A while back I wrote:
It is astonishing how often I have arguments about environmental issues, and a few others, in which I state a belief that the political and economic realities mean that some pet solution won't happen, and am rewarded with an angry/exasperated "Well, then how do you plan to fix the problem?" It is as if they believed that to state a problem, is also to imply a solution.There are plenty of problems in the world, from unrequited love to people with stubbornly obnoxious beliefs, that I have no plans to fix because the solutions, if there are any, seem self-evidently worse than the problems they would replace. Yet many people seem to believe that if I refuse to state such a plan, or agree to theirs, it must be because I don't want to solve the problem--that I hate people who are unlucky in love, or the environment, or at the very least selfishly wish to continue harming same--rather than from any honest belief that sometimes life's a bugger and there's not much you can do about it.
Julian Sanchez has come up with a more pithy name for this phenomenon: the care bear stare.
For those of you who didn't grow up (or have small children) in the 80s, the reference at the close of the previous post is to the cartoon Care Bears. The Care Bear Stare was a sort of deus ex machina the magical furballs could employ when faced with some insuperable obstacle: They'd line up together and emit a glowing manifestation of their boundless caring, which seemed capable of solving just about any problem.In politics, Matt Yglesias has identified the neocon's version of the Care Bear Stare, which he's dubbed the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics. It holds that, like a Green Lantern's power ring, the American military can produce just about any effect imaginable if only the Will of the American People is strong enough. When any foreign intervention fails, this is proof that our will was insufficient, presumably due to the malign influence of fifth columnists in the media.
The left, of course, has its own version, which can be seen in claims that we know perfectly well how to solve problem X, if only we cared enough or had the political will to address it. A common variant holds that some vital function can't be left to the market, since only government can guarantee the right result, presumably by putting the word "guarantee" somewhere in the relevant legislation.
The left, of course, has its own version, which can be seen in claims that we know perfectly well how to solve problem X, if only we cared enough or had the political will to address it. A common variant holds that some vital function can't be left to the market, since only government can guarantee the right result, presumably by putting the word "guarantee" somewhere in the relevant legislation.
Unlike the Green Lantern Theory, the first of these propositions seems unarguably true, at least in some instances.
By way of example, if I recall correctly, the proprietrix here supports reducing greenhouse gas emissions by means of a carbon tax (with offsetting tax cuts to make it revenue neutral). Indeed, that is a position that vast numbers of economists hold. Is it really so silly for me to observe that we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we only had the political will to enact a carbon tax?
The second proposition is a variant of nyah-nyah-liberals-want-the-government-to-run-everything, and it isn't worth addressing.
Well, I think you are missing a rather large middle ground. No, we cannot solve all of our environmental problems. But that doesn't mean we say "Sometimes life's a bugger." There is a disturbing trend with environmental issues to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Whenever someone proposes something that could ameliorate the effects of global warming, someone else will begin to point out all the flaws in the proposal. The common response is then to say "So let's do nothing." We've become paralyzed by the inability to recognize that systems don't have to be perfect to be worth pursuing. We don't have the luxury to only pursue the perfect, so let's pursue the good.
I mean, look, you don't have to employ the Care Bear Stare to support government programs that you think can help solve social problems. Sanchez ignores the possibility that a program could both fail to completely solve the problem and still improve the situation. And I think there's a logical turn that's missing here: if a solution is being proposed for a problem, we know there's already imperfections in the current system. When a solution is proposed, and is shot down because it contains imperfections, all you are really doing is privileging the imperfections that already exist.
Take health care. Most people agree that it is a problem that 47 million Americans have no health coverage. I, for one, support universal coverage provided by the government. A libertarian response might be to say "That would increase inefficiency." Which is probably true. But if you say "That isn't a guarantee of solving the problem, so let's no do it," you are only privileging the problem that already exists.
The devil is always going to be in the details. For any problem, you're going to have to weigh the various pros and cons of proposed solutions and decide whether the negative impact to the public good is overwhelmed by the positives. These will necessarily be contentious arguments, filled with ambiguity and muddle. They can't be dismissed with cute blogger memes like "the Care Bear Stare".
An old environmental economist friend of mine had a saying,
"If the price is deeemed to high,
Let the little fishies die."
Sometimes, it is better to accept a worse environment in some regard so that resources can be used more effectively elsewhere. Had the author stopped at this sentiment, his article would have been fine.
The inclusion of this statement:
"A common variant holds that some vital function can't be left to the market, since only government can guarantee the right result,"
is bizarre. Even libertarians agree that there are situations where negative externalities are not readily handled by the marketplace, requiring government intervention. Those externalities are found frequently in resources held in common, the most prominent example of which is the environment.
alkali,
And if our staggeringly high carbon tax miraculously cuts our carbon emissions by an inconceivable 75%, but China doubles their emissions, how does our mighty political will and righteous caring solve that problem?
Troops? Our mighty diplomatic powers that have so successfully compelled China to do the other things we want it to?
I think that you and Julian are taking an overemotional response and providing an overemotional counterresponse, neither of which are productive. You said something pithy and correct buried in your post:
"There are plenty of problems in the world, from unrequited love to people with stubbornly obnoxious beliefs, that I have no plans to fix because the solutions, if there are any, seem self-evidently worse than the problems they would replace."*
* Of course, the "self-evidently" part is you being you: uninterested in empirics and facts, unwilling to do research, playing an economist when you are not one. But the rest is a very intelligent point.
There is an "expected cost" to certain problems, like global warming. That expected cost would, in theory, factor in future values going on into infinity, it would factor in cultural values to human and nonhuman life, it would factor in the actual odds of particular events occurring, and it would factor in our general risk tolerance. One can compare that to the "expected cost" of certain solutions. If someone is up front in admitting that global warming is a problem, but that no solution is reasonably calculated to fix it at lower cost, one can be up front that letting the problem continue (either for now or forever), so long as one is transparent about the whole process, including the inputs on both sides.**
** And no, I don't mean formula it out and use ks and ys and xs.
Um, Justin, what research are you familiar with into solving the problems of unrequited love and obnoxious beliefs? I mean, research that's legal to conduct in the united states, anyway?
The first few of these comments are stunning in their unintentional irony.
Really, Megan? You were being serious about that issue? I thought the point of your post was your first sentence:
"It is astonishing how often I have arguments about environmental issues, and a few others, in which I state a belief that the political and economic realities mean that some pet solution won't happen, and am rewarded with an angry/exasperated "Well, then how do you plan to fix the problem?"
But your answer is often off - I often give advice to my friends, and often that advice takes the form of either "suck it up" or "let it go" - but usually when I give that advice I think about and rely upon empirical information - mainly my own past experience, and those of my friends. I don't just think about it in a theoretical and logical way.
As to how you can use empirical research to deal with your FIRST sentence - i.e. - problems concerning "political and economic realities" - empirical research does play a historically important role, of course.
Regarding argument form and burdens of proof:
Churchill allegedly said that democracy is the worst form of government yet devised, except for all the others. In other words, the fact that Plan A is worse than some imagined perfect state does not mean that is worse than any given choice available to the chooser. In any policy argument involving criticism of Plan A, therefore, it’s appropriate to ask for recommendations for a substitute plan. The challenge is not designed to refute the criticisms of Plan A, but to put them into perspective. Plan A may be the optimal available alternative regardless of the merits of the criticisms arrayed against it.
On the flip side, when confronted with the challenge to come up with a better plan, I have the opportunity to clarify my views. If I don’t have a better plan to offer, or have no opinion about the relative merits of the proposed plans, I can humbly admit it. “Hey, I don’t mean to say that your idea isn’t the right thing to do, and I’m sorry if I sounded that way. I just didn’t want you to be blindsided by some of the fallout that may result. But it’s totally your call.”
Or, if I do have a better plan, I can state that. “Oh Julie, I’m sooo sorry. Mike doesn’t know what he’s losing. But honestly, shooting him is a bad idea. No, I don’t have any brilliant ways to make the pain go away. He ain’t worth it, and you’re gonna be better off nursing your pain in your living room than nursing your pain in a prison cell.” I don’t have to claim to have the optimal plan in order to demonstrate the weakness of a rival plan; I merely have to point out the relative merits of one potential plan (including the plan of maintaining the status quo) relative to a rival plan.
In sum, people who criticize Plan A needn’t bear the burden to support an alternative plan, but should forthrightly acknowledge that they make no pretense of doing so. People who want to persuade an audience that some alternative plan (including maintenance of the status quo) is superior to Plan A should be prepared to bear the burden of justifying that position. People who criticize should strive not to be defensive when asked to offer an alternative recommendation, and should not expect an audience to embrace Plan B simply because of criticisms of Plan A.
And don't forget about the Law of Unintended Consequences. The welfare laws were a good example of this. Although enacted with good intent, they directly caused the breakup of minority families, causing many fatherless households, and several generations of folks who don't hold the values necessary to succeed in the society of the majority culture.
So just because a problem has a "cure" which might not be at first worse than the problem it is curing, oftentimes it is.
Which is why libertarians prefer the market solution to most problems, because unlike government solutions, market solutions make self-corrections much quicker, taking into account those unforeseen and undesirable consequences.
Bleeding heart statists don't like being accused of the Care Bear Stare!
That means it's a keeper.
...playing an economist when you are not one.
I'm interested in what is required to be a real economist as opposed to someone who merely play acts is if he or she were an economist. I've a good idea what it takes to be recognized as a real attorney -- you pass the bar exam and are admitted to the bar. To be a CPA, you pass the exam, get the requisite supervised experience, and obtain your certificate from the state. To be a medical doctor, you graduate from medical school, etc., etc.
To be a real economist? I thought you just needed to think like an economist. Is there some sort of certification/sanitation process that stamps stars on the bellies of the real economists?
I agree with most of what nobody.really and Justin said. Megan_McArdle: If you are really in the circumstance you described in the first quote, all you have to do is say:
"I wouldn't do anything because I believe any cure is worse than the disease."
See? That didn't require a long rant about different premises and the Care Bears, now, did it?
IMHO, it's a legitimate question to ask what you intend to do about a problem, and "nothing" can be a valid answer.
***
That said, let's talk about carbon for a minute. If indeed carbon causes the problems people claim, there's a simple solution, robust across all complications: don't restrict carbon emission amounts, but place a tax on it sufficient to pay for sinking enough of it out of the air the with most efficient technology available. Markets would incorporate this carbon externality with minimal complication for businesses and individuals, and it wouldn't matter if other countries crank up their emissions because you can arbitrarily raise tariffs on them and/or sink out more carbon.
Of course, that doesn't solve the *real* problem people are after when they complain about global warming (capitalism), so obviously no one wants to do that...
Not to worry, I'm sure there are plans in the works to form the Intergovernmental Panel on Unrequited Love as well as the National Associate for the Advancement of Short People.
To be a real economist? I thought you just needed to think like an economist. Is there some sort of certification/sanitation process that stamps stars on the bellies of the real economists?
Indeed there is. You need to know somewhat advanced mathematics (very advanced for a liberal arts person, fairly simple for a physicist) in order to understand irrelevant concepts like tangential hyperplanes and why Brower's fixed point theorem is critical to the proof of general equilibrium.
Once you've done these things you can then forget all of them if you choose. It falls somewhere between a barrier to entry and a tribal hazing ritual (like a Masai boy having to kill a lion).
Rex's comment @ 10:38 is a beautiful example of what I like to call the Invisible Handjob Theory of Libertarian Politics. This is a phenomenon in which libertarians exhibit a sensible, rational skepticism toward the naive assumptions of liberals or conservatives, but then immediately switch off their rational skepticism and lavish onanistic affection on their own naive assumptions about the market.
This comment illustrates the classic three paragraph format of libertarian political analysis.
(1) A semi-accurate anecdote illustrating how government planning sometimes goes awry.
