 -0000

Bloix might want to read up on the Lump of labour fallacy.

Re: The Paid Vacation Laffer Curve

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:43:43 -0000

Yup, Joe, I noticed that quote too. One of the reasons I still love Krugman.

Re: Throwdown in Midtown

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:05:45 -0000

Pwned!

Re: Guests in the Machine

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 13:39:14 -0000

Everything Kerry writes makes me green with envy for not having written it first and for not being able to say it as clearly and persuasively as she can. Perhaps a redistributive tax on Kerry to benefit less-skilled writers is needed?

Re: Guests in the Machine

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 02:46:42 -0000

In my experience, however, most moral standards are applied self-servingly.

Bullshit. What possible self-serving reason do we pro-immigration libertarians have for recognizing that undocumented Mexican workers are no less human than American citicizens? I'm calling bullshit on that accusation; it's oft-repeated but never explained.

Re: Guests in the Machine

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 09:17:45 -0000

Nobody is denying anybody’s humanity.

Sure you are. Other people are not your property, period.

More generally, the argument for guest workers ignores that cheap labor largely serves to prevent the most efficient division of labor.

Up is down. Left is right. Orwellian doublespeak. Cheap labor prevents the most efficient division of labor? Only if you completely ignore the interests of the migrant workers themselves. Which you apparently do. Guest worker programs count as a subsidy for uneconomic industries? No more than immigration restrictions (which actually cost enormously more taxpayer dollars than any free immigration alternative) count as a subsidy for native workers and firms who enjoy dominance of the status quo.

Viable industries can pay the going market rate for labor and don’t need the subsidy.

*Head explodes*

Re: Guests in the Machine

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:15:18 -0000

Please, you of all people don't get to claim you care about the poor African farmer. You couldn't give two shits about poor, dark skinned people, as you've already so ably demonstrated.

When you talk about our "volunteer" army, you make it sound as if the soldiers are doing it for free. They aren't. Is it better or worse to subsidize our "defense" against such terrible threats to U.S. security as Saddam's Iraq through the current mercenary system of paying recruits to die, or the previous slavery system of drafting them against their will? Both are pretty shitty options, but I'll stick with Uncle Milton; you can have General Westmoreland.

Re: Guests in the Machine

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:15:09 -0000

As I recall from Scorsese's excellent Gangs of New York, Irish immigrants directly off the boat were drafted into Lincoln's army to fight the American Civil War, thereby leading to the infamous New York Draft Riots. So the exact opposite of your contention is true: military conscription (for poor immigrants, not wealthy white men, of course) first originated in response to nativist whinging about immigration, in direct contrast to your historically challenged theory.

Re: Hillary, Huck, and Howley

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:37:48 -0000

Hey now, let's leave the references to "plugging" on Hit & Run, where they belong.

Re: Guest Workers and The Ultimate Liberal Aim

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:32:03 -0000

I like how "MaryJ" accuses libertarians of living in a fantasy world while in the very same post worrying terribly about the well-documented problem of Raul, Miguel and Julio down by the Home Depot, getting their little militia together like Latin versions of Jim Gilchrist. Um, yeah.

Re: I Dated a Guest Worker

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:37:00 -0000

Because the totalitarian Cultural Marxist is right about cosmopolitanism, and racist autarks such as yourself are wrong? Yay, playing the name-calling game is easy and fun for the whole family!

Re: Media This Week

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:39:16 -0000

Now if we can just convince CNN to get you to replace Lou Dobbs, we'll be set.

Re: Ron Paul: Good for “the Blacks”?

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:24:30 -0000

The Gaunt Man,

Racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and every other vile form of hatred out there is as much a part of liberty as “the ability effectively to enact one’s plans, to achieve ones ends.

You are entirely correct. And so is Will. The difference lies in opposing conceptions of liberty. You have a thin conception of liberty, one that requires noncoercion and nothing else. Will has a thick conception of liberty, one that places a certain amount of (but not infinite) value on non-coercion, but ultimately for instrumental, human flourishing reasons. The argument for thickening one's conception of liberty is that a healthy theory of politics in the social, non-governmental realm is both necessary and mutually reinforcing with a healthy theory of politics in the governmental, nonsocial realm. So writes Rod Long and Charles Johnson in "Libertarianism Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved?":

Some of libertarians’ sharpest jabs at feminism have been directed against feminist criticisms of sexual harassment, misogynist pornography, or sadomasochism. Feminists in particular are targeted as the leading crusaders for “political correctness”, and characterized as killjoys, censors, or man-haters for criticising speech or consensual sex acts in which women are denigrated or dominated; it is apparently claimed that since the harassment or the portrayal doesn’t (directly) involve violence, there aren’t any grounds for taking political exception to it. But the popularity in libertarian circles of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead (a deeply problematic novel from a feminist standpoint,3 but instructive on the present point) indicates that libertarians know better when it comes to, say, conformity and collectivism. Although its political implications are fairly clear, The Fountainhead pays relatively little attention to governmental oppression per se; its main focus is on social pressures that encourage conformity and penalize independence. Rand traces how such pressures operate through predominantly non-governmental and (in the libertarian sense) non-coercive means, in the business world, the media, and society generally. Some of the novel’s characters give in, swiftly or slowly, and sell their souls for social advancement; others resist but end up marginalized, impoverished, and psychologically debilitated as a result. Only the novel’s hero succeeds, eventually, in achieving worldly success without sacrificing his integrity — but only after a painful and superhuman struggle. It would be hard to imagine libertarians describing fans of The Fountainhead as puritans or censors because of their objections to the Ellsworth Tooheys of the world—even though Toohey’s malign influence is mainly exercised through rhetorical and social means rather than by legal force. An uncharitable reading that the situation unfortunately suggests is that libertarians can recognize non-governmental oppression in principle, but in practice seem unable to grasp any form of oppression other than the ones that well-educated white men may have experienced for themselves.

A more charitable reading of libertarian attitudes might be this: while the collectivist boycott of independent minds and stifling of creative excellence in The Fountainhead is not itself enacted through government means, collectivism clearly is associated with the mass psychology that supports statism. So is patriarchy, actually, but it is most closely associated with a non-governmental form of oppression—that is, male supremacy and violence against women. All this makes it seem, at times, that libertarians—including libertarian feminists—are suffering from a sort of willful conceptual blindness; perhaps because they are afraid to grant the existence of serious and systematic forms of political oppression that are not connected solely or mainly with the state. It’s as though, if they granted any political critique of the outcomes of voluntary association, they would thereby be granting that voluntary association as such is oppressive, and that government regulation is the solution. But such a phobic reaction only makes sense if you first accept (either tacitly or explicitly) the premise that all politics is exclusively the domain of the government, and as such (given Mises’s insights into the nature of government) all political action is essentially violent action. This is, as it were, a problem that has no name; but we might call it “the authoritarian theory of politics,” since it amounts to the premise that any political question is a question resolved by violence; many 20th century libertarians simply grant the premise and then, because they hold that no question is worth resolving by (initiatory) violence, they call for the death of politics4 in human affairs.

Re: Ron Paul: Good for “the Blacks”?

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:33:07 -0000

danb,

Yes, you should drop your support of RP and not vote. Or if that feels to weird for you, vote for the LP. Or hell, vote for Kucinich. Keep in mind, though, that your individual act of voting does not matter, except for emotive reasons. If there was a snowball's chance in hell that your decision to vote would be the decisive vote in an election, then you might legitimately have a problem deciding between the lesser of many evils. But, fortunately, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of casting the decisive vote, so you have nothing to worry about.

Re: Ron Paul: Good for “the Blacks”?

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:06:42 -0000

Fluffy, your thought experiment demonstrates the follow of pure act consequentialism, but Will is not arguing for pure act consequentialism. He is arguing for something much closer to rule consequentialism, or institutional consequentialism, when he writes,

In my judgment, a regime of strong negative rights is the best guarantee of positive liberty. Government attempts to guarantee the worth of our liberties by recognizing positive rights to a minimum income or certain services like health care often (but not always) undermine the framework of market and civil institutions most likely to enhance liberty over the long run, and should be limited.

Now, in defense of positive liberty, consider the following thought experiment:

You are deciding between two places in which to live: Let's call the first place Somalia, and the second place Sweden. In Somalia, there is little to no government, little to no coercive rights violations (this thought-experiment Somalia is not identical to our real-world Somalia, and massive poverty. People do their best to get by, and many fail. Sweden, by contrast, has lots and lots of government, lots and lots of coercive rights violations, and massive wealth. People are generally happy, healthy, and prosperous, despite the unfortunate redistributionist policies of their government.

In which country would you prefer to live? Is negative liberty all that matters, or is pure economic freedom just another word for nothing else to do?

Re: Ron Paul: Good for “the Blacks”?

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:07:31 -0000

follow=folly. I wish this blog comment software had a preview/edit function. :(

Re: Ron Paul: Good for “the Blacks”?

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:01:59 -0000

badmedia,

Equality is not freedom.

It depends on how you define the terms. Equality, if understood as equality in authority, is not only compatible with Spencerian maximum liberty, but both are required by and mutually reinforce each other.

Because equality isn’t what people want, Freedom is what they want.

Have you ever met a committed (in every sense of the word) Marxist? You speak as if the world was already populated with thoroughgoing Randians. If only.

The only thing I seen anyone guilty of in those newsletters was bad wording.

Mein Kampf would have been far more persuasive if Hitler had made better use of a thesaurus and a public relations agent.

Re: Ron Paul: Good for “the Blacks”?

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:07:13 -0000

Fluffy,

The “Somalia vs. Sweden” argument [or the “Manhattan vs. Kansas” argument, as it has been offered elsewhere] would only be relevant if the difference between Somalia and Sweden existed because of Sweden’s statism.

You miss the point I was trying to make, or perhaps, more charitably, I should have done a better job of making it. Mine was not a causal argument, attempting to explain why my imaginary Somalia and Sweden are the way they are. I completely agree with your analysis on this point. My argument, rather, is that, if given the choice, most of us do not place negative liberty as our sole, overriding value. Other things, like culture and wealth, can be just as important to us as the absence of coercion. This is Will's point about positive liberty.

Re: Ron Paul: Good for “the Blacks”?

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:12:50 -0000

It’s a shame that you could be using your influence for good in the last election to save America as we know it.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Black Helicopters! Bilderbergers!

Where is Marshall Applewhite when you need him?

Re: Bloggingheads TV with Douglas Massey

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:48:41 -0000

Why abandon sociology to the socialists, TGGP? Sure, the field may be dominated by them, but the same could be said about the field of economics at the beginning of the 20th century. That didn't stop Mises, Friedman, and Hayek from entering the field as a minority and turning it around for the better.

I wrote about my experience with academic sociology a few days ago.

One personality type...is a certain sort of vulgar individualist--the kind who loudly and unironically proclaims, "There is no such thing as society!"--and refuses to acknowledge the profound and all-encompassing impact society can have on structuring the way we interact with and understand the world around us. I used to be this worst sort of vulgar individualist, and when faced with overwhelming evidence that contradicted my mistaken beliefs about the relationship between an individual and society, I became terribly worried that my entire ideological worldview was at risk of collapse. It wasn't, of course; I merely needed to reexamine and modify my beliefs about sociology, and once I did that, my normative beliefs were that much stronger for it.

Re: Make that Two Cheers for PC

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:42:37 -0000

Yup, I credit Rod's old post on PC for being the turning point in my thinking, the first of many of his writings that have moved me in a decidedly left-libertarian direction, and made me appreciate the rich history that classical liberalism and radical individualist anarchism has on the issues of gender, race, and class.

Here's another lengthy excerpt of a Rod Long essay that deals with both libertarians' relationship with PC, and touches on my defense of sociology found in your other thread:

All this makes it seem, at times, that libertarians—including libertarian feminists—are suffering from a sort of willful conceptual blindness; perhaps because they are afraid to grant the existence of serious and systematic forms of political oppression that are not connected solely or mainly with the state. It’s as though, if they granted any political critique of the outcomes of voluntary association, they would thereby be granting that voluntary association as such is oppressive, and that government regulation is the solution. But such a phobic reaction only makes sense if you first accept (either tacitly or explicitly) the premise that all politics is exclusively the domain of the government, and as such (given Mises’s insights into the nature of government) all political action is essentially violent action. This is, as it were, a problem that has no name; but we might call it “the authoritarian theory of politics,” since it amounts to the premise that any political question is a question resolved by violence; many 20th century libertarians simply grant the premise and then, because they hold that no question is worth resolving by (initiatory) violence, they call for the death of politics4 in human affairs.

At least one libertarian theorist, the late Don Lavoie, makes our point when he observes that there is

much more to politics than government. Wherever human beings engage in direct discourse with one another about their mutual rights and responsibilities, there is a politics. I mean politics in the sense of the public sphere in which discourse over rights and responsibilities is carried on, much in the way Hannah Arendt discusses it. …. The force of public opinion, like that of markets, is not best conceived as a concentrated will representing the public, but as the distributed influence of political discourses throughout society. … Inside the firm, in business lunches, at street corners, interpersonal discourses are constantly going on in markets. In all those places there is a politics going on, a politics that can be more or less democratic. … Leaving a service to “the forces of supply and demand” does not remove it from human decision making, since everything will depend on exactly what it is that the suppliers and demanders are trying to achieve. … What makes a legal culture, any legal system, work is a shared system of belief in the rules of justice — a political culture. The culture is, in turn, an evolving process, a tradition which is continually being reappropriated in creative ways in the interpersonal and public discourses through which social individuals communicate. … Everything depends here on what is considered an acceptable social behavior, that is, on the constraints imposed by a particular political culture. … To say we should leave everything to be “decided by markets” does not, as [libertarians] suppose, relieve liberalism of the need to deal with the whole realms of politics. And to severely limit or even abolish government does not necessarily remove the need for democratic processes in nongovernmental institutions.5

It’s true that a libertarian could (as Karl Hess, for example, does) simply insist on a definition of politics in terms of the authoritarian theory, and stick consistently to the stipulation, while also doing work on a systemic critique of forms of oppression that aren’t (by their definition) enacted through the “political means”; they would simply have to hold that a full appreciation of oppressive conditions requires a thorough understanding of what “the economic means” or “action in the market” or “civil society” can include. But given the curious misunderstandings that many libertarians seem to have of feminist critiques, it seems likely that the issue here isn’t merely terminological—it may be that the real nature of typical feminist concerns and activism is rendered incomprehensible by sticking to stipulations about the use of “politics” and “the market” when the ordinary use of those terms won’t bear them. You could, if you insisted, look at street harassment as a matter of “psychic costs” that women face in their daily affairs, and the feminist tactic of women’s “Ogle-Ins” on Wall Street as a means of reducing the “supply” of male leering by driving up the “psychic costs” to the “producers” (using shame and awareness of what it’s like to face harassment). In this sense, the “Ogle-In” resembles, in some salient respects, a picket or a boycott. But no-one actually thinks of an Ogle-In as a “market activity,” even if you can make up some attenuated way of analyzing it under economic categories; it clearly fails to meet a number of conditions (such as the voluntary exchange of goods or services between actors) that are part of our routine, pre-analytic use of terms such as “market,” “producer,” and “economic.” Just as clearly, an “Ogle-In” has something importantly in common with legislation, court proceedings, and even market activities such as boycotts or pickets that appeals to our pre-analytic use of “political”—even though neither the “Ogle-In” nor the market protests are violent, or in any way connected with the State: they are all trying to address a question of social coordination through conscious action, and they work by calling on people to make choices with the intent of addressing the social issue—as opposed to actions in which the intent is some more narrowly economic form of satisfaction, and any effects on social coordination (for good or for ill) are unintended consequences.6

Libertarian temptations to the contrary notwithstanding, it makes no sense to regard the state as the root of all social evil, for there is at least one social evil that cannot be blamed on the state — and that is the state itself. If no social evil can arise or be sustained except by the state, how does the state arise, and how is it sustained? As libertarians from La Boétie to Rothbard have rightly insisted, since rulers are generally outnumbered by those they rule, the state itself cannot survive except through popular acceptance which the state lacks the power to compel; hence state power is always part of an interlocking system of mutually reinforcing social practices and structures, not all of which are violations of the nonaggression axiom. There is nothing un-libertarian, then, in recognizing the existence of economic and/or cultural forms of oppression which, while they may draw sustenance from the state (and vice versa), are not reducible to state power. One can see statism and patriarchy as mutually reinforcing systems (thus ruling out both the option of fighting statism while leaving patriarchy intact, and the option of fighting patriarchy by means of statism) without being thereby committed to seeing either as a mere epiphenomenon of the other (thus ruling out the option of fighting patriarchy solely indirectly by fighting statism).

Re: Ron Paul: Good for “the Blacks”?

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:00:48 -0000

Brian Macker writes,

I’ve aways disagreed with those libertarians who have claimed that individuals have a right to discriminate against others based on race.

As I recall, you've also disagreed with those libertarians who have claimed that individuals should have a legal right, but would be committing a moral wrong, to discriminate against others based on country of origin.

Re: Green Line 4-Evah, or Cosmolifestyleorangebeltwaytarians Unite!

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 03:06:47 -0000

Mencius accuses Will of hypocrisy, for being decent to Obama and indecent to Paul. Apparently, according to Mencius, Obama has "blatant connections to black nationalism." I don't know if this is true, nor do I really care, but for the sake of argument, let's assume it's true, and that Obama has as strong a connection to black nationalism as Paul has to white nationalism. Is it hypocritical to acknowledge this and yet still support Obama and despise Paul?

Only if you think black nationalism and white nationalism are equally objectionable.

When a historically persecuted minority responds to the racism of the majority with racism of its own, through isolation, seclusion, and self-sufficient autarky, it is an unfortunate, unwise reaction, but it is understandable in a way that majority, power-holding racism is not.

Re: Stupor Tuesday Liveblogging

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:34:59 -0000

It matches the color of his heart.

Re: The Moral Claims of Non-Citizens

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:06:57 -0000

But, second, contra Will, there are no viable “rights” without a mechanism — such as a state — to protect them against violation; and there are no states without defensible borders, and definable citizens.

