The time may be ripe.

As promised here.

The 2021-2022 term of the U.S. Supreme Court ended recently on a victorious note for America’s conservatives, and on a bitter note for America’s leftists. I am thinking of Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, West Virginia v. EPA, and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Dobbs is the case in which the Supreme Court overturned the anti-life rulings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In West Virginia v. EPA the Court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s economically destructive overreach in the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. And in Bruen the Court rejected a New York law restricting the right to bear arms.

U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D – CA 43) captured the left’s reaction to these rulings when she said (in connection with Dobbs) “To hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them.”

If the left succeeds in overturning or circumventing the Court’s decisions in these matters, conservatives — already outraged by leftist lunacy — will be livid.

If the left doesn’t succeed, its vilification of America and America’s political traditions will continue. Memes like “burn America to the goddam ground” will grow in popularity on social media and will spread to left-wing “news” outlets. The loss of the House in November 2022 and (very possibly) the Senate and White House in November 2024 will only intensify the left’s rage. Perhaps — like New England and the abolitionists of two centuries ago — Deep-Blue States will instigate a secession movement.

It would be wise, at that point, for those States with strong conservative governance to propose a national divorce. Leftists could have their own way in their part of the continent, and conservatives could be left in peace in their part of the continent. Let’s call these groupings Governmentland and Freedomland.

There would be some messy details to sort out. Foremost among them would be the question of defense. But it seems to me that if Governmentland shirks its share of the burden, Freedomland could easily afford a robust defense after having shed the many useless departments and agencies — and their policies — that burden taxpayers and the economy.

Further, a Freedomland foreign policy that is unfettered from the United Nations, and based on strength rather than diplomacy, would be a refreshing and fruitful departure from eight decades of feckless interventionism.

Because Freedomland would exist to foster the freedom and prosperity of its own citizens, it would have strict controls on entry. Visitors and temporary workers would vetted and strictly monitored. Prospective immigrants (including those from Governmentland) would be kept out by physical and electronic barriers, and would be vetted before they enter the country. Citizenship would be granted only after an applicant has demonstrated his ability to support himself (and his family if he has one in country), perhaps with the help of churches and charitable organizations. Non-citizens would be ineligible to vote, of course, and would have to have been citizens for 10 years before they are allowed to vote. (By that time one would hope that they would have been weaned from any allegiance to or dependence on a nanny state.)

What about trade between Governmentland and Freedomland? Self-sufficiency should be the watchword for Freedomland. It should not outsource energy, technology, or other products and services that are essential to defense. Some outsourcing may be necessary in the beginning, but there should be a deliberate movement toward self-sufficiency.

Freedomland’s constitution could be modeled on this one, though with some revisions to accommodate points made above.

Finally, why is a national divorce a matter of urgency? Complete victory for the enemies of liberty is only ever a few elections away. The squishy center of the American electorate — as is its wont — will eventually swing back toward the Democrat Party. With a competent Democrat in the White House, a Congress that is firmly controlled by Democrats, and a few party switches in the Supreme Court, the dogmas of the left will be stamped upon the land; for example:

• Billions and trillions of additional dollars will be wasted on various “green” projects, including but far from limited to the complete replacement of fossil fuels by “renewables”, with the resulting impoverishment of most Americans, except for comfortable elites who press such policies).

• It will be illegal to criticize, even by implication, such things as abortion, illegal immigration, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, anthropogenic global warming, or the confiscation of firearms. These cherished beliefs will be mandated for school and college curricula, and enforced by huge fines and draconian prison sentences (sometimes in the guise of “re-education”).

• Any hint of Christianity and Judaism will be barred from public discourse, and similarly punished. Other religions will be held up as models of unity and tolerance.

• Reverse discrimination in favor of females, blacks, Hispanics, gender-confused persons, and other “protected” groups will become overt and legal. But “protections” will not apply to members of such groups who are suspected of harboring libertarian or conservative impulses.

• Sexual misconduct will become a crime, and any male person may be found guilty of it on the uncorroborated testimony of any female who claims to have been the victim of an unwanted glance, touch (even if accidental), innuendo (as perceived by the victim), etc.

• There will be parallel treatment of the “crimes” of racism, anti-immigrationism, anti-Islamism, nativism, and genderism.

• All health care in the United States will be subject to review by a national, single-payer agency of the central government. Private care will be forbidden, though ready access to doctors, treatments, and medications will be provided for high officials and other favored persons. The resulting health-care catastrophe that befalls most of the populace (like that of the UK) will be shrugged off as a residual effect of “capitalist” health care.

• The regulatory regime will rebound with a vengeance, contaminating every corner of American life and regimenting all businesses except those daring to operate in an underground economy. The quality and variety of products and services will decline as their real prices rise as a fraction of incomes.

• The dire economic effects of single-payer health care and regulation will be compounded by massive increases in other kinds of government spending (defense excepted). The real rate of economic growth will approach zero.

• The United States will maintain token armed forces, mainly for the purpose of suppressing domestic uprisings. Given its economically destructive independence from foreign oil and its depressed economy, it will become a simulacrum of the USSR and Mao’s China — and not a rival to the new superpowers, Russia and China, which will largely ignore it as long as it doesn’t interfere in their pillaging of respective spheres of influence. A policy of non-interference (i.e., tacit collusion) will be the order of the era in Washington.

• Though it would hardly be necessary to rig elections in favor of Democrats, given the flood of illegal immigrants who will pour into the country and enjoy voting rights, a way will be found to do just that. The most likely method will be election laws requiring candidates to pass ideological purity tests by swearing fealty to the “law of the land” (i.e., abortion, unfettered immigration, same-sex marriage, freedom of gender choice for children, etc., etc., etc.). Those who fail such a test will be barred from holding any kind of public office, no matter how insignificant.

Are my fears exaggerated? I doubt it. I have lived long enough and seen enough changes in the political and moral landscape of the United States to know that what I have sketched out can easily happen within a decade after Democrats seize total control of the national government. And it can happen given the fickleness of the electorate.

Are there other options? Yes, but none is as attractive as a negotiated partition of the country, although option E (secession) might lead to a negotiated partition. Here are six options, with my assessment of each:

A. The Benedict Option

Bruce Frohnen says this about it (source no longer available online):

[Rod] Dreher has been writing a good deal, of late, about what he calls the Benedict Option, by which he means a tactical withdrawal by people of faith from the mainstream culture into religious communities where they will seek to nurture and strengthen the faithful for reemergence and reengagement at a later date….

The problem with this view is that it underestimates the hostility of the new, non-Christian society ….

Leaders of this [new, non-Christian] society will not leave Christians alone if we simply surrender the public square to them. And they will deny they are persecuting anyone for simply applying the law to revoke tax exemptions, force the hiring of nonbelievers, and even jail those who fail to abide by laws they consider eminently reasonable, fair, and just.

That is exactly what is happening to many who dare speak out against same-sex “marriage”, and who dare to utter what might be construed as conservative views (e.g., Charles Murray and Professor Amy Wax). These are fundamental wrongs that cannot be cured — and may be encouraged — by widespread adoption of the Benedict Option.

B. Geographic Sorting

This refers to the tendency of “Blue” States to become “bluer” and “Red” States to become “redder”. It means that Americans are sorting themselves along ideological lines. This tendency — natural and laudable as it is — doesn’t cure the underlying problem: the accretion of oppressive power by the national government. Lives and livelihoods in every State, “Red” as well as “Blue”, are controlled by the edicts of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the national government. There is little room for State and local discretion. Moreover, much of the population shift toward “Red” must be understood as opportunistic (e.g., warmer climates, lower taxes) and not necessarily as an embrace of “Red” politics.

In my experience, for example, Californians who fled that State’s high taxes and heavy regulation for Texas brought with them a strong preference for the kinds of programs that cause high taxes and heavy regulation. They voted accordingly when they arrived in Texas, apparently ignorant of the connection between the programs they desire, the taxes they must pay, and the regulations they must endure. (The good news was that they were outnumbered on the whole, so that the State government remained staunchly Red. The bad news was that in places like Austin, they helped to reinforce a regime of high taxes and burdensome regulation.)

C. Convention of the States

A much-discussed option in recent years is a convention of the States, called in accordance with Article V of the Constitution, to amend the Constitution. The aim of such a convention would be to underscore what the Constitution says about the limits on the power of the national government. But the Constitution already says those things. There is no need to underscore them, they just need to be enforced. The options discussed below offer ways to enforce the Constitution.

There is also the matter of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. There is no need to hold a convention of the States to propose and ratify such an amendment. And if the national government could be reined in, so that it more closely resembles the one intended by the Framers, spending by the national government would also be reined in.

D. Departmentalism

Despite recent victories for liberty, the U.S. Supreme Court has too often sided with its big-government enemies. And, in keeping with the traditon of “playing by the rules”, the executive branch has acceed to the Court because of the doctrine of judicial supremacy.

The answer to judicial supremacy is departmentalism. Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen describe it in their book, The Constitution: An Introduction:

All branches of government are equally bound by the Constitution. No branch of the federal government— not the Congress, not the President, not even the Supreme Court— can legitimately act in ways contrary to the words of the Constitution. Indeed, Article VI requires that all government officials— legislative, executive, and judicial, state and federal—“ shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” Thus, the idea of a written constitution is closely tied to the idea of constitutional supremacy: In America, no branch of government is supreme. The government as a whole is not supreme. The Constitution is supreme. It is the written Constitution that prevails over every other source of authority in the United States.

It is crucially important to account for the States in any discussion of departmentalism. Too often all of the branches of the national government have been in agreement about the abrogation of the constitutional contract. Look at the New Deal Supreme Court, for example, which merely upheld Social Security and other unconstitutional legislation proposed by FDR and eagerly embraced by Congress. Similar examples from later administrations include but are far from limited to Medicare and Medicaid (advocated by Lyndon B. Johnson) and their vast and costly expansion through Obamacare.

Further, there are many notable instances in which the Supreme Court has struck down State laws that seem to lie beyond the province of the Constitution, and has done so on flimsy pretexts with the obvious aim of making law that expands the power of the national government. Notable examples are Roe v. Wade (1973), which manufactured a “right” to abortion, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) which legalized same-sex “marriage”, despite the wisdom embedded in long-standing social norms.

As sovereign entities and parties to the constitutional contract, the States can (and should) refuse to implement unconstitutional decrees emanating from the central government. Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, seems to understand this:

“If these people in California can thumb their nose at a law they don’t like [i.e., national immigration law] then I guarantee there will be a pro-life governor who will simply say no more abortions in our state and that’s just the way it is,” … Huckabee … told Fox News….

Far too many Americans have … bought the line that the “Supremacy Clause” of the Constitution states that the federal government is supreme over the states. That is most certainly not what is said in Article VI of the Constitution! Rather, the supremacy clause of the Constitution states that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. A law passed by Congress that is not “in pursuance” of the Constitution is therefore no law at all — and neither is a decision of the Supreme Court that does not follow the Constitution.

While the wording of the Constitution is quite clear — the Congress makes all laws under the supremacy of the Constitution — it is still far too common to hear the misinformed remark that Supreme Court decisions are “the law of the land.” On the contrary, a Supreme Court decision is “the law of the case,” and is binding only on the parties involved in that case….

No one knows how the federal government would react if a state’s governor directed legal authorities to enforce homicide laws against clinics and abortionists. But, as Huckabee told Fox News, it might happen. In Oklahoma, a former state representative, Dan Fisher, is running for governor, and is vowing to do just that. Right now, Fisher is running far behind in public opinion polls for the Republican nomination. He is not expected to win the governorship.

But at some point, a pro-life governor may decide it is time to test the federal government on this point. If the federal courts and the rest of the federal government would actually follow the Constitution instead of a rogue decision by the Supreme Court, the federal government’s reaction would be meek acquiescence. Hopefully, that is what would occur, though no one can predict what the outcome would be. [Steve Byas, “Huckabee Predicts That a Pro-Life Governor Could Defy the Feds“, The New American, April 9, 2018]

The United States has been through this before, in the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33,

during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, which involved a confrontation between South Carolina and the federal government. It ensued after South Carolina declared that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state….

Military preparations to resist anticipated federal enforcement were initiated by the state. On March 1, 1833, Congress passed both the Force Bill—authorizing the President to use military forces against South Carolina—and a new negotiated tariff, the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which was satisfactory to South Carolina.

But that was long ago, in a time when a State might reasonably expect to be able to defend itself militarily against U.S. armed forces, or at least put up a good fight. What would happen now and in the future depends mainly on who occupies the White House at the time.

But departmentalism cuts both ways. A defiant Democrat is more likely to invoke it than a Republican who believes in judicial supremacy.

A more drastic measure is required to restore the constitutional order.

E. Secession

In accordance with the doctrine of departmentalism, a State may be tempted to nullify an unconstitutional act of the national government. But there are probably many such acts that the State (or a preponderance of its citizens) would wish to nullify. Why do the thing piecemeal — and risk intervention by the national government for the sake of a single issue — when a sweeping solution is at hand? The sweeping solution, of course, is secession.

Secession is a legitimate constitutional act — a legal act, in other words — conventional wisdom to the contrary notwithstanding.

The best way to show that secession is legal is to construct a legal case for it, in the form of a resolution of secession:

In Convention, __________ 20__.

The Declaration of the representatives of the people of the State of _______________.

It has become necessary for the people of _______________ to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with the United States of America, and to assume the separate and equal status of an independent nation. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that the people of _______________ should declare the causes which impel them to the separation, and explain its legality.

The Constitution is a contract — a compact in the language of the Framers. The parties to the compact are not only the States but also the national government created by the Constitution.

It was  by the grace of nine States that the Constitution became effective in 1789. Those nine States voluntarily created a new nation and national government and, at the same time, voluntarily ceded to that government certain specified and limited powers. The States and their people were given to understand that, in return for the powers granted it, the central government would exercise those powers for the benefit of the States and their people. Every State subsequently admitted to the union has subcribed to the Constitution with the same understanding as the nine States whose ratification effected it.

