Category: Leftism – Statism – Democracy

More about Democracy and Liberty

Fritz Machlup wrote this summary of a 1961 article (in German) by Friedrich Hayek:

[Hayek] asks why it is that personal liberty is in continual jeopardy and why the trend is toward its being increasingly restricted. The cause of liberty, he finds, rests on our awareness that our knowledge is inevitably limited. The purpose of liberty is to afford us an opportunity to obtain something unforeseeable; since it cannot be known what individuals will make of their freedom, it is all the more important to grant freedom to everybody….Liberty can endure only if it is defended not just when it is recognized to be useful in particular instances but rather continuously as a fundamental principle which may not be breached for the sake of any definite advantages obtainable at the cost of its suspension….It is not easy to convince the masses that they should sacrifice foreseeable benefits for unforeseeable ones. [From “Hayek’s Contribution to Economics,” in Essays on Hayek (1976), p. 41.]

That goes a long way toward explaining why unchecked democracy has become the enemy of liberty.

Tell Us What You Really Think, John

John Lanchester, a British author of excellent novels (e.g., Fragrant Harbour and Mr Phillips), is laden with the usual left-wing baggage of the illiterati:

The Labour Party of semi-fond memory was a broadish church but it had some consistent currents within it. It was left of centre, socially liberal, anti-authoritarian, anti-American, pacifistic, anti-big-business, keen on benefits for the poor, and in favour of nationalisation. In government, New Labour has been right of centre, moralistic, authoritarian; it has been involved in three wars, is slavishly submissive to big business, is keener to promote the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor than any government in the last hundred years, and is bent on extending into health and education and transport an experimental programme of private-public partnerships which allocates risk to the public sector and profits to the private. As for its attitude to America, that is comparable only to the ‘coital lock’ which makes it impossible to separate dogs during sex.

Unlike Geoffrey R. Stone, however, I wouldn’t call on government to suppress Lanchester’s views even though Manchester, as a best-selling author commands a prominent niche in “the marketplace of ideas,” whence he is able to “warp the public debate.” In fact, I love it when lefty celebrities spew their stupidity. It’s a reminder that the market rewards performance, no matter how “undeserving” are those who reap the rewards.

And I still love to listen to old Joan Baez LPs. But as Laura Ingraham says, Shut Up and Sing.

Killing Free Speech in Order to Save It

UPDATED THRICE BELOW

We all know about McCain-Feingold. Now we have the slippery logic of Prof. Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School. Stone is a colleague of Cass Sunstein, a fellow traveler on the road to thought control.

Stone is debating Eugene Volokh at Legal Affairs Debate Club, on the topic “Forget Free Speech?” Stone slides this immodest proposal into his rather slick “defense” of free speech:

I agree that private employers are different. Even in employment discrimination law, we recognize that it would be inappropriate for the law to intrude too deeply into personal relationships. Thus, small employers are exempt. Similarly, we don’t make it unlawful for a person to refuse to date a person of another race. Thus, the law shouldn’t concern itself with individuals who decide not to buy the Dixie Chicks’s records because they dislike their political views.

But the logic of this doesn’t extend to a decision, for example, by General Motors to refuse to employ people who oppose the war in Iraq. Large corporations have substantial market power, and I see no reason to allow them to leverage that market power in this way any more than we let them discriminate on the basis of religion….

To the point about using antidiscrimination laws to promote tolerance of people of other races, religious, and ethnicities, I would say the same about political differences. Isn’t that the view that Lee Bollinger championed as a primary function of the First Amendment itself? Certainly, a more “tolerant society,” a less polarized society, one in which citizens come to understand, in Jefferson’s words, that not “every difference of opinion is a difference of principle,” is something to which we should aspire. And, as for the Klansman, perhaps tolerating his presence in the workplace would be good both for him and for us. No?

So, let’s just take another big slice out of liberty and prosperity by placing yet another burden on the private sector, the burden of being an equal-viewpoint employer. Why should General Motors, regardless of its size, be required to operate under such constraints? General Motors ought to be able to hire persons whose performance will help the bottom line, and thus help society. If an employee says something that embarrasses General Motors and potentially hurts its bottom line, General Motors ought to be able to fire that person — no ifs, ands, or buts.

But in the world of Sunstein and Stone, we can — and must — legislate and regulate our way to a “tolerant society.” Hah! Notice how well it worked when forced busing was used to integrate schools?

Stone, slippery lawyer that he is, doesn’t give a hoot about Klansmen. What he really wants is to make it illegal for employers to fire anyone for saying anything that seems critical of government policy (Republican policy, in particular). When that’s done, he can take up the cudgels for the Dixie Chicks and go after radio stations that refuse to play their songs.

What Sunstein and Stone mean by “free speech” is “forced listening.” Reminds me of the brainwashing scene in the movie 1984. They’ll like the results as long as they get to play Big Brother.

UPDATE: Yep, Big Brother. Here’s Stone in a later installment of the debate:

Even if I concede arguendo that private discrimination on the basis of viewpoint need not be equated with private discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or gender, we have to be concerned about private discrimination that begins seriously to threaten the marketplace of ideas. The point isn’t that such private discrimination would be unconstitutional, but that the government should step in and prohibit such discrimination through legislation if it begins to warp public debate.