You are confusing legal rights with moral rights, a mistake the preamble to the Declaration of Independence was written to correct:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Or, as Roderick Long more recently put it,

For libertarians, the concept of rights belongs in the first instance to the realm of interpersonal ethics, and applies to the political realm only secondarily. That is because, for libertarians – as for the liberal tradition generally – rights are not the product of a political regime, but are prior to such regimes and constitute a constraint on them. Hence rights cannot without circularity be defined in terms of the purposes of a political regime. If political regimes are constrained by certain pre-existing rights, and indeed have as one of their purposes the protection of these rights, then it must be possible to describe what these rights require without presupposing the existence of a political regime. A crucial feature of libertarian political theorizing is the insistence that not just the precise nature, but the very existence, of political authority requires justification and cannot simply be assumed. If we start from the basic natural rights that human beings would have in any social context, including a state of nature, then the specification of a particular political regime cannot subtract from that array of rights; but then it cannot add to it either, for, as we shall see, the addition of one right always involves the subtraction of another.

Re: The Moral Claims of Non-Citizens

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:44:28 -0000

That said, I do agree with Larry that in order for rights to be viable - that is, respected or enforced - a mechanism is required. Larry offers a state as an example of an enforcement mechanism. But then Larry goes on to say that "there are no states without defensible borders, and definable citizens," thereby implicitly assuming that a state is the only enforcement mechanism of rights. It isn't. It isn't even a very good one. By definition, a state must violate rights in order to even exist. Whether the rights violations necessary for the creation and continued existence of a state are worth the supposed benefits of monopolizing the institutions of legitimized force is a question for another thread, but it bothers me how quickly people skip this step and simply assume that:

1. Rights require an enforcement mechanism to be viable.
2. States are one such enforcement mechanism.
3. ???
4. Therefore, states are the only such enforcement mechanism, and thus all rights come from the government, in which case nothing the government does can ever be said to violate rights. I am above the law!
5. Profit!

[Two South Park references in one post!)

Re: The Moral Claims of Non-Citizens

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:56:11 -0000

and not all moral assertions are equally reasonable.

Putting on my logical positivist hat for a minute, might it be the case that all moral assertions are equally reasonable given that all moral assertions are equally unreasonable>/i>, if we reject the possibility of cognitively meaningful moral assertions altogether?

Re: The Moral Claims of Non-Citizens

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:43:02 -0000

I've seen Nozick. Wasn't impressed.

True, it wouldn't make sense to speak of rights if we adopted the logical positivist position. I don't, in fact, adopt that position, but I thought I'd put it out there as a possible disproof of your claim that "not all moral assertions are equally reasonable."

Re: The Moral Claims of Non-Citizens

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:37:40 -0000

Micha, what rights-enforcement mechanism is capable of protecting me from the state?

I don't recall ever claiming I knew of such a mechanism. The lack of such a mechanism, of course, isn't incompatible with my statement that a state is not the only enforcement mechanism of rights.

Re: Nationalist Moral Chauvinism

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:41:06 -0000

the loyalty owed to those of our sovereignty

Where does the loyalty debt come from?

Re: Nationalist Moral Chauvinism

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:03:10 -0000

I have not, and will not, commit to any kind of allegiance to "fellow nationals" relative to others. And I see far more aggression coming from nativist bullies than poor undocumented workers just trying to get by. The foreigner presents me with positive-sum opportunities; your kind does not.

Amusingly (ironically?), the ideal autarkic society of the present day conservative xenophobe reminds me an awful lot of the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Hint: It wasn't all about the butt sex.

Re: The Moral Claims of Non-Citizens

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:06:57 -0000

I'm not going to get into citing examples of non-State enforcement mechanisms in this thread; I know you're well read enough and familiar with the arguments already. The question of stability of civil institutions in a statist world is a good and tough one, but again, far beyond the point I wanted to make here, and far off topic.

Re: Too Much Consumption? Let Me Decide.

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:01:57 -0000

Michael Ostrom writes,

So what are you suggesting, Conor, that we let the poor, destitute peoples of the world die on the vine because they have been obstacles to their own economic success?

Of course not. I don't see anything in Conor's post that suggests we shouldn't do anything; his post was a descriptive explanation of economic history; not a prescriptive recommendation of what should be done at this point.

However, his choice of the term "self-imposed" is unfortunate. This risks anthropomorphizing a nation or economy as a distinct, singular entity, instead of what a nation or economy actually is: a loose collection of many different individual people with various interests, only a small fraction of whom have political power. So I can't really fault you for interpreting his post as blaming-the-victim. ("they have been obstacles to their own economic success"). The vast majority of people living in underdeveloped countries stricken with grinding poverty are not responsible for their own misfortune; their misfortune is entirely the result of an accident of birth. Had they been born in a liberal capitalist economy, they no doubt would be significantly wealthier.

The "self-imposed" claim should be not be taken as a critique of individual achievement among poor people in an underdeveloped economy; rather, I suspect Conor was using the term to rebut the claim that their poverty is a result of our wealth. It isn't. Conor's critique is a critique of the systematic structure, a critique of the unfortunate political choices made by those in power (unfortunate for the ruled if not for the rulers) that pervert healthy economic incentives which lead to wealth. These obstacles are "self-imposed" only to the extent that the politically powerful have imposed them on their fellow citizens, and to a large extent (at least before the more modern era of colonialism), were not imposed from external sources in the developed world.

Apart from the essential injustice of colonialism, which I am not in any way trying to diminish, another unfortunate side effect of it is that it fooled many into believing that wealth, in all places and at all times, is a fixed entity, to be expropriated from others, instead of what it actually is, a product of mutually-beneficial, positive-sum relationships (i.e. trade).

To defend consumerism is to defend trade, the production and consumption that constitutes its very definition. It is not to dismiss the suffering of the poor as unimportant or as a necessary price to be paid. Rather, just the opposite: it is to suggest that one of the very best ways to make the poor not-poor is to trade with them, thereby creating livelihoods for the poor to feed our own consumption, and thus, providing them the means to be consumers themselves. Though somewhat obvious, it should be noted that all consumers are producers of something, and vice-versa, with the small and unsustainable exception of gift recipients, the givers of which were at some point up the chain producers.

The anti-consumerists who criticize our consumption choices to purchase nose hair trimmers and stuffed armadillos as unnecessary are ignoring the fact that many people (many in poor, developing countries, no less) earn their livelihoods manufacturing, distributing, advertising, and in lots of other ways producing that which is later consumed.

Who is the true friend of the poor: We, the capitalist Milton Friedmanite consumer apologists, who, through mutually beneficial trade, even of goods as seemingly frivolous as nose hair trimmers and stuffed armadillos, provide jobs and therefore prosperity to millions around the world, or the anti-consumerist Naomi Kleinites, who would have us cut off wealth creation at its source?

Re: Too Much Consumption? Let Me Decide.

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:58:00 -0000

Of course, market failures occur in the production and distribution of housing and medicine, as evident in the lack of affordable housing (especially rental)and growing numbers of people without health insurance in the U.S.

Yes, yes. Clearly a market failure. Rent controls, zoning regulations, urban planning, and innumerable other government - oops, I mean, market failures, clearly have nothing to do with the lack of affordable housing. So too, the high cost of health insurance has absolutely nothing to do with myriad government regulations and interventions imposed on the health care system, from tax-breaks for employer provided health insurance resulting from wage and price controls imposed during WWII, to government mandated benefits, effectively pricing out of the market bare-bones, low cost, high premium insurance against unforeseen emergencies - the actual "insurance" in insurance - turning the system into the one-sized-fits all monstrosity that it currently is.

Clearly, the "free" market is at fault for all of this, not the omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient government. Market failure indeed.

Re: Too Much Consumption? Let Me Decide.

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:10:10 -0000

michael strassman,

I can’t site the exact sources at the moment, but it has been noted on numerous occasions by survey researchers that Americans’ level of satisfaction with life has been in decline since the middle of the 20th century, despite an increase in the amount of consumer spending and the amount of consumer goods owned by households.

It's not surprising that you can't find your sources, because they don't exist. What the happiness data actually indicates is that while economic growth has increased in the last few decades, self-reported subjective well being has remained relatively constant, not declined. This lack of growth (very different than an actual decline) is still used by some happiness researchers as an indictment of U.S. style market capitalism, on the grounds that the upper portions of the income bracket are already happy enough, and aren't becoming that much happier with increasing wealth, and therefore won't be too upset if we expropriate their earnings.

Of course, Will Wilkinson knows all this, and has thoroughly critiqued it, as it has been the primary subject of his research at Cato for the last 3 years or so. It's just a tad amusing that you call him a "disingenuous idiot" after getting the data completely wrong.

Re: Too Much Consumption? Let Me Decide.

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:57:03 -0000

But I am not an “anti-consumerist.” I am an anti-over-consumerist. We make judgments about other excesses; why should consumption be given a pass?

One reason "excessive" consumption should be given a pass is the enormous positive externalities consumption has on wealth creation for the world's poor. The real victim here is the overconsumer herself, who may not be leading as good a life as she could be if her priorities were different. Forgive me if I have more concern for the welfare of the impoverished factory worker in a developing country who makes their livelihood, and thus improves their life prospects and that of their families, by putting together nose hair trimmers and stuffed armadillos, than I do for the welfare of far-wealthier overconsumer who purchases what you and I might (rightly or wrongly) consider frivolous and unneeded. As far as social maladies go, the day when we should start worrying about "Affluenza" is a great day indeed.

If it's a question, along Aristotelian lines, of what sorts of habits and behaviors lead to the most fulfilling and flourishing lives, I have little objections to the critiques of excessive overconsumptions, though such critiques tend to beg the question of how much is too much. Different strokes satisfy different folks. I certainly agree with many of the classical Greek philosophers; there is more to a good life than mere satisfaction of material wants: there is beauty, friendship, love. Some people fail to realize this, and think that material goods alone will fully satisfy. They aim for the wrong goals.

But, again, people vastly differ with regard to their upbringing, natural talents, and thus their aspirations and life goals. What would be considered excessive consumption for the starving artist who enjoys living the spartan lifestyle would be excessive underconsumption for others. And there is nothing wrong with that. We don't all have to live the same sorts of lives, nor would we want to if we could.

Who is the best judge of how much is too much? More often than not, individual people themselves are the best judges of how best to live their own lives. Sure, many people will make mistakes, and that is unfortunate. But surely, people will tend make fewer mistakes analyzing their own life goals and practices than the technocratic, moralistic, paternalistic busybodies like Naomi Klein and the "Buy Nothing" movement, all of whom assume they know how to run other people's lives better than the people themselves. They tend to either ignore or discount the enormous positive externalities of first-world consumption on third-world incomes - in fact, they quite often get this relationship exactly backwards, as many in this very thread have already done.

And it's no surprise that the loudest and most vociferous critics of consumption wish to replace free-market capitalism with some flavor of welfare statism of the social democratic variety, if not downright state socialism. So forgive me if I am skeptical of their claims of excessive consumption; they have ulterior motives, as do I.

Re: Too Much Consumption? Let Me Decide.

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:52:05 -0000

Rent contols are an imperfect solution to the insurmountable problem of out-of-control rents in highly desirable regions, where teachers, police, firefighters, hamburger flippers, stuffed armadillo salesmen, etc. can no longer afford to live.

I don't believe this is at all true; it's a myth along the same order as justifying farm subsidies on the grounds that small family farms need them to survive. The primary beneficiaries turn out to be neither small family farms nor lower middle class service providers.

But no matter. That's not the objection I wish to raise here. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that your claim is true. Let's suppose that rents in highly desirable regions are indeed "out-of-control" (out of whose control?), which is sort of tautological; the price of highly desirable scarce resources tends to be more than the price of less desirable goods. So what? There is no God-given right to live exactly where you want to live, regardless of the costs. There are tradeoffs.

But along with an increased cost of living generally comes higher incomes,a problem that markets and property rights simply do solve, each and every day. As the cost of living in an area rises, teachers, police, firefighters, hamburger flippers, and stuffed armadillo salesmen find the area less and less attractive, and either move elsewhere or don't choose to move there at all. If other people living in that community still wish to maintain the same level of teachers, police, firefighters, hamburger flippers, and stuffed armadillo salesmen, and are willing to pay for it (willingness to pay being a much stronger indication than cheap talk), then they will have to agree to a higher cost of education, police and fire protection, fast food, and armadillo salesmen in order to attract back the desired service providers, or else they must live without. There is no need for government to step in and distort prices and incentives.

Re: Selling Sex Is OK and Child Abuse Isn’t

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:31:04 -0000

Trevor,

why is it [sex] exclusive to relationships?

It isn't. Prostitution isn't the only instance of sex outside of an emotional relationship. Casual sex of all sorts - hookups, no-strings-attached, fuck buddies, friends with benefits, casual encounters - is on display all over the internet on "dating" sites and craigslist, not to mention on most college campuses.

at what point do relationships (with A significant other) become obsolete?

Just because you can get all of the constituent parts of a relationship by other means (well, except for the romantic emotional parts) doesn't mean that the sum of the parts is no greater than each part individually broken down. It's nice to be able to share all the constituent parts with one (or more!) romantically, emotionally connected partner(s).

Re: Analytical Nationalism vs. What Actually Happens

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:01:11 -0000

KJ,

Offer them abortions and/or miniature American flags?

Seriously, though, your objection is misplaced. If Will intended to address that sort of question here, the post would have been filed under Filthy Non-theoretical Politics. From the fact that it wasn't so filed, we can deduce that Will is concerned here with addressing economists, political scientists, and other social scientists supposedly interested in The Truth, and not with convincing the rubes to change their voting patterns.

Re: Analytical Nationalism vs. What Actually Happens

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:07:52 -0000

I'm reading Pritchett's book right now, and he addresses all these sorts of questions (and more!).

The simplest and most intuitive response Pritchett gives for why free trade and free capital mobility are not (necessarily) substitutes for labor mobility is that we already have, and have had, relatively low restrictions on trade and capital movements for many, many years, and yet, far from seeing economic convergence, we see economic divergence, between the developed world and the developing world. The leading theory as to why this is the case is, as Will mentioned, differences in productivity most likely arising from differences in institutions.

This is obviously not an explanation of the phenomenon, just an empirical observation that, for whatever reason, trade and capital have not been perfect substitutes for labor mobility.

Now, as for the technical explanations, there are a few. JJ mentioned one: most of the jobs we are talking about are low-skill, non tradeable service jobs.

Second, the economic model that predicts that free trade is a sufficient for factor price equalization (factor includes both labor and capital) depends on many restrictive assumptions, one of which is that the trading partners have sufficiently similar factor endowments, an empirical condition that may or may not be true. If the factor price equalization condition were true in this case, we would expect to see economic convergence, and as mentioned earlier, we don't see convergence.

Third, there is some evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that trade was not only not a substitute for labor mobility, it was in fact a complement - that is, freer trade promoted more labor mobility, not less. One explanation for this this effect is that availability of "home-grown" goods (think ethnic supermarkets) and communication networks (to talk to relatives and send remittances) reduce the (psychic) costs of living in a foreign country and therefore make labor mobility easier and more likely.

As for Pithlord's observation that institutions are correlated with culture, correlation is not identity; the quality of institutions are determined by lots of factors other than culture. And insofar as we include factors such as "respect for the rule of law" and the frequency, acceptability, and necessity of political corruption (i.e. bribery) in the category we labor "culture", maintaining a system of global apartheid would tend to weaken, not strengthen, the quality of U.S. culture, U.S. institutions, and U.S. productivity. As it happens, I don't believe that ending or at least lessening the system of global apartheid would have as large of an effect on culture/institutions, either positively or negatively, as people imagine, but it is important to recognize that insofar as changes would occur, there are changes in both directions. New immigrants' cultures are not as different from ours as immigrations restrictionists would like to believe, and what differences do remain tend to evaporate after a few generations. Further still, though the potential labor mobility that is likely to occur if we ended or lessened the system of global apartheid is indeed massive, it's not at all clear that we would be "swamped by new immigrants"; proximity and cost of travel are still major factors in deciding to emigrate; and, we are not only talking about the U.S. reducing its restrictions on immigration, but other countries doing the same. Further, even in the cases where a native country is "swamped by new immigrants", if measured as a ratio of foreign born to native born, we have good empirical evidence that there are many countries with huge ratios of immigrants to natives (mostly oil-rich middle eastern countries with a two-tiered system distinguishing native citizens who enjoy full political rights from temporary non-natives who come to work on conditional terms), and in these countries the existing institutions and culture remains just fine. And it just so happens that this two-tiered system is the sort of thing that both Prichett and Will recommend, at least as a second-best (indeed enormously better than the status-quo) compromise.

bjk,

but the premise is an unstated chauvinism (the third world is hopelessly corrupt, let’s perform an boatlift and save who we can). I don’t happen to be as pessimistic as you are.

The chauvinism here is the paternalistic assumption that you know what's better for the potential third-world immigrant whose revealed preference is a desire to move here better than that immigrant herself. Who is the better judge of whether the third world is hopelessly corrupt (or in some other way a less desirable place to live than the alternative): you, a relatively wealthy first world citizen, or the relatively impoverished third world citizen who wants to move elsewhere?

Incidentally, Pritchett address this objection to, which boggles his mind as much as it does mine; the false assumption that the world's poor are really not so poor, or that, measured by both money and nonmoney indicators of well-being, the third world is not a horrible place to live compared to the alternative. As Pritchett points out, both money and nonmoney indicators of well-being (child mortality, malnutrition, schooling, etc.) suggest that "the richest fifth of the population in poor countries has a much lower living standard than the poorest fifth in rich countries." The differences here are mind boggling, as are the attempts to deny or minimize those differences.

You say the meat-packing plant would not survive without the immigrants, right? Where would that plant go, if not for the immigrants? Mexico?</blockquote?