Lest there be any question about the status of the Constitution as a compact, we turn to James Madison, who is often called the Father of the Constitution. Madison, in a letter to Daniel Webster dated March 15, 1833, addresses

the question whether the Constitution of the U.S. was formed by the people or by the States, now under a theoretic discussion by animated partizans.

Madison continues:

It is fortunate when disputed theories, can be decided by undisputed facts. And here the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made by the people, but as imbodied into the several states, who were parties to it and therefore made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity.

Moving closer in time to the ratification of the Constitution, this is from Madison’s report on the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, a report that was adopted by the General Assembly of Virginia in 1800:

The third resolution is in the words following:–

“That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact to which the states are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact–as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them.”…

The resolution declares, first, that “it views the powers of the federal government as resulting from the compact to which the states are parties;” in other words, that the federal powers are derived from the Constitution; and that the Constitution is a compact to which the states are parties….

The other position involved in this branch of the resolution, namely, “that the states are parties to the Constitution,” or compact, is, in the judgment of the committee, equally free from objection…. [I]n that sense the Constitution was submitted to the “states;” in that sense the “states” ratified it; and in that sense of the term “states,” they are consequently parties to the compact from which the powers of the federal government result. . . .

. . . The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the states, given by each in its sovereign capacity.

Finally, in The Federalist No. 39, which informed the debates in the various States about ratification,  Madison says that

the Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but, on the other, that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. . . .

That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by the objectors; the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act.

Madison leaves no doubt about the continued sovereignty of each State and its people. The remaining question is this: On what grounds, if any, may a State withdraw from the compact into which it entered voluntarily?

There is a judicial myth — articulated by a majority of the United States Supreme Court in Texas v. White (1869) — that States may not withdraw from the compact because the union of States is perpetual:

The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to “be perpetual.” And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained “to form a more perfect Union.” It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?

The Court’s reasoning is born of mysticism, not legality. Similar reasoning might have been used — and was used — to assert that the Colonies were inseparable from Great Britain. And yet, some of the people of the Colonies put an end to the union of the Colonies and Great Britain, on the moral principle that the Colonies were not obliged to remain in an abusive relationship. That moral principle is all the more compelling in the case of the union known as the United States, which — mysticism aside — is nothing more than the creature of the States.

In fact, the Constitution supplanted the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, by the will of only nine of the thirteen States. Madison says this in Federalist No. 43 regarding that event:

On what principle the Confederation, which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be superseded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it? . . .

The . . . question is answered at once by recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature’s God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.

Moreover, in a letter to Alexander Rives dated January 1, 1833, Madison says that

[a] rightful secession requires the consent of the others [other States], or an abuse of the compact, absolving the seceding party from the obligations imposed by it.

An abuse of the compact most assuredly legitimates withdrawal from it, on the principle of the preservation of liberty, especially if that abuse has been persistent and shows no signs of abating. The abuse, in this instance, has been and is being committed by the national government.

The national government is both a creature of the Constitution and a de facto party to it, as co-sovereign with the States and supreme in its realm of enumerated and limited powers. One of those powers enables the Supreme Court of the United States to decide “cases and controversies” arising under the Constitution, which is but one of the ways in which the Constitution makes the national government a party to the constitutional contract. More generally, the high officials of the national government acknowledge that government’s role as a party to the compact — and the limited powers vested in them — when they take oaths of office requiring them to uphold the Constitution.

Those high officials have nevertheless have committed myriad abuses of the national government’s enumerated and limited powers. The abuses are far too numerous to list in their entirety. The following examples amply justify the withdrawal of the State of _______________ from the compact:

A decennial census is authorized in Article I, Section 2, for the purpose of enumerating the population of each State in order to apportion the membership of the House of Representatives among the States, and for none of the many intrusive purposes since sought by the executive branch and authorized by Congress.

Article I, Section 1, vests all legislative powers of the national government in the Congress, but Congress has authorized and allowed agencies of the executive branch to legislate, in the guise of regulation, on a broad and seemingly limitless range of matters affecting the liberty and property of Americans.

Further, in violation of Article III, which vests the judicial power of the national government in the judicial branch, Congress has authorized and allowed agencies of the executive branch to adjudicate matters about which they have legislated, thus creating conflicts of interest that have systematically deprived millions of Americans of due process of law.

Article I, Section 8, enumerates the specific powers of Congress, which exclude many things that Congress has authorized with the cooperation and acquiescence of the other branches; for example, establishing and operating national welfare and health-care programs; intervening in the education of American’s children in practically every village, town, and city in the land; intrusively regulating not only interstate commerce but also intrastate commerce, the minutiae of manufacturing, and private, non-commercial transactions having only a faint bearing, if any, on interstate commerce; making and guaranteeing loans, including loans by quasi-governmental institutions and other third parties; acquisition of the stock and debt of business enterprises; establishment of a central bank with the power to do more than issue money; requiring the States and their political subdivisions to adopt uniform laws on matters that lie outside the enumerated powers of Congress and beyond the previously agreed powers of the States and their subdivisions; and coercing the States and the political subdivisions in the operation of illegitimate national programs by providing and threatening to withhold so-called federal money, which is in fact taxpayers’ money. The view that the “general welfare” and/or “necessary and proper” clauses of Article I, Section 8, authorize such activities was refuted definitively in advance of the ratification of the Constitution by James Madison in Federalist No. 41, wherein the leading proponents of the Constitution stated their understanding of the Constitution’s meaning when they made the case for its ratification.

One of the provisions of Article I, Section 10, prohibits interference by the States in private contracts; moreover, the Constitution nowhere authorizes the national government to interfere in private contracts. Yet, directly and through the States, the national government has allowed, encouraged, and required interference in private contracts pertaining to employment, property, and financial transactions.

Contrary to the express words of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, Congress has vested executive power in agencies that are not under the control and supervision of the president.

The Supreme Court, in various holdings, has curtailed the president’s ability, as commander-in-chief, to defend Americans and their interests by circumscribing his discretionary authority in matters concerning the capture, detention, interrogation, and appropriate imposition of military punishment for offenses against the law of war, of enemy prisoners captured in the course of ongoing hostilities pursuant to a congressional declaration of war or authorization for use of military force.

Amendment I of the Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” But Congress has nevertheless abridged the freedom of political speech by passing bills that have been signed into law by presidents of the United States and not entirely struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Amendment IX of the Constitution provides that its “enumeration . . . of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” But Congress, in concert with various presidents and Supreme Court majorities, has enacted laws that circumscribe such time-honored rights as freedom of association, freedom of contract, and property rights. That such laws were enacted for the noble purpose of ending some outward manifestations of discrimination does not exempt them from the purview of Amendment IX. As Amendment XIII attests, freedom is for all Americans, not just those who happen to be in favor at the moment.

As outlined above, the national government has routinely and massively violated Amendment X, which states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

We, therefore, the representatives of the people of _______________ do solemnly publish and declare that this State ought to be free and independent; that it is absolved from all allegiance to the government of the United States; that all political connection between it and government of the United States is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as a free and independent State it has full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

[Signatures of the delegates to the convention]

F. Coup

If all else fails, a more drastic measure may be called for:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup. [Thomas Sowell, “Don’t Get Weak“, National Review, May 1, 2007]

Glenn Reynolds, who is decidedly anti-coup, writes

that the American Constitution, along with traditional American political culture in general, tends to operate against those characteristics, and to make the American polity more resistant to a coup than most. It is also notable, however, that some changes in the Constitution and in political culture may tend to reduce that resistance….

The civics-book statement of American government is that Congress passes laws that must be signed by the president (or passed over a veto), and that those laws must be upheld by the judiciary to have effect. In practice, today’s government operates on a much more fluid basis, with administrative agencies issuing regulations that have the force of law – or, all too often, “guidance” that nominally lacks the force of law but that in practice constitutes a command – which are then enforced via agency proceedings.…

[I]t seems likely that to the extent that civilians, law enforcement, and others become used to obeying bureaucratic diktats that lack a clear basis in civics-book-style democratic process, the more likely they are to go along with other diktats emanating from related sources. This tendency to go along with instructions without challenging their pedigree would seem to make a coup more likely to succeed, just as a tendency to question possibly unlawful or unconstitutional requirements would tend to make one less likely to do so. A culture whose basis is “the law is what the bureaucrats say it is, at least unless a court says different,” is in a different place than one whose starting impulse is “it’s a free country.”…

[P]ersistent calls for a government-controlled “Internet kill switch”49 – justified, ostensibly, by the needs of cyberdefense or anti-terrorism – could undercut that advantage [of a decentralized Internet]. If whoever controlled the government could shut down the Internet, or, more insidiously, filter its content to favor the plotters’ message and squelch opposition while presenting at least a superficial appearance of normality, then things might actually be worse than they were in [Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey’s Seven Days in May, which imagined an attempted coup by a Curtis LeMay-like general].…

[T]he most significant barrier to a coup d’etat over American history has probably stemmed simply from the fact that such behavior is regarded as un-American. Coups are for banana republics; in America we don’t do that sort of thing. This is an enormously valuable sentiment, so long as the gap between “in America” and “banana republics” is kept sufficiently broad. But it is in this area, alas, that I fear we are in the worst shape. When it comes to ideological resistance to coups d’etat, there are two distinct groups whose opinions matter: The military, and civilians. Both are problematic….

[T]here are some troubling trends in civilian/military relations that suggest that we should be more worried about this subject in the future than we have been in the past…

Among these concerns are:

• A “societal malaise,” with most Americans thinking that the country was on “the wrong track.”

• A “deep pessimism about politicians and government after years of broken promises,” leading to an “environment of apathy” among voters that scholars regard as a precursor to a coup.

• A strong belief in the effectiveness and honor of the military, as contrasted to civilian government.

• The employment of military forces in non-military missions, from humanitarian aid to drug interdiction to teaching in schools and operating crucial infrastructure.

• The consolidation of power within the military – with Congressional approval – into a small number of hands….

• A reduction in the percentage of the officer corps from places outside the major service academies.…

• A general insulation of the military from civilian life…. “Military bases, complete with schools, churches, stores, child care centers, and recreational areas, became never-to-be-left islands of tranquility removed from the chaotic crime-ridden environment outside the gates…. Thus, a physically isolated and intellectually alienated officer corps was paired with an enlisted force likewise distanced from the society it was supposed to serve [quoting from an essay by Charles J. Dunlap, “The Origins Of The American Military Coup of 2012,” Parameters, Winter, 1992-93, at 2]….

[D]istrust in the civilian government and bureaucracy is very high. A 2016 Associated Press/National Opinion Research Center poll found that more than 6 in 10 Americans have “only slight confidence – or none at all” that the federal government can successfully address the problems facing the nation. And, as the AP noted, this lack of confidence transcends partisan politics: “Perhaps most vexing for the dozen or so candidates vying to succeed President Barack Obama, the poll indicates widespread skepticism about the government’s ability to solve problems, with no significant difference in the outlook between Republicans and Democrats.”

As a troubling companion to this finding, the YouGov poll on military coups…also found a troubling disconnect between confidence in civilian government and confidence in the military: “Some 71% said military officers put the interests of the country ahead of their own interests, while just 12% thought the same about members of Congress.” While such a sharp contrast in views about civilian government and the military is not itself an indicator of a forthcoming coup, it is certainly bad news. Also troubling are polls finding that a minority of voters believes that the United States government enjoys the consent of the governed. This degree of disconnection and disaffection, coupled with much higher prestige on the part of the military, bodes ill. [“Of Coups and the Constitution“, University of Tennessee Legal Studies Research Paper No. 294, July 1, 2016, last revised February 7, 2017]

Military personnel are disciplined and have access to the tools of power, and many of them are trained in clandestine operations. Therefore, a cadre of properly motivated careerists might possess the wherewithal necessary to seize power.

But … a plot to undertake a coup is easily betrayed. Among other things, significant numbers of high-ranking officers are shills for “wokeism”. A betrayed coup for liberty could easily become a coup for tyranny.

Its benefits are restricted to a society based on shared values.

The prospect of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter dismayed the left and elated the right. Why? Because of the expectation that Twitter would thenceforth stop censoring “misinformation”, that is, facts and arguments that subvert the tenets of wokeism. Chief among those tenets are:

• Gender fluidity (e.g., the beliefs that “men” can bear children and that sex is “assigned” at birth)

• “Climate change catastrophe” as mainly a human-caused “problem”

• The dictatorship of “science” (when certain “scientists” proclaim “truths” favored by the woke, such as the aforementioned commitment to human-caused warming as a “scientific fact”, which it isn’t)

• Conservatism and constitutionalism as fascistic (a classic case of psychological projection)

• Blacks as oppressed victims of whites, who are all racists (despite strong evidence that blacks earn less than whites, have less wealth than whites, and commit crimes more often than whites because of innate differences in intelligence and cultural reinforcement of dysfunctional behavior).

There’s much more (see this, for example), but you get the idea.

Imagine what the worlds of politics, journalism, entertainment, advertising, and employment would be like if conservatives had been as successful at suppressing the ideas of wokeism as wokeists have been successful at suppressing their ideological opponents’ views. “Sane” would be a good descriptor. (If you liked the 1950s, you’d love the absence of wokeism.)

Wokeism has succeeded largely because of the mistaken idea that freedom of speech in all matters is a “good thing”. (Conservatives generally agree, but with exceptions for such things as pornography.) Further, practically unfettered freedom of speech is bound to lead to the truth because the “marketplace of ideas” ensures that it will.

But, as it has turned out, practically unfettered freedom of speech is the devil’s playground. It fosters the operation of an intellectual version of Gresham’s law: Bad ideas drive out good ones. This perversion of the “marketplace of ideas” is reinforced by the government’s (i.e., the left’s) command of public education indoctrination; the legalistic trick (known as section 230 of the Communications Decency Act) that allows leftist information brokers to suppress conservative views; and the removal of all constraints on what the left-dominated media may present as “entertainment” and “news”.