In other words, if I’m in control of government and I decide that “private discrimination on the basis of viewpoint” has threatened “the marketplace of ideas,” I should step in to prohibit such discrimination when, in my infallible judgment, it begins to “warp” public debate. I therefore decree the following:

  • An employer can’t fire anyone who makes a public statement critical of the employer.
  • A right-wing radio talk-show host who has a huge audience must give equal time to left-wing ideas.

What Stone and his ilk don’t seem to understand (or choose to ignore) is that government involvement (choosing sides) warps the public debate. For every employer who fires a critical employee and for every popular right-wing talk-show host there are legions of protestors and political opponents whose messages the mainstream media amplify, with gusto. That’s the marketplace of ideas in action. Or do Stone and his ilk favor the suppression of the mainstream media? I doubt it very much. They’re just looking for a pseudo-legal justification for the suppression of speech they don’t like.

What the marketplace of ideas needs is less government involvement, not more.

UPDATE II: Stone, in his most recent volley, adds this:

My argument does not meet any of the conditions for McCarthyism (unless you think I am being intentionally manipulative in order to score partisan political gain).

He said it.

UPDATE III: And Eugene Volokh nails him:

It does sound, though, like the definition of “McCarthyism” that’s being suggested is mighty convenient for its users….After all, under this definition exactly the same criticisms—with exactly the same level of substantive merit—would be “McCarthyism” when used by one side and quite proper when used by the other.

Cheney says that voting for Kerry would endanger the nation. That’s McCarthyism, because it comes from this bad administration. Nancy Pelosi says that voting for Bush would endanger the nation. That’s just fine, if you think Democrats are open-minded, unself-righteous (except, of course, when they’re harshly deriding the Bush Administration), attentive to separation of powers and the rule of law, interested in debate, and sophisticated and introspective, with complex views of faith and suitable appreciation for gray areas. Oh, and also respectful of international law and filibusters.

Such use of the term “McCarthyism,” which seems to presuppose what it’s trying to show—which is that one’s targets are bad people—isn’t terribly useful for sober analysis. Wouldn’t it have been more profitable to instead discuss, for instance, whether voting for Bush or Kerry would indeed endanger the nation? That was actually a pretty important question a few months ago.

As best I can tell, public debate about the Administration, the war, civil liberties, and the best ways to fight terrorism has been quite vibrant. If there’s a “substantial chilling effect on the willingness of individual citizens to criticize the government,” I haven’t noticed it. The 2004 Democratic election campaign, for instance, didn’t seem to be unduly obsequious to the Bush Administration. Nor do I see much evidence of “an exaggerated sense of fear in the public,” or even attempts to create such a fear. The world is a dangerous place and I have no reason to think that people are any more fearful of terrorism than they ought to be.

So I think free speech in America is pretty healthy. There are some exceptions; I have long, for instance, criticized hostile environment harassment law, a vague, broad, and viewpoint-based set of speech restrictions. Likewise, some media responses to supposedly unpatriotic speech have indeed been misplaced; Bill Maher, for example, got a bum deal. And, sure, many people in many places—government, universities, the media—are smug and closed-minded, and too often try to name-call people into submission. That ought to be fought. Still, things today are pretty good.

And tomorrow? No-one can tell for sure, but fortunately there are plenty of people and organizations who will fight future attempts at repression, whether from the left or from the right. Geof, I know you’ll be one of them, and I’m very glad about that.

In other words, if you really favor free speech, you favor it for everyone,* not just the lefties favored by Stone.
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* I make an exception for overtly traitorous speech, which I come to in a future post about legal absolutism.

Rousseau’s Daycare

That’s the title of an article which appears in Latin Mass (Winter 2005). The article isn’t on line, but here are some snippets:

Apparently, the frustration of the spoiled child who cannot assert himself in society resulted in the “alienation” that is at the heart of Marx’s theory and which concept was inherited from Rousseau.

It is undoubtedly a fear of personal responsibility, guided by the doctrine of modern secularism, that has helped build the modern daycare regime that caters to adults as well as their unfortunate offspring.

My own thoughts about Rousseau are here, here, here, here, and here.

Funding the Welfare State

Arnold Kling points to a debate between Tyler Cowen and Max Sawicky about the future of the welfare state, at WSJ Online. Tyler would have won the debate hands down if he had shown, as I have, that free markets — protected by strict enforcement of laws against force and fraud — would make almost everyone wealthier. So much wealthier that they could easily afford to buy off the few remaining free-loaders.

But reason and facts seem unlikely to prevail. Sawicky is probably right when he says “Social Security and Medicare spending will increase faster than GDP, requiring increases in taxes, and there is not a damn thing anyone can do about it.” Consider this headline: “Senate Passes Budget With Medicaid Intact.”

I fear that we’re faced with this:

Here’s the prospect: In the coming decades the productive sectors of the economy will be taxed another 15-20 percent of GDP for the support of the nonproductive sectors of the economy. That will bring the total bill for government to something like 60 percent of the output of the productive sectors of the economy (see this). Why will it happen? Because Congress is afraid to make the transition from unproductive transfer payments to productive investments.

Where will it end? The United States will become a third-rate economic power, burdened by a massive welfare state and tied in knots by social and economic regulations. We are on The Road to Serfdom — no doubt about it — unless Congress takes my advice.