It would not be built at all, making the potential immigrant employees, the owners of the plant, and the potential consumers all worse off. Again, the facts are clear: the "gains from trade" that would result from loosing restrictions on labor mobility are enormous, totally dwarfing existing levels of foreign aid, and totally dwarfing potential gains from trade if all remaining trade restrictions were removed.

Re: Correction: Dean Baker Not So Bad!

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:53:31 -0000

Another reason why efforts to increase skilled migration relative to unskilled migration are silly if done for reasons of equality is that while such efforts decrease national inequality, they increase international inequality. Note that this has nothing to do with whether "brain drain" is good, bad, or neutral for the sending country; even if brain drain happens to be good for the sending country, skilled migration from poor countries to rich countries still increases international inequality.

Re: I Want a Blue Card

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:52:45 -0000

Lant Pritchett adresses this question in his book. As I recall, his conclusion is that liberalizing high-skill as opposed to low-skill labor migration is undesirable for all sorts of reasons, such as rising inequality and possible brain drain effects (though he argues that brain drain might actually benefit the sending countries rather than hurt them; the evidence is mixed), but if the choice is between liberalizing high-skill labor migration and not liberalizing any migration at all, then of course we should prefer the former. But if there are a fixed number of labor migration slots, it's better if these are filled with low-skill workers, at least from a pure welfare-maximization perspective, if not from a political feasibility perspective.

Re: I Wouldn’t Say Incest Is Best…

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:07:20 -0000

Wait, how are issues of power imbalance and potential for abuse inseparable from polygamy?

Re: The Curious Irrelevance of Inequality

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:14:20 -0000

Didn't Nozick say all this in ASU as a rebuttal to Rawls, or am I getting him confused with Hayek?

Re: I Wouldn’t Say Incest Is Best…

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:17:17 -0000

Southpaw,

In light of the pervasive taboo, I’d suggest that human society will always seek to impose some cost on incestuous relationships. We can do that in an orderly way through the process of law, or through the ad hoc reactions of the community (from shunning to mob violence). I suspect the latter option would lead to far greater social and economic costs than the former.

I agree with you that the incest taboo is nearly universal. But so are other taboos based on the "ickiness" factor. Yet we feel no need to involve the legal system in, say prohibiting people from eating their own feces, despite the fact that consumption of one's own feces is likely just as universally taboo as incest. Instead, to discourage fecal self-consumption, i.e. to propogate the social taboo, most of us feel that ad hoc reactions of the community, usually in the form of shunning, are sufficient. I see no reason to think that the incest taboo is any different. And in terms of which approach - social or legal - would lead to far greater social and economic costs, imagine what would happen if we placed a legal ban on the consumption of one's own feces, punishable by a hefty fine or jail time. What would happen? Well, not much, since most people need neither legal penalty nor social disapproval to discourage them from eating their feces - their own personal disgust is more than enough discouragement. But that small minority that doesn't share this innate disgust, for one reason or another, would be effected - they would be hunted down and punished, under legal penalty, for violating the taboo. Do you really think that the presence and enforcement of a law against coprophilia would lead to fewer social and economic costs than the absence of such a law? In other words, do you feel that a law prohibiting coprophilia is sorely needed (let alone justified)?

Take another example. While there are far more societies throughout history that were tolerant of homosexual in some form than societies that were tolerant of incest, the difference is not that large. Surely the vast majority of societies throughout history had a taboo against homosexuality. If I happen to be wrong about this, no matter - just entertain the counterfactual that this was in fact the case.

Would the near universality of a homosexuality taboo be a justification for legal prohibition? Would it even be a justification for extra-legal shunning? Is the fact that open homosexuality in certain parts of the world, or during certain peroids of history ight here in the good 'ol US of A often led to mob violence a justification of mob violence? Is a legal prohibition against homosexuality justified on the grounds that the alternative, mob violence, is even worse in terms of social and economic costs? Of course not - the risk of mob violence is a justification for only one thing: a legal prohibition against mob violence.

Just as you can't justify coercive income distribution on the grounds that economic inequality increases the likelihood of violent revolution on the part of the envious poor, so too you cannot justify legal prohibitions on interracial marriage on the grounds that such a prohibition decreases the risks of lynching by bigots.

Re: I Wouldn’t Say Incest Is Best…

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:32:42 -0000

Patrick,

And it may be that the most efficient way to police those crimes is a blanket prohibition on incest itself. ...

The law may assume that, in the vast majority of instances, murder and parent-child incest presuppose a lack of consent–whether consent is actively withheld or whether a party to the act is incapable of giving informed consent.

I understand the efficiency rational, but why not permit exceptions on a case by case basis? For example, we make an exception to age-of-consent laws for Romeo-and-Juliet circumstances, where the two partners are close to each other in age even if one is above the (semi-arbitrary) cut-off and the other is below it. So too, we generally assume, for efficiency reasons, that until a child turns 18, the child is too young to make decisions for itself, so the parents are granted custodial rights to make decisions for the child. But in certain cases, such as exceptional maturity on the part of the child (or exceptional immaturity on the part of the parent), courts allow children to emancipate themselves from their parents' control.

So why not the case for incest, and yes, consensual cannibalism and assisted suicide? Use the broad heuristic as a general rule for the vast majority of cases, but if evidence can be given that the specific circumstances in an individual case are exceptions to the various rationales we may have had to justify the law in the first place (i.e. fear of lack of true consent), why not allow an exception to be made?

The efficiency heuristic argument alone does not justify these sorts of bans, unless it allows for case-by-case exceptions.

Re: I Wouldn’t Say Incest Is Best…

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:39:21 -0000

Dain,

Even in cases of polygyny, with a single man married to multiple women, I still think the issues of power imbalance and potential for abuse are separable from the act of polygyny itself, in exactly the same way that issues of power imbalance and potential for abuse are separable from the act of incest itself.

Just as we can imagine (however unlikely in practice) a case of incest without a power imbalance or potential for abuse, so too we can imagine a case of polygyny without a power imbalance or potential for abuse.

Re: I Wouldn’t Say Incest Is Best…

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:15:57 -0000

John,

That doesn’t mean that society should never change, but it does mean that casting off tradition tends to have far-reaching and unpredictable consequences. If you want to tear down a tradition as well-established as the incest taboo, the burden is on you is to give a good reason. The desires of two Australian nutjobs don’t cut it.

This is precisely the argument non-bigoted conservatives give against gay marriage. (I say non-bigoted conservatives because bigoted conservatives don't need a Hayekian argument to justify maintaining the status-quo; their hatred of homosexuality is justification enough.

I'm not so sure why you think the burden of proof is necessarily in favor of the status quo, as if the status quo is reason enough on its own, and the side proposing a change to the status quo is the only side that must give reasons. The burden of proof could just as easily go in the opposite direction, with a prima facie assumption of freedom, with the side proposing any moral or legal restriction on human action obligated to give sufficient reasons to override the prima facie assumption.

Now, I will agree that the status quo, all else being equal, with no other reasons given by either side, is reason enough to maintain itself, but this is almost never the case, for if there was no one to object to the status quo, this entire discussion is moot. As soon as a critic suggests that the status quo rule (whether a legal rule or simply a moral rule) should be changed in favor of liberty, that critic has given a reason - a reason to be weighed against the reason of the status quo.

Is the reason of liberty a stronger reason than the reason of maintaining the status quo? I'm not sure. But then, I've heard no good argument for why the burden of proof should favor the status quo and not favor liberty.

Jonathan Rauch addressed the Hayekian argument against gay marriage, concluding that Hayek himself was a moderate and not extreme Hayekian, and thus would probably have been in favor of extending the institution of marriage to gay couples. This particular excerpt, from Hayek's "Law, Legislation, and Liberty, is telling:

"It may be due simply to the recognition that some past development was based on error or that it produced consequences later recognized as unjust....But the most frequent cause is probably that the development of the law has lain in the hands of members of a particular class whose traditional views made them regard as just what could not meet the more general requirements of justice....Such occasions when it is recognized that some hereto accepted rules are unjust in the light of more general principles of justice may well require the revision not only of single rules but of whole sections of the established system of case law."

If the only justification we can give for maintaining the status quo is merely that it is the status quo, and if you don't believe that the "desires of two Australian nutjobs" isn't reason enough to change the status quo, then would be reason enough? How many nutjobs who want to enjoy their liberty to be nutjobs does it take before their unsatisfied desires become a good enough reason to ask the status quo to justify itself?

Re: I Wouldn’t Say Incest Is Best…

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:19:23 -0000

That second to last sentence should read, "then what would be reason enough?"

Re: I Wouldn’t Say Incest Is Best…

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:28:05 -0000

Oops, one more response to John,

Now if you’re arguing that the state has no business enforcing a cultural taboo, it seems to me that it’s irresponsible not to step up and enforce it yourself by expressing disgust at these two sickos. Dain’s attitude — “what the hell business is it of ours?” — just seems reckless.

But this only follows if you agree with the cultural taboo. One can acknowledge the fact that a taboo exists without necessarily agreeing with it.

Re: ABJ!

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:32:22 -0000

Wait, we are expected to take DiLorenzo and the Lew Rockwell crowd seriously on the libertarian credentials of Jefferson, the same DiLorenzo who calls John C. Calhoun one of the greatest libertarian philosophers who ever lived?

Re: ABJ!

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:46:05 -0000

Talk about self-reductio...

Re: Tales of the Morally Backward

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:42:04 -0000

We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our institutions. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both.

And from Calhoun's Disquisition on Government,

Liberty when forced upon a people unfit for it, would instead of a blessing, be a curse; as it would in its reaction, lead directly to Anarchy,- the greatest of all curses. No people indeed, can long enjoy more liberty than that which their situation and advanced intelligence and morals fairly entitle them.

One of the greatest libertarian philosophers of his time, indeed, Mr. DiLorenzo.

Even putting aside the elephant of slavery, it's still absurd for DiLorenzo and other Rockwellites (Rockwellians?) to consider Calhoun a champion of liberty. Calhoun was a politician first and foremost, desperate to become President, and was willing to engage in all manner of logical inconsistencies to get there. Calhoun only stuck to principle when the principle supported his side of the issue, which in turn supported his rise to power. Otherwise, he was a political pragmatist, willing to violate any principle if doing so was in his self-interest.

Consider:

Far from being a consistent advocate of free trade, "the first protective tariff in American history (1816) was introduced by Calhoun." Only when tariffs hurt the interests of the slave-labor economy of the South did Calhoun suddenly become an advocate of free trade.

Also, we learn from the Mises Institute's own archives,

The pragmatic requirements on the part of Calhoun to defend slavery called upon him to advocate the suppression of abolitionist literature through the U.S. Mails, as well as the refusal of congress to receive abolitionist petitions, even though the Constitution stipulates that the people have a right to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

Also from the same article, and in direct opposition to DiLorenzo's claim that Calhoun was a consistent, principled defender of "state's rights",

When Calhoun sought to nullify laws detrimental to his state, he used a state's rights doctrine to justify it, but when Northern States applied the same kind of nullification doctrine to the return of fugitive slaves, he invoked the Constitution in much the same manner as those advocating a high tariff interpreted the Constitution to allow them to do so.

Re: Hunger Exists to Destroy Itself

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:10:48 -0000

The comment thread responses on the Guardian site are simply flabbergasting. Herbert Marcuse-style Marxism is alive and well in Britain.

Re: Hunger Exists to Destroy Itself

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:33:16 -0000

Although there are many gems in the thread, I think this one by "Ally F" is my favorite:

This is why the type of individualistic materialism advocated by the author and his friends is actually at the root of the problem. Neoliberal economics sets each of us against the other, it assumes that we should all be happy to trample on our neighbours to get to our goals. This doesn't make us happy, however materially wealthy it might make us. When one person gets rich by making a second person poor, it damages them both. When those two people co-operate to increase both their wealth, it makes both of them happier.

Amazing. "Neoliberal economics," i.e. free trade, apparently consists of a series of zero or negative-sum interactions in which people trample on their neighbors in order to improve their own interests. Why the trampled upon accept these terms willingly, enthusiastically, over and over again, is not explained. Perhaps false consciousness is involved.

The negation of free trade, by contrast, involves positive-sum interactions of cooperation. The cradle-to-grave welfare state enables this cooperation by interfering with and ultimately preventing trading partners from voluntarily exchanging value for value with each other, thereby increasing the wealth and happiness of all involved. This mechanism is not well understood or easily explained, but - trust us on this one - we know what's best for you better than you do.

Re: Hunger Exists to Destroy Itself

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:43:33 -0000

Just one more gem, this one from "CharlieMcMenamin":

My personal 'budgetary space' would be improved by:

- Higher state pensions & free personal care so I don't have to pay so much to support my elderly mother;
- No university fees so I don't have to put something away for the kids' college fund;

That's just two very practical examples of how a higher tax economy would benefit me. I accept, in my case - middle class, middle earner - this might simply be a way of re-distributing income & positive outcomes through out my lifetime. This won't always be true for everyone. Some will want a high tax/ high services economy precisely to fend off the risk of falling off the gravy train due to illness, family break-up or a thousand other possibilities.

I love how he refutes his own argument with the concession that cradle-to-grave welfare statism improves his life by doing his saving and investing for him. He clearly understands that he is a fully grown adult asking to be treated like a child. Which wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, if he didn't also insist that everyone else be treated like children as well.

The world is a scary place, full of illness, family-breakups, and a thousand other possibilities. Therefore, please live my life for me because I'm too frighted to responsibly deal with life's many challenges.

Re: Tales of the Morally Backward

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:18:29 -0000

William,

I'm more than willing to deny Calhoun's "understanding of the centrality of the process of consent." Clearly, a man who believes slavery to be a positive good does not understand the centrality of the process of consent.

Re: “Not just the signature on a series of essays”

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:01:02 -0000

The problem with monarchy is the centralized power structure of monarchy itself, which exists inherent to a monarchial system of government regardless of the individual attributes of the persons who happen to temporarily hold its office. Hamilton’s enthusiastic courtship with monarchy is accordingly anti-libertarian in and of itself.

Your misunderstand what libertarianism is. Libertarianism is primarily concerned with how people act towards each other in a political context, namely: when and how violent force can be justifiably used in society.

Only secondarily is libertarianism concerned with which particular political system of monopoly government, if any, is mostly likely to lead to the most libertarian outcomes.

From my perspective as an anarchist, the problem with any form of government is the centralized power structure of government itself, which exists inherent to government regardless of the individual attributes of the persons who happen to temporarily hold its office. Minimal-statist libertarians' enthusiastic courtship with democracy would be accordingly anti-libertarian in and of itself, if and only if we understood libertarianism to be primarily concerned with choosing between which particular form of government is THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY of achieving liberty.

Luckily, libertarians are free to disagree with each other over which form of government, if any, is best, because the primary concern of libertarianism is broader than specific institutional arrangements. When two or more libertarians are judging between what all agree are second-best, non-ideal systems, libertarian theory alone does not provide us with clearly-defined ordinal rankings with which to correctly place monopoly, democracy, aristocracy, dictatorship, and anarchy in relation to each other. Creating such ordinal rankings requires looking beyond strict libertarian principles and turning instead to the empirical sciences of economics, historical analysis, game theory, and time-preferences.

Re: Tales of the Morally Backward

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:09:13 -0000

I am not attacking his person; I am attacking his political theory. His political theory does not in any reasonable sense give centrality to the process of consent, and glaringly so.

That's not to say that we might nevertheless be able to selectively extract parts of his writings that have some value if completely detached from other parts of his writings. But his "political theory," if taken as an organic whole, is without value.

Re: “Not just the signature on a series of essays”

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:27:18 -0000

No Micha. Libertarianism’s primary concern is the status and liberty of the *individual.* It is from that status that *all* other relationships stem, including the relationship between the individual and the state.

I don't see the difference between your definition and my definition of libertarianism's primary concern.

Recognizing that to be the case, the simple study of history strongly attests to the fact that some systems of state are inherently less conducive to the preservation and exercise of individual liberty than others. And monarchy just so happens to be one of those systems, hence my characterization of it (and its proponent Hamilton) as generally incompatible with libertarianism.

That might be a good argument for Hamilton's naivety about history, if not his libertarianism, if it didn't happen to be the case that at the time Hamilton lived, the long-term stability of democracy did not have much evidence in its favor. You are criticizing Hamilton for failing to grasp history that had not happened yet.

Again, I would be much more critical of minarchist libertarians and would have a much stronger case against them as libertarians for supporting democracy if there currently existed a functioning, thriving, stable society of ordered anarchy.

But such a society doesn't (yet) exist, and the few functioning, thriving, stable anarchist societies that have existed in the past existed under conditions that were sufficiently different from our present circumstances for it to be excusable for minarchists to discount these examples as unconvincing.

Monarchy:Democracy::Democracy:Anarchy

Re: “Not just the signature on a series of essays”

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:13:54 -0000

The propensity of democracies to descend into bureaucratic tyranny has extensive evidence at the time that William lives. William knows that evidence as does everyone around him, yet William is willing to overlook it and advocate democracy anyway.

Re: “Not just the signature on a series of essays”

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:27:19 -0000

Indeed it does. But I am not an advocate of democracy. I find it to be a severely flawed system of government, and generally inferior to the decentralized republicanism advocated by Jefferson (which, though also flawed, is generally less intrusive upon liberty than either democracy or monarchy).

Very well then, allow me to rephrase:

The propensity of decentralized republicanism to descend into bureaucratic tyranny has extensive evidence at the time that William lives. William knows that evidence as does everyone around him, yet William is willing to overlook it and advocate decentralized republicanism anyway.

Re: A Corny Story

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:50:59 -0000

Further, “many of the upheavals over food prices abroad have concerned rice and wheat, neither of which is used as a biofuel.”

And both of which are substitutes for corn, which is used as a biofuel. An increase in demand for one leads to an increase in demand for the others, and so too prices.

I see your knowledge of rudimentary economics hasn't improved much since you quit commenting at Cafe Hayek, muirgeo.

Re: “Not just the signature on a series of essays”

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:57:38 -0000

Zealotry in defense of liberty and against slavery is no vice, moderation no virtue...