(2) A banal, but generally clear-headed statement criticizing the questionable assumptions that are often made by non-libertarians.
(3) A smug, patronizing truth claim about the superiority of libertarianism that contains a questionable assumptions about the market.
LaFollette Progressive, it's fun to be snide but not particularly illuminating. If you think Rex made a questionable assumption about markets why don't you show us what is wrong with his assumption. Otherwise you are just preaching to the choir, people who don't like markets will nod at your characterization and people who agree with Rex will dismiss you as a jackass.
There's likely a fair bit of material that most people could agree is essential to being an economist. I mean, you really ought to know how to multiply. You probably also need at least passing familiarity with the popular economic systems - capitalism, communism, etc. And you need to know the vocabulary. You wouldn't get far as an economist if you didn't know what was meant by an interest rate.
As for the Care Bear Stare... short story. Once, at a previous job, our organization had come up with the mother of all systems for itemizing employee skillsets. At the training, we were asked to brainstorm the essential requirements of such a system, presumably so that the trainer could then show us how the system already implemented all of the ideas we would come up with. And it did, for many of the requirements we thought up - it was thorough, unbiased, supported periodic updates, and so forth.
In fact, it exemplified every virtue our group put forth, except the one I brought up - easy. I said it had to be easy enough to do that it would actually BE done; if updating your skill set record required two weeks of testing and poking in numbers, no one would do it. The trainer actually made a point of saying it would require diligent effort; the one thing it would not be, was "easy".
Today, I could probably mention that system around the employees at that organization, and they probably wouldn't know what I was talking about.
Today, I feel my theory is even more justified, and applicable to any proposed project. It doesn't matter how noble the cause is. If it requires long term investment of human energy, then it will require a way to make that energy easy to invest. It's only sorta hard to get 200 people to clean up the town park; post a few fliers around, organize the bake sale, make a day out of it, and it's done. It's doing it every day that's hard to the point of unsustainable.
So, I'd hoped this went without saying, but the CBS is not meant to be a claim about every situation ever. The military really can do some things if we're prepared to commit to them, and the government really can solve some problems if we're prepared to focus on them.
So I'm the only person wondering why Julian Sanchez has such a clear memory of the Care Bears. Hell, I was part of their target demographic back then, and even I thought it was too lame to watch.
George, given the relative distribution of libertarians and non-libertarians in America, I think it's a bit odd for you to suggest that the onus falls on those who don't accept libertarian truth claims to provide evidence against them. Additionally, given the relative distribution among Megan McArdle's blog readers, it's odder still to suggest that I'm "preaching to the choir."
Whether or not you believe it, the world is not neatly divided into people who think "market solutions" make self-corrections by "taking into account... unforeseen and undesirable consequences" and people who "don't like markets." There are a great many people who appreciate markets while also appreciating the limitations inherent to asking supply and demand to perform "problem solving." Markets don't take things into account, because they lack self-consciousness. This should be fairly obvious.
Julian's a smart guy, and he's making a sound point in a humorous way. Some problems in the world will work themselves out over time with no state interference in the market. Other problems simply shouldn't be "solved" because the proposed solutions will generate worse outcomes than doing nothing. There's often a good case to be made for doing nothing.
But doing nothing isn't "problem solving." Those who fetishize markets tend to ignore the role of planning in creating a stable environment for a healthy marketplace, mitigating the negative externalities of competition, etc. This reductio ad absurdum theory of capitalism found it's true calling in the CPA government of Iraq, where the government dumped a bunch of money and young free market ideologues on Baghdad and attempted to unleash the problem-solving powers of the market, with predictable results.
Take THAT George. More people agree with me than you, and that means I'm right.
Now I personally disagree with any form of federal control as far as environmental matters are concerned. I feel it should be left to markets and state regulations. However, as I understand it the government entity that does in fact hold sovereignty over the atmosphere is the FAA. Would it not be their province, as it is technically their property that is being compromised, to regulate emissions, carbon taxing, etc.? I am curious about this and would like to know if anyone else has any further information.
This reductio ad absurdum theory of capitalism found it's true calling in the CPA government of Iraq, where the government dumped a bunch of money and young free market ideologues on Baghdad and attempted to unleash the problem-solving powers of the market, with predictable results.
Yeah! And Russia implemented TRUE communism!
Mike, I've been arguing with people on the internet for years, and those are easily two of the most pointless non-sequitur responses I've ever received.
Freddy wrote I, for one, support universal coverage provided by the government. A libertarian response might be to say "That would increase inefficiency." Which is probably true. But if you say "That isn't a guarantee of solving the problem, so let's no do it," you are only privileging the problem that already exists.
But here's the question; is universal coverage the best allocation of an individual's resources? Would it be better for some people to go without coverage beyond the poor, defacto coverage offered by emergency rooms and instead put their money towards gym memberships and the time to exercise, better food, mold free housing or more time with their kids? And if not, who decides that?
There are times when a market has externalities so it doesn't produce the best solution. But the problem with mandates is that they tend to priveledge the most visible problems as opposed to those which individuals themselves consider most important.
given the relative distribution of libertarians and non-libertarians in America, I think it's a bit odd for you to suggest that the onus falls on those who don't accept libertarian truth claims to provide evidence against them.
This seems absurd to me. Given what is known about the pervasiveness of cognitive and social biases, it seems that it is more often than not the popular views which are the least critically examined, and therefore the ones that bear the burden of justification.
Markets don't take things into account, because they lack self-consciousness. This should be fairly obvious.
This can be viewed as incorrect in a couple of different ways, depending upon your definition of consciousness:
1)Markets can be seen as self-conscious, in that prices and allocation of resources exhibit an incredible degree of coordination - various markets interlace and interact with other markets continuously - they don't just churn along oblivious to relevant aspects of other markets or internal states of being.
2)"Markets" of course are not human, and cannot be conscious in any manner. Market outcomes are, however, the result of humans. Humans do take things into account, and the markets reflect the coordination of all this individual, local, and often non-articulable information and knowledge.
See Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Society and similar works. This is something which no form of government organization can possibly come close to doing.
But doing nothing isn't "problem solving."
"Doing nothing" at the government level can be "problem solving" if leaving the issue to voluntary means will better 'solve' the problem than any form of government intervention. Many "problems" such as unemployment, worker safety, and the like fall into this category (regardless of any attempts by certain political groups to claim credit for them).
Those who fetishize markets tend to ignore the role of planning in creating a stable environment for a healthy marketplace, mitigating the negative externalities of competition, etc. This reductio ad absurdum theory of capitalism found it's true calling in the CPA government of Iraq, where the government dumped a bunch of money and young free market ideologues on Baghdad and attempted to unleash the problem-solving powers of the market, with predictable results.
This "stable environment" does not necessarily require government planning. Indeed, it is likely that social, cultural, and legal institutions are far more important to creating such an environment.
(and Iraq seems to me more like an example of planning: previously it was centrally planned by the elites - destroying any innate, bottom-up stabilizing institutions; and after the invasion we see top-down imposition of rules by different elites who claim to know better how to run society).
LaFollette wrote: Those who fetishize markets
And right there is where your argument (and not just yours, it has company) takes a high-speed turn and then floors the accellerator in the direction of the outer stratosphere.
Most people who value the market as a primary means of best allocating scarce resources do so not because they "fetishize" it, but because they recognize -- just like the old saw about democracy -- that markets, in spite of their problems, generally have the best track record of getting the job done.
Contrawise, what we seem to have among the modern progressive movement is a tendency to fetishize market failure. Some group of people haven't been provided with something that is nominally available? Why, that must be a market failure! Nevermind the context of the situation or whether a functional market was even allowed to exist in the first place; it's market failure, and by extension, an immediate justification for any level of necessary government intervention or takeover, because the market failed.
This rings hollow to folks who possess a sufficient grasp of history to recognize that while the government is generally the best means to regulate markets and protect a commons, and sometimes it does need to step in and address a market failure, the market itself is the foundation of all successful western societies. If the goose lays golden eggs, but not as equitably as you might like, then sure -- it may sometimes be necessary to reorient the goose now and then so that the gold is distributed more equitably. But the sane default position is NEVER "Whoops...market failure! Let's shoot the goose and replace it with the National Bureau of Gold Laying."
Take the classic issue of US healthcare. Already in this thread we have Freddie chiming in to wave around the usual talisman of 47 million uninsured Americans, and claiming that it's a "problem" that "everyone" agrees needs solving, apparently by massive restructuring of the system to something more government-oriented. Because, y'know, the market has failed!
Except that it hasn't and the figure itself is flawed; first remove 10m illegals (whose mere presence represents a more fundamental government failure, the policing of the governed borders), and another multi-million portion who qualify for Medicaid but haven't applied. Then knock it down another 18 million for people who are in the upper half of income earners and are, if not rationally uninsured, not grievously threatened by normal medical expenses. A few million here, a few million there, and suddenly your talking real population deductions -- specifically, maybe 15 million American citizens who are actually up the creek in regards to healthcare options. Is 15/300 a problem? Sure, I can go with that. Is it the same kind of problem requiring the same kind of solutions as a 47/300 proglem? Not even close.
And this is before we get into the fact that a real healthcare market has not functioned in the US for over fifty years, due to a wide range of government distortions at both the federal and state levels -- which may, in turn, directly explain a few of those 15m and many of the 18m.
Do we get an open and honest review of this from the vocal voices in favor of larger government control over healthcare? No, just the religious chiming of market failure! and loud applause from the fetishizing claque.
There are times when a market has externalities so it doesn't produce the best solution.
That doesn't necessarily follow. Markets with externalities can often produce the best obtainable solution.
One has to keep in mind that any democratic system with anything short of unanimous consent is a machine for churning out externalities. The costs and benefits of the minority positions are external to the calculus of the majority.
Even with unanimous consent there is the issue of agenda-setting, where the agenda-setters impose external costs on non-agenda-setters.
"Government failure" is far more endemic and severe than "market failure." Utopia is not an option.
Mike, I've been arguing with people on the internet for years, and those are easily two of the most pointless non-sequitur responses I've ever received.
Well, to each their own, but before we give out that award, allow me to nominate the following:
1) There are more liberals than libertarians. Therefore, liberals don't have to defend their positions.
2) Capitalism doesn't work. Just look at Iraq!
If I had actually said either of those things, or even said anything remotely close to those things, you might have a point, Mike.
Ryan said:There are times when a market has externalities so it doesn't produce the best solution.
Bill said: That doesn't necessarily follow.
Granted, but my wording doesn't indicate that it necessarily follows, just that it can.
It may be too expensive to plug an externality, so a market is the best solution. But if a good is too cheap (with unwilling bystanders shouldering the cost), typically it will be over-consumed.
"Given what is known about the pervasiveness of cognitive and social biases, it seems that it is more often than not the popular views which are the least critically examined, and therefore the ones that bear the burden of justification."
This is a fair point. However, several people here are making grand, sweeping claims about the superiority of markets as if they're established facts that everyone should accept without question. These claims are highly questionable, and are in fact not widely accepted. Obviously, I'm willing to defend my position, but I don't think I'm under some obligation to write a cogent rebuttal to Hayek's life work in order to point out that George's truth claim contains a questionable assumption.
Market outcomes are, however, the result of humans. Humans do take things into account, and the markets reflect the coordination of all this individual, local, and often non-articulable information and knowledge... This is something which no form of government organization can possibly come close to doing.
This is a much better statement than the one you're defending, but I still think you're going much too far with the "all" in the second sentence and the "no form of government could possibly come close." I don't think I'm breaking any new theoretical ground by pointing out that people do not always act rationally, they sometimes act on bad information and false assumptions, they are occasionally subject to panic and wild fluctuation, etc. Additionally, market outcomes favor profits for investors over the needs of people who have no money to invest-- two goals which are broadly compatible but by no means identical.