The Destruction of Income and Wealth

PRACTICAL LIBERTARIANISM FOR AMERICANS

ADDENDUM TO PART V:
THE DESTRUCTION OF INCOME AND WEALTH BY THE STATE
(Links to previous entries in this series are at the end of this post.)

The Destruction of Income

I wrote in Part V about the loss of income that has resulted from the intrusions of the regulatory-welfare state into America’s economy.

Real (inflation-adjusted) GDP began to rise sharply after the Civil War, thanks mainly to the Second Industrial Revolution. Despite the occasional slump — which the economy worked its way out of, thank you — things continued to go well until about 1906. Then the trajectory of GDP growth fell suddenly, sharply, and (it seems) permanently. The Panic of 1907 coincided with, but did not cause, the deceleration of America’s economy.


Data on real GDP for 1870-2003 are from Louis Johnston and Samuel H. Williamson, “The Annual Real and Nominal GDP for the United States, 1789 – Present.” Economic History Services, March 2004, URL: http://www.eh.net/hmit/gdp/. Real GDP for 2004 estimated by deflating nominal 2004 GDP (source at footnote a) by increase in CPI between 2000 and 2004 (from Bureau of Labor Statistics).

The stock market — an accurate, if volatile, indicator of the nation’s economic health — corroborates my judgment about the downward shift in economic growth. After 1906 the S&P 500 (as reconstructed back to 1870) dropped to a new trendline that has a shallower slope and an intercept that is 48 percent lower than that of the trendline for 1870-1906.


Real S&P price index constructed from annual closing prices of the S&P 500 Composite Index (series “S&P 500® Composite Price Index (w/GFD extension)”), available at Global Financial Data, Inc., and the GDP deflator (see notes for previous chart).

What happened around 1906? First, the regulatory state began to encroach on American industry with the passage of the Food and Drug Act and the vindictive application of the Sherman Antitrust Act, beginning with Standard Oil (the Microsoft of its day). There followed the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment (enabling the federal government to tax incomes); the passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act (a more draconian version of the Sherman Act, which also set the stage for unionism); World War I (a high-taxing, big-spending, economic-control operation that whet the appetite of future New Dealers); a respite (the boom of the 1920s, which was owed to the Harding-Coolidge laissez-faire policy toward the economy); and the Great Depression and World War II (truly tragic events that imbued in the nation a false belief in the efficacy of the big-spending, high-taxing, regulating, welfare state).

The stock-market debacle of 1916-20 was as bad as the crash of 1929-33 (see second chart above), and the ensuing recession of 1920-21 was “sharp and deep,” as the unemployment rate rose to 12 percent in 1921. But Americans and American politicians didn’t panic and scramble to “fix” the economy by adopting one perverse scheme after another. Thus prosperity ensued.

But less than 10 years later — at the onset of the Great Depression — Americans and American politicians lost their bearings and joined Germany, Italy, and Russia on the road to serfdom. Most Americans still believe that government intervention brought us out of the Depression. That bit of shopworn conventional wisdom has been debunked thoroughly by Jim Powell, in FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, and Murray N. Rothbard, in America’s Great Depression. The bottom line of FDR’s Folly is stark:

The Great Depression was a government failure, brought on principally by Federal Reserve policies that abruptly cut the money supply; unit banking laws that made thousands of banks more vulnerable to failure; Hoover’s tariff’s, which throttled trade; Hoover’s taxes, which took unprecedented amounts of money out of people’s pockets at the worst possible time; and Hoover’s other policies, which made it more difficult for the economy to recover. High unemployment lasted as long as it did because of all the New Deal policies that took more money out of people’s pockets, disrupted the money supply, restricted production, harassed employers, destroyed jobs, discouraged investment, and subverted economic liberty needed for sustained business recovery [p. 167].

All we got out of the New Deal was an addiction to government intervention, as people were taught to fear the free market and to believe, perversely, that government intervention led to economic salvation. The inculcation of those attitudes set the stage for the vast regulatory-welfare state that has arisen in the United States since World War II. (See footnote c.)

You know the rest of the story: Spend, tax, redistribute, regulate, elect, spend, tax, redistribute, regulate, elect, ad infinitum. We became locked into the welfare state in the 1970s (see the chart at footnote a), and the regulatory burden on Americans is huge and growing. The payoff:

  • Real GDP (in year 2000 dollars) was about $10.7 trillion in 2004.
  • If government had grown no more meddlesome after 1906, real GDP might have been $18.7 trillion (see first chart above).
  • That is, real GDP per American would have been about $63,000 (in year 2000 dollars) instead of $36,000.
  • That’s a deadweight loss to the average American of more than 40 percent of the income he or she might have enjoyed, absent the regulatory-welfare state.
  • That loss is in addition to the 40-50 percent of current output which government drains from the productive sectors of the economy.

And that is the price of privilege — of ceding liberty piecemeal in the mistaken belief that helping this interest group or imposing that regulation will do little harm to the general welfare, and might even increase it.

The Destruction of Wealth

The destruction of income necessarily results in the destruction of wealth; income not received cannot be saved and invested.