Yes, slavery existed, and yes, slavery was evil. But it’s always easy to sit here from your modern perch and condemn its long-dead practitioners in paragraph upon paragraph of haughty self-righteous Jacobin indignation.

See, it's statements like these that are highly problematic. There should be no "but" following the first sentence. It's "slavery, was evil, period", full stop, no qualification with times-were-different-back-then bullshit.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:14:46 -0000

Jason,

I have given you a logical argument why there is an objective basis for morality, please engage those arguments specifically if they are flawed.

I think much of the controversy in this thread stems from a disagreement over the definition of the term "objective basis for morality." You seem to mean something along the lines of "morality is informed by empirically verifiable, scientific, objective facts, such as human nature and brain states." Your critics seem to mean something along the lines of "morality is entirely informed by all of the above, and nothing else, especially nothing subjective such as whether or not we should prefer a world in which human preferences are better satisfied than alternative worlds."

Both of you are correct, of course; you are not really disagreeing about anything substantive, but merely arguing over the proper definition of "objective morality." Once both sides understand that the other side is pretty much in agreement on all the substantive issues but with different language, the controversy will disappear.

Do you feel, for instance, maybe that more human beings would be better off, or that greater well being would be achieved if rape were permitted or encouraged?

Some people would certainly be better off if rape were permitted or encouraged; namely, rapists. But then wouldn't rapists be subject to rape too? Only if we accept a Kantian universalization principle of either all-rape or no-rape. But why must we accept that? A male rapist could favor a policy, for example, which states that only men are allowed to rape women; women are not allowed to rape men and men are not allowed to rape other men. (And let's assume this hypothetical male rapist also has no female friends or relatives who he cares about enough to not want them to suffer rape.) Such a policy would certainly make male rapists better off (all else being equal, ignoring any unintended second-order consequences), and might make society as a whole better off if we gave sufficiently greater weight to the interests of male rapists and sufficiently lesser weight to the interests of their victims.

But there is no "objective" reason to adopt a Kantian universalization maxim, or to give everyone's interests equal weight. These might seem more fair than the alternatives, but the universe doesn't care about fairness, nor does it even care about Pareto or Kaldor-Hicks improvements between possible worlds, even worlds in which persons' interests are not given equal consideration.

Denying the pure objectivity of morality (while acknowledging that objective truths combined with subjective preferences constitute morality) is not a concession by atheists to theists in the god debates, because the atheist isn't arguing for moral nihilism, and even if he was, it still wouldn't be any kind of concession. Whether morality can ultimately be grounded on purely objective truths is irrelevant to the question of whether morality can be grounded on a sufficiently weighty foundation. And further, whether morality can ultimately be grounded on a sufficiently weighty foundation is not necessarily relevant to the question of whether people are more or less likely to behave morally. I don't think most people--even professional philosophers and theologians--behave morally if and only if they have a complete, well-grounded, sufficiently objective moral system in mind first. People behave morally for a variety of reasons: that's what they were taught as children, it's what society expects of them, they want to be well-liked by others, they want to think of themselves as good people, they fear the legal repercussions, they believe moral behavior is a necessary component of a flourishing life, or they just believe, axiomatically, that immoral behavior is wrong, period, full stop. Finding out that all of these reasons are also supported by Divine Command or purely objective secular observation changes nothing.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:50:43 -0000

Jason,

There are substantive disagreements which are more important. TGGP rejects that human well-being can be or has been measured or reasoned about at all.

True, but TGGP doesn't need to go that far to make his point. I accept your claim that most people's ethical opinions are factually wrong, and so ethical disagreement is less a matter about disagreement over subjective preferences than a disagreement over which facts are the case. But even granting that, TGGP's conclusion still stands; ultimately, the preferences that you and I share, and that you are think are "objective", are only objective in the sense that a significant majority of humans share those preferences. Sociopaths, Vikings, sadists, masochists, and others with strange, minority preferences could honestly say they disagree and we would have nothing to say to rebut them other than, "Too bad, let's fight."

This wouldn’t make society better off because whether it is recognized or not the women are suffering intensely; there are biological reasons for this. Men who are prevented from raping do not suffer in this intense manner. ...And this is an unrealistic counterfactual; even rapists don’t want their wives, daughters, and mothers getting raped, and would suffer from this.

Again, you are assuming that society should give equal weight to the interests and suffering of women as it does men. But historically, many human societies have not done this. Some currently existing human societies do not yet give equal weight to the interests and suffering of women, to various degrees; on the most extreme end of the spectrum, some currently existing human societies allow men to rape women under certain circumstances. And it's simply not true that all rapists don’t want their wives, daughters, and mothers getting raped, because some rapists do in fact rape their wives, daughters and mothers, and some societies systematically approve of this kind of behavior - consider "honor killings" in certain parts of the Middle East and North Africa.

This all may seem unrealistic compared to our enlightened Western sensibilities, but even the West is mostly humanist; we do not, as a social policy, give equal weight to the interests and suffering of human animals and non-human animals. Our choice of how much weight to give to the interests of non-human animals relative to our own is not a question that can be answered by appealing to the objective universe. We might be able to answer the question by appealing to objective facts concerning which sort of social policies are most likely to promote human interests, but again, this doesn't tell us whether or not, and if so how much, we should take non-human interests in to account.

So too, we might be able to answer the question of which sort of social policies are most likely to promote male interests, but this doesn't tell us whether or not, and if so how much, we should take female interests in to account. Equality seems like the obvious choice to many in the modern age, but it certainly didn't seem as obvious to people living even a century ago, and equality between the interests of humans and non-human animals does not seem at all obvious to most people in the modern age, apart from Peter Singer and his fellow travelers.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:06:50 -0000

Caledonian,

Think the universe doesn’t have preferences? Modify tigers to act like wolves, and wolves to act like tigers, and see how long your modifications persist. Organisms have ethical systems, but it is the nature of the universe that determines what they are, and whether they persist. It is the niche in which an organism exists that determines what systems of ethics are viable.

I'm still unclear where normativity enters the picture here. Neither the universe, nor nature, nor evolution, nor any other entity other than tigers and those species whose survival is interrelated with the survival of tigers, cares whether or not tigers continue to exist. Evolution is not goal directed - it just is. Whatever happens to result from evolution, through the processes of random mutation and natural selection, is neither good nor bad. The result just happens to be, by way of luck, the result that best fits with the current environment.

But again, the term "best fits" is not normative, anymore than claiming that the winner of a single-elimination, multi-tiered coin-flipping tournament normatively deserved to win. Someone had to be the winner, someone had to be the person who didn't lose a single coin toss; if it hadn't been this guy, it would have been someone else. There is nothing special about the winner; by the rules of the game, there necessarily will be a winner. But the winning is entirely random, undeserved, and non-normative.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:47:26 -0000

A sociopath can correctly argue ‘I’m going to kill you for fun’, but could not correctly argue ‘I’m going to kill you for fun because it’s good’ because he would then require a rational argument for why human wellbeing has been fairly increased at the expense of my suffering. This argument could not be made, because the murder was factually selfish and unfair.

And where is it written that to be moral one cannot be selfish and unfair? The sociopath can correctly argue "I'm going to kill you for fun because it's good" because the sociopath can rationally argue that his personal wellbeing is all that matters in the world, and anything that increases his wellbeing is therefore good. Yes, this sociopath's conception of the good is selfish and unfair, but so what? The universe contains no rule against calling something good only if it isn't selfish or unfair.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:58:17 -0000

No, I am arguing that societies that don’t are necessarily built on factually wrong ideas about women.

Suppose a society justifies its misogyny, not on any factual claims about innate differences between men and women, but on purely subjective value claims that male interests count for more than female interests. Why do male interests count for more? Isn't this inherently unfair and selfish? Yes. So what? What are you going to say to the male misogynist who prefers his status quo? That women would be better off under a more egalitarian system? But we've already stipulated that he considers his interests to be more important than womens' interests. How are you going to argue him out of his subjective preference? You can try to show him how this preference, if acted upon, leads to all sorts of social ills, many of which negatively effect his own interests as he understands them. But at the end of the day, if his preference for misogyny is great enough, and you cannot convince him that he will be worse off from his own perspective if he doesn't take your advice, the argument is over.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:06:37 -0000

As soon as he defines morality as “causing others pain for my own amusement” he is necessarily automatically defining something else entirely. The concept of morality inherently means something different: behaving in a fair way to reduce or not cause harm to others.

The concept of morality does not contain with in itself instructions for which sort of creatures deserve equal respect.

This is irrelevant to the objectivity of morality, since the same thing can be said for factual issues in general. If he wants to say/believe the moon is made of bacon, there is absolutely nothing I can do to “make” him change his mind except present evidence and logic that refute his claim.

If I say I believe the moon is made of bacon, you can present me with evidence and logic and hopefully convince me to change my belief. But what sort of evidence or logic can you present me with if I am a committed misogynist or racist? Whatever evidence or logic you present me with, can I still not reasonably say, "Sorry, men are just more important than woman, whites are just more important than blacks." You can ask me to emphasize and pretend to walk a mile in another person's shoes. But that's not the same as evidence or logic; it requires a leap of faith that accepting evidence or logic about the physical makeup of the moon does not.

A) Define ‘good’ - which has a factually correct and factually incorrect definition

Are you referring to any facts here other than common usage?

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:18:49 -0000

In what sense is it “reasonable” if you’ve presented no factual (i.e. reasoned) basis for the moral distinction?

The burden of proof isn't on the racist or misogynist, at least no more so than it is on the egalitarian. Perhaps racism or misogyny is simply an aesthetic preference. Selfishness needs no justification; it seems to be the default case.

In what sense is racism or mysoginy “unreasonable” if you’ve presented no factual (i.e. reasoned) basis for equality?

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:11:55 -0000

The racist can hate but cannot hate because it is ‘good’.

The racist can make the following argument:

All else being equal, satisfaction of one's preferences, even aesthetic preferences, is a moral good.

But preference satisfaction of this sort is only good if it doesn't require committing a moral bad in the process.

Until we establish that racism is a moral bad, the default position is that racism, as preference satisfaction, is a moral good.

We have not yet established that racism is a moral bad.

Therefore, racism is a moral good.

We learn from this argument that the burden of proof is on the non-racist to demonstrate how racism is a moral bad, and not on the racist to prove that racism is a moral good.

These arguments are well known and were very common during the 20th century, why do I need to retread them here?

Because all of these arguments (Kant's Universalizability, Mill's Harm Principle, Spencer's Law of Equal Liberty), while plausible and to various degrees persuasive, are not objectively provable through facts or logic.

Powerless groups were able to gain rights, not by force of might but by appealing to the moral instincts of the dominant groups with honed logic and superior facts.

Appeals to empathy are not factual or logical, but emotional. That doesn't make them any less valuable or important, but it does make them less persuasive to people who don't happen to have a strong sense of empathy for whatever reason.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:58:40 -0000

This is not the definition of ‘morality’ in any society, it’s the definition of ’selfishness’, or ‘immorality’ if it means hurting others. The concept of morality inherently means something different: behaving in a fair way to reduce or not cause harm to others.

Again, this just begs the question: which entities count as "others" worthy of consideration? Can we cause harm to non-human animals for our own benefit and still be moral? Insects? Plants? Rocks? The environment in general?

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:16:42 -0000

It's an irrational addiction, Clyde.

Re: Capitalism to Egalitarians: You’re Welcome!

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:22:00 -0000

It's sad what some will do to attempt to justify coercive redistribution, even after it's shown that doing so is not helping but hindering their goal of improving the wellbeing of the worse-off.

And how in the world is success measured in terms of profit increases an indication of a zero-sum transfer?

I see muirgeo's mastery of logic and economics hasn't improved much since he fled the comment threads at Cafe Hayek.

Re: Capitalism to Egalitarians: You’re Welcome!

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:00:59 -0000

I'm not sure if muirgeo realizes that every time he refers to "wizardry" he is essentially admitting that he doesn't understand the thing in question and is therefore concluding that it must be magic. This does not speak favorably of muirgeo's worldview.

And though I risk violating Godwin's Law, I can't help but point out the similarities between scapegoating investment banking "wizards" who get rich "while adding nothing to the nations real productivity and often taking from it," and, well, to put it bluntly, Hitler. This is how anti-Semitism begins, not with a bang but with a muirgeo.

Re: Capitalism to Egalitarians: You’re Welcome!

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:46:47 -0000

Muirgeo believes that derivatives and other forms of magic have caused housing prices in his area increase by 50% in the last several years. Whereas "Eighty-eight percent of the increase in the median real price of a house in Seattle since 1989 is the result of land-use restrictions." So where does that leave us proposing government as a solution to addressing the rise in housing prices?

Muirgeo also suggests that "the guys at the top took out their big chunks and left everyone below holding loans." But the guys at the top were the mortgage companies, the ones doing the loaning, which are now going bankrupt and asking the government to bail them out. So how exactly was it in their benefit to make loans to people who would be unable to pay them back?

Re: Barr - Root

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:57:38 -0000

When it comes to filthy non-theoretical politics, the soft bigotry of low expectations is where it's at, yo.

Re: “Irrational” Choice and the Persistence of Lives Well-Lived

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:18:27 -0000

muirgeo,

If you think that "many people see their self interest furthered in a slightly more paternalistic society," then surely these people would willingly choose these paternalistic policies for themselves, correct? In which case, the policies would no longer be considered paternalistic since they are self chosen. So why not let the few people who want less paternalistic policies go in peace, opt-out of the system you believe is so incredibly popular? Unless you think people don't really know what's best for themselves, but you do know what's best for them.

You say that paternalism is a derogatory term for electoral democracy. But what is electoral democracy if not a majority voting to tell the minority what to do, whether the minority likes it or not? The majority is treating the minority as if the minority were comprised of children. Ergo, paternalism.

On the other hand, if people can't be trusted to live their own adult lives, surely they shouldn't be trusted to vote on how other people should live their own lives, no? So perhaps paternalism countenances against democracy and for technocracy.

Re: “Irrational” Choice and the Persistence of Lives Well-Lived

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:19:54 -0000

They are completely free to opt out and move to the next Libertarian Run society over.

And by the same token, paternalists are completely free to opt out of a non-paternalist system and move to the next paternalist society elsewhere. You are assuming facts not in evidence: that paternalists and not libertarians have a legitimate and rightful claim to govern other people's lives.

People want democracy and you seem to think they shouldn’t have it.

Sure they should have it. For themselves. Anyone who wants to willingly submit to the will of other people should be free to do so. What they should not be free to do is subject the unwilling to their dictates.

See the problem for you and your argument of the tyranny of the majority is that your position is undemocratic.

Yes, it is undemocractic. So what?

You are expecting the rest of us to give up our democracy (representative republic).

No, I am expecting the rest of you to stop imposing your democracy on people who don't want it. You're more then welcome to impose it on those who do want it.

Further you also believe in some degree of tyranny yourself or you are by definition an anarchist.

Indeed, I am an anarchist. Again, so what?

Micah under what name did you participate over at Cafe Hayek?

Same as here. I just didn't post much over there, because the level of discourse was much lower.

Re: “Irrational” Choice and the Persistence of Lives Well-Lived

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:50:02 -0000

Muirgeo,

I'd rather not shift the discussion too far away from the original topic of paternalism. If you're interested in libertarian anarchism, there are more than enough other places on the web to discuss the topic. Further, the question of how a just system would work, and the question of whether and to what extent free societies have existed in the past, are distinct from the question of whether a certain social institution is or is not just.

The focus is paternalism: is it okay to treat adults as if they were children? Or, to get even closer to the original topic, does discovering that people are even less like homo economicus than we previously believed give us more reason to treat people as children? Or does the fact that government actors are just as (if not more) flawed as non-government actors make the discoveries of behavioral economics irrelevant to questions of paternalism?

Re: John Cassidy on Libertarian Paternalism: Way Too Libertarian!

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:54:35 -0000

Jim,

Every Libertarian model presumes general democracy. But people who live dysfunctional lives are still allowed to vote.

Untrue. Libertarian anarchists do not presume democracy; they do not presume anyone should be allowed to vote.

Re: “Irrational” Choice and the Persistence of Lives Well-Lived

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:39:28 -0000

Muirgeo,

When some one gives me expert advice I don’t consider that paternalistic. When the Food and Drug Administration assures my food to be safe that is not paternalistic. It’s not about treating people like children it IS about using the benefits of societal organization for efficiency purposes.

But the FDA doesn't merely dispense advice, as an organization like Consumer Reports does. The FDA forcibly prevents people from rejecting its advice and consuming food or drugs that the FDA doesn't approve of. That is paternalism. And thousands of people die as a result of this paternalism, because not all people have the same preferences for risk. For example, if I have a fatal disease, I am much more willing to take a risky and unproven drug that might have a chance of curing or ameliorating the disease than if I was perfectly healthy. The FDA prevents me from taking this risk. It treats me as if I was a child who doesn't know any better. This is not efficient.

Re: “Irrational” Choice and the Persistence of Lives Well-Lived

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:43:35 -0000

Berger,

Indeed, he’s pretty clearly saying that those who best understand why/how people make the decisions they do - as well as the potentially destructive consequences of their actions - are the ones who should make those decisions.

Right, but this is government technocracy in a vacuum. How do the technocrats get to be in power? Do they just pop into existence? Or are they elected and appointed, subject to the same political constraints and perverse incentives as every other political actor? Who is doing the electing in a democracy if not the same flawed people that need to be told what to do (apart from voting) in every other context?

Re: Collectivism and Meaning

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:42:14 -0000

mk,

Who says there isn't a lot of meaning in playing status games? I thought the problem with status games isn't that they are meaningless, but that they are zero-sum. They are meaningful for those who win.

Pithlord,

However, you need to argue that it is impossible to have a moderate ethic of public spiritedness

This might be on point.

Re: Please Discuss

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:41:45 -0000

Will,

The reason, I think, that people who speak in the language of liberty and coercion tend to avoid speaking in the language of harm is because harm is usually incommensurate, in their view. From a deontological perspective, we cannot say if stealing $2 from me is better or worse than stealing $1 from you, because deontologists don't believe there is a legitimate way of comparing the value of $2 to me to the value of $1 to you. All we can say is that both thefts are bad.