I have elsewhere and at length (e.g., here and here) explained and explored the wrongness and consequences of free-speech absolutism. Here, I will focus on the question posed by the title of this post: Why freedom of speech, that is, what is the good of it?

Free speech — speaking one’s mind without restraint at all times and in all places — is the province of innocents and madmen. For most human beings, speech approaches (and sometimes attains) openness and candor only among intimates. Even then — when marriages, romances, and friendships fail — the limitations of openness and candor (“free speech”) become apparent.

Even among academics who work in fields that are supposedly objective (e.g., the “hard sciences” and mathematics) there are rivalries, jealousies, and political differences that stand in the way of openness and candor. It’s not that academics don’t say what they really think; they are notorious for doing so. It’s that the purported objective of free speech — the pursuit of truth through the competition of ideas — is unlikely to be attained when hypotheses and facts are skewed by academicians’ biases. A leading example of this phenomenon is the scientific consensus group-think about “climate change“, which is a shining example of a hypothesis that has been disproved by evidence but survives and thrives on ignorance, emotionalism, and self-interest. (As do many other ruinous manifestations of “free speech”, such as recycling, “green” energy, anti-COVID masking, the innocence of Trayvon Martin, the saintliness of George Floyd, etc., etc., etc.)

In sum, given the left’s dominance of the “marketplace of ideas”, favored opinions will be (and are) those that foster social discord (e.g., critical race theory) and hysterical attachments to destructive pseudo-scientific fraudulence (e.g., “climate catastrophe” and “gender fluidity”).

Freedom of speech, as now practiced in America, favors irrationality and emotionalism. It does not — as evidenced by the current state of America — favor truth, justice, or the general well-being of the citizenry.

Freedom of speech is beneficial only if a vast majority of the populace shares certain fundamental values:

• Free markets produce the best outcomes, especially when people take personal responsibility for their economic situation.

• Social comity rests on taking personal responsibility for one’s actions, not making excuses or blaming “the system”.

• The last six of the Ten Commandments are the best guides to proper behavior.

• Duly enacted laws are to be upheld until they are duly revised or rescinded.

• Social and economic freedom come down to mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual forbearance, which describes the state of liberty. Without those things, there is no liberty.

The Framers of the Constitution could not envision a free society in which the foregoing tenets were routinely and gleefully violated. That is because there can be no free society where the foregoing tenets are routinely and gleefully violated.

To put a point on it, freedom of speech is a danger to liberty, prosperity, and social comity as long as America’s institutions are held captive or besieged by the left.

But it is evident that the left will not relent. It is therefore time for a national divorce that frees the majority of States from the left’s tyranny.

I will discuss national divorce in my next post.

Why not keep your car and house unlocked?

Bryan Caplan claims that

prohibiting someone from immigrating to the United States … violates private property rights and freedom of association. An American’s freedom to hire an immigrant to work in the business she owns is protected by her private property rights as well as her freedom to associate with the immigrant and the immigrant’s freedom to associate with her. The same goes for decisions to reside or congregate with people from other countries.

The fundamental right of freedom of association necessarily includes the freedom not to associate with a certain person or persons. A group of like-minded individuals may therefore band together and declare that they will not associate with, say, illegal immigrants.

Further, that group may hold joint title to “public” property (e.g., hospitals, schools, and other “public” services) by virtue of paying taxes to maintain the property and to support the operations conducted on it. The group therefore has the right to forbid certain persons (outside the group) from using that property, both as a matter of property rights and freedom of association.

Caplan’s kind of libertarianism is in fact destructive of property rights and freedom of association.

Dubious rhetoric, then and now.

“We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty” ― John F. Kennedy, 1961

That was then.

Now, Uncle Joe (the addled one in DC, not the crafty one in the Kremlin) wants Americans to sacrifice for the war effort by paying $5 (and up) for a gallon of gasoline.

What war effort, Joe? Ukraine is losing. NATO is providing some help, but won’t (with good reason) intervene directly. Putin — having successfully portrayed himself as a madman — threatens to pull the nuclear trigger in the event of direct intervention.

In sum, there’s not really a war effort, just a kabuki dance in which our Uncle Joe is a leading performer.

And if there’s not really a war effort, why stick Americans with the cost of a phony war? Seems unpatriotic to me, but that’s today’s Democrat Party for you.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

It pains me to write this. But I must.

Where will critical race theory get blacks? Right where Dov Fischer predicts:

[T]he same disadvantaged groups who today rely on blaming instead of self-help will then be at the same exact rung on the social order that they are today, just as 50 years of racism-free society and Great Society “entitlements” have not accomplished equality of results today, even as newcomers from Asia entered this country these past 50 and 60 years and leap-frogged those already here.

Blacks, on the whole, are not where they are because of whitey, but because of their genes and culture.

Consider the experience of Latinos in America. Latinos are also “persons of color”. They are not only more intelligent than blacks, on average, but they are also, on average, harder working, more self-reliant, and more observant of traditional morality. Instead of whining about their fate, Latinos do something about it.

Consider Jews, who have been subjected to violence and discrimination in this country. (And many of them are survivors and descendants of the Holocaust, which puts slavery in the shade.) Jews are where they are — generally more prosperous, learned, and respected than blacks — because of their genes and culture.

It speaks volumes that the proponents of CRT want to blame not only white slave-holders and white segregationsists for the plight of blacks, but also schoolchildren whose only sin is “whiteness”. For shame.

Some blacks understand the biased narrative that underlies critical race theory, and warn against it because it stands in the way of improvement from within. Glenn Loury is one of those blacks.

What (most) politicians dare not say about mass shootings.

Guns have never been in short supply in America. What has been in short supply is loving but strict upbringing by both parents (one man and one woman).

When did mass shootings start? In 1966, when Charles Whitman, an abused child of an abusive father killed and wounded four dozen persons, mostly by gunfire, before being killed by police.

Whitman — in method and madness — was a harbinger of what now seems to be an epidemic.

The cure for the epidemic isn’t “gun control” or “red flag” laws, both of which are demonstrably failed policies. It is a moral rebirth of the nation, which is unlikely to happen as long as leftists and “establishment” types are in charge.

For a lengthier treatment of this subject, complete with (slightly out of date) statistics, see this.

A cyber-age pipe dream.

Nothing is new under the Sun, the saying goes. That’s probably true of politics because history is littered with failed political systems, ranging from the defunct totalitarian regimes of the 20th century to the myriad anarchistic communes that have sputtered out like candles in a strong wind.

The republic that we have been unable to keep is on the way out, too.

What will take its place? Loose confederations of States, defined by traditional geographic boundaries? Virtual states, bound together in quasi-contractual and ever-shifting economic, social, and jurisprudential relationships that cut across traditional polities and span continents?

We live in interesting times.

I’m rooting for it.

Governor Abbott has been making some bold moves with respect to illegal immigration. His spring-loaded anti-abortion law, which was triggered in the wake of Dobbs, was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court. And his attitude toward Washington is clearly antagonistic, as is the attitude of a majority of Texans, especially those who live outside the big four metro areas: Houston, Dallas-Forth Worth, San Antonio, and Austin.

Now comes a recent poll by SurveyUSA, which finds that (among 625 Texans polled),

• 60 percent would support a peaceful secession by Texas (poll #2).

• 80 percent do not want to live in a country that includes Democrat-controlled States (poll #3).

It won’t take much to push Texas over the edge, and the Dems in Washington seem poised to apply the necessary push.

It’s too bad that I no longer live in Texas. As a resident of Austin I would especially relish the wailing and gnashing of teeth by that over-rated city’s denizens.

Bettors beware.

INTRODUCTION

A probability is a statement about a very large number of like events, each of which has an unpredictable (random) outcome. Probability, properly understood, says nothing about the outcome of an individual event. It certainly says nothing about what will happen next in a sequence of random events of a given kind.

Consider this: A fair coin comes up heads with a probability of 0.5, and comes up tails with the same probability. But those aren’t statements about the outcome of the next coin toss. No, they’re statements about the approximate frequencies of the occurrence of heads and tails in a large number of tosses. The next coin toss will eventuate in heads or tails, but not 0.5 heads and 0.5 tails (except in the rare and unpredictable case of a coin landing on edge and staying there).

A person who chooses to place a bet on a coin toss should disregard the irrelevant and misleading idea that the probability of the next toss coming up heads (or tails) is 0.5. He should simply bet an amount that he is willing to lose, or to make a series of bets with an aggregate value that he is willing to lose.

There’s a vast gap between routine processes of the kind to which probabilities attach — coin tosses, for example — and the complexities of human activity. Human activity is too complex and dependent on intentions and willful actions to be characterized (properly) by statements about the probability of this or that action.

It is fatuous to say, for example, that a war on the scale of World War II is improbable because such a war has occurred only once in human history. By that reasoning, one could have said confidently in 1938 that a war on the scale of World War II could never occur because there had been no such war in human history.

A SINGLE EVENT DOESN’T HAVE A PROBABILITY

A believer in single-event probabilities takes the view that a single flip of a coin or roll of a dice has a probability. I do not. A probability represents the frequency with which an outcome occurs over the very long run, and it is only an average that conceals random variations.

The outcome of a single coin flip can’t be reduced to a percentage or probability. It can only be described in terms of its discrete, mutually exclusive possibilities: heads (H) or tails (T). The outcome of a single roll of a die or pair of dice can only be described in terms of the number of points that may come up, 1 through 6 or 2 through 12.

Yes, the expected frequencies of H, T, and and various point totals can be computed by simple mathematical operations. But those are only expected frequencies. They say nothing about the next coin flip or dice roll, nor do they more than approximate the actual frequencies that will occur over the next 100, 1,000, or 10,000 such events.

Of what value is it to know that the probability of H is 0.5 when H fails to occur in 11 consecutive flips of a fair coin? Of what value is it to know that the probability of rolling a  7 is 0.167 — meaning that 7 comes up every 6 rolls, on average — when 7 may not appear for 56 consecutive rolls? These examples are drawn from simulations of 10,000 coin flips and 1,000 dice rolls. They are simulations that I ran once, not simulations that I cherry-picked from many runs. (The Excel file is at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FABVTiB_qOe-WqMQkiGFj2f70gSu6a82/. Coin flips are at the first tab, dice rolls are at the second tab.)

Let’s take another example, one that is more interesting and has generated much controversy of the years. It’s the Monty Hall problem,

a brain teaser, in the form of a probability puzzle, loosely based on the American television game show Let’s Make a Deal and named after its original host, Monty Hall. The problem was originally posed (and solved) in a letter by Steve Selvin to the American Statistician in 1975…. It became famous as a question from a reader’s letter quoted in Marilyn vos Savant’s “Ask Marilyn” column in Parade magazine in 1990 … :

Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice

Vos Savant’s response was that the contestant should switch to the other door…. Under the standard assumptions, contestants who switch have a 2/3 chance of winning the car, while contestants who stick to their initial choice have only a 1/3 chance.

Vos Savant’s answer is correct, but only if the contestant is allowed to play an unlimited number of games. A player who adopts a strategy of “switch” in every game will, in the long run, win about 2/3 of the time (explanation here). That is, the player has a better chance of winning if he chooses “switch” rather than “stay”.

Read the preceding paragraph carefully and you will spot the logical defect that underlies the belief in single-event probabilities: The long-run winning strategy (“switch”) is transformed into a “better chance” to win a particular game. What does that mean? How does an average frequency of 2/3 improve one’s chances of winning a particular game? It doesn’t. Game results are utterly random; that is, the average frequency of 2/3 has no bearing on the outcome of a single game.

I’ll try to drive the point home by returning to the coin-flip game, with money thrown into the mix. A $1 bet on H means a gain of $1 if H turns up, and a loss of $1 if T turns up. The expected value of the bet — if repeated over a very large number of trials — is zero. The bettor expects to win and lose the same number of times, and to walk away no richer or poorer than when he started. And for a very large number of games, the bettor will walk away approximately (but not necessarily exactly) neither richer nor poorer than when he started. How many games? In the simulation of 10,000 games mentioned earlier, H occurred 50.6 percent of the time. A very large number of games is probably at least 100,000.

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that a bettor has played 100,00 coin-flip games at $1 a game and come out exactly even. What does that mean for the play of the next game? Does it have an expected value of zero?

To see why the answer is “no”, let’s make it interesting and say that the bet on the next game — the next coin flip — is $10,000. The size of the bet should wonderfully concentrate the bettor’s mind. He should now see the situation for what it really is: There are two possible outcomes, and only one of them will be realized. An average of the two outcomes is meaningless. The single coin flip doesn’t have a “probability” of 0.5 H and 0.5 T and an “expected payoff” of zero. The coin will come up either H or T, and the bettor will either lose $10,000 or win $10,000.

To repeat: The outcome of a single coin flip doesn’t have an expected value for the bettor. It has two possible values, and the bettor must decide whether he is willing to lose $10,000 on the single flip of a coin.

By the same token (or coin), the outcome of a single roll of a pair of dice doesn’t have a 1-in-6 probability of coming up 7. It has 36 possible outcomes and 11 possible point totals, and the bettor must decide how much he is willing to lose if he puts his money on the wrong combination or outcome.

In summary, it is a logical fallacy to ascribe a probability to a single event. A probability represents the observed or computed average value of a very large number of like events. A single event cannot possess that average value. A single event has a finite number of discrete and mutually exclusive possible outcomes. Those outcomes will not “average out” in that single event. Only one of them will obtain, like Schrödinger’s cat.

To say or suggest that the outcomes will average out — which is what a probability implies — is tantamount to saying that Jack Sprat and his wife were neither skinny nor fat because their body-mass indices averaged to a normal value. It is tantamount to saying that one can’t drown by walking across a pond with an average depth of 1 foot, when that average conceals the existence of a 100-foot-deep hole.