How much wealth has been forgone because of the vast amounts of income that have been destroyed in the past 100 years? I can’t hazard a guess. But by drawing on the data presented in the charts above I can estimate how much higher stock prices would be today if government were no more intrusive than it had been a century ago. Consider this chart of the relationship between GDP and the S&P index (data for 1870-1906 are plotted in green, data for 1907-2004 are plotted in red):

As I noted above, GDP in 2004 might have been $18.7 trillion if government had grown no more intrusive after the early 1900s. Taking that level of GDP and using the relationship between GDP and the S&P for 1870-1906 (shown in green), the S&P price index for 2004 would have been 30.8 (with 1870 = 1). The actual S&P price index for 2004 stood at 20.4.* In other words, the stocks of corporations in the S&P 500 are currently undervalued by one-third because of the depradations of the regulatory-welfare state, which have lowered investors’ expectations for future earnings.** The effect of those lowered expectations is shown in the difference between the green (1870-1906) and red (1907-2004) trendlines.

And that’s only the portion of wealth that’s represented in the S&P 500. Think of all the other forms in which wealth is stored: stocks not included in the S&P 500, corporate bonds, mortgages, home equity, and so on.

If government had left its grubby hands off the economy, there never would have been a Great Depression, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the myriad regulations that have us tied in knots.
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* The index for 2004 is significantly out of line with the trendline for 1907-2004, which suggests that there is still some air in the stock market bubble. Or it could be that the market is anticipating the expected growth surge I wrote about toward the end of Part V — a surge that may not take place if environmental hysteria prevails and Social Security taxes are raised.

** As Jeremy Siegel, author of Stocks for the Long Run, explains in a piece at the Library of Economics and Liberty:

The price of a share of stock, like that of any other financial asset, equals the present value of the expected stream of future cash payments to the owner. The cash payments available to a shareholder are uncertain and subject to the earnings of the firm….

[T]he price of a stock can rise even if the firm does not pay a dividend and never intends to do so. If and when the assets of these firms are sold or liquidated, a cash distribution will be made and shareholders will realize a capital gain. Some firms pursue this policy to enable their shareholders to realize lower taxes, since taxes on capital gains are deferred and often paid at a lower rate.

LINKS TO PREVIOUS ENTRIES IN THIS SERIES

I. Introduction

II. Terminology

Addendum to Part II: Notes on the State of Liberty in American Law

III. The origin and essence of rights

IV. Liberty and its prerequisites

Addendum to Part IV: More Hayek

V. The economic consequences of liberty

Liberty, Democracy, and Voting Rights

I wrote recently that

we have come to [the regulatory-welfare] state because public opinion, elite opinion, and the media have combined to undo the great work of the Framers, whose Constitution prevented tyranny by the majority. Unchecked democracy has become the enemy of liberty and, therefore, of material progress. As Michael Munger says, “The real key to freedom is to secure people from tyranny by the majority, or freedom from democracy.”

The last best hope for liberty and prosperity lies in the neutralization of public opinion through a renewal of constitutional principles.

A post at the now-defunct Blogger News Network caused me to leave this comment (edited lightly):

Restrict voting to persons aged 30 or older whose adjusted gross income in the preceding year was no less than one standard deviation below the mean for all filers of Form 1040 (or one of its variants). A registrant must be able to pass two tests: (1) a standardized literacy test at a level of comprehension equivalent to that of the average graduate of a suburban high school in the Midwest, circa 1955; and (2) a test of constitutional literacy, consisting of 25 multiple-choice questions on such topics as the functions of the three branches of the federal government, the rights reserved to States and people, and enumerated powers.

In other words, voters ought to have a real stake in the outcome, a modicum of intelligence, and an understanding of the proper role of government. Our drift away from those three principles that has brought us to the point where democracy — as it’s practiced in the United States — is the enemy of liberty.

An Unreconstructed Stalinist Mangles History

Eric (The Red) Hobsbawm of the Guardian Unlimited, writes about “The last of the utopian projects,” subtitled “Perestroika plunged Russia into social ruin – and the world into an unprecedented superpower bid for global domination.”

Unprecedented? Lest we forget, there were the Greeks, the Romans, the Huns, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the English, the Axis, and the Russians — to name several aspiring dominators of the globe (or those portions of it worth dominating) that come immediately to mind.

But Hobsbawm will leap into any rhetorical chasm for the sake of celebrating communism and denigrating the United States. He betrays himself at the outset of his fatuous flapdoodle when he says this:

I have a lasting admiration for Mikhail Gorbachev. It is an admiration shared by all who know that, but for his initiatives, the world might still be living under the shadow of the catastrophe of a nuclear war….

Poppycock! We’re not “living under the shadow of the catastrophe of a nuclear war” because Reagan stared down Gorbachev.

But what do you expect from an old Stalinist?

A Leftist’s Lament

Lillian B. Rubin, writing in Dissent, laments the inability of the left to reach the “masses” (those recalcitrant Reagan Democrats):

I don’t take a backseat to anyone in my anger at the right, especially the radical religious right and its neocon partners. Their ideological inflexibility, the way they manipulate the facts to fit their preconceptions and sell their falsehoods to the American public, is both outrageous and frightening. But my concern here is to examine the political behavior of the millions of other Americans-those working-class and lower-middle-class women and men who are not driven by ideological rigor, who are not convinced that they speak the word of God, yet who listen appreciatively to the Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys, and Bill O’Reillys as they rail against us as “liberal elites” who have lost touch with the people, and who went to the polls in our recent presidential election and voted accordingly. Why do they subscribe to a politics that in [Thomas] Frank’s words, “strangles their own life chances?”