None of these are reasons to dispense with markets and replace them with a Politburo, but all of them are reasons to question whether most of the decision-making in society should be outsourced to undirected forces of nature.
I don't really have time to respond to "anony-mouse" in full, so I'll just say that your critique of progressivism contains some truth, but your apologia for the health care sector as a non-market-failure is extremely unconvincing. It's extremely difficult to make the case that supply and demand are the best way to allocate life-prolonging services for people who can't afford them. Many smart people have tried, but that's an uphill climb.
Just to be clear, I didn't intend the "fetishize" dig to apply to every single person on earth who broadly supports free markets. But as with porn, I know it when it see it.
"Which is why libertarians prefer the market solution to most problems, because unlike government solutions, market solutions make self-corrections much quicker, taking into account those unforeseen and undesirable consequences."
How does this translate to "(3) A smug, patronizing truth claim about the superiority of libertarianism that contains a questionable assumptions about the market."???
I didn't claim that libertarians hold a monopoly on the truth, nor did I make any claim about the superiority of libertarians. And I didn't refer to "markets", but rather to "market solutions", and the only feature I stated about market solutions was to say that they make self-corrections much quicker than government solutions. How is that a questionable assumption?
I think that there is more than one person who needs to read posts a little more carefully.
I don't know what your definition of 'solution' is, but the 'market solution' to bad meat and meat preparation was to do nothing for a rather long time . . . at which point the governmnet stepped in and regulated it.
So it seems as if your claim is provably false, i.e., your assumption is quite definitely questionable.
Only on the internet can you have a flame war started by the frickin' Care Bears!!!
Scent O' Violets,
I assume you refer to Upton Sinclair, Muckraker's expose "The Jungle". Roosevelt responded to the avowed Socialist's piece, himself an evolving progressive, by having his social worker colleagues inspect the Chicago facilities about which he wrote. But not before responding personally to Sinclair in a series of letters. If we are to assume that his account is accurate, and not simply sensationalized in order to lift himself from poverty and a modest pulp writer's stipend to fame and fortune, it probably resonated on a deeper level with Roosevelt who replied in one letter that the "arrogant and selfish greed on the part of the capitalist" must be eradicated. There seemed to have been a more thorough agenda at work here.
Actually, there's a fairly long history there, although you're quite correct about Sinclair and his roll in sensationalizing unsanitary food practices (ironically, Sinclair himself said that this was not the raison de tare for the novel, but rather, making a case for the necessity of Socialism. But I don't have any primary cites for this.) Here's a nice little summary of the history of the FDA:
http://www.fda.gov/opacom/backgrounders/miles.html
I might add that it's not just in the regulation of product safety that government has produced superior outcomes, or even the more general venue of regulation. Most people are aware of the fact that the 'free market' here in the U.S. has delivered inferior broadband services (inferior in cost, speed, and availability) in comparison with more 'socialized' approaches employed in other countries. Even Megan concedes this, but says something to the effect that she suspects 'in ten years' the situation will be reversed. Ten years does seem like rather a long time for an optimal market solution.
No, the idea that one can get away with saying that 'the market' just naturally generates superior outcomes by any of a variety of metrics is just a conservative shibboleth.
That's not to say that it doesn't do so a great deal of the time of course. But there's no particular theoretical reason why this is so as a general case.
"ironically, Sinclair himself said that this was not the raison de tare for the novel, but rather, making a case for the necessity of Socialism. But I don't have any primary cites for this"
Yeah that's true. He was intending to highlight the horrific and unsafe working conditions,but the unsanitary food got all the attention. He later said of the book "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit in in the stomach"
Of course libertarians don't need the care bear stare or anything like it. For every problem they just say "let the market fix it" and when the market doesn't doesn't even address the problem to begin with, "well government is inefficient." Better to just ignore the problem entirely.
There's been an ongoing issue on this blog which to me is quite puzzling:
And then there's this weirdy:
I feel like I've stumbled into Bizzaro World; most everybody I work and associate with on a daily basis, science and math departments, operate under the assumption that the person making the claim bears the burden of proof. Always. It doesn't matter whether the claim is some specific case of market deregulation, the color of the sky or the infinitude of the primes. No matter how trivial or obvious the claim is, it's the person making it that has to defend it.
Now, obviously, we don't go around demanding that people prove every little assumption they make, e.g., the world is round, the sky is blue, etc. This would be time consuming, no matter how easily accesible the proofs were. But as a matter of fact, this is the way scientists and mathematicians operate, and as a matter of course, even if we don't ask for proof, or proof is not asked of us for any given claim, nevertheless we are prepared to give it. Einstein didn't say anything to the effect of well, prove my theory's not true, it's on everyone else to prove my theory wrong, not me to prove it's right. To name a trivial and obvious example. I trust we can all see why this makes sense.
But in a lot of these discussions here and elsewhere, this assumption seems not to hold. Why is that, other than the obvious advantages it gives to claimants. Is it just a general ignorance? Or are the rules somehow different once you wander out of the fields of math and science?
Some people may object that it's rough on the person making the claim, that it's 'not fair', that there are unequal hurdles, that it's somehow 'biased'. But so what? The point is not to be nice, but to have very tough standards as to what is accepted as truth.
Our mighty diplomatic powers that have so successfully compelled China to do the other things we want it to? - Geoff
You mean like get tough on factories that put lead paint on toys, and start seriously inspecting exports? Yeah, too bad our efforts to get them to change that are...uh...working.
There's this notion among a lot of people that China is this Big Bad Evil Dragon that will just never ever do anything good no matter what. This notion is mysteriously unaffected by the fact that in the last 30 years, China has rehabilitated the victims of the Cultural Revolution, instituted a market economy and given people property rights, opened up its university system to Western science, history and philosophy, and on and on. China does good things when those things are in China's interests to do -- which pretty much describes the US too.
Reducing greenhouse emissions isn't some nice charity effort we're engaged in because we're such sweet people; it's something we're doing so that we don't drown our cities and turn our farmlands into deserts. China has more low-lying coastland and delta than the US does: Shanghai, Shenzhen, much of Fujian, Dalian etc. all stand to drown within the next century if greenhouse emissions aren't reduced. China has shown itself adept at rapidly altering mass economic and social behavior once the Party decides it's a national priority to do so. (See: one-child policy.) And Chinese attitudes on international questions are profoundly influenced by concerns of prestige and reputation. Chinese thinking on energy policy may take some years to shift, but it will shift, and the more the US does to play along with the rest of the world on the greenhouse gas issue, the faster China will join the consensus. It's easy to say "Oh, but the Chinese will always do the bad thing, so what's the point of my trying to be good" -- it's an easy excuse for bad behavior. But that's basically lazy sinophobia and nothing else.
Or are the rules somehow different once you wander out of the fields of math and science?
There is more to it than this, but I'll take a swipe.
Very few people have strongly held views about issues in the natural sciences (or applied fields such as heart surgery) beyond their training.
Many people have strongly held views in the social/political arena, despite no serious study in the field.
If you are incorrect about some important aspects of physics or chemistry, you could very well die or suffer permanent injury - feedback on important issues is pretty strong. If you are completely incorrect about some important aspects of political science or economics, then because of the nature of collective action your life is probably almost exactly the same as if you had correct views - there is no selective pressure.
In fact, in a democratic society, political entrepreneurs are likely to encourage biased or popular incorrect views - the politician who says 'you are right, let's solve that problem' is going to be more popular than the politician who says 'no, you don't understand opportunity cost and compensating wage differentials.'
An economist might say that being well-informed and well-studied on social and political issues is a public good, and likely to be under-invested in.
So, one would expect the status-quo views and policies to be incredibly biased. Policy reflects the whim of the median voter, and the median voter doesn't know much about international trade, but probably has a strong opinion about it, and candidates for office will reinforce it.
A different angle: political theory has to start from some position. You can presume that ultimate rights lie with the state and that individuals are means to the end of serving the state (or some other abstract entity, like 'social justice', or a 'social welfare function'), in which case people are just means to an end, government control is the status-quo and individual rights and liberties need be justified.
If you are like me, you might give the presumption to individual liberty and nonviolence, in which case coercive activities must bear the burden of justification. This view might have some appeal to a natural scientist (as I was for many years), as individuals are observable and 'less abstract' than the alternatives.
If you are truly interested in other aspects of the fundamental differences between the natural and social sciences, I recommend Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science or his essay, The Facts of the Social Sciences, in Individualism and the Economic Order.
Some rather fundamental questions for your consideration regarding AGW.
1) What is the ideal average global temperature? 2) What is the ideal atmospheric CO2 concentration?
3) By what percentage must AGW emissions be reduced to achieve the ideal?
4) Over what time period must that reduction occur?
5) Who will convince everyone to do what must be done?
Since the science is settled, the answers to these questions should now be obvious to all. Remember, by the way, that this is a global issue and thus is amenable only to a global solution.
As to the epistemological issues:
I feel like I've stumbled into Bizzaro World; most everybody I work and associate with on a daily basis, science and math departments, operate under the assumption that the person making the claim bears the burden of proof. Always.
ScentOfViolets, I don't think this is quite correct. In the case of arguments over the theory of evolution, for example, a scientist who assumes the validity of the theory doesn't generally feel that any individual effort on his part to defend his assumption is required, since the evidence for the theory is simply the vast and diffuse grounding of the entire field of biology; it's the backers of intelligent design who need to substantiate their case. I think most libertarians think of the superiority of private, market mechanisms over bureaucratic government mechanisms in the same way. They feel that the failure of Communism and the little price-supply curve with the deadweight loss region highlighted in yellow prove their case sufficiently, and they think it's a trivial extension to go from "Communism failed" to "universal health insurance is wrong".
What troubles me in libertarian styles of argument isn't so much the burden of proof issue as the rejection of actual evidence. There is a non-falsifiable cast to libertarians' faith in the superiority of the market. Select any case of market failure -- health insurance and care, electricity-market privatization in California, the Great Depression, etc. -- and libertarians will find a way to explain that the real problem is too much government intervention. In health insurance, the problem is Medicare and Medicaid; in California electric markets, it was regulations preventing distributors from also being generators (an absolutely critical regulation without which collusion sends prices through the roof); in the Depression, it was Smoot-Hawley and government control of the money supply. Liberals are generally willing to admit evidence of clear market successes in areas previously dominated by government as proof that market solutions are superior in that area. (See the breakup of Ma Bell, for instance.) But for many libertarians, it seems that no evidence of government success could ever constitute proof that government solutions are superior in that area; instead, the market is always the hidden hero, and the real reason for the problem always somehow traces back to government. It's a style of argument that feels like Marxist apologia.
Golly, brooksfoe, what do you think caused the Depression?
I will grant that government is clearly superior at stacking corpses to the horizon.
1) What is the ideal average global temperature?
Ideal for whom, or for what? People? Fauna? Periwinkles?
Honestly, who knows? I'm sure we'll find out eventually, though.
2) What is the ideal atmospheric CO2 concentration?
What's the level where you have trouble breathing? Yeah, it's a little below that.
3) By what percentage must AGW emissions be reduced to achieve the ideal?
Your guess is better than mine.
4) Over what time period must that reduction occur?
See above.
5) Who will convince everyone to do what must be done?
I don't know. Maybe if someone tied you down on a beach where the sea level is expected to rise decades hence if AGW occurs, and if you drown, you'll be convinced? That would be an amusing little experiment.
I will grant that government is clearly superior at stacking corpses to the horizon.
After reading this, I kinda wish it were a little bit better.
Yeah, Immoralist, your sentiment is pretty representative of the statist.
your sentiment is pretty representative of the statist.
I'm only a statist when the right people are in power. Otherwise, I'm a bomb-throwing anarchist, and a lawyer.
Yes, yet another common sentiment of the statist, and lawyer. Or thug, to be redundant.