It should go without saying that a specific event that might occur — rain tomorrow, for example — doesn’t have a probability.

WHAT ABOUT THE PROBABILITY OF PRECIPITATION?

Weather forecasters (meteorologists) are constantly saying things like “there’s an 80-percent probability of precipitation (PoP) in __________ tomorrow”. What do such statements mean? Not much:

It is not surprising that this issue is difficult for the general public, given that it is debated even within the scientific community. Some propose a “frequentist” interpretation: there will be at least a minimum amount of rain on 80% of days with weather conditions like they are today. Although preferred by many scientists, this explanation may be particularly difficult for the general public to grasp because it requires regarding tomorrow as a class of events, a group of potential tomorrows. From the perspective of the forecast user, however, tomorrow will happen only once. A perhaps less abstract interpretation is that PoP reflects the degree of confidence that the forecaster has that it will rain. In other words, an 80% chance of rain means that the forecaster strongly believes that there will be at least a minimum amount of rain tomorrow. The problem, from the perspective of the general public, is that when PoP is forecasted, none of these interpretations is specified.

There are clearly some interpretations that are not correct. The percentage expressed in PoP neither refers directly to the percent of area over which precipitation will fall nor does it refer directly to the percent of time precipitation will be observed on the forecast day Although both interpretations are clearly wrong, there is evidence that the general public holds them to varying degrees. Such misunderstandings are critical because they may affect the decisions that people make. If people misinterpret the forecast as percent time or percent area, they maybe more inclined to take precautionary action than are those who have the correct probabilistic interpretation, because they think that it will rain somewhere or some time tomorrow. The negative impact of such misunderstandings on decision making, both in terms of unnecessary precautions as well as erosion in user trust, could well eliminate any potential benefit of adding uncertainty information to the forecast. [Susan Joslyn, Nimor Nadav-Greenberg, and Rebecca M. Nichols, “Probability of Precipitations: Assessment and Enhancement of End-User Understanding“, Journal of the American Meteorological Society, February 2009, citations omitted]

The frequentist interpretation is close to being correct, but it still involves a great deal of guesswork. Rainfall in a particular location is influenced by many variables (e.g., atmospheric pressure, direction and rate of change of atmospheric pressure, ambient temperature, local terrain, presence or absence of bodies of water, vegetation, moisture content of the atmosphere, height of clouds above the terrain, depth of cloud cover). It is nigh unto impossible to say that today’s (or tomorrow’s or next week’s) weather conditions are like (or will be like) those that in the past resulted in rainfall in a particular location 80 percent of the time.

That leaves the Bayesian interpretation, in which the forecaster combines some facts (e.g., the presence or absence of a low-pressure system in or toward the area, the presence or absence of a flow of water vapor in or toward the area) with what he has observed in the past to arrive at a guess about future weather. He then attaches a probability to his guess to indicate the strength of his confidence in it.

Thus:

Bayesian probability represents a level of certainty relating to a potential outcome or idea. This is in contrast to a frequentist probability that represents the frequency with which a particular outcome will occur over any number of trials.

An event with Bayesian probability of .6 (or 60%) should be interpreted as stating “With confidence 60%, this event contains the true outcome”, whereas a frequentist interpretation would view it as stating “Over 100 trials, we should observe event X approximately 60 times.”

It is impossible to attach a probability — as properly defined earlier — to something that hasn’t happened, and may not happen. So when you read or hear a statement like “the probability of rain tomorrow is 80 percent”, you should mentally translate it into language like this:

X guesses that Y will (or will not) happen at time Z, and the “probability” that he attaches to his guess  indicates his degree of confidence in it.

The guess may be well-informed by systematic observation of relevant events, but it remains a guess. As most Americans have learned and relearned over the years, when rain has failed to materialize or has spoiled an outdoor event that was supposed to be rain-free.

BUT AREN’T SOME THINGS MORE LIKELY TO HAPPEN THAN OTHERS?

Of course. But only one thing of a kind will happen at a given time and place.

If a person walks across a shooting range where live ammunition is being used, his is more likely to be killed than if he walks across the same patch of ground when no one is shooting. And a clever analyst could concoct a probability of a person’s being shot by writing an equation that includes such variables as his size, the speed with which he walks, the number of shooters, their rate of fire, and the distance across the shooting range.

What would the probability estimate mean? It would mean that if a very large number of persons walked across the shooting range under identical conditions, approximately S percent of them would be shot. But the clever analyst cannot specify which of the walkers would be among the S percent.

Here’s another way to look at it. One person wearing head-to-toe bullet-proof armor could walk across the range a large number of times and expect to be hit by a bullet on S percent of his crossings. But the hardy soul wouldn’t know on which of the crossings he would be hit.

Suppose the hardy soul became a foolhardy one and made a bet that he could cross the range without being hit. Further, suppose that S is estimated to be 0.75; that is, 75 percent of a string of walkers would be hit, or a single (bullet-proof) walker would be hit on 75 percent of his crossings. Knowing the value of S, the foolhardy fellow offers to pay out $1 million dollars if he crosses the range unscathed — one time — and claim $4 million (for himself or his estate) if he is shot. That’s an even-money bet, isn’t it?

No it isn’t. This situation is exactly analogous to the $10,000 bet on a single coin flip, discussed above. But I will dissect this one in a different way, to the same end.

The bet should be understood for what it is, an either-or-proposition. The foolhardy walker will either lose $1 million or win $4 million. The bettor (or bettors) who take the other side of the bet will either win $1 million or lose $4 million.

As anyone with elementary reading and reasoning skills should be able to tell, those possible outcomes are not the same as the outcome that would obtain (approximately) if the foolhardy fellow could walk across the shooting range 1,000 times. If he could, he would come very close to breaking even, as would those who bet against him.

To put it as simply as possible:

When an event has more than one possible outcome, a single trial cannot replicate the average outcome of a large number of trials (replications of the event).

It follows that the average outcome of a large number of trials — the probability of each possible outcome — cannot occur in a single trial.

It is therefore meaningless to ascribe a probability to any possible outcome of a single trial.

MODELING AND PROBABILITY

Sometimes, when things interact, the outcome of the interactions will conform to an expected value — if that value is empirically valid. For example, if a pot of pure water is put over a flame at sea level, the temperature of the water will rise to 212 degrees Fahrenheit and water molecules will then begin to escape into the air in a gaseous form (steam).  If the flame is kept hot enough and applied long enough, the water in the pot will continue to vaporize until the pot is empty.

That isn’t a probabilistic description of boiling. It’s just a description of what’s known to happen to water under certain conditions.

But it bears a similarity to a certain kind of probabilistic reasoning. For example, in a paper that I wrote long ago about warfare models, I said this:

Consider a five-parameter model, involving the conditional probabilities of detecting, shooting at, hitting, and killing an opponent — and surviving, in the first place, to do any of these things. Such a model might easily yield a cumulative error of a hemibel [a factor of 3], given a twenty five percent error in each parameter.

Mathematically, 1.255 = 3.05. Which is true enough, but also misleadingly simple.

A mathematical model of that kind rests on the crucial assumption that the component probabilities are based on observations of actual events occurring in similar conditions. It is safe to say that the values assigned to the parameters of warfare models, econometric models, sociological models, and most other models outside the realm of physics, chemistry, and other “hard” sciences fail to satisfy that assumption.

Further, a mathematical model yields only the expected (average) outcome of a large number of events occurring under conditions similar to those from which the component probabilities were derived. (A Monte Carlo model merely yields a quantitative estimate of the spread around the average outcome.) Again, this precludes most models outside the “hard” sciences, and even some within that domain.

The moral of the story: Don’t be gulled by a statement about the expected outcome of an event, even when the statement seems to be based on a rigorous mathematical formula. Look behind the formula for an empirical foundation. And not just any empirical foundation, but one that is consistent with the situation to which the formula is being applied.

And when you’ve done that, remember that the formula expresses a point estimate around which there’s a wide — very wide — range of uncertainty. Which was the real point of the passage quoted above. The only sure things in life are death, taxes, and regulation.

PROBABILITY VS. OPPORTUNITY

Warfare models, as noted, deal with interactions among large numbers of things. If a large unit of infantry encounters another large unit of enemy infantry, and the units exchange gunfire, it is reasonable to expect the following consequences:

• As the numbers of infantrymen increase, more of them will be shot, for a given rate of gunfire.

• As the rate of gunfire increases, more of the infantrymen will be shot, for a given number of infantrymen.

These consequences don’t represent probabilities, though an inveterate modeler will try to represent them with a probabilistic model. They represent opportunities — opportunities for bullets to hit bodies. It is entirely possible that some bullets won’t hit bodies and some bodies won’t be hit by bullets. But more bullets will hit bodies if there are more bodies in a given space. And a higher proportion of a given number of bodies will be hit as more bullets enter a given space.

That’s all there is to it.

It has nothing to do with probability. The actual outcome of a past encounter is the actual outcome of that encounter, and the number of casualties has everything to do with the minutiae of the encounter and nothing to do with probability. A fortiori, the number of casualties resulting from a possible future encounter would have everything to do with the minutiae of that encounter and nothing to do with probability. Given the uniqueness of any given encounter, it would be wrong to characterize its outcome (e.g., number of casualties per infantryman) as a probability.

Creation is a cosmological imperative, not a leap of faith.

Is our world a product of chance?

Jacques Maritain writes:

To attempt to demonstrate that the world can be the effect of chance by beginning with the presupposition of this very possibility is to become the victim of a patent sophism or a gross illusion. In order to have the right to apply the calculus of probabilities to the case of the formation of the world, it would be necessary first to have established that the world can be the effect of chance. [Approaches to God, Macmillan paperback edition, pp. 60-1.]

To say that the world as we know it is the product of chance — and that it may exist only because it is one of vastly many different (but unobservable) worlds resulting from chance — is merely to state a theoretical possibility. Further, it is a possibility that is beyond empirical proof or disproof; it is on a par with science fiction, not with science.

If the world as we know it — our universe — is not the product of chance, what is it? A reasonable answer is found in another post of mine, “Existence and Creation.” Here is the succinct version:

1. In the material universe, cause precedes effect.

2. Accordingly, the material universe cannot be self-made. It must have a “starting point,” but the “starting point” cannot be in or of the material universe.

3. The existence of the universe therefore implies a separate, uncaused cause.

Philosopher Gary Gutting writes:

The idea of a cosmological argument is to move from certain known effects to God as their cause. To construct such an argument, we need a principle of causality: a statement of which sorts of things need causes to explain them. The simplest such principle would be: everything has a cause. But this is too strong a claim, since if everything has a cause, then God will have a cause and so be dependent on something else, which would, therefore, have a better claim to be God. A cosmological argument will work only if we have a causal principle that will not apply to God….

A cosmological argument is an effort to carry the search for an explanation as far as it can go, to see if we can discover not just an explanation of some single thing but an explanation of everything—for, we might say, the world (kosmos in Greek) as a whole. Let’s call this an ultimate explanation. We want, therefore, an argument that will show that God is the ultimate explanation. Perhaps, then, the causal principle we need is that there must be an ultimate explanation (provided by an ultimate cause).

Now, however, we need to think more carefully about what an ultimate explanation would explain. We’ve said it’s an explanation of everything, but just what does this mean? Something that needs explanation is, by definition, not self-explanatory. It needs to be explained by something other than itself. As we’ve seen, if we sought an explanation of literally everything, then there would be nothing available to provide the explanation.

If there is to be an ultimate explanation, then, it must be something that itself requires no explanation but explains everything else. The world that the cosmological argument is trying to explain must not be everything but everything that needs an explanation. But what things require explanation?

One plausible answer is that we must explain those things that do exist but might not exist, things that, to use the traditional technical term, are contingent….

Correspondingly, for the cosmological argument to work, the explanation of everything contingent must be something that is not contingent; namely, something that not only exists but also cannot not exist; it must, that is, be necessary. If it weren’t necessary, it would be contingent and so itself in need of explanation. (Notice that what is necessary is not contingent, and vice versa.) Simply put, the God the cosmological argument wants to prove exists has to be a necessary, not a contingent, being.

Here, then, we move to a still better principle of causality: that every contingent thing requires a cause. But we still need to be careful. Most contingent things can be explained by other contingent things. The world (the totality of contingent things) is a complex explanatory system…. If this makes sense, the cosmological argument can’t get off the ground because, as we’ve seen, its God is a necessary being that’s needed to explain what contingent things can’t….

What does this mean for our effort to construct a cosmological argument? It means that our argument must deny that there is an infinite regress of contingent things that explains everything that needs explaining. Otherwise, there’s no need for a necessary God.

This is a crucial stage in our search for a cosmological argument. We have a plausible principle of causality: any contingent being needs a cause. We now see that we need another premise: that an infinite regress of contingent things cannot explain everything that needs explaining….

We can agree that there might be an infinite series of contingent explainers but still maintain that such an infinite series itself needs an explanation. We might, in effect, grant that there could be an infinite series of tortoises, each supporting the other—and the whole chain supporting the Earth—but still insist that there must be some explanation for why all those tortoises exist. That is, our argument will require that an infinite regress of contingent things must itself have an explanation. This gives us the two key premises of our cosmological argument: a principle of causality and a principle for excluding an infinite regress.

Now we can formulate our argument:

1. There are contingent beings.

2. The existence of any contingent being has an explanation.

3. Such an explanation must be provided by either a necessary being or by an infinite regress of contingent beings.

4. An explanation by means of an infinite regress of contingent beings is itself in need of an explanation by a necessary being.

5. Therefore, there is a necessary being that explains the existence of contingent beings.

This argument is logically valid; that is, if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true…. [“Can We Prove That God Exists? Richard Dawkins and the Limits of Faith and Atheism,” Salon, November 29, 2015]

That looks like my argument.

What about atheism?