She then goes on manipulate facts and manufacture falsehoods:

Why, in the face of exploding deficits, a war that has become increasingly unpopular, a three-year-long recession, millions of jobs lost and not replaced, a public education system that’s a national disgrace, prescription drugs made by American manufacturers that cost half or less in neighboring Canada, and a health-care system that’s the most expensive in the world yet fails to provide the most elementary care for tens of millions of Americans, why-when we’re on the people’s side of all these issues-don’t they listen to us?

Perhaps, Lillian, it’s because “they” are not always fooled by leftist rhetoric:

  • The left hates deficits only because they’ve been fueled by tax cuts rather than spending on leftist programs.
  • The recession — hardly unique or deep by historic standards — began in Clinton’s administration, though he’s not to be blamed for that. Recessions happen.
  • Public education is a disgrace because it’s public education, but the left won’t let parents take their tax money and spend it at private schools.
  • The creation of new “miracle” drugs depends on the prospect of earning sufficient profits to fund the necessary research. Reimportation therefore undermines advances in healthcare.
  • There’s much more to healthcare than drug prices, and America’s healthcare system is the best. Even Americans without health insurance have access to that system through emergency rooms, State and municipal public-assistance programs, and the support of charitable organizations.

The left is uncomfortable with facts, because facts get in the way of the left’s agenda, which is to remake the world to its liking. Thus, instead of blaming the “masses” for siding with what she calls “the right,” Rubin blames “the right”:

There’s much to do in the coming years to build a set of institutions that can begin to compete with the highly organized, enormously well-funded network of newspapers, periodicals, think tanks, publishing houses, and television and radio stations the right already has in place. But no institutions will save us until we find the way to reframe the debate so that it’s on our terms, not theirs. That means opening up discussion among ourselves to debate and develop positions and strategies that, while honoring our own beliefs and values, enable us to build bridges across which we can speak to those who now see us as an alien other.

It’s not enough to speak in another voice, however. We must learn to listen as well, to develop a third ear so that we can hear beneath their rage to the anguish it’s covering up. Only then will we find our way into the hearts and minds of those Americans who have been seduced and exploited by the radical right into “strangling their own life chances.” Only then will we be able to stop asking, “Why don’t they listen to us?”

Because “they” often intuit the facts, which the left ignores studiously, and because “they” often see through the left’s smug, elitist condescension. That’s why.

Rubin’s lament gives me renewed hope for the future of America.

Treasonous Blogging?

Tom W. Bell of Agoraphilia posts about and links to an article he has submitted to several law reviews. The title is of the article is “Treason, Technology, and Freedom of Expression.” Here are some excerpts of the abstract and concluding section:

The power to punish treason against the U.S. conflicts with the First Amendment freedoms of speech and of the press. Far from a question of mere theory, that conflict threatens to chill public dissent to the War on Terrorism….After World War II, the United States won several prosecutions against citizens who had engaged in propaganda on behalf of the Axis powers. Today, critics of the War on Terrorism likewise face accusations of treason. Under the law of treasonous expression developed following World War II, those accusations could credibly support prosecutions. Any such prosecutions could win convictions, moreover, unless courts narrow the law of treasonous expression to satisfy the First Amendment….

In terms of abstract doctrine, the law of treason condemns anyone who owes allegiance to the U.S., who adheres to U.S. enemies, and who gives them aid and comfort by an overt act to which two witnesses testify. As courts have applied that doctrine, however, it threatens any citizen or resident of the U.S. who publicly expresses disloyal sentiments. The Internet has made it cheap, easy, and dangerous to publish such sentiments….Even if no prosecutions for treason arise, the alarmingly broad yet ill-defined reach of the law of treason threatens to unconstitutionally chill innocent dissent….

As courts have interpreted it, the law of treason allows for the punishment of an indeterminate but wide range of disloyal public expressions that help enemies of the U.S. That interpretation both subverts the original meaning of the constitution’s treason clause and violates the strict scrutiny test applied to content-based restrictions on expression. To save the law from unconstitutionality, courts should in cases of treasonous expression interpret the “adhering to [U.S.] enemies” element of treason as nothing broader than “being employed by enemies of the U.S.” Perhaps courts should demand a still less restrictive variation on the law of treason. Perhaps they should do away with the law of treasonous expression altogether. At the least, though, they should limit liability for treasonous expression to defendants employed by enemies of the U.S. Anything broader than that would, by wounding our First Amendment rights, do far more to harm the U.S. than disloyal expressions would.

I disagree with the compromise position Bell offers in the final sentence. If it’s treason, it’s treason. An unpaid traitor can do just as much harm to the nation as can a paid traitor.

It would be better to do away with the law of treasonous expression altogether than to draw an arbitrary line between paid and unpaid traitors. If a person’s treachery goes no further than expressions of hatred for America or sympathy with America’s enemies, let that person suffer the consequences in the forum of public opinion.

We bloggers are already facing enough trouble, given the strong possibility that our freedom of expression may be throttled by the strict application of the McCain-Feingold Act. The last thing that we (bloggers) need is an inquisition into our views about the War on Terrorism.