Immoralist,
Don't you think it might be handy to know the answers to the five questions I posed above before a multi-trillion dollar plan to avert the coming AGW cataclysm is developed and implemented?
The answers to those questions define the goal; the plan lays out the approach to achieving it.
"A goal without a plan is just a wish.", Antoine de St. Exupery
"A plan without a goal is insanity.", Ed Reid
Could it be that there's some causal relationship between libertarians' unwillingness to believe in the direness of anthropogenic global warming, and their distaste for government action? Is it possible that their judgment as to whether it's a serious problem is influenced by their reluctance to have to do anything about it?
Nah -- gotta be coincidence. Just like my conviction that it's not going to rain is completely unrelated to my reluctance to get off my ass and close the upstairs windows.
brooksfoe,
Do what, how, to accomplish what, by when? (who, what, when, where, why) [In your case, at least you have a goal established and a plan to execute it, even if you are unwilling to execute the plan.]
NOTE: You will lose all credibility, with me at least, if you parrot back the silly Kyoto mantra: "7% below 1990 levels by 2012".
"You've got to be careful, if you don't know where you're going, because you might end up someplace else.", Yogi Berra, American philosopher
There is no free market in broadband services. I just "switched" from Roadrunner to Comcast. Rather, I was switched because Comcast becaome our local providor. I could switch to DSL with AT&T or try one of a few other options but there is hardly a market in broadband service. It's a highly regulated "market" with legal monopolies.
It may not be possible to create a market, though, but I'm not sure how broadband services availability supports or refuts a market driven v. government run solution to anything else.
Immoralist... your lack of any clear answers to the queestions on AGW really makes me doubt that we're ready to commit trillions of dollars on programs that may or may not even be effective in stopping it.
Stopping AGW has tremendous costs and will use resources that could be used in other ways to improve life in more immediate and certain ways. Committing all those resources to programs that are of unknown likelihood to produce uncertain results seems reckless.
China may have improved, but they are still producing lead-soaked toys, questionably chemicals, oppression in Tibet, threats in Taiwan, and lots of roadblocks in dealing with Iran.
EI
Brooksfoe,
Your 9:21 post held an uncomfortable grain of truth: libertarians are often overeager to explain why your counterexample is not really a counterexample. Personally, I believe that has more to do with the over-representation of geeks, nerds and debate teamers among our ranks (2 out of 3, myself), than with excessive "true belief".
Also, while you're right that the argument for free markets is largely unfalsifiable, this is also true of the argument for government intervention. In both cases, the response to failures is roughly "It wasn't done right/That wasn't how I would have done it." This isn't really be avoidable, because there is no simple solution to organizing society that is verifiably the best . It's always an optimization problem, a search for some way to make tomorrow a little better than today.
Hey, I'll repeal FICA taxes today, by Constitutional Amendment, in return for a significant carbon tax. Where do I sign up?
Will,
I understand your enthusiasm, but I can't be had that cheaply.
If we're going to "screw with" both the economy and the tax code, why not "go for broke" and get rid of the income tax and the resulting tax code, which has become so complicated by special preferences and special penalties that it has spawned specialist classes of both accountants and lawyers, as well as an army of professional "preparers"?
I will grant that government is clearly superior at stacking corpses to the horizon.
Ok, I understand that this was a throw-away line, but it does pose an interesting question related to the role of government: Is anarchy better?
Consider Iraq. Saddam’s statist regime is alleged to have killed an average of 12,000 citizens a year. That regime is gone. Has the death toll declined?
Admittedly, war is a kind of investment: we expect things to be bad for some initial period in the hope of securing improvements to be enjoyed over a longer period. So I’ll concede that it’s not a fair comparison – yet. But I have my doubts for the long run.
The idea of any government oppressing its people really pisses me off. But after I let my initial spasm of indignation cool, I reflect that far more people have died for lack of clean water and public health than ever died from a government bullet. Psychologists remark on the fact the people respond more strongly to stories that have a personified villain (the devil, Hitler, the big bad wolf, a fat racist police captain, etc.) than to stories about struggle against an impersonal challenge (poverty, global warming, disease, racism, etc.). The risk that you will be killed by heart disease utterly swamps the risk that you will be killed by a terrorist. But which cause will attract more public attention? This poses a big challenge for designing rational public policy.
It may be worth noting that the Declaration of Independence sets forth the founders’ rationales for breaking from Britain. Those rationales contain both grievances about governmental actions AND inaction (failure to protect the colonists from Indians, etc.).
While I don’t have any figures to offer you, I humbly suggest that chaos – disease, crime, lack of aid in the face of natural disasters, and the like – kills more people than government action. I don’t mean to excuse government incompetence and malfeasance, but to place them in context.
---
Regarding global warming: I’ll reiterate what I said above. People who criticize practices that promote global warming need not propose remedies, but should candidly concede that their criticisms may not justify any policy change. People who advocate a policy change should bear the burden to support their proposal.
I think the globe is warming. I suspect humans play a role in that. (Although I don’t know why that’s a relevant consideration. The question of whether humans cause lightning probably has no bearing of the merits of putting up lightening rods.) I agree that, in devising policies to address this issue, we should consider both the costs and benefits of any proposed change. I invite people who object to global warming either to propose remedies, including both costs and benefits, or to acknowledge that their criticisms do not, by themselves, justify a change in policy.
Nobody, most libertarian-leaning people are not anarchists, that moldy strawman notwithstanding.
Ed, yes, I misspoke. If human caused global warming is the danger some claim it to be, they should not object to repealing income and FICA taxes by amendment, a replacing them with carbon taxes.
Will,
...; and, if human-caused global warming is the danger some claim it to be, it will require a global solution which must include the globe's largest society and greatest carbon emitter, as well as the globe's second largest society and currently fourth largest carbon emitter. Anything less is doomed to failure.
The US could not realistically reduce carbon emissions as fast as China is increasing carbon emissions, nor could Europe reduce carbon emissions as fast as India is increasing them. However, the US and European governments could inflict a great deal of unnecessary pain in the process.
Bill Abott:
On the contrary, I'd say there are several areas where scientific/engineering questions get swept up into political battles, with political positions largely driving claims about science among nonspecialists. Some off-the-top-of-my-head examples:
a. AGW is the obvious one.
b. The association between cigarettes and cancer, for many years (but now nobody argues it anymore).
c. Evolution, paleontology, etc.
d. The role of race in medicine, and related issues involving the relationship between self-identified race and genes.
e. Intelligence testing, the meaning and usefulness of IQ tests, the origin of racial differences in IQ scores, etc.
f. The safety of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste disposal techniques.
g. The scientific and instructional value of experiments on animals.
h. The safety to consumers and the environment of genetically modified foods.
i. The biological basis for gender roles, aggression, etc.
There must be dozens more. All of these get a huge number of people spouting off about their opinions of stuff they haven't bothered studying at all, on the basis of political or social implications of the science.
Science has the advantage that you can often get better data, which gives you a chance to throw out incorrect ideas. But politically hot topics are still capable of generating lots of controversy, and even when issues aren't really controversial in the field, they may be terribly controversial outside it. (Essentially nobody in biology argues against evolution, but good luck getting the average person in the US to accept that.)
Hey, Ed, I just prefer consumption taxes, which is what a carbon tax is, to income and payroll taxes. So if the global warming alarmists are willing to repeal income and payroll taxes via amendment, making them extremely difficult to re-institute, and replace them with a carbon tax, what do I care about China or India?
Bill, I don't see where you have addressed my question. It seems to me that in most venues for most purposes, the person making the claim has the burden of proof. I happen to think there are good reasons for that. Are you saying there are reasons - good reasons - for people not to adopt that stance? By 'good reason', I should add that they shouldn't be of the type 'because it gives the claimant an advantage'. I mean a good reason in the sense that it promotes truth.
I'm sorry, but I literally cannot make sense of this. Are you promoting a different burden of proof standard?
Yes, I do happen to be, shall we say, acquainted with one or two instances of his written work. His rantings against 'Scientism' as he calls it are unimpressive to say the least. I think what good points he does make speak more to the practicing of science in his day (at least, as he saw it), and is now just common wisdom.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Yes, some scientists who work in the appropriate fields assume the correctness of the theory of evolution. But I'm sure that if you asked them why they accepted it they would be quite capable of backing up their position.
If you're talking about evolution vs ID, I don't think you've cast the dynamic correctly. It's true that if one theory is right, the competing one must be wrong, of course, but it does not follow that if one theory is wrong the other must be right.
My practice these days if I happen to get roped into these discussions by a determined believer in ID is to simply grant him his premise and assume for the purpose of argument that the theory of evolution is incorrect. Then I ask what ID has got going for it. Generally the replies boil down to the fact that it's not evolution, which of course does not mean anything in re the truth of ID. Which I take relish in pointing out.
But as far as burden of proof requirements go, I'm not making any particular effort to convince anyone that the theory of evolution is true, so I have no burden of proof. ID proponents, however, are definitely not that blase about what other people believe; they are actively trying to convince people that ID is true. So it behooves them to present evidence.
My own theory is that people who otherwise hew to normative burden of proof standards in other parts of their lives do not do so in other cases because they know there is no way that they can plausibly convince others of their views. So what they do instead is to make a claim, and then get nonbelievers to present evidence as to why they don't think this is so. If they can do this, they've got the game, as from there they like to say things like 'your evidence is unconvincing', as if through some slate of hand they could reverse the standards, that it is not on others to disprove their statement but upon them to prove it.
Not a particularly nice or ennobling game, imho.
for many libertarians, it seems that no evidence of government success could ever constitute proof that government solutions are superior in that area
I think this is more often philosophical in nature than practical. Not only to libertarians disagree on which solutions are superior, they often disagree on how "superior" is defined.
Going back to Bill Abbott's post: If your target goal is "social justice", "public welfare", or "the greater good" then your fundamental philosophical bent is likely more towards ultimate rights lying with the state (or whatever you want to call the collective group). Your definition of the superior solution is by achieving the best end result for the group - whatever gets the job done.
On the other hand, if you agree with the fundamental libertarian philosophy of individual liberty then your definition of the superior solution involves more how the result is achieved than that it is achieved. Government-based solutions almost always involve coersion, and from this stems the steep aversion.
As a libertarian, I can agree that something should be done for the greater good while at the same time disagree that I should be coerced (or coerce others) to do it. This position is so often misunderstood and twisted into something along the lines of "you don't care about the poor/uninsured/SS recipients/fill-in-the-blank".
It's like the exclusionary principle in law that one cannot use ill-gotten evidence in court: process trumps result.
But this doesn't seem to be correct. I would say that it is obvious that it is incumbent upon the libertarian to prove he is right. Not upon you to prove he is wrong.
Iow, if a libertarian is agitating for the deregulation of something or other, I don't point to counter examples where it has failed to convince him he is wrong. I point to counterexamples to show him why he can't convince me that he is right.
Although you're quite correct; libertarians do tend to want to make claims then sit back and have others try to disprove them. "Your argument with its logic, examples and cites designed to show me that I'm wrong is unconvincing (to me.) You haven't supported your assertion." Seems to be a fairly common gambit.
ScentOfViolets wrote:
Actually, there is. Any situation with multiple players describes a multidimensional space. A free market allows each player their degree of freedom and is inherently able to explore a larger part of that multidimensional space than a single-valued governmental solution. Put another way, there's no solution that the government can reach that a free market couldn't also reach, but there are solutions that a free market can reach that the government can not. And since every player is individually optimizing their (micro) solution, the free market result is guaranteed to be at least at a local, and possibly global, maxima. Free markets are theoretically superior to governmental interventions.