Greg Perkins, writing at now-defunct Noodlefood (“Why the New Atheists Can’t Even Beat D’Souza: The Gap in Religious Thought“), criticizes Dinesh D’souza’s article, “Taking Aim at God, and Missing,” wherein D’Souza essays a defense of the “God hypothesis”. There is much to criticize about D’Souza’s argument, but Perkins — an Objectivist and therefore, I assume, an atheist — should have looked in a mirror before writing this:

… Dinesh D’S-ouza continues his counters to “New Atheists” such as Christopher Hitchens. This time we find him saying that “Thanks to the astounding discoveries of modern science, I think the God hypothesis has a lot more going for it today than it did in the eighteenth century.” …

[H]istory is littered with examples of something “supernatural” being arbitrarily asserted as the explanation, only to be retracted later as our knowledge expanded….

In other words, science will explain all and nothing will be left to God. That is the import of Perkins’s post, at any rate. He does precisely what he accuses D’Souza of doing; that is, “not knowing the answer to a puzzle” (the basis of existence) entitles Perkins “to go and make one up”. The gaps in scientific knowledge do not prove the existence of God, but they surely are not proof against God. To assert that there is no God because X, Y, and Z are known about the universe says nothing about the creation of the universe or the source of the “laws” that seem to govern much of its behavior.

If theists of D’Souza’s stripe are guilty of assuming the answer they seek, atheists of Perkins’s stripe are equally guilty of the same thing. Both want to generalize from evidence whose limitations cannot be guessed at. “Unknown unknowns” dominate the mystery of existence.

There is no reasonable basis — and certainly no empirical one — on which to prefer atheism to deism or theism. Strident atheists merely practice a “religion” of their own. They have neither logic nor science nor evidence on their side — and eons of belief against them.

What about various mythologies (e.g., Norse and Greek) and creation legends, which nowadays seem outlandish even to persons who believe in a creator? Professional atheists (e.g., Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Lawrence Krauss) point to the crudeness of those mythologies and legends as a reason to reject the idea of a creator who set the universe and its laws in motion. (See, for example, “Russell’s Teapot,” discussed here.)

Logic is not on the side of the professional atheists. The crudeness of a myth or legend, when viewed through the lens of contemporary knowledge, cannot be taken as evidence against creation. The crudeness of a myth or legend merely reflects the crudeness of the state of knowledge when the myth or legend arose.

Crudeness aside, the essence of a creation mythology is an intuitive grasp of the argument for the logical necessity of a creator; that is:

1. In the material universe, cause precedes effect.

2. Accordingly, the material universe cannot be self-made. It must have a “starting point,” but the “starting point” cannot be in or of the material universe.

3. The existence of the universe therefore implies a separate, uncaused cause.

Were the isolationists right?

World War II was America’s last “good” war. It was “good” because the main enemy, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime, were widely known to be evil — long before the full story of the Holocaust was revealed.

The war also good because it ended with unconditional surrender by our enemies. It didn’t end in stalemate, defeat, or a hollow victory, as it did in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan.

It was a high point of American history, which is why it is the subject of countless films, TV series, novels, and histories. It is why the veterans of World War II have been honored far beyond the relatively feeble recognition given to veterans of other wars.

But, in reality, World War II was a failed war because an enfeebled FDR, guided by the Communists in his administration, gave away Eastern Europe to Stalin. The giveaway was unnecessary. The U.S. had been relatively unscathed by the war; the Soviet Union’s losses in life, property, and industrial capacity had been devastating. The U.S. (with Britain) was in a position to dictate to Stalin.

Think of all that has happened since FDR’s giveaway, not the least of which is the war in Ukraine and the economic devastation it is visiting upon the West.

I once believed that World War II was necessary because, if the United States had failed to join it, Germany and Japan would have been able to encircle us. The mere presence of German and Japanese forces at our doorstep, and their ability to control our international trade, could have meant de facto submission to the authoritarian demands of Germany and Japan.

As it turns out, authoritarianism has overtaken the U.S. from within. So what was the point of fighting a “good” war?

Perhaps America’s fighting spirit and fundamentally robust economy (which would eventually have recovered from the Great Depression) would have been proof against an invasion.

Economic isolationism was then far more viable than it is in the age of globalization. The rest of the world might have gone to hell in a handbasket, but America could well have survived intact, well-armed, well-clothed, well-fed, etc.

Perhaps the constant threat of invasion would have made Americans more united and more committed to the values that preserve liberty.

Perhaps the isolationists were right, after all.

And science is never “settled”

The title of this post applies, inter alia, to econometric models — especially those that purport to forecast macroeconomic activity — and climate models — especially those that purport to forecast global temperatures. I have elsewhere essayed my assessments of macroeconomic and climate models. (See this and this, for example.) My purpose here is to offer a general warning about models that claim to depict and forecast the behavior of connected sets of phenomena (systems) that are large, complex, and dynamic. I draw, in part, on a paper that I wrote 41 years ago. That paper is about warfare models, but it has general applicability.

HEMIBEL THINKING

Philip M. Morse and George E. Kimball, pioneers in the field of military operations research — the analysis and modeling of military operations — wrote that the

successful application of operations research usually results in improvements by factors of 3 or 10 or more. . . . In our first study of any operation we are looking for these large factors of possible improvement. . . .

One might term this type of thinking “hemibel thinking.” A bel is defined as a unit in a logarithmic scale corresponding to a factor of 10. Consequently a hemibel corresponds to a factor of the square root of 10, or approximately 3. [Methods of Operations Research, 1946, p. 38]

This is science-speak for the following proposition: In large, complex, and dynamic systems (e.g., war, economy, climate) there is much uncertainty about the relevant parameters, about how to characterize their interactions mathematically, and about their numerical values.

Hemibel thinking assumes great importance in light of the imprecision inherent in models of large, complex, and dynamic systems. Consider, for example, a simple model with only 10 parameters. Even if such a model doesn’t omit crucial parameters or mischaracterize their interactions,  its results must be taken with large doses of salt. Simple mathematics tells the cautionary tale: An error of about 12 percent in the value of each parameter can produce a result that is off by a factor of 3 (a hemibel); An error of about 25 percent in the value of each parameter can produce a result that is off by a factor of 10. (Remember, this is a model of a relatively small system.)

If you think that models and “data” about such things as macroeconomic activity and climatic conditions cannot be as inaccurate as that, you have no idea how such models are devised or how such data are collected and reported. It would be kind to say that such models are incomplete, inaccurate guesswork. It would be fair to say that all too many of them reflect their developers’ conscious and unconscious biases.

Of course, given a (miraculously) complete model, data errors might (miraculously) be offsetting, but don’t bet on it. It’s not that simple: Some errors will be large and some errors will be small (but which are which?), and the errors may lie in either direction (but in which direction?). In any event, no amount of luck can prevent a modeler from constructing a model whose estimates advance a favored agenda (e.g., massive, indiscriminate government spending; massive, futile, and costly efforts to cool the planet).

The case for hemibel thinking is made forcefully in “Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty” (PNAS research article, October 28, 2022). Given the same data and hypothesis for testing, 73 teams of analysts generated 1,253 models of the phenomenon under study (the effect of immigration on social-services spending) with this range of results:

Broad variation in the findings from 73 teams testing the same hypothesis with the same data. The distribution of estimated AMEs across all converged models (n = 1,253) includes results that are negative (yellow; in the direction predicted by the given hypothesis the teams were testing), not different from zero (gray), or positive (blue) using a 95% CI. AME are xy standardized. The y axis contains two scaling breaks at ±0.05. Numbers inside circles represent the percentages of the distribution of each outcome inversely weighted by the number of models per team.

NO MODEL IS EVER PROVEN

The construction of a model is only one part of the scientific method. A model means nothing unless it can be tested repeatedly against facts (facts not already employed in the development of the model) and, through such tests, is found to be more accurate than alternative explanations of the same facts.As Morse and Kimball put it,

[t]o be valuable [operations research] must be toughened by the repeated impact of hard operational facts and pressing day-by-day demands, and its scale of values must be repeatedly tested in the acid of use. Otherwise it may be philosophy, but it is hardly science. [Op. cit., p. 10]

Even after rigorous testing, a model is never proven. It is, at best, a plausible working hypothesis about relations between the phenomena that it encompasses.

A model is never proven for two reasons. First, new facts may be discovered that do not comport with the model. Second, the facts upon which a model is based may be open to a different interpretation, that is, they may support a new model that yields better predictions than its predecessor.

The fact that a model cannot be proven can be take as an excuse for action: “We must act on the best information we have.”  That excuse — which justifies an entire industry, namely, government-funded analysis — does not fly, as I discuss below.

MODELS LIE WHEN LIARS MODEL

Any model is dangerous in the hands of a skilled, persuasive advocate. A numerical model is especially dangerous because:

• There is abroad a naïve belief in the authoritativeness of numbers. A bad guess (even if unverifiable) seems to carry more weight than an honest “I don’t know.”

• Relatively few people are both qualified and willing to examine the parameters of a numerical model, the interactions among those parameters, and the data underlying the values of the parameters and magnitudes of their interaction.

• It is easy to “torture” or “mine” the data underlying a numerical model so as to produce a model that comports with the modeler’s biases (stated or unstated).

There are many ways to torture or mine data; for example: by omitting certain variables in favor of others; by focusing on data for a selected period of time (and not testing the results against all the data); by adjusting data without fully explaining or justifying the basis for the adjustment; by using proxies for missing data without examining the biases that result from the use of particular proxies.

So, the next time you read about research that purports to “prove” or “predict” such-and-such about a complex phenomenon — be it the future course of economic activity or global temperatures — take a deep breath and ask these questions:

• Is the “proof” or “prediction” based on an explicit model, one that is or can be written down? (If the answer is “no,” you can confidently reject the “proof” or “prediction” without further ado.)

• Are the data underlying the model available to the public? If there is some basis for confidentiality (e.g., where the data reveal information about individuals or are derived from proprietary processes) are the data available to researchers upon the execution of confidentiality agreements?

• Are significant portions of the data reconstructed, adjusted, or represented by proxies? If the answer is “yes,” it is likely that the model was intended to yield “proofs” or “predictions” of a certain type (e.g., global temperatures are rising because of human activity).

• Are there well-documented objections to the model? (It takes only one well-founded objection to disprove a model, regardless of how many so-called scientists stand behind it.) If there are such objections, have they been answered fully, with factual evidence, or merely dismissed (perhaps with accompanying scorn)?

• Has the model been tested rigorously by researchers who are unaffiliated with the model’s developers? With what results? Are the results highly sensitive to the data underlying the model; for example, does the omission or addition of another year’s worth of data change the model or its statistical robustness? Does the model comport with observations made after the model was developed?

IMPLICATIONS

Government policies can be dangerous and impoverishing because they are one-size-fits-all “solutions” to problems that are difficult (if not impossible) to modify and reverse. Consider, for example, the establishment of public schools more than a century ago, the establishment of Social Security more than 70 years ago, and the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid more than 40 years ago. There is plenty of evidence that all four institutions are monumentally expensive failures. But all four institutions have become so entrenched that to call for their abolition is to be thought of as an eccentric, if not an uncaring anti-government zealot.

The principal lesson to be drawn from the history of massive government programs is that those who were skeptical of those programs were entirely justified in their skepticism. Informed, articulate skepticism of the kind I counsel here is the best weapon — perhaps the only effective one — in the fight to defend what remains of liberty and prosperity against the depredations of massive government programs.

Skepticism often is met with the claim that such-and-such a model is the “best available” on a subject. But the “best available” model — even if it is the best available one — may be terrible indeed. Relying on the “best available” model for the sake of government action is like sending an army into battle — and likely to defeat — on the basis of rumors about the enemy’s position and strength.

With respect to the economy and the climate, there are too many rumor-mongers (“scientists” with an agenda), too many gullible and compliant generals (politicians), and far too many soldiers available as cannon-fodder (the paying public).

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The average person is so mystified and awed by “science” that he has little if any understanding of its limitations and pitfalls, some of which I have addressed here in the context of modeling. The average person’s mystification and awe are unjustified, given that many so-called scientists exploit the public’s mystification and awe in order to justify personal biases, gain the approval of other scientists (whence “consensus”), and garner funding for research that yields results congenial to its sponsors (e.g., global warming is an artifact of human activity).

Isaac Newton, who must be numbered among the greatest scientists in human history, was not a flawless scientist. (Has there ever been one?) But scientists and non-scientists alike should heed Newton on the subject of scientific humility:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. [Quoted in Horace Freeland Judson,The Search for Solutions, 1980, p. 5.]

If economics was a science, the multiplier would be called (rightly) science fiction.

There are a few economic concepts that are widely cited (if not understood) by non-economists. Certainly, the “law” of supply and demand is one of them. The Keynesian (fiscal) multiplier is another; it is

the ratio of a change in national income to the change in government spending that causes it. More generally, the exogenous spending multiplier is the ratio of a change in national income to any autonomous change in spending (private investment spending, consumer spending, government spending, or spending by foreigners on the country’s exports) that causes it.

The multiplier is usually invoked by pundits and politicians who are anxious to boost government spending as a “cure” for economic downturns. What’s wrong with that? If government spends an extra $1 to employ previously unemployed resources, why won’t that $1 multiply and become $1.50, $1.60, or even $5 worth of additional output?

What’s wrong is the phony math by which the multiplier is derived, and the phony story that was long ago concocted to explain the operation of the multiplier.

MULTIPLIER MATH

To show why the math is phony, I’ll start with a derivation of the multiplier. The derivation begins with the accounting identity  Y = C + I + G, which means that total output (Y) = consumption (C) + investment (I) + government spending (G). I could use a more complex identity that involves taxes, exports, and imports. But no matter; the bottom line remains the same, so I’ll keep it simple and use Y = C + I  + G.

Keep in mind that the aggregates that I’m writing about here — Y , C , I , G, and later S  — are supposed to represent real quantities of goods and services, not mere money. Keep in mind, also, that Y stands for gross domestic product (GDP); there is no real income unless there is output, that is, product.