I do detest the extremists of the left and right who portray America as the villain of the piece. But I defend their right to do so — as long as they aren’t doing it on my dime.

Here We Go Again

Back on September 18, in “Time to Regulate the Blogosphere?,” I wrote that the thought of regulating the blogosphere

must have crossed the minds of some highly placed Democrat sympathizers in the “mainstream” media when the blogosphere started shredding the threadbare remnants of Dan Rather’s reputation for honest reporting. But the blogosphere is protected by the First Amendment, isn’t it?

There’s stark evidence that the blogosphere can be regulated, if the feds want to do it. Look at the airwaves, which the feds seized long ago, and which the feds censor by intimidation. Look at the ever-tightening federal control of political speech, which has brought us to McCain-Feingold. It’s all in the name of protecting us, of course.

I followed that with a post on October 13, in which I quoted from an AP story (link no longer works):

FEC May Regulate Web Political Activity

Oct 13, 7:55 AM (ET)

By SHARON THEIMER

WASHINGTON (AP) – With political fund raising, campaign advertising and organizing taking place in full swing over the Internet, it may just be a matter of time before the Federal Election Commission joins the action. Well, that time may be now.

A recent federal court ruling says the FEC must extend some of the nation’s new campaign finance and spending limits to political activity on the Internet.

Long reluctant to step into online political activity, the agency is considering whether to appeal.

But vice chairwoman Ellen Weintraub said the Internet may prove to be an unavoidable area for the six-member commission, regardless of what happens with the ruling.

“I don’t think anybody here wants to impede the free flow of information over the Internet,” Weintraub said. “The question then is, where do you draw the line?”…

LGF (via Freespace) now points to this (from CNET News.com):

The coming crackdown on blogging

March 3, 2005, 4:00 AM PT
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.

In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign’s Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate’s press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Smith should know. He’s one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.

In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. “The commission’s exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines” the campaign finance law’s purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

Smith and the other two Republican commissioners wanted to appeal the Internet-related sections. But because they couldn’t get the three Democrats to go along with them, what Smith describes as a “bizarre” regulatory process now is under way.

CNET News.com spoke with Smith about the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as the McCain-Feingold law, and its forthcoming extrusion onto the Internet.

Q: What rules will apply to the Internet that did not before?
A: …Do we give bloggers the press exemption? If we don’t give bloggers the press exemption, we have the question of, do we extend this to online-only journals like CNET?

How can the government place a value on a blog that praises some politician?
…The FEC did an advisory opinion in the late 1990s (in the Leo Smith case) that I don’t think we’d hold to today, saying that if you owned a computer, you’d have to calculate what percentage of the computer cost and electricity went to political advocacy.

It seems absurd, but that’s what the commission did. And that’s the direction Judge Kollar-Kotelly would have us move in….

How about a hyperlink? Is it worth a penny, or a dollar, to a campaign?
I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this. One thing the commission has argued over, debated, wrestled with, is how to value assistance to a campaign….

Then what’s the real impact of the judge’s decision?
The judge’s decision is in no way limited to ads. She says that any coordinated activity over the Internet would need to be regulated, as a minimum….

(Editor’s note: federal law limits the press exemption to a “broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication.” )

How do you see this playing out?
There’s sensitivity in the commission on this. But remember the commission’s decision to exempt the Internet only passed by a 4-2 vote.

This time, we couldn’t muster enough votes to appeal the judge’s decision. We appealed parts of her decision, but there were only three votes to appeal the Internet part (and we needed four). There seem to be at least three commissioners who like this.

Then this is a partisan issue?
Yes, it is at this time. But I always point out that partisan splits tend to reflect ideology rather than party. I don’t think the Democratic commissioners are sitting around saying that the Internet is working to the advantage of the Republicans.

One of the reasons it’s a good time to (fix this) now is you don’t know who’s benefiting. Both the Democrats and Republicans used the Internet very effectively in the last campaign.

What would you like to see happen?
I’d like someone to say that unpaid activity over the Internet is not an expenditure or contribution, or at least activity done by regular Internet journals, to cover sites like CNET, Slate and Salon. Otherwise, it’s very likely that the Internet is going to be regulated, and the FEC and Congress will be inundated with e-mails saying, “How dare you do this!”

What happens next?
It’s going to be a battle, and if nobody in Congress is willing to stand up and say, “Keep your hands off of this, and we’ll change the statute to make it clear,” then I think grassroots Internet activity is in danger….

Senators McCain and Feingold have argued that we have to regulate the Internet, that we have to regulate e-mail. They sued us in court over this and they won.

If Congress doesn’t change the law, what kind of activities will the FEC have to target?
We’re talking about any decision by an individual to put a link (to a political candidate) on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet….

Why wouldn’t the news exemption cover bloggers and online media?
Because the statute refers to periodicals or broadcast, and it’s not clear the Internet is either of those. Second, because there’s no standard for being a blogger, anyone can claim to be one, and we’re back to the deregulated Internet that the judge objected to. Also I think some of my colleagues on the commission would be uncomfortable with that kind of blanket exemption….

Imagine that: unregulated political speech. What a concept. Perhaps we need a constitutional amendment to protect it. We could even call it the First Amendment, because of its importance.

God damn McCain, Feingold, Congress, the President, and the U.S. Supreme Court! (Oops, am I allowed to say that?)