The problem with free markets isn't that they don't find the optimum solution (they do), the problem is that they are optimizing for the wrong parameter. Free markets act to minimize cost, not maximize social utility. Social utility is a tricky one, because unlike cost it is itself multidimensional (cost being but one variable) and is inherently subjective. Since cost is a generally held to be an important (even dominant) parameter of social utility, people often equate the two, but they are different.
So much of what people describe as "market failures" are no such thing. The market worked fine, it's just that were other values that overrode minimizing cost. These are the places where government intervention is justified.
By the way, the reason democracy works is exactly the same reason why free markets work. Representative democracy creates a "market" for social utility.
brooksfoe wrote:
There's a fair degree of truth to that. The issue is that libertarian's social utility function is heavily weighted toward individual liberty with free markets being a relatively pure expression of that. At it's core, the argument (usually) isn't that the problems with the free market solutions aren't
problems, it's that the proposed solutions (typically government interventions) would act to reduce individual freedom, and thus would minimize their view of optimum social utility.
And since these (often unstated) views are axiomatic, they're not subject to debate. And you can't reason someone out of what they were never reasoned into to begin with.
Note that this cuts both ways. The various interventionist positions are also based on inarguable premises (the things they value more highly than individual liberty and/or cost). But since there's no debate to be had over conflicting axioms, the argument shifts to grounds that are debatable. This results in arguing over the superiority/inferiority of the market results in individual cases. But since the true conflict is in the underlying axioms, it results in a debate where neither party is capable of conceding points to he other. Axioms by definition can not be invalidated.
So everyone winds up going around in circles.
far more people have died for lack of clean water and public health than ever died from a government bullet.
That's literally true, but oppressive government is often behind the seemingly impersonal causes like poverty. Stalin and Mao caused huge famines; Mugabe has turned a well-to-do net food exporter in to a starving basket case. I'd chalk those deaths up to oppressive, irresponsible government just as surely as if the victims had been gassed.
To put it bluntly, this is just gobbledegook. Nonsense. You are, at the very best, trying to utilize a mathematical metaphor. But changing metaphors doesn't make you any more or less correct.
You do know that I teach math for a living right? So if you want to claim that you're actually making sense, you're going to have to show a little work, rather than just flinging words around like 'space' 'dimension', 'value' etc.
Albatross,
Good point, though I was mostly considering core hard natural science research in the reproducible, verifiable vein - more like the math and physics which SOV was discussing.
The stuff you mention seems to be issues where natural science informs part of the debate, but by no means the whole debate.
I would venture that, in general, the "fuzzier" the science gets, the more room for social and political influence to drive the results, and hence less faith one should rationally place in the status-quo state of "knowledge" - besides the fact that even in many harder areas of science, history shows that most results, even those with "consensus" turn out to be incorrect.
Also, scientists often overextend the implications (and accuracy) of their findings, a common bias which often helps to get funding (the evolutionary implications of that are very significant under a regime where political and governmental bodies control most funding).
Just another throwaway: I'd say the evidence from the Nazi vs. Soviet competition shows that private industry is more effective, in dollar and man-hour terms, at stacking corpses to the horizon. The gentlemen at Krupp clearly outperformed their lazy, technologically unsophisticated and poorly incentivized Soviet gulag rivals. Definitely a convincing argument for outsourcing, though, in both cases, government remained the ultimate contractor.
Oh, I dunno, brooksfoe, in terms of murderous return on investment, it's pretty hard to top the highly motivated fellows who operated in the country adjacent to the one you currently reside in. They certainly did as much as they could with the resources available.
ScentOfViolets:
Do you know that I do math for a living? Yes it's a metaphor but that's how I think.
I did know you taught math which is why I thought that you'd be able to understand the metaphor. My bad. What about the metaphor don't you accept/understand? That some values are orthogonal to other values? That different people have their own cost functions? Or that a governmental solution picks one weighting for everyone, whereas a free market allows each participant to choose their own weighting? Or that a gradient search is guaranteed to find a local extrema?
I agree it's a only metaphor and as such shouldn't be examined to closely (for example, I'm talking in terms of linear algebra and the system is clearly non-linear, it's a dynamic system and my metaphor is static, etc.), but as a metaphor I'm comfortable with it. I don't think the abstraction detracts from my basic point: Having one weighting for all participants can not produce an overall better solution than each participant performing their own weighting for the cost function being optimized for. And the larger problem is that the cost function markets optimize for is related to but not exactly the same cost function that people want to optimize.
SOV,
I disagree with your view that what you see as the status quo beliefs in the social and political arenas deserves a privileged position regarding burden of proof, as you suggest is normal in the natural sciences.
1)The nature of the "status quo" body of knowledge differs fundamentally between the natural and social sciences, due largely to the large difference in strength and power of empirical verification. As I mentioned, often in the political economy realm you (analytically) begin from scratch - "privilege the state and require limitations on its power to be justified" versus "privilege the individual and require limitations to freedom to be justified" versus "given this social welfare function, what is the optimal social contract." There are various bodies of knowledge using these different approaches, and within them there are privileged positions that generally impose the burden of proof on opposing views, but there are few, if any such positions in political economy as a whole.
2)Furthermore, the status quo you seek to privilege isn't the status quo body of knowledge in the social sciences, it seems to be the status quo policies in effect today.
The status quo policies in effect today are the result of the political process, not of scientific analysis.
Popular views and beliefs (implicit or explicit) in physics are probably more in accord with Classical models than Relativistic or Quantum models.
Is it your view that anyone arguing here for a (scientifically well-established) quantum explanation must bear the burden of proof versus someone arguing from a classical explanation, if the classical explanation was more popular in the general population?
Similarly, most people still seem to hold to Freud's hydraulic model of the psyche - again the popular status quo is not the scientific status quo.
Many, if not most, popular political and social policies are dominated by incorrect models as to how the world works. Due, among other reasons, to the strong ability for cognitive and social biases to influence people's views in the absence of strong selective pressure; this absence due to the nature of collective action.
SG said: Free markets act to minimize cost, not maximize social utility.
Markets tend to act to maximize net value, not to minimize cost.
That strawman is only as moldy as the invective "statist." If you don't embrace anarchy, then I surmise you support the existence of a state. Hence nearly everyone in this discussion is a "statist." We accept some restriction on our autonomy in order to secure some benefits of collective action. Or, to quote Churchill, "What you are has already been establish; the only remaining question is price."
The larger point is that sub-optimal circumstances can arise both through government action and non-government action. Statements like "Governments are the best at staking corpses to the horizon" fail to reflect this dynamic.
I understand the metaphor quite clearly. That is why I know it is a very, very poor one. But, since you say you know linear algrebra . . . just what are the basis elements of this space? What are the rules for addition and scalar mulitplication? You don't know, apparently, that values cannot be 'orthogonal'. What you can do is define an inner product on your space and then say objects in your space are othogonal if the the value of their inner product is zero. So what is this inner product? And so on and so forth. So your metaphor is unclear right from the get-go. And as I said earlier, whether something is right or wrong, true or not true is going to change according to changing metaphors.
Now, I repeat, I certainly haven't seen any general principal that assures that 'markets' generate a superior outcome as a general case. If you want to argue otherwise, fine. But don't try to say that your metaphor 'proves' it. And . . . work on your metapnor.
Yes, "statist" is an inadequate term. It would be more accurate to write, "Those who advocate state directed coercion, with implicit threats of violence, as a means of social or economic organization or change, without the requirement that such coercion be first shown to be necessary to prevent the conditions of anarchy or tyranny.", but quite a bit more clunky.
My disagreement with most people who vote for Democrats or Republicans (ignoring most third parties for now), is that they set the bar so extremely low before they see fit to use the state to force people to submit to their will. The standard is really often no more than "We think this will make society more to our liking, therefore do as we say, or we will jail or kill you." This is extremely thuggish, no matter if the people saying this are in the majority.
In contrast, I would prefer that people make a good faith argument as to why failure to engage in such coercion would threaten society with the most pernicious forms of violence, that of tyranny or anarchy, and if they could not make a convincing argument on that basis, that they would refrain from seeking coercive measures. No, this is far from a bright line test, and leaves plenty of room for political disagreement, which ultimately would be settled via measures consistent with republican government. However, I would prefer, for example, that people try to make a good faith argument as to how tyranny or anarchy would threaten if we did not make the transfer of wealth from young, poorer, people to old, wealthier people the primary activity of our national government, before making that activity primary for out national government.
I really have no idea where you're coming up with this. If it's from something I said, please quote it.
And again, what does this have to do with the notion that the person making the claim bears the burden of proof? I said nothing about what the particular claim was, or who, particularly, was making it. Just that the person who makes the claim has to show that they're right, not that others have to prove they're wrong.
Why would you want to have it otherwise?(I'm assuming that's what you're arguing.) If a car salesman goes on about one particular vehicle on the lot, I'm going to want him to back up his claims about the mileage, service record, etc. If he said that I had to prove his claims were wrong, I'd think he was nuts. So, I imagine, would most people.
Are you sure you're just not resentful of the people who hold with the status quo? After all, they don't have to prove anything to anybody; they've already got what they want. Practically speaking, if a libertarian wants me to deregulate or privatize an activity, and he cannot persuade me . . . I win. My position is the de facto one. I know that can be frustrating. But that's just the way it is.
I suspect this is what motivates the desire to bend the rules a bit.
SOV:
One nitpick: I think the strength of the status quo argument in policy issues is largely based on how well the current system is working. For example, if someone argues to me that the current system of running the postal service is a disaster, I'm going to need a fair bit of evidence from him before I want radical restructuring, because it seems to be functioning just fine. On the other hand, you can find places where the current policies aren't working too well--say, making sure everyone can get a doctor and doesn't get wiped out by the costs of one serious illness, or that inner-city schools educate their kids. In that kind of place, it's a lot easier to see the argument for ditching the status quo.
It seems to me that popularity is one of the weaker reasons to stick with a status-quo position. The real reasons have to do with evidence. Functioning social systems lend some credence to their underlying social theories, even when those theories can't be tested directly, right? (But they are worth much less when the functioning systems evolved first, and then someone backfilled explanations for them.)
SOV:
You're right, my use of the word "value" was unclear. I was using value in the economic, not mathematical, sense. My phrasing was ambiguous and the most logical reading, given my choice of a mathematical metaphor, was not the reading I intended. My apologies.
My poor wording aside, I stand by the general principle. Free markets will find optimal economic solutions. People typically don't want the optimal economic solution, they want the optimal economic solution subject to other, non-economic constraints.
(Interestingly enough, those non-economic constraints are also called values...)
Ed Reid, I don't know the answers to your queries, and I never suggested that I supported a "global" solution to AGW, or any solution whatsoever. I was mostly interested in your last question, about what it would take to convince people that AGW is a serious problem that needs addressing. I suggested tying AGW skeptics down on beach areas that would be affected by rising sea levels if AGW did occur. In other words, I would personalize the level of risk they're willing to take. Kinda puts things into perspective, doesn't it?
If that's a little extreme for you, I can think of another way to personalize the risk. Would you be willing to move yourself and/or your family to a house located on a beach area that would see rising sea levels from AGW, if it occurred? If so, would that affect your perspective on whether AGW is a problem worth addressing? I think it might.
The point is, if you live in the Colorado Rockies, you might not see the risks of doing nothing about AGW (if it exists--are my qualifications satisfactory?), because you are unlikely to be affected very much by climate change. But if you live somewhere at risk, like on a beach, you might be inclined to take the problem a bit more seriously.
Yes, yet another common sentiment of the statist, and lawyer. Or thug, to be redundant.
It would probably burn you to know how much money I make being a lawyer and a thug. And how much fun I have doing both.
Immoralist, your sense of self-importance is rather exaggerated. Trust me, in a thuggish world, I've encountered more than few thugs which would make you look like a amateur, unless you care to unwisely admit to some rather unsavory activity. No, I suspect you are a run of the mill thug who, as is common among thugs, believes the amount of money they make is something that others would find notable.