But there is no problem of incommensurability when dealing with a single person and a single kind of harm. Deontologists can say that stealing $2 from you is worse than stealing $1 from you. Stealing $1 is a Pareto improvement over stealing $2 from the same person, but it is not a Pareto improvement if we are choosing between stealing $1 from one person and stealing $2 from a different person.

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

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:02:35 -0000

JP,

If Mafia families are the alternative to the state, then the question becomes whether the market competition between Mafia families is a better check on power than the check electoral democracy places on a monopoly Mafia family. Anarchist libertarians generally view the power of Exit more favorably than the power of Voice; competition is superior to monopoly.

Re: Shaun Nichols on Free Will (Among Other Things) on Free Will

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:49:31 -0000

Is it just my imagination or dismiss the idea of fee will in this bhtv? It seems like you do - for a bit - and then decide that free will is just a fact …?

I think you just cynically summarized Daniel Dennett's entire argument in "Freedom Evolved." Ah, that's compatibilism for ya'.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:55:23 -0000

In particular, Anarcho-Libertarians might try to lure people into saying “well we’re against drug laws” as if to say “if the Guvmint’s gone we’ll all smoke pot until we drop!” in reality though you know what they’re really saying is “well in a privately-owned society some private property owner might like drugs but most of society is Conservative and most private property owners would move drug users along lest they lose their family-friendly patronage”.

Have you ever actually met any anarchist libertarians in person? I don't think I've ever met a single anarchist libertarian who was against the use (not to be confused with abuse) of illegal narcotics, even on private property that they control. I've know some who wouldn't personally use drugs for personal religious or health reasons, but none of them had any problem with others using right in front of them.

Even the Lew Rockwell crowd, with all their promoting of paleo-libertarian/conservative fusionism, are still actually a lot more tolerant and open-minded in person. (Well, maybe barring Hoppe.)

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:02:01 -0000

” We are successful animals because we think and organize. The idea that a market, an economy or a society is better left to its own then planned and regulated by intelligent beings is sheer hoccum with not an ounce of factual support.”

Maybe the reading of this Hayek seminal paper will help you to rethink your statement:

http://www.econlib.org/Library/Essays/hykKnw1.html

I suggest the artticles with good faith, because this space isn’t appropriate to develop good answers to your questions. I hope you read them.

Honestly, anyone who reads and truly understands the crucial points Hayek makes in that essay could not possible make the claim that muirgeo just made, to which you were responding. That's why it's so frustrating explaining markets to socio-economic creationist; it's exactly like trying to explain Darwinism to a committed and unread biological creationist. The spontaneous order of emergent systems is a central insight that some people simply refuse to understand, even after it is explained to them repeatedly.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:34:29 -0000

Muirgeo,

Ricardo has 3 requirements for comparative advantage to be successful.

You failed to mentioned that Ricardo is not God. Economics does not progress by appealing to the infallible works of long-dead economist Popes. Ricardo is credited with originating (or at least popularising) the concept of comparative advantage, just a Adam Smith is credited with originating (or at least popularizing) the concept of absolute advantage. But neither are Saints to which we can appeal biblically.

Economics has come a long way since both Smith and Ricardo, and some of the things they wrote were later expanded upon and shown to be not true or at least more complicated than they believed. The concept of comparative advantage is a perfect example of this phenomenon, because it came to replace the older and incomplete view of absolute advantage. Adam Smith was wrong and Ricardo was right.

So too, Ricardo was wrong (or at least incomplete) on some things. It turns out, even when Ricardo's conditions for comparative advantage are weakened, the principle of comparative advantage remains intact.

It's as if you are arguing against the concept of Darwinian evolution by pointing out mistakes and incompletenesses in Darwin's original work. Sure, Darwin was wrong about a few things, but the central insight of his discover remains as true as ever. So too with comparative advantage.

Bad Samaritan by Joon Chang is a good book which dispels some of the myths of our “free trade” policies.

Joon Chang is either a fool or a charlatan, or both. Tyler Cowen completely demolished his critique of free trade in a recent online debate. Joon could not answer Tyler's very basic objection to the infant industry argument: it is next to impossible for the government to get the infant industry policy right, to decide which industries the country has a comparative advantage in and then protect those industries in order for them to grow, and then have the wisdom and political will to end those subsidy protections after the fact once the protections have received long standing political support. There is a reason why it is next to impossible for the U.S. to get rid of its farm subsidies. Give farmers huge subsidies for nearly a century and it comes as no surprise that farmers develop powerful lobbies to protect their protectionist interests. Promoting and encouraging that impulse by actively embracing the infant industry argument, as Joon does, is shear foolishness for someone with a PhD in economics. Again, it's the intellectual equivalent of someone with a PhD in biology failing to understand rudimentary evolutionary theory.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:51:29 -0000

I expand on the Darwinian analogy to Muirgeo's economic foolishness here:

The Difficulty in Countering Economic Creationism...

and here:

Biology Doesn't End With Darwin; Economics Doesn't End With Ricardo

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:55:20 -0000

Muirgeo,

On protectionism I’d argue it makes sense or might make sense in some cases for emerging industries and should not be aimed at any one corporation.

And I'd argue, as would basic textbook economics, that you don't have a clue what you are talking about.

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."

– Murray Rothbard

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:15:47 -0000

Muirgeo,

“Muirgeo talks out of both sides of its mouth.
….
In short, it is a duplicitous character that is not to be taken seriously.”

Just want to point out this initial unprovoked personal attack. Through the ignorance or brilliance or difference of my positions I often attract such wayward slights from those not really wanting their positions challenged.

You are right that the argument here should be about ideas and not about character. But John V has a point; perhaps you unknowingly adopted this argument from someone else without understanding why it is dishonest, but it is nevertheless a dishonest argument. You cannot simulatenously "criticize libertarians for supporting things that they do in fact oppose and opposing things that they do in fact support." You cannot simultaneously "conflate corporatism and free markets when criticizing free markets and separating them when trying to offer a hollow and hypocritical word of support for free markets." These are dishonest arguments.

You may not be intentionally dishonest if you don't understand why they are dishonest, but they are nevertheless dishonest arguments.

I’m pretty sure self-order in the markets is often a good idea but I can think of lots of times when it’s failed and when planning worked better. ... And even here some one had to plan where to build those huts and who would wear red and who black.

Then you do not yet understand the point Hayek is making in that article. He is not claiming that all intentional human planning is impossible; obviously, that is not true. Centrally-directed human planning exists and is often very successful on the individual, family, small village, and firm level. But it is not and cannot be successful on a large scale, on the scale of national economics that we are concerned here with.

And again, I always resort to my claim that no unplanned society has ever existed…

And as Matt Simpson pointed out, there is no sense in which any western (i.e. non-Communist) society is planned, in the Hayek sense. That doesn't mean that planning does not exist within western societies on the individual, family, small village, and firm level. It means that planning does not exist on a society-wide level.

Re: Shaun Nichols on Free Will (Among Other Things) on Free Will

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:36:41 -0000

MK,

But what about that sci-fi movie with Tom Cruise!

If we really could take a supercomputer and predict your actions based on atoms, all hell would break loose. We would be like the remote tribe who you show them a camera and it completely blows their freaking mind. The supercomputer is not logically impossible and it could happen someday.

It's not logically impossible, but it's practically highly unlikely, given the enormous computing power this would take and the extremely low pay-off for systematically predicting an individual's actions. Daniel Dennett makes the same sort of argument for the practical (but not logical) impossibility of things like truly convincing brain-in-the-vat scenarios in the beginning of Consciousness explained. The information processing capacity and continual feed-back loops necessary to achieve such a feat would be prohibitively costly and unlikely to ever be as complete or convincing as mere logical possibility would imply.

Re: Please Discuss

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:25:38 -0000

Grumpy Realist,

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…..

This argument is circular. It assumes that the imposer of income taxes (the government) is the legitimate owner of the geographic territory that is called United States and has carte blanche discretion to impose whichever policies it pleases. This legitimacy is entirely what is in question; it cannot be shrugged off with a "like it or leave it" bromide without begging the question.

Look, you nitwits–we’re living in a democracy. A DEMOCRACY, capisce? If you don’t like the level of taxation that’s imposed get together with enough of your neighbors and vote to a) cut the programs, and b) cut taxes. If you can’t get enough of your neighbors to vote the way you want them to do, then tough noogies–go back to the drawing board and get better arguments.

Again, this is circular argument question begging. You are trying to justify the legitimacy of democratic decision making by appealing to... democratic decision making. Democracy does not justify itself.

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

Correct. The central libertarian insight is that Other People Are Not Your Property. They are not yours to boss around, even if you win an election.

Re: Please Discuss

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:33:31 -0000

From that last link:

Other people are not your property. ...They are not yours to boss around. Their lives are not yours to micromanage. The fruits of their labour are not yours to dispose of.

It doesn’t matter how wise or marvelous or useful it would be for other people to do whatever it is you’d like them to do. It is none of your business whether they wear their seatbelts, worship the right god, have sex with the wrong people, or engage in market transactions that irritate you. Their choices are not yours to direct. They are human beings like yourself, your equals under Natural Law. You possess no legitimate authority over them. As long as they do not themselves step over the line and start treating other people as their property, you have no moral basis for initiating violence against them – nor for authorising anyone else to do so on your behalf. ...

Nor is this requirement lifted merely because you happen to be a police officer, or an elected legislator, or a member of a majority of citizens casting their votes.</blockquote

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:42:13 -0000

Muirgeo,

I’ve been on the side of trying to convince creationist of Darwin’s theory but did natures emergent order give us our great crop yields or did planning, logic, research and an understanding of and manipulation of evolution do the trick?

Yet again, you demonstrate your failure to understood the main point Hayek is making in that essay. You are essentially making the watchmaker argument, except in this case for economics instead of biology. Just as the biological creationist observes that watches don't occur in nature and must be designed, so therefore the parts of nature which seem even more complex than a watch must be designed, so too you observe human technologies such as farming techniques and conclude that since these techniques are designed, the price system, which is many orders of magnitude more complex, must be subject to the intentional dictates of centralized command-and-control.

Crop yields and the American economy are not the result and would not be as successful as they are were it not for planning. Left to nature and emergent properties we’d still be living in tribal units like the native American’s our good planning displaced.

Again, this is essentially the same as when a biological creationist says something like, "If left to nature and emergent properties, watches would not exist." Well, yes, but that clearly misses the point of biological evolution, just as you have clearly missed Hayek's point about the information signals embedded in the price system.

Muirgeo will continue to make this same mistake, over and over again, because he does not want to understand the importance of the price system and the impossibility of central planning on a large scale. Until a creationist is willing to accept that his worldview might be wrong and that God/a central planner need not exist (at least to the extent creationists believe is necessary), no amount of explanation of emergent phenomenon will be sufficient. It amounts to an ideological unwillingness to understand.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:54:14 -0000

In the sense that there is no such thing as property rights without a planned society. Likewise for a monetary system, courts ect…

The world as a whole is not a planned society. There is no central planner who implements international property rights. Yet individual sovereign nations generally respect each other's property rights, and there is a large body of law that developed to govern these sorts of international property disputes. Yet this law and this legal system was never centrally planned. How can this be?

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:57:36 -0000

Muirgeo,

I’m not sure what you are promoting. Free trade as practiced currently is NOT “free” and NOT unplanned. Chang and my point would be that we need better and more fair plans.

Don't be disingenuous. Of course you know what I am promoting, as you know you are promoting just the opposite. Nor did I ever claim that the system currently in place is ideal, perfectly free, or completely unplanned. My point, and the point of nearly every trained economist, is that we need far fewer trade plans and far more trade freedom.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:03:09 -0000

“Centrally-directed human planning exists and is often very successful on the individual, family, small village, and firm level. But it is not and cannot be successful on a large scale, on the scale of national economics that we are concerned here with.” micah

On what basis do you make this claim?

Jesus, read the fucking Hayek article again. This is Hayek's entire point. The socialist calculation debate was over generations ago.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:27:26 -0000

Muirgeo,

Did the computer chip or this here internet develop as a result of individual, family , small village or firm actions alone? I don’t think you can honestly say yes to that.

Of course I can honestly say that the development of computer chips and the Internet was not centrally planned, but a result of many decentralized interactions between various individuals and firms. And while it is true that the government did try to subsidize some of this development, the government was always just one of many players. It never held a position in the commanding heights of the economy, dictating which five year plans we'd be following for technological development.

Muirgeo,

Wouldn't it be a good idea for the government to nationalize certain industries, like health care, but also oil, food, and housing? Hungry people wouldn't have to rely on food stamps or worry about the high prices of corn and rice. If government nationalized housing we wouldn't have to worry about overpopulation, gentrification, lack of affordable housing for poor people. We would not have to suffer the high cost of gasoline while greedy oil companies make profits hand over first. The government would set the true, right, fair price.

If health care needs a massive planning overhaul from the obviously purely free market heath care we have now, then certainly the same benefits we might enjoy with socialized medicine we could also enjoy for socialized grocery stories, socialized gas stations, and socialized housing complexes.

Do you think we have lots of trade plans because the American people are pushing for them or because lobbyist of large corporations push for them?

We have trade restrictions because of the lobbyists of large corporations push for them.

My point is don’t try to claim that what we have now is protectionism aimed to protect the American people. We have protectionism aimed to help corporations and we don’t have free trade.

I agree. We have protectionism aimed to help corporations and we don’t have free trade. I would like us to have free trade instead.

I guess my problem is I’m not sure if people like you are for things like NAFTA/GATT/WTO or against these rule making entities. The idea is they are there to “free-up” trade but I’m not convinced they don’t exist to restrict trade to favor certain groups.

I'm pretty much ambivalent about these trade organizations. Insofar they can increase trade between willing partners, I applaud them. Insofar as they can convince countries to multilaterally or even unilaterally lower their trade restrictions, then that is a good thing. But insofar as they limit rather than expand trade, they are undesirable.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:38:20 -0000

ranger_granger,

1) By the need for “far more trade freedom”, I presume you’re referring to the protectionist policies of China and India?

Yes, I oppose all barriers to trade, including Chinese and Indian protectionism.

The hallmark of way too many contemporary “trained economists”: utilization not only of the “appeal to authority” fallacy, but of the even more absurd practice of citing ONESELF as that authority.

Well, if you will note, I wrote "My point, and the point of nearly every trained economist…" in response to Muirgeo's claim that "Chang and my point would be that we need better and more fair plans." Muirgeo pulls out Chang to help support a point he was making, and I point out the Chang's position is roundly rejected by nearly every trained economist, for the basic reason that Chang fails to make a convincing infant industries argument against free trade.

So who is appealing to authority here: Muirgeo for appealing to Chang or me for point out that Chang's arguments are not taken seriously by his colleagues? I even pointed out why Chang's argument is bunk - it's the same old infant industries argument that is demolished in any International Econ textbook.

I'm not sure which of us, if any, you are accusing of "the even more absurd practice of citing ONESELF as that authority." Who did this?

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

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:11:34 -0000

Fry,

“I’ve been thinking through this myself; I have an idea that short of some compelling justification, there is no reason to use force against people,”

The justification is that business interaciton between strangers can only be maintained through the threat of force.

Then that itself provides the compelling justification the person to whom you were responding is looking for. But that is not a justification for government, only a justification for using force in self-defense against contract violation.

Whats funny about wanting the ability to opt for another provider of force is that they can already do so, by moving.

Well, no, that's not funny. The Coase theorem taught us that what is most important for efficient market outcomes is transaction costs. When I want to switch cell phone providers, I just pick up the phone and make a call. That low transaction cost provides the check of competition on regulating cell phone providers. But if I have to move in order to switch governments, the transaction costs of switching are much higher, and thus the regulatory check of competition is much lower. Which is one of, if not the major reason we get piss poor government.

It is most likely that you will have to move in order to acquire the services of different arbiters of force in an anarchist system, but they see no problem with that.

Absolutely untrue. A central tenet of free market anarchism is that there is no need for granting firms geographical monopolies on force. The territories would overlap in the absence of monopoly. Search Google for the term "polycentric law" or "polycentric legal order" and read the work by Tom Bell and Randy Barnett on this issue.

We already have a free market on force, it’s call the world and there are many nations to choose from.

As to anarchism, I think it is utopianism. There is nothing in anarchism to protect your “rights”. With anarchism the strong will always prey on the weak.

Notice the disconnect between the first sentence and the second two sentences. You first acknowledge that a free market in the use of force exists on an international level, but then immediately claim that a free market in the use of force (e.g. anarchism) is utopian. How is it that, under the international anarchist order (for there is no central state), the rights of weak countries remain protected against the will of stronger countries?

Security companies (or DROs or whatever) will have geographic monopolies in mos areas,

This is precisely what anarchists deny. Without a government to enforce a monopoly, competition thrives.

Re: Remittances

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:22:28 -0000

Um, no Lonewacko, the politicians enforcing unjust laws are the ones who are corrupt. An unjust law is no law at all and can (and should!) be routinely violated. Your fetish for respecting unjust laws is... disturbing. I'm glad Anne Frank never tried to hide in your attic.

Re: Remittances

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:25:32 -0000

Complain all you want, TLB, but you have ignored the question. Does an unjust law demand respect or not? Is it corrupt to violate an unjust law, or is it corrupt to enforce an unjust law? The Anne Frank analogy points directly to these questions. You don't wish to answer because answering means acknowledging either than unjust laws demand no respect and that to enforce them is itself corrupt, or it means acknowledging that you would have turned Anne Frank in to the authorities. In the first case, you would be contradicting your own stated "enforce the law" fetish; in the second case you would look like a monster. You choose.

And your claim that "billions" (plural!) would try to enter and live permanently in the U.S. in the absence of international apartheid belies a tremendous ignorance of economics. World population is currently 6.7 billion. If we take your claim on its own terms, and assume that immigrants make conditions in the U.S. less attractive and not more, then it is preposterous to assume that 25% or more (i.e. "billions") of the world's population would immigrate here, unless we first ignore the dynamic effects of immigration itself. The more people arrive - assuming as you do that immigration is a net harm - the less attractive immigration becomes to potential immigrants, and thus immigration tapers off at an equilibrium.