Favorite Posts: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech

How to Deal with Left-Wing Academic Blather

David French, over at FIRE’s The Torch, writes about a speech by Newt Gingrich (my comments bolded in brackets):

Gingrich asks, “What obligation does society have to fund its own sickness?” This is a good question—but it is constitutionally dangerous. One of the most common statements we hear at FIRE (in the context of both public and private schools—since almost every college and university in the United States receives significant government funding) is: “Sure, they have their right to free speech, but why do I have to fund it?” [Good question. It’s your tax dollars at work.]

In essence, what Gingrich (and others) wants is to attach viewpoint-related strings to public funds. We will “fund” speech, but only the speech we like. In the public university context, I can think of few ideas more catastrophic to free speech and open debate than the notion that the funding entity controls the political discourse of a university community. [But the funding entity can and should control a university’s academic emphasis.] Do we really want state legislators injecting themselves into tenure disputes? Deciding which English teachers deserve their salaries? The obligation of the funding entity should be viewpoint neutrality, not ideological conformity. [So, we leave ideological conformity in the hands of the left-wingers who dominate university faculties?]

Within the university setting, think of the state as funding not a point of view but a marketplace of ideas. [Balderdash! See previous comment.] The goal is to advance knowledge and freedom through public institutions that foster and support the free exchange of ideas. [The kind of blather espoused by academic left-wingers isn’t remotely related to knowledge.] The existence of a Ward Churchill is no more evidence that the marketplace is broken than the existence of the Edsel (or, even worse, the AMC Pacer) was evidence of fundamental problems in the American car market. [But the Edsel and Pacer were evidence of fundamental problems in the American car market, which have been cured to some extent by competition from Japanese makes.] Even in a perfectly functioning marketplace, Ward Churchills would exist, teach (sometimes to packed houses), and maybe even get tenure. [In a perfectly functioning academic marketplace there would be conservative and libertarian counterparts to Ward Churchill, who would also be heard.]

The real problem in our public universities is not that “bad ideas” are funded but that the marketplace of ideas itself has broken down. [As I was saying.] Through speech codes, mandatory diversity training, viewpoint discrimination in hiring and other mechanisms that violate basic constitutional protections, universities have closed the free marketplace and are often simply vendors for the prevailing political orthodoxy. If Newt wants to create positive change at our universities, he should be talking about opening them up to more ideas, not adding yet another “forbidden topic” to the long list that currently exists. [Agreed. But how does one open them to more (non-left-wing) ideas?]

How have we improved our universities if we add just one more “ism” to the long list of banned thoughts and words? Campuses have already banned subjectively defined expressions of racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. Do we solve anything by including “anti-Americanism”? If the state and federal government have any role in this dispute, it is to take steps to restore the free marketplace, not to add further restrictions. [Perhaps restoring the free marketplace at universities requires the application of something like an intellectual anti-trust act, to break up the left’s stranglehold on most universities.]

Actually, although Ward Churchill and his ilk are despicable human beings, I don’t care what they say as much as I care that they represent what seems to pass for “thought” in large segments of the academic community. Clearly, universities are failing in their responsibility to uphold academic standards. Left-wing blather isn’t knowledge, it’s prejudice and hate and adolescent rebellion, all wrapped up in a slimy package of academic pretentiousness.

The larger marketplace of ideas counteracts much of what comes out of universities — in particular the idiocy that emanates from the so-called liberal arts and social sciences. But that’s no reason to continue wasting taxpayers’ money on ethnic studies, gender studies, and other such claptrap. State legislatures can and should tell State-funded universities to spend less on liberal arts and social sciences and spend more on the teaching of real knowledge: math, physics, chemistry, engineering, and the like. That strikes me as a reasonable and defensible stance.

It isn’t necessary for State legislatures to attack particular individuals who profess left-wing blather. All the legislatures have to do is insist that State-funded schools spend taxpayers’ money wisely, by focusing on those disciplines that advance the sum of human knowledge. Isn’t that what universities are supposed to do?

Favorite Posts: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech

The Stupid Party

Orin Judd, writing at Tech Central Station, observes of the Democrat Party’s suicidal behavior:

[W]e should be reluctant to label a whole political party “stupid.” But the only other description that seems to fit this behavior pattern is insanity: doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. So, take your pick, stupidity or insanity?

And the right answer is: stupidity. As I have shown, the right is smarter than the left.

See, People Can Think for Themselves

Craig William Perry and Harvey S. Rosen (both of Princeton) have published a paper that goes by this provocative title: “The Self-Employed are Less Likely to Have Health Insurance Than Wage Earners. So What?” Here’s the abstract:

There is considerable public policy concern over the relatively low rates of health insurance coverage among the self-employed in the United States. Presumably, the reason for the concern is that their low rates of insurance lead to worse health outcomes. We use data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey conducted in 1996 to analyze how the self-employed and wage-earners differ with respect to insurance coverage and health status. Using a variety of ways to measure health status, we find that the relative lack of health insurance among the self-employed does not affect their health. For virtually every subjective and objective measure of health status, the self-employed and wage earners are statistically indistinguishable from each other. Further, we present some evidence that this phenomenon is not due to the fact that individuals who select into self-employment are healthier than wage-earners, ceteris paribus. Thus, the public policy concern with the relative lack of health insurance among the self-employed may be somewhat misplaced.