My disagreement ... is that they set the bar so extremely low before they see fit to use the state to force people to submit to their will. The standard is really often no more than "We think this will make society more to our liking, therefore do as we say, or we will jail or kill you."
While this is the most uncharitable of characterizations, I am not sure that there is any dispute about this, really. This is the most irreducible basis for the wanting government involvement.
For example, like many folks, I don't believe that we should simply let poor children starve to death. I can wax on about our moral obligation to the helpless, but at the end of the day, this is an attempt to make society "more to my liking." I wouldn't intend to wait until so many impoverished children are dying that it would destabilize our democracy before supporiting state assistance where private assistance is failing.
That may seem thuggish, but it is a belief that I will unapologetically hold. If, like me, you think there must be some notion of social justice in government, then any standard inevitably can be characterized as making society "more to my liking." What "higher" bar would you suggest?
Well, Brad L., I think a good faith case can be made that failure to transfer wealth which would result in poor children starving would be destabilizing. I think it is much harder to make the case that failure to transfer wealth to the wealthiest age demographic in society, without regard to need, is destabilizing. I think it is impossible to make the case that failure to subsidize ethanol, or use eminent domain to build condominiums, would be destabilizing. I simply would prefer that people be much more hesitant in forcing others to submit to majority will.
What is uncharitable about frankly noting that at it's core the state is a blunt instrument of violence, one that is frequently wielded without much concern?
SOV,
Obviously we are talking past each other. You seem more concerned with personal persuasion, whereas I was more focused on the pursuit of "truth" or better understanding.
I've argued that your priors about most of the issues discussed in this arena, along with most people's, are probably wrong and therefore don't deserve a privileged position. You feel that they deserve the privileged position because they are yours. I suppose we will have to agree to disagree.
I would like to see you prove your claim that the burden of proof lies with the claimant, beyond vague appeals to "that is how we do things in math and science" and examples involving used car salesmen (which can be explained by the presumption of bias I discussed earlier - you presume their views are biased due to personal self interest, therefore privilege the position of the skeptical buyer).
...where private assistance is failing.
Is there really any basis for the belief that children in the US in 2007 would literally starve but for government intervention? No church would feed them? No restaurants with leftovers, no charitable fund with adorable doe-eyed moppets on its fundraisers? Nobody? Really?
Not get bone-marrow transplants, maybe (although there certainly are medical charities). Not get top-quality representation in trademark disputes, definitely. But starve?
Well, Brad L., I think a good faith case can be made that failure to transfer wealth which would result in poor children starving would be destabilizing. I think it is much harder to make the case that failure to transfer wealth to the wealthiest age demographic in society, without regard to need, is destabilizing. I think it is impossible to make the case that failure to subsidize ethanol, or use eminent domain to build condominiums, would be destabilizing. I simply would prefer that people be much more hesitant in forcing others to submit to majority will.
I'd disagree with the premise that letting poor children starve would be genuinely destabilizing, and I think you'd have to craft a pretty tortured argument to demonstrate otherwise. Below a certain threshold, it almost certainly wouldn't be. I mean, 500, 5,000, or maybe 50,000 starved children would not bring down our democracy. Your position forces you (I think) into a box where you are arguing from result -- which is expressly not the standard I would set. I'd rather not argue about which levels of starvation are tolerable and which are not.
Unless, of course, you reach towards destabilizing tendencies. But all crime has a destabilizing tendency, and a great deal of social engineering can be (and is) defended by an attempt to prevent crime through improving conditions.
What is uncharitable about frankly noting that at it's core the state is a blunt instrument of violence, one that is frequently wielded without much concern?
It is not noting that the state is built on power that is uncharitable. It is the characterization that any (or every) reason for government action (beyond preventing anarchy,etc) is wanting a society "that I'd rather live in." This characterization ends up equating the feeding of starving children with painting every house blue - it relegates all concerns equally (morality, justice, efficiency, or anything else) to the realm of "I want it."
Incidentally, I think a much better "non-destabilization" case could be made for how we burn feul than how we feed the marginal poor. Feul concerns can be seen to matter greatly to both national defense and to the environment, where massive changes could certainly be destabilizing.
Free markets will find optimal economic solutions. People typically don't want the optimal economic solution, they want the optimal economic solution subject to other, non-economic constraints. -- SG
Yeah, but the other thing is that a lot of what constitutes a "market" isn't just there naturally; it's created by social rules and investments. Corporations are the most obvious example; they're legal fictions constituted by government, which allow Group A to borrow money from Lender B and, if Group A goes bankrupt, Lender B isn't allowed to go to the people in Group A to get its money back. That is, in libertarian terms, the state invokes the threat of violence to compel Lender B to stop trying to get his money back from Group A. And this use of state power to reshape marketplace incentives is at the root of the prosperity of all of advanced capitalist society since the 16th century.
This is one reason liberals are unconvinced by the argument that state intervention in the marketplace inevitably reduces overall prosperity.
Is there really any basis for the belief that children in the US in 2007 would literally starve but for government intervention?
Ok, I'll admit that I was using an extreme example of something that most people would support that would not hold up to the standard I was trying to refute. If it helps, I admit that I am trying to make a logical argument, not a practical one about a particular policy, but I think the original point stands.
The effects of poverty and hunger, in reality, are less immediate than huddled starvation. They tend to be things like malnutrition (and illness), high infant mortality rates, etc etc. But hey, at that point, we are just haggling over price, so to speak. Either it is fair to discuss this (or bone marrow, or whatever else) as a problem that government may be involved in (as I contend) or not (as Will's position suggests to me).
Brad, when our society was poor (think early 19th century), poor children starving was not destabilizing, because such a large percentage of our population faced the real prospect of starvation. Expectations play a huge role in what is destabilizing. Now, if we are "only" talking 500 children a year dead of starvation, the paradox becomes that a problem that small would be solved without any government involvement at all, because this society is so wealthy. If the numbers of children subject to starvation actually did become large enough that government intervention was the only viable means to head off that outcome, you can bet is would be a large enough number to be destabilizing.
I'm sorry, but whenever it is proposed that some minority, be it rich, poor, geographically based, or some other subset, is to be told that they will either submit or be targeted with violence, it becomes necessary, if such an implicit threat of violence is to be morally legitimate, to explain why the result obtained without such an implicit threat of violence is a morally less acceptable outcome. As P.J. O'Rourke once memorably asked. "Would you kill your grandmother to re-pave I-95?" O'Rourke's answer was, sorry granny, but ante up, or swing from a rope, and I tend to agree. In contrast, I don't think I'm willing to kill my nephew to ensure that my materially comfortable mother continues to receive her full social security check.
The question of energy generation fits the paradigm nicely. Are you willing to kill people for their energy consumption patterns? Well depending on how one views the scientific debate, the answer may just be, "Yes, with vigor!". I'm agnostic on the matter, since I know the long history of scientific "fact" being subject to revision, but I can certainly see that it might be true. Thus, I'm quite willing to strike a compromise, given I prefer consumption taxes as a means of funding government anyways. Repeal income and FICA taxes by Constitutional Amendment, replace all revenues via a huge ol' carbon tax, and I'll sign up yesterday. Surely, if those who portray human CO2 emissions as catastrophically dangerous are sincere in their beliefs, they will agree to a compromise along these lines, won't they? If they refuse to enter such a compromise, is it not reasonable to think that they are insincere in their assertions?
Is there really any basis for the belief that children in the US in 2007 would literally starve but for government intervention?
I'm pretty sure public school surveys in poor districts show that a lot of kids are coming to school hungry, and without the federal student lunch program, would actually face malnutrition. And, yes, without food stamps we'd probably see a lot more malnutrition in the US. If you eat nothing but candy and french fries, you'll be stunted and knock a few points off your IQ. (There's double-digit malnutrition right now in wealthy urban areas of Vietnam due to the warping of the diet by the advent of cheap candy.) In the US, if the government halted food stamps, private charity would reach some of those who'd been cut off, but not all -- especially if they compensated by switching from government cheese to Cheetos.
Repeal income and FICA taxes by Constitutional Amendment, replace all revenues via a huge ol' carbon tax, and I'll sign up yesterday. Surely, if those who portray human CO2 emissions as catastrophically dangerous are sincere in their beliefs, they will agree to a compromise along these lines, won't they? If they refuse to enter such a compromise, is it not reasonable to think that they are insincere in their assertions?
Um, no. Just as I don't think libertarians are insincere in their assertions just because most of them don't seem to be clamoring to eliminate the US's standing armed forces. Or that abortion opponents are insincere if they wouldn't agree to a compromise in which, in exchange for outlawing abortion, the US adopts Islam as its official religion.
Well, brooksfoe, any argument in regards to human behavior which maintains that there is a condition of inevitability is almost inevitably wrong. The better question is whether or not, on average, do decentralized systems in which decision making is widely distributed, with near-constant feedback loops providing additional information, work better than systems in which decision making is highly centralized and feedback loops function much more sporadically. There are mountains of evidence which suggest that the answer is "yes, with some exceptions." I think people who frequently are advocates for the 2nd kind of system are quite often extraordinarily lax in demonstrating that they have encountered one of those exceptions, and that laxity quite often results from nothing more than a common human desire to have other people do their bidding.
Golly, brooksfoe, do you mean to say that people who claim that excessive CO2 emissions by human beings threaten civilization itself would rather see the income tax continue to exist, instead of striking a compromise that would head off the end of civilization? By cracky, that is someone dedicated to the current tax code!!!!!
Now, if we are "only" talking 500 children a year dead of starvation, the paradox becomes that a problem that small would be solved without any government involvement at all...
I don't think this is self-evidently true, or at least, the "solution" may not be fully acceptable. We regulate meat because the market solution, companies going out of business after poisoning or killing their customers, leaves us with dead customers first and a solution to the problem second. Not so many as to bring down our nation, but enough that we don't accept it.
Poverty and infant mortality track imperfectly but well enough that I'd bet that well more than 500 deaths a year are probably attributable, and even more would be in the absence of the government help that exists. I don't believe that private charity solves every problem that is smaller than a crisis, and that all unsolved problems are outside the provenance of government.
I'm sorry, but whenever it is proposed that [they] will either submit or be targeted with violence, it becomes necessary, if such an implicit threat of violence is to be morally legitimate, to explain why the result obtained without such an implicit threat of violence is a morally less acceptable outcome.
I'm confused. Are you saying that since government action is by definition force, that any mandate be argued for on some moral level? No problem there. Are you saying that every outcome that the government can acheive through force can also be effected voluntarily? I guess I simply disagree with that. Are you saying that we should be thoughtful in using the leverage of government? My whole original point is that everything argued for shouldn't be lumped in as "I want it," not that every policy recommendation is right. The conversation about what the government should do for reasons of morality and justice is a legitimate one, which runs counter to the position that I think you were taking.
Repeal income and FICA taxes by Constitutional Amendment, replace all revenues via a huge ol' carbon tax, and I'll sign up yesterday. Surely, if those who portray human CO2 emissions as catastrophically dangerous are sincere in their beliefs, they will agree to a compromise along these lines, won't they?
This is just strange to me. Yes, the stronger one feels about the likeliness and severity of ill effects of fossil feul consumption should determine how much compromise they might make in other areas. Why that should take the shape of your compromise (as opposed to any other one), I don't know.
More generally, from a voter perspective, these trade-offs usually aren't offered, because of the way parties have formed belief clusters. If I want a greener candidate, I may very well have to compromise and select one that wants more government intervention than I would personally prefer, not less, though I might make either compromise. Since politicians are in the business of minimizing our compromise, my chances of getting a green candidate with more sympathetic views on other issues are better than trying to make the same compromise with people that have different underlying fundamental beliefs. But with a lack of other options, yes, you might be able to sell your tradeoff.