But, then, explaining basic economics to anti-immigration bigots is never an easy task.

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

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:39:59 -0000

Fry,

I also simply disagree that geographic monopolies will not occur. Rural areas and sparse population don’t encourage business diversity, especially for something with a high market entry cost like defence. Of course even if you could absolutely guarantee, not just make geographic monopolies unfavorable, you would still incur the problem already discussed.

Well, I don't think any anarchist - definitely not this one - thinks that you can absolutely guarantee the non-existence of geographic monopolies; the best we can do is structure incentives in such a way that they are unlikely to arise.

As for your claim that "Rural areas and sparse population don’t encourage business diversity", I completely agree - all the more reason not the live in rural areas with sparse populations. This is an argument frequently made against privatizing things like the Postal service or public schools or roads. No one is entitled to live wherever they please. There is no reason why urban dwellers should have to subsidize rural communities. Part of the cost of choosing to live in a rural community is doing without some of the same services enjoyed by more concentrated populations.

One of the biggest of which is without uniform justice we have no guarantees that our DROs won’t simply enslave us.

But we have no such guarantee now regarding our governments. Demanding such a guarantee is utopian, for there is no higher authority to turn to to reign in the lower authority, for if there was such a higher authority, the problem would be recreated one level higher. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The relevant question is not which system makes a guarantee possible, because no system does that. The relevant question is whether electoral democracy or market competition act as better checks on power.

All the arguments I’ve seen in favor or a just anarchism rely on a miracle of fine-tuning, to keep all DROs perfectly in line with each other, each individual signing up to a large bureaucracy of overlapping protection, and voluntary regulation.

And this differs from electoral democracy...how?

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:09:34 -0000

Ranger_granger,

How exactly do you go from "I oppose all barriers to trade, including Chinese and Indian protectionism" to joking about "all the Chinese-made crap lining the walls of my local Mall-Wart"? If the Chinese want to subsidize purchases made by American consumers, why in the world would you want to stop them? There may not be such thing as a free lunch, but if the Chinese are paying, I'll have top sirloin.

When you initially challenged Muirgeo’s contention about Joon’s book, you cited some basic reasons why you disagreed. Your argument didn’t convince me, because I had listened to that NPR discussion between Joon and Cowen and didn’t see anywhere where Cowen “demolished” Joon’s position.

Then you weren't paying close enough attention. When Tyler asked Joon to explain exactly why he thinks governments are competent enough to know which infant industries to protect and for how long, and how exactly governments are supposed to avoid creating powerful pro-infant industries lobbies by doing so, and when Joon admitted he had no response, Joon essentially admitted that the emperor has no clothes. The argument was over at that point.

I’m not sure roughly how many economists disagree specifically with Joon’s book (has there been some kind of a poll?); but supposing if every single economist on the planet were to sign a petition stating that Joon’s book is bunk — would that make Joon’s opinion any less credible? Not a bit; it would just mean that the community of “experts” believed otherwise.

Well, yes, it would make Muirgeo's citation of Joon as an authority less credible. Just as when in an argument with an advocate of Intelligent Design, and the advocate cites Behe or Dembski or some other Discovery Institute hack as an authority, pointing out that nearly every biologist on the planet outside of the Discovery Institute has signed a petition stating that, in their professional opinion, Intelligent Design is bunk, this makes citation of Behe or Dembski less credible.

Appeals to authority are perfectly valid when used in response to appeals to bogus authorities.

Re: Remittances

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:14:46 -0000

Sorry, Ben, but Godwin's Law cuts both ways. It is true that one should not overuse extreme analogies, especially when they are totally inappropriate and uncalled for given the specific situation, but at the same time, this cannot mean that all extreme analogies are at all times inappropriate, or else whatever we might potentially learn from past tragedies would be forever lost as a source of moral education and wisdom.

Invoking Godwin's Law when a Hitler, Nazi, or Holocaust analogy is actually relevant is just as much of a logical error and conversation stopper as invoking a Nazi analogy when doing so is irrelevant to the argument. Godwin's Law does not and cannot mean that all discussion involving what we might learn from the experience of the Holocaust is totally out of bounds for rational discussion.

And the Anne Frank analogy is not just completely relevant to this particular discussion, it is also frequently used in moral philosophy as an example of what is wrong with overly-legalistic ethical systems such as strict interpretations of Kantian deontology. If it is the case that one must never tell a lie no matter the consequences, then it must also be the case that one must give an honest and correct answer to Nazi officers if they ask you if you are hiding any Jews in your attic. And since most people rightfully recognize such a conclusion as morally outrageous, we are able to see what is wrong with strict obedience to immoral government laws.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:32:09 -0000

Tim,

Supporting freedom generally, and specifically reduced government intervention in economic matters, isn’t anti-democratic, at least if one does not call for such decisions to be imposed by force. I recommend less intervention, that isn’t the same as saying that the policy of less intervention should be imposed by force no matter what the people want or their representatives vote for.

It is incoherent (for a non-pacifist) to say that it is aggressive coercion to forcefully prevent one person or group of people from coercing another person or group of people. It is not coercion to stop coercion; it is self-defense. And we are not even talking here about using violent means to "impose" freedom; we are talking about not respecting the "will of the people" if the will of a majority of the people happens to be to impose their will on a political minority. There is no reason to respect that sort of democratic decision making, for the democracy is itself not respecting the decisions of dissenters.

As a matter of practical politics and prudence, it is often a good idea to not interfere with the political decisions made by democratic (or non-democratic) polities, even if those decisions violate minority rights. Iraq is a prime example. No one believes that Iraq under Saddam was democratic, but it was still imprudent for the U.S. to invade. But Saddam had no legitimate, sovereign right to impose his will on other people, just as democratic majorities have no legitimate, sovereign right to impose their will on anyone but themselves.

The proper response to Muirgeo's comment, "Your position basically is an anti-democratic one seeking to weaken the powers of people to govern themselves," is that people are not governing "themselves", people are governing other people. Self-government is incompatible with the kind of majoritarian democracy Muirgeo proposes.

Democracy can mean different things to different people, but insofar as it means what Muirgeo thinks it means, it should be vehemently opposed by anyone concerned with individual freedom.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:51:48 -0000

ranger_granger,

It's been a while since I listened to that podcast, which was shortly after it aired. I just went back and skimmed it, and here is the part I was remembering:

[Chang responding to Tyler's question:]

I fully agree with you that there are dangers of corruption and special interests. What I find problematic these days is that rich countries are not giving poor countries the choice [to engage in protectionism]. If they are so much in favor of the free market the countries should be given choices.

Notice Chang's dodge and essential non-answer here. Instead of explaining how he expects developing countries to engage in protectionist infant-industry policies while avoiding all of the knowledge problems and special interest problems associated with this kind of protectionism (and as Tyler points out earlier in the discussion, developing countries tend to be more corrupt than developed countries [which is one major reason why they are not rich yet], and thus even less likely to avoid these pitfalls), Chang subtly changes the subject, not defending protectionism as a wise economic policy, but arguing that developing country governments should be free to impose bad, coercive laws on their citizens.

Which, of course, aside from being a dodge of the economic question, is mistaken politically as well. The free market, and freedom in general, does not include the "freedom" of states to tyrannize their own citizens by preventing them from trading with people living in other countries or forcing them to subsidize unprofitable industries. That is a complete misunderstanding of freedom and free markets. Nation states are not the relevant actors in questions of freedom; individuals and the firms and groups they form voluntarily are.

Re: The Error of Productributionism

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 06:54:00 -0000

Muirgeo,

Michael Greenberger, a former director of the commodities and trade commission explains well on C-SPAN how speculators are responsible for 1/3 of the price of oil. These same Enron types create asset bubbles tae huge chunks of the profits away from the honest hard working and add nothing to the economy. They don’t if operate under an principles Adam Smith would recognize much less advocate.

Muirgeo, as usual, could not be more wrong. Adam Smith was a huge advocate of commodity speculation.

The story is told well in Adam Smith's discussion of the Corn Laws in The Wealth of Nations. Smith reviewed 18thcentury public attitudes toward two new forms of wealth creation: "forestalling" and "engrossing" (terms picked for the same connotative reasons that "junk" and "hostile" are the adjectives of choice for non-traditional bond financing and changes in corporate control today). "Forestalling" was a new economic activity involving low-priced corn purchases during times of plenty in the hope that the corn could later be resold at a profit. "Engrossing" described a similar arbitrage activity focusing on price differentials among different locales within England. Engrossers, for example, bought low in Birmingham and sold high in London -- or rather they hoped to do so. Both activities had become possible only as storage and transportation costs dropped.

Forestalling and engrossing were soundly criticized as sterile middlemen activities that produced no new corn but only raised prices. Such speculation, the conventional wisdom held, could only hurt the general public.

However, Smith explained clearly that such middlemen played an essential role. If speculators predicted scarcity and it failed to materialize, they lost money. They not only had to sell the corn at a loss, but also pay its storage and/or transportation costs. When the scarcity was real, however, Smith explained that "the best thing that can be done for the people is to divide the inconveniences of it as equally as possible through all the different months, and weeks, and days of the year" and, of course, across the nation. Smith noted that the corn merchant -- the specialist in this commodity -- was the most appropriate party to carry out this "most important operation of commerce."1

Moreover, Smith noted, the risks were clearly shifted from the consumers to these specialists. When engrossers and forestallers were wrong (a situation all too likely in commodity markets) and prices fell rather than rose, they felt the consequences of their follies. On the other hand, when these speculators were correct and shortages did occur, both they and the citizenry benefited. As Smith explained, "By making [the people] feel the inconveniences of a dearth somewhat earlier than they might otherwise do, he prevents their feeling them afterwards so severely as they certainly would do, if the cheapness of price encouraged them to consume faster than suited the real scarcity of the season."2

Smith detailed the consumer advantages of making uniform the supply of foodstuffs over time and avoiding the feast or famine problems that plagued untold generations before there were middleman.3 In modern terms, forestalling and engrossing were creative forms of voluntary risk-shifting, in which risks were transferred from risk-averse consumers and growers to risk-taking speculators.

Smith stated that "after the trade of the farmer, [there is] no trade contributing so much to the growing of corn as that of the corn merchant."4 He continued, "The popular fear of engrossing and forestalling may be compared to the popular terrors and suspicions of witchcraft. The unfortunate wretches accused of this latter crime were not more innocent of the misfortunes imputed to them, than those who have been accused of the former." To Smith, "the corn trade, so far at least as concerns the supply of the home-market, ought to be left perfectly free."5

The reader will notice the clear similarity between the speculators and arbitragers of today and Smith's corn merchants. Indeed, the forestallers and engrossers were simply the first workers specializing in risk management, information provision, and information processing. As in Smith's time, such middlemen provide society with services that are no less valuable because they are intangible; speculators are willing to take risks that consumers would prefer to avoid.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:54:26 -0000

tyrannogenius,

Does your dog own your house?

Incidentally, all of the government interventions which you think justify even more interference on compensatory grounds are interventions that libertarians consistently argue against, including the limited liability of corporations. Government interventions no more justify compensatory interventions than the existence of the welfare state justifies restrictions on immigration, a canard that all too many libertarians fall for themselves.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:58:39 -0000

disinterested observer,

I think these initiatives at creating international order are far closer to a form of central planning or an agreement between cartels than they are to leaving it all up to the market. Perhaps the success of the EU is that it involves both deepening markets and co-ordinating the rules under which markets operate across countries.

If this is what you mean by central planning, then sign me up as an advocate of central planning! Of course, these sorts of agreements ultimately rest on unanimous consent (on the part of the political leaders if not individual citizens), and without that consent, the agreements have no force. So if this is what is meant by central planning, I am all for it.

Re: The Error of Productributionism

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:18:12 -0000

Muirgeo,

I think in todays modern day finance is not applicable to the truth that Adam Smith discussed.

And you can bet that in Smith's day, the people who wanted the government to crack down on engrossing and forestalling were just as willing as you are to grant the value of speculation in theory, but considered their particular circumstances to be different.

My purpose here is simply to refute your claim that Smith did not approve of commodity speculation. That is demonstrably false.

Of course, as is to be expected, you ignore this and continue to pretend that "times were different back then." No, they were not. People have always and will always fear and misunderstand commodity speculation, just as people have always and will always fear and misunderstand international trade. Some things never change, and there will always be people like Muirgeo around who desperately need but adamantly refuse economic education.

Re: The Douthat-Carter Continuum

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:48:44 -0000

[crossposted comment to Distributed Republic]

If you think comparing watching porn to having an affair is batshit crazy (and it is, of course), just be glad you didn't have to grow up learning that masturbation "is the most severe of all Torah forbidden sins", including not just murder, but "when one emits sperm to waste it is as if he destroys the earth." Which is, of course, "punishable by death."

So give Ross Douthat some credit here; at least he is only comparing masturbation to having an affair. His analogy could have been a whole lot batshit crazier.

Re: “If the World Cooperates…” Jeffrey Sachs’ Esoteric Doctrine of Impending Doom

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:55:03 -0000

Sorry to feed the troll, but I will continue to do so until the troll does his homework and reads the article that has been assigned to him, repeatedly:

In ordinary language we describe by the word "planning" the complex of interrelated decisions about the allocation of our available resources. All economic activity is in this sense planning; and in any society in which many people collaborate, this planning, whoever does it, will in some measure have to be based on knowledge which, in the first instance, is not given to the planner but to somebody else, which somehow will have to be conveyed to the planner. The various ways in which the knowledge on which people base their plans is communicated to them is the crucial problem for any theory explaining the economic process, and the problem of what is the best way of utilizing knowledge initially dispersed among all the people is at least one of the main problems of economic policy—or of designing an efficient economic system.
H.5

The answer to this question is closely connected with that other question which arises here, that of who is to do the planning. It is about this question that all the dispute about "economic planning" centers. This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals. Planning in the specific sense in which the term is used in contemporary controversy necessarily means central planning—direction of the whole economic system according to one unified plan. Competition, on the other hand, means decentralized planning by many separate persons. The halfway house between the two, about which many people talk but which few like when they see it, is the delegation of planning to organized industries, or, in other words, monopoly.
H.6

Which of these systems is likely to be more efficient depends mainly on the question under which of them we can expect that fuller use will be made of the existing knowledge. And this, in turn, depends on whether we are more likely to succeed in putting at the disposal of a single central authority all the knowledge which ought to be used but which is initially dispersed among many different individuals, or in conveying to the individuals such additional knowledge as they need in order to enable them to fit their plans with those of others.

Re: Class War!

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:43:32 -0000

Muirgo,

The underlying causes are people with money and power writing laws to make themselves more powerful and wealthy

You mean laws like Sarbanes-Oxley, sold to naive people like you as a way to regulate the future Enrons but which just increase the barriers to entry for small businesses and price them out of the market?

I simply don't believe it because I've seen people from Enron get wealthy manipulating my states electricity market</blockquote?

Which, we all recall, was a direct result of Enron taking advantage of poorly designed government regulations. Proposed solution: more regulations! Brilliant!

If these nefarious businessmen are so good at using the levers of government against you, it might be time to reconsider your plan of using the levers of government against them. You're playing a losing man's game, and shouldn't be surprised that you inevitably end up as victim.

Re: Class War!

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:37:11 -0000

No my proposed solution is more democracy and better regulation.

Right, and as I just said, and you responded to with this comment, you have been losing the democracy game and the regulations have been protecting the powerful against competition from the weak. Asking for more of the same is... progress?

But lets say we follow your advice to decrease regulation. How do we get there? Please be specific. Who should I vote for?

Don't vote for anyone. Voting is how we got into this mess in the first place. I don't know how you get there from here, but it certainly isn't going to be by voting for the same politicians over and over again.

I think you are wrong because history shows us that unregulated markets are a roller-coster ride of ineffeciency, boom and bust econiomies of corruption and ultimatly result in concentrations of wealth and power

But isn't this exactly what we see in the heavily regulated markets of today? Where are these unregulated markets you speak of?

Re: Class War!

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:43:56 -0000

<blockquote<This would make senase if it weren't for the fact of lobbyist throwing all sorts of money at politicians to get favorably policy. The government by it's policies effects the issue of income distribution.

If the problem you see is lobbyists paying off politicians to get their favored policies enacted, then perhaps the proper solution is to decrease the size and scope of democracy and government regulations, not increase them.

Re: Class War!

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:49:30 -0000

What purpose for democracy except to level the playing field in a war against classism?

Um, the major purpose of democracy in modern times is and has been to unlevel the playing field, as you yourself have repeatedly pointed out in this thread. So why do you think you can take the same weapon that has historically increased inequality and use it to do the opposite?

You sound sort of like an obsessive gambler, who thinks that if he plays just a few more rounds, he'll make back all his losses, despite his continual losing streak. But he just digs his hole deeper and deeper. Double or nothing! Double or nothing!

Re: The Goatee of the Overeager Left

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 13:10:41 -0000

He started amnesty for illegals.

Wait, you consider this a bad thing? What a fucking hypocrite you are, muirgeo. Your professed concern for income inequality is a complete joke now that you have admitted you really only care about people lucky enough to be born in America.

And for the record, you still have not done your econ homework, muirgeo. Until you understand what Hayek means by central planning, you have no room to talk about anything resembling the subject.

Re: The “Annually Appropriated/Authorized Until Revised” Spending Distinction

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:09:05 -0000

Um, Will, how is this not preemptive redistribution? I elaborate here.

Re: Morally Bogus Debates

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:38:04 -0000

The situation is analogous to my "right" to travel within your home.

So the state collectively owns all the property it claims dominion over, and its subjects (both citizen and not) must justify to it their freedoms, but it need not justify to them its authority?

This sort of sounds like... the abolishment of private property; a purely socialist sentiment.

+2 chutzpah points, though

Re: Ranting Cant

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:52:14 -0000

Wow, I think this is the first time I've ever agreed with a Freddie post.