Now for the derivation (right-click to enlarge this and later images):

So far, so good. Now, let’s say that b = 0.8. This means that income-earners, on average, will spend 80 percent of their additional income on consumption goods (C), while holding back (saving, S) 20 percent of their additional income. With b = 0.8, k = 1/(1 – 0.8) = 1/0.2 = 5.  That is, every $1 of additional spending — let us say additional government spending (∆G) rather than investment spending (∆I) — will yield ∆Y = $5. In short, ∆Y = k(∆G), as a theoretical maximum. (Even if the multiplier were real, there are many things that would cause it to fall short of its theoretical maximum; see this, for example.)

How is it supposed to work? The initial stimulus (∆G) creates income (don’t ask how), a fraction of which (b) goes to C. That spending creates new income, a fraction of which goes to C. And so on. Thus the first round = ∆G, the second round = b(∆G), the third round = b(b)(∆G) , and so on. The sum of the “rounds” asymptotically approaches k(∆G). (What happens to S, the portion of income that isn’t spent? That’s part of the complicated phony story that I’ll examine in a future post.)

Note well, however, that the resulting ∆Y isn’t properly an increase in Y, which is an annual rate of output; rather, it’s the cumulative increase in total output over an indefinite number and duration of ever-smaller “rounds” of consumption spending.

The cumulative effect of a sustained increase in government spending might, after several years, yield a new Y — call it Y’ = Y + ∆Y. But it would do so only if ∆G persisted for several years. To put it another way, ∆Y persists only for as long as the effects of ∆G persist. The multiplier effect disappears after the “rounds” of spending that follow ∆G have played out.

The multiplier effect is therefore (at most) temporary; it vanishes after the withdrawal of the “stimulus” (∆G). The idea is that ∆Y should be temporary because a downturn will be followed by a recovery — weak or strong, later or sooner.

An aside is in order here: Proponents of big government like to trumpet the supposedly stimulating effects of G on the economy when they propose programs that would lead to permanent increases in G, holding other things constant. And other things (other government programs) are constant (at least) because they have powerful patrons and constituents, and are harder to kill than Hydra. If the proponents of big government were aware of the economically debilitating effects of G and the things that accompany it (e.g., regulations), most of them would simply defend their favorite programs all the more fiercely.

WHY MULTIPLIER MATH IS PHONY MATH

Now for my exposé of the phony math. I begin with Steven Landsburg, who borrows from the late Murray Rothbard:

. . . We start with an accounting identity, which nobody can deny:

Y = C + I + G

. . . Since all output ends up somewhere, and since households, firms and government exhaust the possibilities, this equation must be true.

Next, we notice that people tend to spend, oh, say about 80 percent of their incomes. What they spend is equal to the value of what ends up in their households, which we’ve already called C. So we have

C = .8Y

Now we use a little algebra to combine our two equations and quickly derive a new equation:

Y = 5(I+G)

That 5 is the famous Keynesian multiplier. In this case, it tells you that if you increase government spending by one dollar, then economy-wide output (and hence economy-wide income) will increase by a whopping five dollars. What a deal!

. . . [I]t was Murray Rothbard who observed that the really neat thing about this argument is that you can do exactly the same thing with any accounting identity. Let’s start with this one:

Y = L + E

Here Y is economy-wide income, L is Landsburg’s income, and E is everyone else’s income. No disputing that one.

Next we observe that everyone else’s share of the income tends to be about 99.999999% of the total. In symbols, we have:

E = .99999999 Y

Combine these two equations, do your algebra, and voila:

Y = 100,000,000

That 100,000,000 there is the soon-to-be-famous “Landsburg multiplier”. Our equation proves that if you send Landsburg a dollar, you’ll generate $100,000,000 worth of income for everyone else.

The policy implications are unmistakable. It’s just Eco 101!! [“The Landsburg Multiplier: How to Make Everyone Rich”, The Big Questions blog, June 25, 2013]

Landsburg attributes the nonsensical result to the assumption that

equations describing behavior would remain valid after a policy change. Lucas made the simple but pointed observation that this assumption is almost never justified.

. . . None of this means that you can’t write down [a] sensible Keynesian model with a multiplier; it does mean that the Eco 101 version of the Keynesian cross is not an example of such. This in turn calls into question the wisdom of the occasional pundit [Paul Krugman] who repeatedly admonishes us to be guided in our policy choices by the lessons of Eco 101. [“Multiple Comments”, op. cit,, June 26, 2013]

It’s worse than that, as Landsburg almost acknowledges when he observes (correctly) that Y = C + I + G is an accounting identity. That is to say, it isn’t a functional representation — a model — of the dynamics of the economy. Assigning a value to b (the marginal propensity to consume) — even if it’s an empirical value — doesn’t alter that fact that the derivation is nothing more than the manipulation of a non-functional relationship, that is, an accounting identity.

Consider, for example, the equation for converting temperature Celsius (C) to temperature Fahrenheit (F): F = 32 + 1.8C. It follows that an increase of 10 degrees C implies an increase of 18 degrees F. This could be expressed as ∆F/∆C = k* , where k* represents the “Celsius multiplier”. There is no mathematical difference between the derivation of the investment/government-spending multiplier (k) and the derivation of the Celsius multiplier (k*). And yet we know that the Celsius multiplier is nothing more than a tautology; it tells us nothing about how the temperature rises by 10 degrees C or 18 degrees F. It simply tells us that when the temperature rises by 10 degrees C, the equivalent rise in temperature F is 18 degrees. The rise of 10 degrees C doesn’t cause the rise of 18 degrees F.

Similarly, the Keynesian investment/government-spending multiplier simply tells us that if ∆Y = $5 trillion, and if b = 0.8, then it is a matter of mathematical necessity that ∆C = $4 trillion and ∆I + ∆G = $1 trillion. In other words, a rise in I + G of $1 trillion doesn’t cause a rise in Y of $5 trillion; rather, Y must rise by $5 trillion for C to rise by $4 trillion and I + G to rise by $1 trillion. If there’s a causal relationship between ∆G and ∆Y, the multiplier doesn’t portray it.

PHONY MATH DOESN’T EVEN ADD UP

Recall the story that’s supposed to explain how the multiplier works: The initial stimulus (∆G) creates income, a fraction of which (b) goes to C. That spending creates new income, a fraction of which goes to C. And so on. Thus the first round = ∆G, the second round = b(∆G), the third round = b(b)(∆G) , and so on. The sum of the “rounds” asymptotically approaches k(∆G). So, if b = 0.8, k = 5, and ∆G = $1 trillion, the resulting cumulative ∆Y = $5 trillion (in the limit). And it’s all in addition to the output that would have been generated in the absence of ∆G, as long as many conditions are met. Chief among them is the condition that the additional output in each round is generated by resources that had been unemployed.

In addition to the fact that the math behind the multiplier is phony, as explained above, it also yields contradictory results. If one can derive an investment/government-spending multiplier, one can also derive a “consumption multiplier”:

Taking b = 0.8, as before, the resulting value of kc is 1.25. Suppose the initial round of spending is generated by C instead of G. (I won’t bother with a story to explain it; you can easily imagine one involving underemployed factories and unemployed persons.) If ∆C = $1 trillion, shouldn’t cumulative ∆Y = $5 trillion? After all, there’s no essential difference between spending $1 trillion on a government project and $1 trillion on factory output, as long as both bursts of spending result in the employment of underemployed and unemployed resources (among other things).

But with kc = 1.25, the initial $1 trillion burst of spending (in theory) results in additional output of only $1.25 trillion. Where’s the other $3.75 trillion? Nowhere. The $5 trillion is phony. What about the $1.25 trillion? It’s phony, too. The “consumption multiplier” of 1.25 is simply the inverse of b, where b = 0.8. In other words, Y must rise by $1.25 trillion if C is to rise by $1 trillion. More phony math.

CAN AN INCREASE IN G HELP IN THE SHORT RUN?

Can an exogenous increase in G spending really yield a short-term, temporary increase in GDP? Perhaps, but there’s many a slip between cup and lip. The following example goes beyond the bare theory of the Keynesian multiplier to address several practical and theoretical shortcomings (some which are discussed  “here” and “here“):

1. Annualized real GDP (Y) drops from $16.5 trillion a year to $14 trillion a year because of the unemployment of resources. (How that happens is a different subject.)

2. Government spending (G) is temporarily and quickly increased by an annual rate of $500 billion; that is, ∆G = $0.5 trillion. The idea is to restore Y to $16 trillion, given a multiplier of 5 (In standard multiplier math: ∆Y = (k)(∆G), where k = 1/(1 – MPC); k = 5, where MPC = 0.8.)

3. The ∆G is financed in a way that doesn’t reduce private-sector spending. (This is almost impossible, given Ricardian equivalence — the tendency of private actors to take into account the long-term, crowding-out effects of government spending as they make their own spending decisions. The closest approximation to neutrality can be attained by financing additional G through money creation, rather than additional taxes or borrowing that crowds out the financing of private-sector consumption and investment spending.)

4. To have the greatest leverage, ∆G must be directed so that it employs only those resources that are idle, which then acquire purchasing power that they didn’t have before. (This, too, is almost impossible, given the clumsiness of government.)

5. A fraction of the new purchasing power flows, through consumption spending (C), to the employment of other idle resources. That fraction is called the marginal propensity to consume (MPC), which is the rate at which the owners of idle resources spend additional income on so-called consumption goods. (As many economists have pointed out, the effect could also occur as a result of investment spending. A dollar spent is a dollar spent, and investment  spending has the advantage of directly enabling economic growth, unlike consumption spending.)

6. A remainder goes to saving (S) and is therefore available for investment (I) in future production capacity. But S and I are ignored in the multiplier equation: One story goes like this: S doesn’t elicit I because savers hoard cash and investment is discouraged by the bleak economic outlook. Here is a more likely story: The multiplier would be infinite (and therefore embarrassingly inexplicable) if S generated an equivalent amount of I, because the marginal propensity to spend (MPS) would be equal to 1, and the multiplier equation would look like this: k = 1/(1 – MPS) = ∞, where MPS = 1.

7. In any event, the initial increment of C (∆C) brings forth a new “round” of production, which yields another increment of C, and so on, ad infinitum. If MPC = 0.8, then assuming away “leakage” to taxes and imports, the multiplier = k = 1/(1 – MPC), or k = 5 in this example.  (The multiplier rises with MPC and reaches infinity if MPC = 1. This suggests that a very high MPC is economically beneficial, even though a very high MPC implies a very low rate of saving and therefore a very low rate of growth-producing investment.)

8. Given k = 5,  ∆G = $0.5T would cause an eventual increase in real output of $2.5 trillion (assuming no “leakage” or offsetting reductions in private consumption and investment); that is, ∆Y = [k][∆G]= $2.5 trillion. However, because G and Y usually refer to annual rates, this result is mathematically incoherent; ∆G = $0.5 trillion does not restore Y to $16.5 trillion.

9. In any event, the increase in Y isn’t permanent; the multiplier effect disappears after the “rounds” resulting from ∆G have played out. If the theoretical multiplier is 5, and if transactional velocity is 4 (i.e., 4 “rounds” of spending in a year), more than half of the multiplier effect would be felt within a year from each injection of spending, and about two-thirds would be felt within two years of each injection. It seems unlikely, however, that the multiplier effect would be felt for much longer, because of changing conditions (e.g., an exogenous boost in private investment, private reemployment of resources, discouraged workers leaving the labor force, shifts in expectations about inflation and returns on investment).

10. All of this ignores that fact that the likely cause of the drop in Y is not insufficient “aggregate demand”, but a “credit crunch” (Michael D. Bordo and Joseph G. Haubrich in “Credit Crises, Money, and Contractions: A Historical View”, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper 09-08, September 2009). “Aggregate demand” doesn’t exist, except as an after-the-fact measurement of the money value of goods and services comprised in Y. “Aggregate demand”, in other words, is merely the sum of millions of individual transactions, the rate and total money value of which decline for specific reasons, “credit crunch” being chief among them. Given that, an exogenous increase in G is likely to yield a real increase in Y only if the increase in G leads to an increase in the money supply (as it is bound to do when the Fed, in effect, prints money to finance it). But because of cash hoarding and a bleak investment outlook, the increase in the money supply is unlikely to generate much additional economic activity.

So much for that.

THE THEORETICAL MAXIMUM

A somewhat more realistic version of multiplier math — as opposed to the version addressed earlier — yields a maximum value of k = 1:

How did I do that? In step 3, I made C a function of P (private-sector GDP) instead of Y (usually taken as the independent variable). Why? C is more closely linked to P than to Y, as an analysis of GDP statistics will prove. (Go here, download the statistics for the post-World War II era from tables 1.1.5 and 3.1, and see for yourself.)

THE TRUE MULTIPLIER

Robert J. Barro of Harvard University opens an article in The Wall Street Journal with the statement that “economists have not come up with explanations … for multipliers above one”. Barro continues:

A much more plausible starting point is a multiplier of zero. In this case, the GDP is given, and a rise in government purchases requires an equal fall in the total of other parts of GDP — consumption, investment and net exports….

What do the data show about multipliers? Because it is not easy to separate movements in government purchases from overall business fluctuations, the best evidence comes from large changes in military purchases that are driven by shifts in war and peace. A particularly good experiment is the massive expansion of U.S. defense expenditures during World War II. The usual Keynesian view is that the World War II fiscal expansion provided the stimulus that finally got us out of the Great Depression. Thus, I think that most macroeconomists would regard this case as a fair one for seeing whether a large multiplier ever exists.

I have estimated that World War II raised U.S. defense expenditures by $540 billion (1996 dollars) per year at the peak in 1943-44, amounting to 44% of real GDP. I also estimated that the war raised real GDP by $430 billion per year in 1943-44…. The other way to put this is that the war lowered components of GDP aside from military purchases. The main declines were in private investment, nonmilitary parts of government purchases, and net exports — personal consumer expenditure changed little. Wartime production siphoned off resources from other economic uses — there was a dampener, rather than a multiplier….