Brad L., I suspect that the prospect of very large torts modifies the behavior of meatpackers more effectively than the prospect of government inspection. You may wish to inquire as to how many meat inspectors there are actually serving this nation of 300 million people.
I have no idea regarding how many poor children would be threatened with malnutrition absent food support programs. I just know that if it were a large enough number that private charity did not for the most part head off the problem, it would be destabilizing, given the expectations that have developed in this society. Therefore, I favor government food support programs.
I thought I wrote clearly, but perhaps not, so I'll restate. If people are going to be threatened with violence, whether implicitly or explicitly, such threats are only morally legitimate if it has been demonstrated that absent such threats, greater violence would threaten, especially it's most pernicious forms, tyranny or anarchy. I think this is a rather more difficult argument to make than simply saying, "We, the majority, or energized minority with exceptional lobbying skills, would like our lives better if this policy was instituted, thus we demand that all others adhere to our desires, or we will jail or kill you." I think the latter argument, unfortunately, is what too often suffices for a rationale for state action in our society. I have no concrete reforms to propose, really. I simply wish our polity exercised rather greater amounts of self-restraint.
As far as what I offer in compromise regarding CO2 emissions, hey, people can accept it or reject it. I simply wish it were offered in our upcoming election season, by someone with a real chance at gaining power. I sure would sort out who REALLY thought civilizations was threatened, from those who simply engage in such rhetoric for other purposes.
Immoralist,
Yes, I would be willing (even anxious) to move myself and my family to the beach, if I could afford it. Beach properties here in NC are beyond my means, though still very desirable. If you are interested in moving me and my family to Holden Beach, or Emerald Isle, please respond here and I will provide my contact info. My sons, daughters-in-law and granddaughters would greatly appreciate your generosity and concern.
I have actually prepared a conceptual plan for reducing the US anthropogenic carbon emissions by 95% by 2050; and, achieving energy independence in the process. You can find it here: http://www.utilitiesproject.com/documents.asp?grID=111&d_ID=4296 (registration required, but free). I will freely admit that this conceptual plan is neither libertarian not conservative; in fact, it is "statist" command and control on steroids, in my opinion. It could, however, achieve the objective. I do not believe markets could be expected to achieve the objective in the timeframe, primarily because I do not believe achieving the objective is necessary or desirable, especially if the desirability is measured with regard to AGW.
My views on this issue have caused me to be accused of being a "denialist" here. I admit to being immensely proud of that designation. I will continue to ask very fundamental questions about AGW, such as the five questions I asked above, until the AGW religionists begin providing unique, consistent answers to those fundamental questions.
"Don't begin vast programs with half-vast ideas.". Ed Reid
No need to apologize, but my opinion of you just went up enormously. It seems that all sorts of bad science metaphors abound, everything from 'a quantum leap forward' (uh, dude, do you have any idea how small a unit of action the quantum is?), to the trusty old standy 'survival of the fittest', to what seem to be bad computing puns, but seriously indended.
Well, if you want to make a case, I'm willing to listen. But I haven't heard anything so far that I've found convincing.
I've asked you this several times now - where did you get this from what I wrote? Specifically. I think I've quite explicitly stated that these proof standards evolved as the best way to discover the truth.
What claims am I making that you think show some sort of priveleged 'prior'? I haven't, so far as I can tell, made any claims for the status quo at all. If I did - I'd expect to have to defend them. Same as everyone else. But I'm not making any claims. You are. That's why you have to defend them.
What I have said is that as a practical matter, if arguments against the status quo are unpersuasive, the status quo 'wins' in the sense that this is the real-worl policy adopted, ie, no change at all. That's a far cry from making any claim for the status quo.
Again, I am puzzled as to how you get any of this. I've just looked over what I have written, I think I expressed myself fair to middlin' clearly, and I can't see what you claim to find there. Could you show me where this is, specifically, so I can avoid this misunderstanding in the future?
I am not quite sure what you mean here either, or what you would accept as proof. Uh, that's just the way we do things in the math and science departments, probably because over the millenia this has been found to be the best way to arrive at the truth.
You seem to be saying that the person who makes the claim is under no onus to prove it, while much more acrues to someone trying to disprove it. Well . . . I say there's no such thing as gravity; it's all invisible tiny demons that move things around as if there is gravity. Prove me wrong. I say that before Atlantis sank beneath the waves, psychic adepts teleported their entire population to the blue area of the moon. Prove me wrong. I say that George Bush is a robotic consruct serially operated by an autistic gaming group of Asian children under the age of fourteen. Prove me wrong.
I think there might be something just a little, ah, unproductive about this standard of proof.
If people are going to be threatened with violence, whether implicitly or explicitly, such threats are only morally legitimate if it has been demonstrated that absent such threats, greater violence would threaten, especially it's most pernicious forms, tyranny or anarchy.
I advocate deploying the coercive power of the state to compel people to use apostrophes correctly -- and stacking corpses to the horizon, if need be, to achieve this aim.
One thing does interest me here. If all state action implies coercion and the threat of violence, explain the implied threat of violence deployed by the following state institutions:
1. The Army Corps of Engineers.
2. The Peace Corps.
3. Sallie Mae.
4. The Academie Francaise. (With respect to issues like that of the comma noted above.)
It seems to me that the connection of these institutions to an implied threat of violence is rather notional, and that their power proceeds instead from the accumulated mass of authority of the state, the weight of social consensus which pressures citizens and corporations to meet their responsibilities, and in the worst case, the state's ability to render your life a pain in the ass in case of noncompliance, rather than any actual ability to handcuff you to a monkey bar. And then there are institutions like the FCC, which, sure, can fine you for showing your tits on TV, but mainly set standards and decide which frequency gets used by who, which is more a matter of mediation than of enforcement.
The definition of the state as an organization with a monopoly on legitimate violence is useful. But it's a minimal definition. There are a lot of things which successful states in advanced societies do that don't have much to do with violence, and where the coercion employed is more like the coercion involved when a group of people decides what to cook for dinner.
Re: brooksfoe | November 8, 2007 9:29 PM
I'm afraid your understanding of limited liability is a bit off, you may want to read up on it.
It is more like a legal rule which allocates liability a certain way. Though I'm sure some may argue otherwise, there is no real coercion involved - it merely establishes some default rules for a certain form of organization. No one is forced to be involved in any way, and parties involved are free to contract around the default rules.
You are free to start up, or invest in, an unlimited liability corporation if you choose to do so.
Similarly, the legal personhood of corporations is simply a way to reduce transactions costs and make it easier to do things like hold corporations liable for their actions and enable them to enter into contracts - no coercion is involved.
Being more of a classical liberal than a pure libertarian myself, I have little problem with state-enforced rules which clearly make everyone better off ex-ante (like making murder illegal), or solve coordination problems (driving on the right side of the road), and arguably many which significantly reduce transactions costs (like corporate charter laws); though I'm sure many libertarians may have issue with some or all of them (and many of the libertarians do have good arguments that the state is not needed to effectively establish or enforce many of the rules and/or that state involvement in these areas is a wedge to illegitimate state activities).
Brooksfoe,
Malnutrition is the result of bad food choices, not lack of food. Now, I'm not in favor of malnutrition, and probably school lunches and food stamps, with their attendant restrictions on what is bought/served, are helping out poor children by forcing at least a few good choices on them and their parents. But I find it impossible to believe that anyone would actually die from lack of calories, or that parents with enough motivation could not possibly arrange proper nutrition for their children, in the absence of government support. How expensive are generic "Cheerios", dry milk, and Flintstones vitamins? Doesn't the local food bank offer Chef-boy-r-dee in cans?
Malnutrition in the US is caused by parents who don't trouble themselves to make sure their kids eat well. Maybe the feds are the only way to prevent that; if so, I'm not opposed, but I am skeptical.
parties involved are free to contract around the default rules
This is an important point. Lender B is always free to demand personal guarantees from the members of Group A, and indeed when dealing with small business, that's a pretty common condition.
Brooksfoe, are you under the impression that the entities you mention operate by way of voluntary transaction? Now, this does not necessarily mean that any of them are an unecessary instance of coercion, but let us (careful!) not pretend that these are voluntary associations. When's (oh no!) the last time you knew of a group which jailed people who didn't want to participate in a dinner party?
Better yet, just correct more typos!
Similarly, the legal personhood of corporations is simply a way to reduce transactions costs and make it easier to do things like hold corporations liable for their actions and enable them to enter into contracts - no coercion is involved.
Bill Abbott, it's hard for me to get my head into a libertarian frame of my mind, but explain where the flaw is here:
-- A limited liability corporation is an entity chartered by the government in which shareholders can't be held responsible for debts incurred by the corporation above their own level of investment.
-- Contracts signed by a corporation with other persons are considered by the government to be legally binding. The government undertakes to enforce those contracts like any other contracts, granting the corporation the status of a person. Without this government guarantee to enforce contracts, corporations would be unable to function, because contracts are only valid if they are between persons, not between a person and some entity with no legal status. A contract I sign with my cat, with Satan, or with the principle of decency, is unenforceable.
-- "Enforcing" a contract means implying the threat of coercive force by the government against someone who breaks the contract.
-- The existence of the corporation is predicated on the implied use of government coercion.
One might say that the same holds true for human beings, considered as business entities. But human beings would continue to exist in some real sense even if government declined to enforce contracts with them. Limited liability corporations would simply be meaningless literary devices. (As a lot of people in Russia have found out lately.)
Right? Or am I missing something here?
When's (oh no!) the last time you knew of a group which jailed people who didn't want to participate in a dinner party?
When's the last time you heard of the Peace Corps or Sallie Mae jailing anyone for anything?
Brooksfoe, the flaw is that 1) nobody is required to deal with a particular corporation if they don't want to, and 2) you're free to demand that the shareholders waive limited liability by giving a personal guarantee. You're also free, come to that, to insist that the corporation hold you harmless beyond a certain amount, effectivly granting yourself limited liability.
Obviously, you personally can't play fun contracting games with a large public corporation, but most of them pay small debts easily, and large loans should be given to them only with a thorough inspection of their books anyway. Mom and pop owners regularly offer personal guarantees to banks lending them money, effectively negating the limited liability for that particular transaction.
I thought I wrote clearly, but perhaps not, so I'll restate. If people are going to be threatened with violence, whether implicitly or explicitly, such threats are only morally legitimate if it has been demonstrated that absent such threats, greater violence would threaten, especially it's most pernicious forms, tyranny or anarchy.
This is a far more compelling standard to me than the 'destabilization' standard. At this point, I fear we must agree to agree (although I think anarchy and tyranny are misleading - I think most problems of consequence are felt and make for justifiable action long before they rise to such a level, but we may simply be disagreeing on what constitutes "destabilizing").
I just still think your 'society I'd like to live in' characterization is a very broad brush, and that you and I would personally engage in great debate over which problems are important and how important they are. And I think most people would hold that their beliefs are similarly important. You may think they are in error, but saying "they aren't taking government action seriously enough" is a mind-reading game.
Take one of my pet peeve laws: ridiculously low drunk driving standards (in DC, you can still literally be arrested even when you blow a .02). Or anti-pot laws. Etc. People that want these surely believe that they are actually saving lives (i.e. preventing greater violence than is taking place by the raising of funds for the efforts). The argument to be had here is whether they are right or wrong, not whether they are being "serious."
Brad L., I suspect that the prospect of very large torts modifies the behavior of meatpackers more effectively than the prospect of government inspection. You may wish to inquire as to how many meat inspectors there are actually serving this nation of 300 million people.
This will become a tangent, but...
I doubt it (money is an equally great incentive towards fraud - it's the getting caught part that is a risk some will take), but even so, the problem remains: you get dead people first, solutions second. There is not enough meat inspection for my tastes (pun intended), although I am also deeply offended that government prevents the self-testing/labeling of meat as mad-cow free.