My problem with the ad hominem response to global warming is that even if it is true (and in fact, I think it is true; environmentalism is the last refuge of many a left-statist scoundrel), it doesn't tell us much one way or another about the truth value of the scientific claims being made. It may give us reason to discount pronouncements made by Al Gore, but you have to believe in a vast conspiracy far beyond the one posited by 9/11 Truthers to discount the consensus of climatologists as politically motivated.

On the other hand, when people like Ted Turner start wailing about how "Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals" by mid-century due to global warming and overpopulation...

Re: Update!

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:12:06 -0000

Ryan,

The best place to start in moral philosophy, imho, is James Rachels' "The Elements of Moral Philosophy." It's used as a textbook in many intro to ethics courses, for good reason.

For slightly different (and more libertarian) takes in the same style, see Jan Narveson's "Moral Matters" and David Shmidtz' "Elements of Justice."

Also, the articles found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy are both free and generally high quality (if a bit terse). Combined with Wikipedia, find a general topic or thinker who interests you and go from there.

Also, if you like Hayek, read Ludwig Wittgenstein. They are like brothers from another mother (well, distant cousins), except Wittgenstein is a much better writer. Also: David Hume.

Re: David Gordon on Rawls

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:28:35 -0000

Jimmy_D, meet David Friedman

Re: Eat Local, Yokel

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:08:29 -0000

Tracy W wins the thread.

Re: Can You Use Heroin Responsibly?

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:03:34 -0000

Jonathan Caulkins' piece was awful - just embarrassing. I could argue the pro-prohibition side better than that.

Let's hope Mark Kleiman at least puts up a fight - it's too depressing to think that no one on the other side can offer anything even approaching a serious argument, and yet despite their lack of a case, major drug policy reform remains extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Re: What Books Would You Ban?

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 14:10:18 -0000

The Bible

Re: Meet Winston

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:25:19 -0000

Winston tastes good like a little doggie should.

Re: What’s an Incrementalist Market Liberal to Think?

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:18:32 -0000

Will,

One of the criticisms of markets that we frequently hear from it's opponents is that markets are unstable, chaotic and inherently risky. They concede that it may make us wealthier in certain respects, but that they'd rather pay the cost in wealth for additional safety and stability.

Now you seem to be saying the opposite. Without the Fed's meddling, the Austrians might be right and we can avoid the excessive boom and bust of market cycles brought on by interventionist economic policy, and thus have a smoother, more predictable, safer, and more stable business cycle.

So which is it?

Re: What’s an Incrementalist Market Liberal to Think?

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:23:18 -0000

DWAnderson,

This assumes that central monetary planning is feasible and desirable, if just tweaked and tuned a little. If that assumption is incorrect, then we are wasting our time arguing about the details of middle-of-the-road policy. This is the same objection brought up in the recent Cato Unbound series on drug policy; a refusal by prohibitionists to even consider a policy of legalization, thereby assuming that it isn't a complete waste of time to trim around the edges of prohibition.

Re: Deliberation Day

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:59:12 -0000

This is indeed an excellent post; thank you for bumping it from oblivion, Robin.

Re: Qualifications and Sarah Palin’s Crazy Politics

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:17:48 -0000

Essentially government allowing us to keep whatever property we may currently have is the normative assumption/essence behind our death and income taxes. That is socialistic.

But this makes Obama just as much of a socialist as McCain, in which case calling Obama a socialist as a reason to vote for McCain is simply absurd. I don't have a problem with consistent libertarians who refuse to vote for either major party candidate calling Obama a socialist; I do have a problem with prospective Republican voters doing so.

Re: Obama’s Economic Xenophobia

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:11:25 -0000

Do you hear that, Will? Your hubris has caused the financial system to implode! Shame on you! Exercise some humility and trust that the hopelessly ignorant (democracy in action!) can command and control national energy policy, health care policy, and the entire financial system. Keeping your hands out of other people's pockets is elitist! Stop being such an ideologue! (I am not an ideologue because I disagree with Will.)

Bonus points to lxm for writing quite possibly the most ridiculous comment on a blog I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot.

Re: An Amalgam Enmeshed in a Thicket

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:34:31 -0000

Will,

I find this commentary confusing. First you say that a market is only as stable as the regulations that define it, implying that regulations imposed by the state are a necessary precursor to functioning markets. Wasn't this Cass Sunstein's shtick a few years ago?

But then you return to the Caplanian point at the end of your community, expressing skepticism that the political process can deliver the right regulation. What, then, is the point of pushing for better regulation if you know that the political process is incapable of providing it? Is it not the case that ought presupposes can? And if the political process is incapable of providing what you want it to provide, isn't that a good reason to think it ought not try?

Re: An Amalgam Enmeshed in a Thicket

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:40:23 -0000

Oops, that should read: "at the end of your commentary."

Re: An Amalgam Enmeshed in a Thicket

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:26:38 -0000

I agree with that message, but I don't see how framing the issue as "We don't need more regulation or less" communicates that message accurately. Calling for the "right regulation" is sort of like calling for the election of the "right politician", with the implication that if we just get our hearts in the right place, care enough about the issues, and vote for the right candidates, all will be well, all the while ignoring the structural incentives that monopolies of power inevitably create.

I'm not asking that you to do ideal theory here, but the unideal theory as it has been presented seems incoherent to me. If the problems were caused by government regulation and intervention in financial markets, then what good does it do to call for better regulation? Isn't better regulation the impossible ideal here? And how will we ever get any closer to laissez faire if we continue to take the status quo for granted and are too afraid to question the premise that the economy needs government regulation in the first place?

Re: New on Free Will: Polluting the Polls with Jason Brennan

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:26:36 -0000

What demographic do you belong to being ruled over without consent?

The Lysander Spooner demographic.

Consent, of course, is a self-evidently absurd notion in the absence of unanimity.

Here is Randy Barnett, explaining Why "We the People" is a Fiction:

This point becomes clearer when one realizes that if consent is an expression of a willingness to go along with something, then this presupposes it is possible to express unwillingness. Just as I can say, "I consent," there also must also be a way to say, "I do not consent." I am not here talking about the likelihood of such a refusal or all the considerations that might leave one "little choice" but to consent. Rather, I am simply insisting that, just as the word "no" means the opposite of "yes," for consent to have any meaning, it must be possible to say "I do not consent" instead of "I consent." But notice where the argument has taken us when consent to obey the laws is based on voting: If we vote for a candidate and he wins, we have consented to the laws he votes for, but we have also consented to the laws he votes against. If we vote against the candidate and he wins, we have consented to the laws he votes for or against. And if we do not vote at all, we have consented to the outcome of the process, whatever it may be. It is a queer sort of "consent" where there is no way to refuse. "Heads I win, tails you lose," is the way to describe a rigged contest. "Heads" you consent, "tails" you consent, "didn't flip the coin," guess what? You consent as well. This is simply not consent.

And on The Dangerous Fiction of "We the People":

Some use such slogans as "We are the government" or "the government is us" (though I heard this more frequently in my youth before Vietnam and Watergate). This view of government gives legislators an enormous power to do what they will, provided only that they muster the requisite number of votes. For if "we are the government," then we would seem to consent to anything the government does. The fiction of popular sovereignty, therefore, becomes dangerous when legislatures are conceived of as a literal surrogate for "We the People" themselves. Because "the people" can "consent" to alienate any particular liberty or right - though not their more abstract inalienable rights - legislatures, as the people's surrogate, can restrict almost any liberty and justify it in the name of popular consent. The fiction of popular rule, as opposed to a popular check on rulers, allows a legislature to justifiably do almost anything it wills. And this, in turn, allows majority and minority factions of the electorate to gain control and wield the power of the legislative branch at the expense of the aggregate rights of their fellow citizens.

Re: New on Free Will: Polluting the Polls with Jason Brennan

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:06:43 -0000

Which, frankly, is troubling in a world with a history of movements to prevent the "wrong" people from voting. Given this history, and given that "bad" voting is undefinable, I find your focus troubling.

When I look at the world, I see a history of movements of various interest groups trying to command and control the lives of other people, and the all too predictable response of some of these interest groups who try to gain control of these commanding heights by preventing other people from voting. Given this history, I find your adulation of democracy troubling.

One of your comments earlier in the thread was:

It is also rather silly to claim that a racist vote is immoral - in fact racism is immoral, on message boards, in coffee shops, anywhere. Singling out voting as a particular instance of the evils of racism is beside the larger point - racism is bad, in any form

This is nonsense. It doesn't bother me very much if some anti-Semite living hundreds of miles away from me hates the abstract concept of my identity. It does bother me when this person's bigoted preferences are expressed through the ballot box, and consequently through policy.

Re: New on Free Will: Polluting the Polls with Jason Brennan

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:43:59 -0000

I look at efforts to prevent people from voting in the say way I look at lobbying: both are predictable symptoms of the ever increasing importance of democracy and politics in our lives. Both are ugly. The way to treat the underlying disease is to lessen the importance and impact of politics.

If one is concerned with the social impact of racism, and less so with the inner intellectual errors of individual racists, then there are more than your two suggested responses available. An additional option is to reduce the number of questions that are addressed by the political realm. An example: suppose our dating options had to first be approved by democratic vote (much like many business decisions). This would amplify the social impact of racism. Instead of merely worrying about glares and unkind looks, those who would like date interracially might be legally barred from doing so, if enough of the electorate disapproved.

Dating is one obvious example of something that should not be decided democratically, and why democracy would be a horrible nightmare if expanded. Since democracy amplifies the social effects of racism, those who wish to minimize racism should look towards minimizing (and eventually completely eliminating) electoral democracy. And that is why your adulation of democracy troubles me. I have no interest in running other people's lives, and I except the same sort of respect from them. And from you.

Re: New on Free Will: Polluting the Polls with Jason Brennan

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:52:03 -0000

I wouldn't consider voting (except perhaps in self-defense, though even in that case it is almost always just a waste of time). I would consider convincing other people not to vote, since I don't think it's healthy for people to always look towards elections and politicians whenever they have problems that need solving.

The Lysander Spooner demographic has no interest in playing your sorts of political games. We want out. You won't let us. That is unfortunate.

Meanwhile, we will continue to point out that democracy rests on irrational and immoral foundations - that most voters are not equipped with either the knowledge or the incentives to run other people's lives for them, and that it is wrong for them to try, and wrong for people to encourage eligible voters to participate more, when they should be participating less.

Re: Does the Financial Crisis Discredit “Neoliberalism”?

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:56:28 -0000

Where does democracy exist successfully in the world? What are you standards for success?

And most importantly, what would you say to a monarchist who asked, two to three hundred years ago, where democracy exists (successfully or not) in the world? Would you consider this a decisive argument against democracy?

Re: Does the Financial Crisis Discredit “Neoliberalism”?

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:01:59 -0000

King George the 3rd I believe asked just that question. The American revolutionaries showed him the answer.

So then you agree that the nonexistence of a system is not an argument against the desirability of that system?

They said we don't like your system of private property that results in ownership by a few and servitude of the many.

So you are saying that the American revolution was a rejection of private property in favor of social democracy? Do you have any evidence to support this peculiar view?

And successful social democracies of the developed world have followed allowing a flourishing of the human condition but indeed with much refinement still needed as the Monarchs are not totally defeated.

Which countries, specifically, are the successful social democracies you admire, and which countries, specifically, are the unsuccessful neoliberal ones you despise?

Libertrainism WAS the state of the world... feudal systems were the obvious end result.

Which countries, specifically, would you describe as being libertarian, historically?

Social democracies do exist successfully all over the world and they maximize liberty as much as can be exppected when sharing among millions.

Why only millions and not billions? What makes you think it's okay to force some people to share while excluding billions of others from sharing in the system you favor?

Re: New on Free Will: Polluting the Polls with Jason Brennan

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:47:29 -0000

Passive-aggressive much?

I don't resent you personally; I don't know you. I disagree with your views on the value of electoral politics, just as you disagree with mine.

Re: Does the Financial Crisis Discredit “Neoliberalism”?

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:14:21 -0000

Question: Did anyone ever mention Iceland as an example of failed libertarianism/neoliberalism prior to two weeks ago? I know very little about contemporary Iceland, but this citation seems suspicious and all too convenient.

Re: Does the Financial Crisis Discredit “Neoliberalism”?

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:36:02 -0000

"no-one suggested changing the prevailing world order"

I am aware if this. My question is: why not? What makes it just to force millions to share with you while excluding billions from sharing with you? Telling me that's just the way things are isn't responsive to whether things should be that way. Surely poor people living in the undeveloped world would benefit much more from our coerced generosity than poor people living in the developed world.

Is it actually the case that Sweden, Norway, Finland have more regulated financial systems than the U.S. and Iceland? I recall them having higher taxes as a percentage of GDP, but not necessarily more regulations.

Re: Some Reflections on Leiter’s Insult

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:02:43 -0000

Subtle, All Too Subtle

Re: Some Reflections on Leiter’s Insult

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:00:38 -0000

When playing pin the blame on the deregulators, one should start not with Ayn Rand, but with Brian Leiter, for offering this passionate critique of government regulation:

[T]here is no reason to have confidence that the agents of the state in America will excerise their regulatory powers in the service of human well-being and enlightenment.

Brian Leiter, meet Ronald Coase.

Re: Fearful Asymmetry

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:21:18 -0000

Lots of actors contribute to the conditions of civil society; does that fact give each of those actors legitimacy to tax? From Your dog does not own your house:

One of the beautiful facts about a great society such as ours is that no group of persons, no particular group of specialists, plays a role that alone creates society. Each of many groups of specialists is necessary for society to exist; no single group of specialists -- not even that group specializing in protecting people from violence -- is sufficient.

As for improving the lot of society on the whole, have I got a deal for you!

Yeah, they offer to dust off your jacket AND shine your shoes now, but I still don’t want a shoe-shine, and I still don’t want my jacket dusted. I really don’t want them holding my money till I’m old either. (and I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever see that money again). It don’t really matter though. They voted on it (and they’ve got guns).

Re: Fearful Asymmetry

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:42:18 -0000

Michael,

There is in fact a rich body of academic literature that documents the existence of civil society and customary/private/polycentric law prior to and independent of any state sovereign. See, for example, Tom Bell or the Cato Unbound issue from August 2007. Here is the takeaway from Peter Leeson's lead essay:

Empirical evidence, past and present, sheds light on how individuals under anarchy develop private institutional solutions to address the problems that statelessness presents. The guiding force behind these solutions is none other than Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” Importantly, Smith’s principle applies not only to individuals’ activities in the context of well-functioning institutions, but also to their activities in the development of institutions themselves.

Re: Fearful Asymmetry

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:40:54 -0000

I'm not sure I follow. Complex systems of exchange and social organization exist and have existed absent a governing sovereign power. You seemed to deny this in your previous comment. I can't tell if you are denying this or confirming this in your subsequent comment. Or are you claiming that it is irrelevant to your argument?

It is a legitimate question to ask why there aren't more anarchic societies alive today, but that is separate from your prior question of whether or not "there is a plausible notion of contract, civil right, and law outside or prior to a recognized sovereign power able to enforce that law."

Re: Fearful Asymmetry

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:13:21 -0000

Michael, the "final arbiter guarantee" argument doesn't work either, for the reasons Roderick Long outlines here.

I think that a lot of people – one reason that they’re scared of anarchy is they think that under government it’s as though there’s some kind of guarantee that’s taken away under anarchy. That somehow there’s this firm background we can always fall back on that under anarchy is just gone. But the firm background is just the product of people interacting with the incentives that they have. Likewise, when anarchists say people under anarchy would probably have the incentive to do this or that, and people say, "Well, that’s not good enough! I don’t just want it to be likely that they’ll have the incentive to do this. I want the government to absolutely guarantee that they’ll do it!" But the government is just people. And depending on what the constitutional structure of that government is, it’s likely that they’ll do this or that. You can’t design a constitution that will guarantee that the people in the government will behave in any particular way. You can structure it in such a way so that they’re more likely to do this or less likely to do this. And you can see anarchy as just an extension of checks-and-balances to a broader level.

For example, people say, "What guarantees that the different agencies will resolve things in any particular way?" Well, the U.S. Constitution says nothing about what happens if different branches of the government disagree about how to resolve things. It doesn’t say what happens if the Supreme Court thinks something is unconstitutional but Congress thinks it doesn’t, and wants to go ahead and do it anyway. Famously, it doesn’t say what happens if there’s a dispute between the states and the federal government. The current system where once the Supreme Court declares something unconstitutional, then the Congress and the President don’t try to do it anymore (or at least not quite so much) – that didn’t always exist. Remember when the Court declared what Andrew Jackson was doing unconstitutional, when he was President, he just said, "Well, they’ve made their decision, let them enforce it." The Constitution doesn’t say whether the way Jackson did it was the right way. The way we do it now is the way that’s emerged through custom. Maybe you’re for it, maybe you’re against it – whatever it is, it was never codified in law.

In short, there is no guarantee under anarchy just as there is no guarantee under a state. There are only systems of incentives and probabilities that these incentives will work the way we intend.

Long also addresses the "if Bill gates stole from me" argument. Lobbying magnifies the power of the rich through access to taxpayer dollars. There is good reason to think that the rich can get away with a lot more under a monopoly legal system than they could under a competitive one.

Finally, you say that "if Ohio attacked Michigan, there'd [be] a soverign power to come and make things right" and this therefore makes both Ohio and Michigan count as civil societies. But what if Canada attacked Mexico? Is there a sovereign power to come and make things right? Does this absence of a world sovereign power mean that neither Canada nor Mexico count as civil societies?

Re: The Principles of Weisbergian Political Economy

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:46:39 -0000

your credibility falls at least as far or further when you claim that there is nothing but government encouragement of home ownership behind the current meltdown

Will did not make this claim. Read closer. Hint: Will's claim is an example of an INUS condition:

[A]n inus condition for some effect is an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition. Suppose, for example, that a lit match causes a forest fire. The lighting of the match, by itself, is not sufficient; many matches are lit without ensuing forest fires. The lit match is, however, a part of some constellation of conditions that are jointly sufficient for the fire. Moreover, given that this set of conditions occurred, rather than some other set sufficient for fire, the lighting of the match was necessary: fires do not occur in such circumstances when lit matches are not present.