There are reasons to believe that the war-based multiplier of 0.8 substantially overstates the multiplier that applies to peacetime government purchases. For one thing, people would expect the added wartime outlays to be partly temporary (so that consumer demand would not fall a lot). Second, the use of the military draft in wartime has a direct, coercive effect on total employment. Finally, the U.S. economy was already growing rapidly after 1933 (aside from the 1938 recession), and it is probably unfair to ascribe all of the rapid GDP growth from 1941 to 1945 to the added military outlays. [“Government Spending Is No Free Lunch”, The Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2009]

This is from a paper by Valerie A. Ramsey:

[I]t appears that a rise in government spending does not stimulate private spending; most estimates suggest that it significantly lowers private spending.  [“Government Spending and Private Activity”, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2012]

There is a key component of government spending which usually isn’t captured in estimates of the multiplier: transfer payments, which are mainly “social benefits” (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid). In fact, actual government spending in the U.S., including transfer payments, is about double the nominal amount that is represented in G, the standard measure of government spending (the actual cost of government operations, buildings, equipment, etc.). But transfer payments — like other government spending — are subsidized by directing resources from persons who are directly productive (active worker) and whose investments are directly productive (innovators, entrepreneurs, stockholders, etc.) to persons who (for the most part) are economically unproductive and counterproductive. It follows that real economic output must be affected by transfer payments.

Other factors are also important to economic growth, namely, private investment in business assets, the rate at which regulations are being issued, and inflation. The combined effects of these factors and aggregate government spending have been estimated. I borrow from that estimate, with a slight, immaterial change in nomenclature:

gr = 0.0248 – 0.340F + 0.0773A -0.000336R -0.131P

Where,

gr = real rate of GDP growth in a 10-year span (annualized)

F = fraction of GDP spent by governments at all levels during the preceding 10 years [including transfer payments]

A = the constant-dollar value of private nonresidential assets (business assets) as a fraction of GDP, averaged over the preceding 10 years

R = average number of Federal Register pages, in thousands, for the preceding 10-year period

P = growth in the CPI-U during the preceding 10 years (annualized).

The r-squared of the equation is 0.74 and the F-value is 1.60E-13. The p-values of the intercept and coefficients are 0.093, 3.98E-08, 4.83E-09, 6.05E-07, and 0.0071. The standard error of the estimate is 0.0049, that is, about half a percentage point.

Given that rg = -0.340F, other things being the same, then

Y1 = Y0(c – 0.340F)

Where,

Y1 = real GDP in the period after a change in F, other things being the same

Y0 = real GDP in the period during which F changes

c = a constant, representing the sum of 1 + 0.025 + the coefficients obtained from fixed values of A, R, and P

The true F multiplier, kT, is therefore negative:

kT = ∆Y/∆F = -0.340Y0

For example, with Y0 = 1000 , F = 0 , and other things being the same,

∆Y = [1000 – (0)(1000)] = 1000, when F = 0

∆Y = [1000 – (-0.347)(1000)] = 660, when F = 1

Keeping in mind that the equation is based on an analysis of successive 10-year periods, the true F multiplier should be thought of as representing the effect of a change in the average value of F in a 10-year period on the average value of Y in a subsequent 10-year period.

This is not to minimize the deleterious effect of F (and other government-related factors) on Y. If the 1947-1957 rate of growth (4 percent) had been sustained through 2017, Y would have risen from $1.9 trillion in 1957 to $20 trillion in 2017. But because F, R, and P rose markedly over the years, the real rate of growth dropped sharply and Y reached only $17.1 trillion in 2017. That’s a difference of almost $3 trillion in a single year.

Such losses, summed over several decades, represent millions of jobs that weren’t created, significantly lower standards of living, greater burdens on the workers who support retirees and subsidize their medical care, and the loss of liberty that inevitably results when citizens are subjugated to tax collectors and regulators.

ADDENDUM: A REAL ECONOMIC EXPLANATION FOR THE INEFFECTIVENESS OF “STIMULUS” SPENDING

Consider a static, full-employment economy, in which the same goods and services are produced year after year, yielding the same incomes to the same owners of the same factors of production, which do not change in character (capital goods are maintained and replaced in kind). The owners of the factors of production spend and save their incomes in the same way year after year, so that the same goods and services are produced year after year, and those goods and services encompass the maintenance and in-kind replacement of capital goods. Further, the production cycle is such that all goods and services become available to buyers on the last day of the year, for use by the buyers during the coming year. (If that seems far-fetched, just change all instances of “year” in this post to “month”, “week”, “day”, “hour”, “minute”, or “second.” The analysis applies in every case.)

What would happen if there were a sudden alteration in this circular flow of production (supply), on the one hand, and consumption and investment (demand), on the other hand? Specifically, suppose that a component of the circular flow is a bilateral exchange between a gunsmith and a dairyman who produces butter: one rifle for ten pounds of butter. If the gunsmith decides that he no longer wants ten pounds of butter, and therefore doesn’t produce a rifle to trade for butter, the dairyman would reduce his output of butter by ten pounds.

A Keynesian would describe the situation as a drop in aggregate demand. There is no such thing as “aggregate demand”, of course; it’s just an abstraction for the level of economic activity, which really consists of a host of disparate transactions, the dollar value of which can be summed. Further, those disparate transactions represent not just demand, but demand and supply, which are two sides of the same coin.

In the case of the gunsmith and the dairyman, aggregate output drops by one rifle and ten pounds of butter. The reduction of output by one rifle is voluntary and can’t be changed by government action. The reduction of output by ten pounds of butter would be considered involuntary and subject to remediation by government – in the Keynesian view.

What can government do about the dairyman’s involuntary underemployment? Keynesians would claim that the federal government could print some money and buy the dairyman’s butter. This would not, however, result in the production of a rifle; that is, it would not restore the status quo ante. If the gunsmith has decided not to produce a rifle for reasons having nothing to do with the availability of ten pounds of butter, the government can’t change that by buying ten pounds of butter.

But, a Keynesian would say, if the government buys the ten pounds of butter, the dairyman will have money with which to buy other things, and that will stimulate the economy to produce additional goods and services worth at least as much as the rifle that’s no longer being produced. The Keynesian would have to explain how it’s possible to produce additional goods and services of any kind if only the gunsmith and dairyman are underemployed (one voluntarily, the other involuntarily). The gunsmith has declined to produce a rifle for reasons of his own, and it would be pure Keynesian presumption to assert that he could be lured into producing a rifle for newly printed money when he wouldn’t produce it for something real, namely, ten pounds of butter.

Well, what about the dairyman, who now has some newly printed money in his pocket? Surely, he can entice other economic actors to produce additional goods and services with the money, and trade those goods and services for his ten pounds of butter. The offer of newly printed money might entice some of them to divert some of their production to the dairyman, so that he would have buyers for his ten pounds of butter. Thus the dairyman might become fully employed, but the diversion of output in his direction would cause some other economic actors to be less than fully employed.

Would the newly printed money entice the entry of new producers, some combination of whom might buy the dairyman’s ten pounds of butter and restore him to full employment? It might, but so would private credit expansion in the normal course of events. The Keynesian money-printing solution would lead to additional output only where (a) private credit markets wouldn’t finance new production and (b) new production would be forthcoming despite the adverse conditions implied by (a). And the fact would remain that economic output has declined by one rifle, which fact can’t be changed by deficit spending or monetary expansion.

This gets us to the heart of the problem. Deficit spending (or expansionary monetary policy) can entice additional output only if there is involuntary underemployment, as in the case of the dairyman who would prefer to continue making and selling the ten pounds of butter that he had been selling to the gunsmith. And how do resources become involuntarily underemployed? Here are the causes, which aren’t mutually exclusive:

• changes in perceived wants, tastes, and preferences, as in the case of the gunsmith’s decision to make one less rifle and forgo ten pounds of butter

• reductions in output that are occasioned by forecasts of lower demand for particular goods and services

• changes in perceptions of or attitudes toward risk, which reduce producers’ demand for resources, buyers’ demand for goods and services, or financiers’ willingness to extend credit to producers and buyers.

I am unaware of claims that deficit spending or monetary expansion can affect the first cause of underemployment, though there is plenty of government activity aimed at changing wants, tastes, and preferences for paternalistic reasons.

What about the second and third causes? Can government alleviate them by buying things or making more money available with which to buy things? The answer is no. What signal is sent by deficit spending or monetary expansion? This: Times are tough, demand is falling, credit is tight, In those circumstances, why would newly printed money in the pockets of buyers (e.g., the dairyman) or in the hands of banks entice additional production, purchases, lending, or borrowing?

The evidence of the Great Recession suggests strongly that printing money and spending it or placing it with banks does little if any good. The passing of the Great Recession — and of the Great Depression seventy years earlier — was owed to the eventual restoration of the confidence of buyers and sellers in the future course of the economy. In the case of the Great Depression, confidence was restored when the entry of the United States into World War II put an end to the New Deal, which actually prolonged the depression

In the case of the Great Recession, confidence was restored (though not as fully) by the end of “stimulus” spending. The lingering effort on the part of the Fed to stimulate the economy through quantitative easing probably undermined confidence rather than restoring it. In fact, the Fed announced that it would begin to raise interest rates in an effort to convince the business community that the Great Recession is really coming to an end.

ADDENDUM II: THE MULTIPLIER ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL THEORY

The essential falsity of the multiplier can be found by consulting the equation of exchange:

In monetary economics, the equation of exchange is the relation:

MV = PQ

where, for a given period,

M is the total nominal amount of money supply in circulation on average in an economy.

V is the velocity of money, that is the average frequency with which a unit of money is spent.

P is the price level.

Q is an index of real expenditures (on newly produced goods and services).

Thus PQ is the level of nominal expenditures. This equation is a rearrangement of the definition of velocity: V = PQ/M. As such, without the introduction of any assumptions, it is a tautology. The quantity theory of money adds assumptions about the money supply, the price level, and the effect of interest rates on velocity to create a theory about the causes of inflation and the effects of monetary policy.

In earlier analysis before the wide availability of the national income and product accounts, the equation of exchange was more frequently expressed in transactions form:

MVT = PT

where,

VT is the transactions velocity of money, that is the average frequency across all transactions with which a unit of money is spent (including not just expenditures on newly produced goods and services, but also purchases of used goods, financial transactions involving money, etc.).

T is an index of the real value of aggregate transactions.

(Note the careful — but easily overlooked — qualification that quantities are for “a given period”, as I have pointed out. One cannot simply add imaginary increases in real output over an unspecified span of time to an annual rate of output and obtain a new, annual rate of output.)

If the values for M, V, P, and Q are annual rates or averages, then MV = PQ = Y, the last of which I am using here to represent real GDP.

If the central government “prints” money and spends it on things (i.e., engages in deficit spending financed by the Federal Reserve’s open-market operations), then ∆G (the addition to the rate of G) = ∆M (the average annual increase in the money supply). What happens as a result of ∆M depends on the actual relationships between M and V, P, and Q. They are complex relationships, and they vary constantly with the state of economic activity and consumers’ and producers’ expectations. Even a die-hard Keynesian would admit as much.

If new economic activity (Y) is relatively insensitive to  ∆G, as it is for the many reasons detailed here, it is equally insensitive to ∆M. For one thing — one very important thing — ∆M may be absorbed almost entirely by an increase in VT without a concomitant increase in Q. That is to say, ∆G necessarily implies (in the short run) an increase in transactions velocity (VT) and it is most likely to be spent on resources that are already employed (i.e, either on things that were already being produced or by displacing private purchases of things that were already being produced).

The equality MV = PQ long predates Keynes’s General Theory, in which he introduces the multiplier, and so it was well known to Keynes. As it happens, the equality is at the heart of his multiplier:

The state of the economy, according to Keynes, is determined by four parameters: the money supply, the demand functions for consumption (or equivalently for saving) and for liquidity, and the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital determined by ‘the existing quantity of equipment’ and ‘the state of long-term expectation’ (p 246).

Adjusting the money supply is the domain of monetary policy. The effect of a change in the quantity of money is considered at p. 298. The change is effected in the first place in money units. According to Keynes’s account on p. 295, wages will not change if there is any unemployment, with the result that the money supply will change to the same extent in wage units.

We can then analyse its effect from the diagram [reproduced below], in which we see that an increase in M̂ shifts r̂ to the left, pushing Î upwards and leading to an increase in total income (and employment) whose size depends on the gradients of all 3 demand functions. If we look at the change in income as a function of the upwards shift of the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital (blue curve), we see that as the level of investment is increased by one unit, the income must adjust so that the level of saving (red curve) is one unit greater, and hence the increase in income must be 1/S'(Y) units, i.e. k units. This is the explanation of Keynes’s multiplier.

Here’s the diagram:

If that is the explanation of Keynes’s multiplier, it is even more backward than the usual explanation that I shredded earlier in this post. All the explanation says is that if the real money supply (M̂) is increased (i.e., not translated into higher prices) due to an exogenous increase in government spending, the real interest rate (r̂) decreases. And if the decrease in the real interest rate leads to an increase in investment, Y must rise by enough to preserve the theoretical relationship between Y and saving (S) and investment (I).

In this case, Keynes depicts the multiplier as the effect of an increase in I resulting from an increase in M, which is really an increase in G (∆G) under the condition of less than full employment (whatever that is). The increase in I is made possible by the decrease in the real rate of interest.

That’s odd, because the popular view of the multiplier is that it is the rise in real GDP that is directly attributable to a rise in government spending. Will the real multiplier please stand up?

Regardless, the relationship between the increase in I and the increase in Y is no less tautologous than it is in the usual explanation of the multiplier.Simply put, the increase in I is the increase that must result if Y increases, given an ex-post relationship between I and Y. There is no causality, except in the imagination of the proponent of increased government spending.