Generally speaking, though, my idea of the best government interventions involve creating or spreading information, not making choices for others by fiat. I'd be just as happy if the government forced transparency in the food industry in other ways. I'm all happy for us to make our different choices about risk tolerance and humane treatment conditions. I just want proper information to do it, and I don't trust the 'free market for information' to be tamper-proof or even necessarily to provide clarity, particularly when huge piles of money are at stake.
When's the last time you heard of the Peace Corps or Sallie Mae jailing anyone for anything?
Oh, brooksfoe, don't put me on the other side here. The IRS jails people all the time, in the process for raising funds for these and every useful or useless government program.
The whole "jail or kill" thing is extreme (in the same sense as me using starving kids as a moral example is extreme); it's just the logical extension of a philosophical position.
brooksfoe,
-- A limited liability corporation is an entity chartered by the government in which shareholders can't be held responsible for debts incurred by the corporation above their own level of investment.
This seems more like a registration issue. If investors want corporate status, they have to file all the relevant information with the government and meet certain basic requirements. This information is then publicly available somewhere where all interested parties can find it. In this respect it is similar to the government titling and registration functions - the state is acting as central storehouse and clearinghouse for information about who owns what (titles to land and automobiles) or who is married to whom (marriages etc.). So if you want information on the corporation you look at the charter (much like if you want to buy a car, you check the title to make sure the seller actually owns it).
There is a potential element of coercion in that the state can impose other arbitrary requirements or limitations on corporate charters - such as requiring that the average height of all employees isn't too high, so as to not discriminate against short people (which can be seen as violating freedom of association); but the core function is just recognition and registration of a voluntary collective enterprise which is subject to certain default legal rules.
You could theoretically organize and operate a de facto limited liability corporation without a corporate charter by using (an incredibly huge number of) voluntary contracts, one between each and every member of {investors, employees, customers, potentially affected third parties}. Chartering just provides a default form, making it easier for people to organize and transact.
-- "Enforcing" a contract means implying the threat of coercive force by the government against someone who breaks the contract.
This does not have anything to do with corporations per se, but contract law in general. Most people want the ability to credibly commit to promises to act over time (or they want the modern society that requires such ability). Credible commitment requires an enforcement mechanism to impose costs on people who break promises - without enforcement, non-simultaneous exchange would be extremely costly (requiring hostage exchange or the like) or impossible. By enforcing promises (the primary function of contract law), you greatly increase the freedom available to people by allowing people the ability to operate on the basis of their promises or the promises of others without restricting the freedom of anyone (no one is forced to enter any contracts).
Now the pure libertarian might argue that private organizations can provide contract law and enforcement; and indeed I am sympathetic to that claim (and private arbitration is on the rise, somewhat displacing government enforcement). But as long as the government courts do a decent job of allowing parties to freely contract around default rules (which some argue they don't) and enforcing them, I don't see the gains to be had from complete privatization of contract law to be all that high.
Without this government guarantee to enforce contracts, corporations would be unable to function,
Again, they could theoretically function, if not practically. Instead of signing a single sales contract when you buy a new car, you could sign separate contracts with each and every employee of the company selling it. This would have massive transactions costs, making all parties to the potential exchange worse off, and reducing the number of voluntary, mutually beneficial exchanges in society.
Limited liability corporations would simply be meaningless literary devices. (As a lot of people in Russia have found out lately.)
The problem in Russia is that there is no rule of law, contracts aren't being enforced for all parties. Decades of centralized command and control have eroded the social and cultural traditions which support the rule of law and protect voluntary exchange and private property.
An important distinction touched on here is the difference between law (as properly understood) and legislation. Law is more like default background rules that affected parties can generally contract around if they don't like, while legislation typically involves active government command and exercise of coercive power (real or potential).
Hayek's books on Law, Legislation, and Liberty are great reading for anyone interested in these or any political issues.
Also, if you are interested in better understanding the Classical Liberal (mostly libertarian) justifications for the enforcement of basic common law, such as private property and contract law, Richard Epstein's books are great (Simple Rules for a Complex World, among others).
Well, Brad L., I appreciate that you are intellectually honest, and our disagreements may not be as large as they appear. I can't tell you how many times I encounter people who try to maintain that an entity such as the Peace Corps is noncoercive in nature, as if the salaries get paid by Peace Corps volunteers ringing bells standing next to buckets at Wal-Mart. That isn't to argue that the Peace Corps should not exist, but sheesh, it is a commentary on how deeply statism has taken hold in the last century or so, that people seem to think such entities such spring forth from people's voluntary interactions.
Will,
Some people even believe that the Constitution authorizes the federal government to establish such entities, though I have been unable to find the authorizing text.
Ed, haven't you heard? Because the Constitution says Congress has the goal of promoting the general welfare, the rest of the document is superfluous. The fellas back in Philly that long hot summer just didn't want to sully their reputation by being in their cups before noon, so they just killed time by writing a bunch pointless language, before retiring to the taverns for the afternoon.
Nobody's Treaties on Government:
1. Minimum role of the state. I understand libertarians generally to support the state exercising force for the purpose of defending the autonomy of citizens against fraud and coercion. Yup, the state will exercise some coercion in doing so, but in theory the degree of coercion imposed by the state is less than the degree that would be imposed (by criminals, invaders, etc.) in the absence of a state. In brief, the state is a protection racket, but it's the least-burdensome protection racket available.
The state may also coerce people into restoring, or compensating for, intrusions on the life, liberty or property of another. To the extent that someone's reasonable expectations regarding her life, liberty or property is affected by a contract, the state would enforce the contract.
Any number of excuses to exercise state power can be justified in the name of national security. The potential need to field an army can lead to programs designed to promote the public's health and education, for example. And the effort to avoid insurrection from a dissatisfied domestic population can justify "bread and circuses" programs, a/k/a welfare.
National security can also justify non-coercive state action, as in granting immunity to state agents. "Granting immunity" means withholding from each individual the right to call upon the collective power of the state to vindicate that individual's right to life, liberty and property. In "social contract" terms, the individual is conceptually deprived of equal protection of the law, denied the benefit of the bargain she thought she secured when she joined society. But the benefits to society as a whole are deemed sufficiently great to justify the burden to the individual.
2. Role of the state: economic efficiency. Some people argue that the state should also be able to exercise force to promote economic efficiency. I detect a range of views here.
- Market failure. The largest number of people in this category support state intervention to correct "market failures." For example, requiring disclosure of product ingredients, or disclosing the risks of a stock to potential investors, both tend to cure the market failure that arises from asymmetric information between buy and seller. Meat inspections putatively burden meat producers, but in practice bolster the producers' interests by reassuring consumers -- again, reducing asymmetric information.
- Facilitation of commerce. Some go further still, advocating for practices that facilitate commerce: uniform systems of weights and measures, transportation systems, international treaties protecting the rights of citizens when they travel abroad, etc. Many support public education on this basis.
- Immunities. Still others advocate promoting commerce by abrogating the rights of private citizens to sue for compensation when deprived of live, liberty or property. This takes the form of bankruptcy laws, "tort reform" laws (such as the asbestos fund), limitations on citizen rights to seek compensation from foreign governments and their citizens (such as the US's treaty with Iran), and most especially the granting of limited liability charters (including corporate status).
None of these arrangements are purely consentual, including the corporate one. If I fund a partnership and the partnership harms you, you may be able to recover damages from me even though I didn't do the harming. But if I fund a corporation through buying a share, and that corporation harms you, you likely will not be able to recover damages from me. So if the corporation and its agents are broke, you're left without a remedy. Yes, lenders can contract around this limitation. No, people who get run over by a corporate van can't.
Similar to the granting of immunities to government agents, these policies represent a net transfer of wealth from the injured party to the injuring party, but in the hope that the social good done by the injuring party will more than compensate, on a net societal basis, for the loss suffered by the injured party.
3. Role of the state: charity. Some people argue that the state may also coercively redistributing wealth for the benefit of the less wealthy, even in the absence of any other state need.
Conceptually, these people see benefit in broadening the range of risks against which the state offers protection. Similar to the grants of immunities discussed above, wealth transfers aren't consentual but they are justified on the theory that the benefits to society overall offset the costs to the relatively wealthy. In this sense, I don't see government action here as representing much of a departure from other government policies.
Nobody.really,
I think you've provided a coherent encapsulation of many of the views expressed by libertarians here. I'm not going to nitpick whether you got them all or are slightly off-base on some of them.
My original post stated that libertarians tend to prefer market solutions because of the tendency to self-correct faster than government solutions. Nowhere did I state that libertarians exclusively want market-based solutions, nor that market-based solutions work in every instance. (Not that you are saying I did.)
But I think there has been a rather good expounding of the libertarian philosophy in this thread, with a lot of different viewpoints coming out from SG to Ed Reid to Will Allen to Rob Lyman etc.
I've always wondered what makes a person feel akin to one philosophy or another. I tend to be very libertarian in my outlook, but my siblings tend to be very liberal. The main thing I did differently was to join the military, where I was exposed to a lot of different types of people and a lot of different cultures. My viewpoint is clearly shaped by my experiences. I grew up in a non-urban environment, so I don't have a warm and fuzzy feeling about government services per se. I've been trained in law, banking, management, science, and technology as well as the military, so that also influences my beliefs. Although raised Roman Catholic, but not in a parochial school, I alternate between atheism, agnosticism, and deism all depending on how one defines "God." Sometimes I think that solipsism has a lot going for it.
I know that people of good will run the gamut of political philosophy, because I've seen them and talked with them, but I still can't for the life of me understand anyone (and I'm not saying you are) who is so full of BDS that they can't think logically. We are just so different at heart.
Without this government guarantee to enforce contracts, corporations would be unable to function,
So what's special about corporations? All trade requires a mutual expectation that promises will be honored and goods will be delivered substantially as expected. Going to court to get the coercive power of government to enforce a contract is only rarely the best approach to a breach of contract, but in well-functioning economies it is the ultimate remedy when simpler approaches fail. That is, contract disputes generally move up a heirarchy before someone starts the slow and very expensive process of a lawsuit:
1. Tell the other party how you are dissatisfied with the performance of the contract and ask for satisfaction. For example, "Mr Grocer, this box of corn flakes is full of wood chips instead." A store manager that intends to stay in business is probably going to refund your money and give you a free box from some brand that does make them out of corn.
2a. If that doesn't work, don't deal with them anymore. I don't shop at a store that screwed me. The wood-chip corn flake brand is going to get pulled from the shelves pronto, and will have a tough time persuading grocers to stock it again - or even all the other products they didn't screw up. Suppliers stop shipments when the last shipment was not paid for on time. Etc.
2b. Warn others about the problem - tell your friends about that store, talk to the Better Business Bureau (a private organization whose biggest stick is generating publicity), or see if the local TV news will do a 20-second spot. Or conversely, businesses will report you to a credit agency if you are consistently late with payments.
3. Sometimes the contract will specify a kind of private court for settling disputes, that is mediation or arbitration, or the parties may both agree to try to settle it in such a private court.
4. Sometimes a government agency will have enforcement responsibilities that can relieve you of having to stand the costs of a lawsuit: state attorney generals prosecute consumer fraud, the SEC regulates security transactions, etc.
5. File a lawsuit - if the matter is so important to you that heavy costs and a multi-year schedule are worth it.
6. Or in a lawless society or a lawless niche of a mostly lawful society, you can hire legbreakers or a hit man. They'll probably work for much less than your lawyer.
Most issues are resolved in #1-3, because they aren't worth taking further. The real value of the government court system is that it strongly discourages proceeding to #6, including adding some severe non-economic costs... And if corporations use the courts more than small businesses, it's just because their deals are apt to be larger and so there's more chance of a contract dispute passing the threshold where lawsuits may be cost-effective.