Re: The Principles of Weisbergian Political Economy

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:06:47 -0000

In addition to Matthew's point that Will is arguing hypothetically according to Weisberg's logic, consider the following causal claims:

Remove the presence of a lit match, and what do we have left of the main forces behind the forest fire? I’d say we have nothing left. So there’s our culprit, right?

Remove the dry underbrush, and what do we have left of the main forces behind the forest fire? I’d say we have nothing left. So there’s our culprit, right?

Remove the absence of firefighters, and what do we have left of the main forces behind the forest fire? I’d say we have nothing left. So there’s our culprit, right?

Each of these factors is an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition for the forest fire. Similarly, there are a large number of potential INUS conditions related to the subprime mortgage crisis. The absence of any one of these conditions may have prevented the entire crisis, leaving us with no crisis and a number of insufficient partial conditions.

The crisis can be attributed to a number of factors pervasive in both the housing and credit markets, which developed over an extended period of time. There are many different views on the causes, including the inability of homeowners to make their mortgage payments, poor judgment by the borrower and/or the lender, speculation and overbuilding during the boom period, risky mortgage products, high personal and corporate debt levels, financial innovation that distributed and perhaps concealed default risks, central bank policies, and government regulation (or alternatively lack thereof).

Re: The Principles of Weisbergian Political Economy

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:34:32 -0000

What's interesting about this objection (which I agree with, by the way) is that it is precisely the same objection libertarians often give to the relative benefits of the Scandinavian social democratic/corporatist model over the U.S. model. For example, from P.J. O'Rourke's Eat the Rich:

A Scandinavian economist once proudly said to free-market advocate Milton Friedman, "In Scandinavia we have no poverty." And Milton Friedman replied, "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either."

Moral of the story: cross-country comparisons are difficult.

Re: We’re Gonna Need a Montage

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:30:36 -0000

For a libertarian pro-CSR approach, see Roderick Long's “Stakeholder Theory for Libertarians: A Rothbardian Defense of Corporate Social Responsibility.” [.doc]

Also see John Hasnas' "The Social Responsibility of Corporations and How to Make It Work for You," [.pdf] 44 The Freeman 332 (1994) and "The Normative Theories of Business Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed," 8 Business Ethics Quarterly 19 (1998) For a .pdf version of that last article, go here.

My sympathies for having a debate partner with the last name "Crook," given the proposition and the current economic climate.

Re: Against Fake Libertarian Clarity

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:11:58 -0000

Spencer was arguably an anarchist, Hayek was not much of a champion of natural rights, and Rothbard considered Mises a utilitarian. Make if that what you will.

Re: Against Fake Libertarian Clarity

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:14:42 -0000

I may be wrong but my impression is that *all* libertarians think of libertarianism this way.

You are wrong.

Re: Whip Conflation Now!

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:39:37 -0000

A third option: drown the regulatory apparatus in the bathtub until there is nothing left to capture.

Re: Against Fake Libertarian Clarity

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:09:49 -0000

What is the difference between a well-defined minority and the fringe? (That is a rhetorical question.)

For what it's worth, Friedman's views (the consequentialist ones, not so much the anarchist ones) are shared by many (most?) economists who self-describe as libertarian and work out of the neoclassical (as opposed to Austrian) tradition, most notably his father, Milton.

For more on the problems with defining liberty, see Daniel Klein's Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek and Rothbard [.pdf]

A taste:

That the ambiguities are countless is undeniable. The limits of ownership, rights of joint property, criteria for nuisance or invasion, definition of “threat” or “risk” to one’s property, relevance of intent, definition of “use” in homesteading, status of brand-names, trademarks, patents, copyrights, and stolen property, criteria for consent, implicit terms of contracts, status of promises, issues of children and the senile, liability of principals for the torts of agents, the theory of punishment, compensation of duress, standards of proof in court, etc., all involve serious gray areas and matters of interpretation—as the libertarian theorists David Hume (1751: 26-32), Wordsworth Donisthorpe (1895: 1-121) and David Friedman (1989: 167-76) have explained. Sensible judgments on such matters will depend on particulars of time and place -- the paths of technology, of precedent, of expectations, and so on. It is foolish to think that a definition of liberty could ever spell out definitive interpretations and clear demarcation lines.

Re: Against Fake Libertarian Clarity

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:20:46 -0000

Let me add to that: Will's thinking about liberty is much closer to Hayek's than Hayek's is to Locke or Rothbard. That is not necessarily a good thing, as Hayek's view of liberty is terribly confused. But Hayek was certainly no Lockean or Rothbardian about natural rights and liberty.

From Daniel Klein's Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek and Rothbard

Others have offered other concepts of liberty. In The Constitution of Liberty Hayek offers a series of passages and remarks that attempt to delineate his own idea of liberty. A brief examination of some of the passages ought to establish, as argued by many critics (Viner 1961, Hamowy 1961, 1978; Brittan 1988: 85-92; Kukathas 1989: 151-65), that Hayek’s hints about the meaning of liberty are deeply flawed.

In the book, Hayek never defines liberty in a Lockean fashion (coming
closest at 140-41). Rather, he says, “Whether [someone] is free or not [depends
on] whether somebody else has power so to manipulate the conditions as to make him act according to that person’s will rather than his own” (13). Liberty is the “independence of the arbitrary will of another” (12); it is the absence of
“coercion by other men” (19, 421).2 The state of liberty is “that condition of men
in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible in society”
(11). Each hint introduces additional terms that call out for definition.

Re: Against Fake Libertarian Clarity

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:59:07 -0000

Tim,

The argument put forth by "thick" left-libertarians isn't that the two are identical, but that they are closely connected, causally, logically, or rhetorically. See: Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin. Will here seems to be making what Charles Johnson calls a "Thickness from Grounds" argument:

Second, libertarians have many different ideas about the theoretical foundation for the nonaggression principle—that is, about the best reasons for being a libertarian. But whatever general foundational beliefs a given libertarian has, those beliefs may have some logical implications other than libertarianism alone. Thus there may be cases in which certain beliefs or commitments could be rejected without contradicting the nonaggression principle per se, but could not be rejected without logically undermining the deeper reasons that justify the nonaggression principle. Although you could consistently accept libertarianism without accepting these commitments or beliefs, you could not do so reasonably: rejecting the commitments means rejecting the proper grounds for libertarianism.

Of course, Charles speaks in NAP-compatible language, while Will does not. But the argument remains the same: on whatever grounds Will derives his libertarianism, he also derives his opposition to bigotry.

Re: Against Fake Libertarian Clarity

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:04:57 -0000

Jack,

The left-libertarian project has two components: speaking to the left (that's you) and speaking to the libertarians who do not already consider themselves left-libertarians (they are the people who want to kick Will out of libertarianism). The first component often seems easier than the second, surprisingly enough.

Re: Against Fake Libertarian Clarity

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:29:21 -0000

TGGP,

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the argument, but if I were to make a libertarian argument that by locking a door you can coerce someone, I would mention the encirclement problem and the common law solution of easements:

Suppose that the states owns all the land along the border. Then we have the same situation as one in which one person buys all the land surroundig another person’s property, thus keeping them prisoner (if they were on it at the time) or keeping them away from their proeprty (if they were off it). Since you can’t legitimately use your property in a way that interfere’s with the liberty and property of others, you are obligated to provide an easement.

Re: Against Fake Libertarian Clarity

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:33:41 -0000

Yes, this. Similar to arguments for rule utilitarianism over act utilitarianism.

Re: Failure: For Our Future

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:13:01 -0000

To paraphrase Oliver Wendall Holmes, three imbecilic, failed, inefficient U.S. automakers are enough. Time to euthanize them.

Re: Failure: For Our Future

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:21:32 -0000

You don't speak for everybody. I don't want someone to be watching me, neither an omnipotent, omniscient God nor an omnipotent, omniscient government. Both are childish fantasies.

Re: Failure: For Our Future

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:33:47 -0000

Save the candlemakers! Fuck the Sun!

Re: Failure: For Our Future

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:39:06 -0000

While we are at it, let's grow up and realize that the problems facing candlemakers and horse-and-buggy manufacturers are enormously complex and need to be handled intelligently. These industries are the source of many jobs, and providing jobs is their primary function. It's long past time to extinguish the sun and ban automobiles in order to save these jobs.

Re: Failure: For Our Future

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:27:22 -0000

Saving capitalism through socialism, on the other hand, is exactly smart.

No one will buy a car from a company in bankruptcy, even a Chapter 11. IT IS NOT AN OPTION.

What does this even mean?

I can't believe we are going to have the bailout argument over and over again. Maybe bailout proponents can give us a list of companies they consider too big too fail, before they fail, just so we know how far this bailout ideology is supposed to go? I mean, if no major company is considered small enough to fail, that sort of says all there needs to be said about killing capitalism, doesn't it? Put a fork in it, it's done.

Re: Failure: For Our Future

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:01:30 -0000

I also love the "retrain the workers" option. Can someone please tell me which industries are in desperate need of millions of workers?

Candlemakers.

Re: Failure: For Our Future

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:10:52 -0000

And if we smash five million windows, we can "create" five million new jobs as well, thereby destroying our way to prosperity.

Re: Breathtaking Capital Destruction

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:03:58 -0000

If Japan/Germany/Korea want to take from their own citizens in order to subsidize cars purchased by American consumers, I fail to see the problem from the U.S. consumers' perspective. Free stuff is cool. As long other countries are willing to give us cheaper cars than we can make ourselves, I say we take the freebies and call it a day.

Re: I’m Back

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:55:30 -0000

Mazel Tov! Any chance you will rethink your anti-breeder stance? Or at least adopt some cool Southeast Asian kids and turn them into rabid Rothbardians and/or Objectivists?

Re: The Opposite of Krabi

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:56:55 -0000

Will is the most metrosexual male I've ever met, right after Julian Sanchez.

Re: Clubs versus Social Justice

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:09:37 -0000

Libertarianism, rightly understood (i.e. as I understand it) inexorably leads to questioning and then ultimately rejecting the morality of the nation-state itself. Will is not an anarchist, so he somehow pulls off this balancing act in a way I've never fully grasped, but hey, no one is as perfect, ideologically speaking, (or as humble) as me.

Re: Clubs versus Social Justice

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:05:12 -0000

I don't understand what you think Glen got wrong. Median can indeed be less than the mean in cases where many small numbers are added to the sample (i.e. "If you've got *lots* of immigration").

Re: I’m Back

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:58:19 -0000

Hey, I did the Jew thing first. This comment thread ain't big enough for the both of us, Levy!

Re: Helping = More Options

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:53:46 -0000

The issue of human trafficking is overblown. Yes, it exists, and is wrong, insofar as it is coercive and harmful. And yes, there is certainly anecdotal evidence that it occurs. The problem is the statistical aggregate described by the term "human trafficking" is often bogus, and includes non-coercive, non-harmful cases of (often illegal) labor mobility lumped in with the coercive, harmful kind.

This is one of Kerry Howley's frequent topics of inquiry. Here she writes:

I’m inclined to see the hugely exaggerated statistics regarding human trafficking as driven by economic realities; sex slavery, thanks to evangelicals domestically and other social forces abroad, is where the money is. No one–least of all an NGO vying for that money–has an incentive to suggest that there are fewer victims than previously believed, or that the data suggests very few victims of trafficking are women sold into sex as opposed to men and boys forced into less titillating forms of labor; correct the misperception and you may shut off the tap. But clearly, there has to be some deeper will to believe among those who continue to parrot the now-discredited numbers.

In that same post she cites this Washington Post article:

Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence
U.S. Estimates Thousands of Victims, But Efforts to Find Them Fall Short

And the money quote:

Ronald Weitzer, a criminologist at George Washington University and an expert on sex trafficking, said that trafficking is a hidden crime whose victims often fear coming forward. He said that might account for some of the disparity in the numbers, but only a small amount.

"The discrepancy between the alleged number of victims per year and the number of cases they've been able to make is so huge that it's got to raise major questions," Weitzer said. "It suggests that this problem is being blown way out of proportion."

[...]

Although there have been several estimates over the years, the number that helped fuel the congressional response -- 50,000 victims a year -- was an unscientific estimate by a CIA analyst who relied mainly on clippings from foreign newspapers, according to government sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the agency's methods. Former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales told Congress last year that a much lower estimate in 2004 -- 14,500 to 17,500 a year -- might also have been overstated.

Also, the issue of human trafficking is closely tied to the issue of sex work, and so there are lots of biases and assumptions that predictably go along with any discussion of trafficking. For example, Howley often cites Laura María Agustín,

a sociologist who studies migrant sex workers. In her writings, she is critical of the conflation of the terms "human trafficking" with "prostitution" and "migration", arguing that what she calls the "rescue industry" often ascribes victim status to and thereby objectifies women who have made conscious and rational decisions to migrate. She advocates for a more nuanced study of migrant sex workers without pre-conceived notions.

Kerry interviewed Agustín for Reason here, in The Myth of the Migrant.

Kerry excerpts a piece by Agustín on the gender biases coloring our view of human trafficking here:

Single men’s decisions to travel are generally understood to evolve over time, the product of their ‘normal’ masculine ambition to get ahead through work: they are called migrants. Then there is the case of women who attempt to do the same…

It is striking that in the year 2001 women should so overwhelmingly be seen as pushed, obligated, coerced or forced when they leave home for the same reason as men: to get ahead through work. But so entrenched is the idea of women as forming an essential part of home if not actually being it themselves that they are routinely denied the agency to undertake a migration. So begins a pathetic image of innocent women torn from their homes, coerced into migrating, if not actually shanghaied or sold into slavery. This is the imagery that nowadays follows those who migrate to places where the only paid occupations available to them are in domestic service or sex work.[3] The ‘trafficking’ discourse relies on the assumption that it is better for women to stay at home rather than leave it and get into trouble; ‘trouble’ is seen as something that will irreparably damage women (who are grouped with children), while men are routinely expected to encounter and overcome it. But if one of our goals is to find a vision of globalisation in which poorer people are not constructed solely as victims, we need to recognise that strategies which seem less gratifying to some people may be successfully utilised by others.

To sound the left-libertarian note, this is yet another case where patriarchal "traditional" cultural values about the proper role of women and the moral legitimacy of sex work leads to unlibertarian conclusions: millions of dollars wasted, mostly by governments, on essentially an urban legend popularized and believed by prudish traditionalists.

Re: Helping = More Options

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:02:58 -0000

I’m inclined to see the hugely exaggerated statistics regarding human trafficking as driven by economic realities; sex slavery, thanks to evangelicals domestically and other social forces abroad, is where the money is. No one–least of all an NGO vying for that money–has an incentive to suggest that there are fewer victims than previously believed, or that the data suggests very few victims of trafficking are women sold into sex as opposed to men and boys forced into less titillating forms of labor; correct the misperception and you may shut off the tap. But clearly, there has to be some deeper will to believe among those who continue to parrot the now-discredited numbers.

In that same post she cites this Washington Post article:

Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence
U.S. Estimates Thousands of Victims, But Efforts to Find Them Fall Short

And the money quote:

Ronald Weitzer, a criminologist at George Washington University and an expert on sex trafficking, said that trafficking is a hidden crime whose victims often fear coming forward. He said that might account for some of the disparity in the numbers, but only a small amount.

"The discrepancy between the alleged number of victims per year and the number of cases they've been able to make is so huge that it's got to raise major questions," Weitzer said. "It suggests that this problem is being blown way out of proportion."

[...]

Although there have been several estimates over the years, the number that helped fuel the congressional response -- 50,000 victims a year -- was an unscientific estimate by a CIA analyst who relied mainly on clippings from foreign newspapers, according to government sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the agency's methods. Former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales told Congress last year that a much lower estimate in 2004 -- 14,500 to 17,500 a year -- might also have been overstated.

a sociologist who studies migrant sex workers. In her writings, she is critical of the conflation of the terms "human trafficking" with "prostitution" and "migration", arguing that what she calls the "rescue industry" often ascribes victim status to and thereby objectifies women who have made conscious and rational decisions to migrate. She advocates for a more nuanced study of migrant sex workers without pre-conceived notions.

Kerry interviewed Agustín for Reason here, in The Myth of the Migrant.

Kerry excerpts a piece by Agustín on the gender biases coloring our view of human trafficking here:

Single men’s decisions to travel are generally understood to evolve over time, the product of their ‘normal’ masculine ambition to get ahead through work: they are called migrants. Then there is the case of women who attempt to do the same…

It is striking that in the year 2001 women should so overwhelmingly be seen as pushed, obligated, coerced or forced when they leave home for the same reason as men: to get ahead through work. But so entrenched is the idea of women as forming an essential part of home if not actually being it themselves that they are routinely denied the agency to undertake a migration. So begins a pathetic image of innocent women torn from their homes, coerced into migrating, if not actually shanghaied or sold into slavery. This is the imagery that nowadays follows those who migrate to places where the only paid occupations available to them are in domestic service or sex work.[3] The ‘trafficking’ discourse relies on the assumption that it is better for women to stay at home rather than leave it and get into trouble; ‘trouble’ is seen as something that will irreparably damage women (who are grouped with children), while men are routinely expected to encounter and overcome it. But if one of our goals is to find a vision of globalisation in which poorer people are not constructed solely as victims, we need to recognise that strategies which seem less gratifying to some people may be successfully utilised by others.

Re: “I pledge to be a servant to our President…”

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:57:08 -0000

You forgot the part about the Bilderbergers and the the extraterrestrial prison warder reptilians from the constellation Draco. Addendum made!

Re: On Celestial Teapots and FSMs

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:24:12 -0000

Hence their illegitimacy.

Re: The Wit and Wisdom of Nick Gillespie

Micha Ghertner — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:30:32 -0000

Aww man, I miss the Teaser. Especially the Boaz firing prank.