We are back to where we started, with a mythical multiplier that explains nothing.

Rethinking the authority of the Constitution

It is has long been glaringly evident that a large and vocal fraction of U.S. citizens rejects the Constitution’s blueprint for liberty. The blueprint delineates an edifice with these essential features: the horizontal and vertical separation of powers: a central government of limited and enumerated powers; coequal branches of that government, each possessing the ability to restrain the others; and the reservation to the States and the people of the powers not expressly granted to the central government.

More important than the edifice, perhaps, is the foundation upon which it was built: the Judeo-Christian tradition, generally, and the predominantly British roots of the signatories, in particular. As one blogger puts it, “underlying cultural assumptions are just as a important to the success of a republic as its political structures.”

Then, there are the Constitution’s underlying — and largely forgotten — purposes. Two of the main ones were keep the tenuous union of 1776 from flying apart because of sectional differences, and to defend the union militarily without depending on the whims of the various State legislatures.

The Framers’ brilliant scheme worked well for about 140 years, despite the depredations of the Progressive Era, which encompassed the imperial presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Then came the New Deal and it has since been all downhill for the Constitution.

The cultural underpinnings of the Constitution didn’t begin to rot until the onset of America’s societal and cultural degeneration in the 1960s. It was then that political polarization began, and it has accelerated with the passage of time (despite the faux unity that followed 9/11).

Lamentable as it may be, the demise of the Constitution is just a symptom of the demise of America as something like a social and cultural entity. Conservatives must recognize this reality and act accordingly. Flogging a dead horse will not revive it. America as it was before the 1960s is dead and cannot be revived.

Conservatives must face the facts and learn from the left.

These are the facts (some of which are previewed above):

1. The Constitution was a contract, but not a contract between “the people”. It was a contract drawn by a small fraction of the populace of twelve States, and put into effect by a small fraction of the populace of nine States. Its purpose, in good part, was to promote the interests of many of the Framers, who cloaked those interests in the glowing rhetoric of the Preamble (“We the People”, etc.). The other four of the original thirteen States could have remained beyond the reach of the Constitution, and would have done so but for the ratifying acts of small fractions of their populations. (With the exception of Texas, formerly a sovereign republic, States later admitted weren’t independent entities, but were carved out of territory controlled by the government of the United States. Figuratively, they were admitted to the union at the point of a gun.)

2. Despite their status as “representatives of the people”, the various fractions of the populace that drafted and ratified the Constitution had no moral authority to bind all of their peers, and certainly no moral authority to bind future generations. (Representative government is simply an alternative to other types of top-down governance, such as an absolute monarchy or a police state, not a substitute for spontaneous order. At most, a minimal night-watchman state is required for the emergence and preservation of a beneficial spontaneous order, wherein social norms enforce the tenets of the Golden Rule and the last six of the Ten Commandments.)

3. The Constitution was and is binding only in the way that a debt to a gangster who demands “protection money” is binding. It was and is binding because state actors have the power to enforce it, as they see fit to interpret it. (One need look no further than the very early dispute between Hamilton and Madison about the meaning of the General Welfare Clause for a relevant and crucial example of interpretative differences.)

4. The Constitution contains provisions that can be and sometimes have been applied to advance liberty. But such applications have depended on the aims and whims of those then in positions of power.

5. It is convenient to appeal to the Constitution in the cause of liberty — and I have often done just that — but this does not change the fact that the Constitution was not and never will be a law enacted by “the people” of the United States or any State thereof.

6. Any person and any government in the United States may therefore, in principle, reject the statutes, executive orders, and judicial holdings of the United States government (or any government) as non-binding.

7. Secession is one legitimate form of rejection (though the preceding discussion clearly implies that secession by a State government is morally binding only on those who assent to the act of secession).

8. The ultimate and truly legitimate form of rejection is civil disobedience — the refusal of individual persons, or voluntary groupings of them (e.g., family, church, club, and other institutions of civil society), to abide by positive law when it infringes on natural law and liberty.

States and municipalities governed by leftists are engaging in institutional civil disobedience (e.g., encouragement of illegal immigration, spiteful adoption of aggressive policies to combat “climate change” and to circumvent the Second Amendment; an organized effort to undermine the Electoral College; a conspiracy by state actors to thwart the election of Trump and then to oust him from the presidency). There are also some conservative counterparts (e.g., Second Amendment “sanctuaries” and seemingly successful State efforts to undermine Roe v. Wade).

The lesson for conservatives is to do more of what the left is doing, and to do it aggressively. When the left regains control of the White House and Congress — as it will given the mindlessness of most American voters — conservatives must be prepared to resist the edicts emanating from Washington (unless a national divorce can be arranged). The best way to prepare is to emulate and expand on the examples mentioned above. The best defense is a good offense: Dare Washington to deploy its weaponry in the service of slavery.

Slavish obedience to the edicts of the central government is neither required by the dead Constitution nor in keeping with conservative principles. Those principles put traditional morality and voluntarily evolved norms above the paper promises of the Constitution. In fact, those promises are valid only insofar as they foster the survival of traditional morality and voluntarily evolved norms.

I am loathe to leave loose ends, so I am republishing the best of P&P at Substack: https://loquitur.substack.com/. Republishing gives me a chance to edit posts lightly and update them a bit. I’ve just started with a reprise of my first post at P&P: “On Liberty“.

There’ll be more to follow as I scour my archives and find time to polish what seems worth republishing. So, bookmark the Substack site or add it to your feeds, and be watching for more old posts in new clothing.

Reflections on the 246th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

WHAT LIBERTY IS NOT

Who can doubt that many people have forgotten, for very obvious reasons, Mill’s qualifications of personal sovereignty, namely that it applies to conduct that “merely concerns himself”? — Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice:
The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas

Liberty is not license, as the saying goes, for what should be an obvious reason: Unrestrained behavior is bound, at some point, to intrude on those who are harmed by it or its consequences. The intrusion may be direct, as in the case of a wild party that devolves into a brawl and thence to the injuries and the destruction of property. Or the intrusion may be indirect, as in the gradual weakening of social norms that had contained (if not stifled) licentious behavior and, therefore, its consequences.

Nor is liberty found in anarchy, which is an open invitation to thuggery. This is true even in free-market anarchism, a Utopian scheme in which the state is replaced by private institutions offering defense services. There is nothing in free-market anarchism to prevent contractual bargains of the vilest sort: murder by the low bidder, for example. Who could stand in the way of such a contract and its execution if the parties to it could summon more force than any objector?

John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty (1869), preaches neither license nor anarchy, or so it seems. He offers a deceptively benign description of liberty:

It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly, the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow: without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived. [1]

That description, strangely, follows Mill’s prescription for the realization for liberty, which is his “harm principle” beloved of both libertarians and modern liberals, now leftists. It is as if Mill began with the harm principle in mind, then concocted a description of liberty to justify it. The “devil,” in this case, lies not in the details but in the harm principle:

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. [2]

Given the individualistic thrust of this passage and the surrounding text, the only plausible interpretation of the harm principle is as follows: An individual may do as he pleases, as long as he does not believe (or claimes not to believe) that he is causing harm to others. [3] That is Mill’s prescription for liberty. It is, in fact, an invitation to license and anarchy.

Libertarians and leftists, even those who claim to reject license and anarchy, embrace the harm principle, for all of its simple-mindedness. Dalrymple writes:

It has long been an objection to Mill that, except for the anchorite in the Syrian desert who subsists on honey and locusts, no man is an island (and even an anchorite may have a mother who is disappointed by her son’s choice of career); and therefore that the smallest of his acts may have some impact or consequences for others. If one amends the [harm] principle to take that part of a man’s conduct that concerns principally himself, rather than only himself, one will be left with endless and insoluble disputes as to which part of his conduct that is….

But, as the great historian Lord Acton said, “Ideas have a radiation and development, an ancestry and posterity of their own, in which men play the part of godfathers and godmothers more than that of legitimate parents.” Who can doubt that many people have forgotten, for very obvious reasons, Mill’s qualifications of personal sovereignty, namely that it applies to conduct that “merely concerns himself”? [4]

The main appeal of On Liberty to libertarians and leftists is Mill’s defense of conduct that (in his view) only offends social norms:

Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.[5]

Thus Mill rejects the enforcement of social norms, “except [in] a few of the most obvious cases,” [6] by either the state or “society.” Lest anyone mistake Mill’s position, he expands on it a few paragraphs later:

These are good reasons for remonstrating with [a person who acts contrary to social custom], or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil [including social censure] in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.[7]

In Mill’s usage, “calculated” means “intended”. [8] By that logic, which is implicit throughout On Liberty, an individual is, except in “a few of the most obvious cases”, a law unto himself, and may do as he pleases as long as he believes or claims to believe that his conduct is not harmful to others.

Mill’s bias against the enforcement of social norms, in all but a few “obvious cases” (murder? theft? rape?), ignores the civilizing influence of those norms. That influence is of no account to Mill, as Dalrymple explains:

For Mill, custom is an evil that is the principle obstruction to progress and moral improvement, and its group on society is so strong that originality, unconventionality, and rebellion against it are goods in themselves, irrespective of their actual content. The man who flouts a convention ipso facto raises society from its torpor and lets everyone know that there are different, and better, ways of doing things. The more such people there are, the greater the likelihood of progress….

Of radical evil, in which the [twentieth] century was to abound, [Mill] has nothing to say, and therefore he had no idea that a mania for progress could result in its very antithesis, or that some defense against such radical evil, of which the commission was not possible without the co-operation and participation of many men, was necessary. The abandonment of customary restraint and inverted moral prejudice was not necessarily followed by improvement. [9]

There is a high price to be paid for the blind rejection of long-standing social norms, whether by individuals, organized groups, legislatures, or courts wishing to “do their own thing”, exact “social justice”, make life “fair”, or just “shake things up” for the sake of doing so. The price is liberty.

WHAT LIBERTY IS

A man at liberty is a person neither in chains, under confinement, nor intimidated like a slave by the fear of punishment…. [T]o consider inability of soaring to the clouds like the eagle, of living under the water like the whale, of making ourselves king or pope, as a want of liberty, would be ridiculous. — Claude Adrien Helvétius, Essays on the Mind and Its Several Faculties

License and anarchy, even in John Stuart Mill’s deceptive packaging of them, are antithetical to liberty. For it is the general observance of social norms that enables a people to enjoy a kind of liberty that is attainable: peaceful, willing coexistence and its concomitant: beneficially cooperative behavior.

True liberty must therefore be “ordered liberty”, in that it cannot arise from license or anarchy, as prescribed by Mill or his more radical progeny (e.g. Murray Rothbard). Anarchists and libertarians seize on Mill’s prescription because they are preoccupied with individualism, as opposed to willing coexistence and beneficially cooperative behavior.

Nor can liberty arise from modern liberalism, now leftism, which has been diagnosed, quite rightly, as a superficially benign kind of fascism. [10] Leftists pay lip service to Mill’s prescription because it seems to justify unfettered pursuit of “happiness”, without regard for the consequences. But leftists demonstrate their lack of principle by contradictorily and unabashedly using the state to impose their preferences on others, often for the adolescent thrill of subverting social norms that help to bind people in willing coexistence and beneficially cooperative behavior.

Liberty, as I define it, requires four things:

• the general observance of social norms and, accordingly, their enforcement through social censure;

• an accountable, minimal state, dedicated to the protection of its citizens;

• voice, the opportunity for dissent from social norms and laws (though not the right to have one’s dissent honored); and

• exit, the right to leave one’s neighborhood, city, State, or country without prejudice.

I will say a bit more about the role of the state, which is important to the effectiveness of my prescription for liberty. The state’s proper role is negative. A state that is meant to preserve liberty state may not:

• tax citizens more than is necessary to protect them from enemies, foreign and domestic [11];

• allow or enable predatory or parasitic behavior among the populace [12];

• compel anyone to observe social norms, except those that the state enforces for the protection of all citizens (e.g., the maxims found in the last six of the Ten Commandments);

• interfere in the voluntary evolution or operation of social norms;

• consistently overstep its rightful authority.

As was the case in 1776, repeated violations of rightful authority expose the state to overthrow by political action or rebellion, as necessary.

It is true that the state must sometimes act against the preferences of some citizens, for not everyone can agree at all times about the proper and necessary scope of state action in matters of justice and defense.

Reflexive opposition to the idea of the state is not libertarian; it is Utopian. The issue is not whether to have a state, but how to harness it in the service of liberty.

The challenge of harnessing the state is the greatest challenge now facing America because the failure to harness it is reaping economic disaster and deep social divisions.

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1. On Liberty (1869), Chapter I, paragraph 12. (All citations of On Liberty refer to the version at Bartleby.com: http://www.bartelby.com/130/index.html.)

2. On Liberty, Chapter I, paragraph 9.

3. As I show below, I am not misreading the quoted passage.

4. In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas (2007), pp. 44-5.

5. On Liberty, Chapter I, paragraph 5. See also Chapter IV: On the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual, paragraph 3.

6. On Liberty. Chapter I, paragraph 6.

7. On Liberty, Chapter I, paragraph 9.

8. See, for example, Mill’s use of “calculated” in Chapter IV, paragraph 19.

9. In Praise of Prejudice, pp. 57-8.

10. See, for example, Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism (2007).

11. This allows a few (and only a few) positive acts on the part of the state: the maintenance and use of national-defense forces, the administration of justice through police and courts.

12. There are predators other than murderers, thieves, etc. There are, for example, those who would use the coercive power of the state (e.g., legal bans on smoking in private establishments, licensing laws) to deny liberty to others, sometimes on behalf of parasites. Parasites benefit from coercive power state power, and depend on it instead of depending on their own efforts. Parasites, who can be classes of individuals or corporations, benefit from such things as affirmative action, income redistribution and regulatory protection from competitors.