In other words, the self-employed tend to make an informed calculation about the risks to their health and don’t waste money on unneeded health-insurance coverage. No doubt many persons who work for others make the same rational calculation.

But if the health-care hysterics on the left had their way, the U.S. government would force health insurance down the throats of everyone, driving up health-care costs and premiums. But it would be “free” because we (as taxpayers) would share the burden. Right.

(Thanks to Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution for the pointer to the abstract.)

Unlimited Government?

Well, that’s what J. Peter Byrne seems to advocate in his online debate with Richard Epstein about Kelo v. New London (discussed in an earlier post):

[In the city of New London’s taking,] I see self-government, which while never pure, gives most of us a voice and is capable of innovation….I think that the democratic process provides the best and most legitimate accountability, especially if it is amenable to reform from above, as municipal decision making is by state statutes. The abuses in eminent domain can be addressed through statutes improving procedures and changing the measure of compensation.

Not incidentally, I think New London’s plan here is quite reasonable, so far as I understand it. They are redeveloping some 90 acres, strategically located between a new Pfizer research facility—the largest private investment in New London in many years—and the water; they are constructing a new park and providing substantial infrastructure and environmental remediation in their best shot to encourage private development of offices, hotels, and residences. The plaintiffs’ property lies in the middle of the 90 acres and in a flood plain. The elevation of the land needs to be raised for development and that cannot be done with functioning inholdings. This is not warehousing, but a sensible, long term development plan, which the people of New London have knowingly approved and financed.

In other words, government can do anything it wants to do, as long as it is done in the name of “social progress” or “economic development” — and as long as it pretends to draw its legitimacy from the “people.” By Byrne’s rule, government is entitled to tell us where to work, where to live, how many children to have, and on and on. If government is so “smart,” why don’t we just let it run all of our businesses and lives? We could then stop pretending that we live in something approximating liberty.

It all reminds me very much of Hitler’s abuse of German law to advance his repugnant agenda. Just go through the motions and what do you get? Absolute power of the kind that makes mincemeat of schnooks like Byrne.

Support Homeschooling

WriteWingNut, a homeschooler and co-blogger at Blogger News Network, writes about “Homeschooling and Socialization.” There’s much to be said in favor of homeschooling as an antidote to public education. But teachers’ unions and their allies (notably the Democrat Party) have a lot of political clout, which they wield almost ceaselessly in an effort to undermine homeschooling.

Just take a look at the website of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), for a taste of the legal hurdles that homeschoolers face or are threatened with. Here’s what HSLDA is and does:

Home School Legal Defense Association is a nonprofit advocacy organization established to defend and advance the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children and to protect family freedoms. Through annual memberships, HSLDA is tens of thousands of families united in service together, providing a strong voice when and where needed.

HSLDA advocates on the legal front by fully representing member families at every stage of proceedings. Each year, thousands of member families receive legal consultation by letter and phone, hundreds more are represented through negotiations with local officials, and dozens are represented in court proceedings. HSLDA also takes the offensive, filing actions to protect members against government intrusion and to establish legal precedent. On occasion, HSLDA will handle precedent-setting cases for nonmembers, as well.

HSLDA advocates on Capitol Hill by tracking federal legislation that affects homeschooling and parental rights. HSLDA works to defeat or amend harmful bills, but also works proactively, introducing legislation to protect and preserve family freedoms.

HSLDA advocates in state legislatures, at the invitation of state homeschool organizations, by assisting individual states in drafting language to improve their homeschool legal environment and to fight harmful legislation.

HSLDA advocates in the media by presenting articulate and knowledgeable spokesmen to the press on the subject of homeschooling. HSLDA staff members are regularly called upon for radio, television, and print interviews, and their writings are frequently published in newspapers and magazines across the country. HSLDA’s own bimonthly magazine, The Home School Court Report, provides news and commentary on a host of current issues affecting homeschoolers. And its two-minute daily radio broadcast, Home School Heartbeat, can be heard on nearly 500 radio stations.

HSLDA advocates for the movement by commissioning and presenting quality research on the progress of homeschooling. Whether it’s in print, from the podium, or on the air, HSLDA provides insightful vision and leadership for the cause of homeschooling.

You can support HSLDA’s worthy efforts by shopping online through its Clicks for Homeschooling page:

Did you know that you can support homeschooling just by using the links on this page or special QuickLinks set from this page to get to your favorite online retailers? That’s right, the online retailers on this page will give a portion of your online purchase amount back to HSLDA for the work of the Home School Foundation. So next time you want to shop online, please come to this page first or use one of our QuickLinks to get to the online retailer. It’s easy and you will be helping the Home School Foundation support homeschooling through its Special Needs Children’s Fund, Widows Curriculum Scholarship Fund, and its other funds.

The list of participating retailers includes many familiar names (e.g., Amazon.com, Circuit City, Home Depot, Toysrus.com, and Wal-Mart.com). From now on, I’m going first to the Clicks for Homeschooling page before I shop online.

(Thanks to my daughter-in-law for the tip about HSLDA.)

What Is the Point of Academic Freedom?

Just read:

Marketplace of Fear

New Proof That Man Has Created Global Warming

How Global Warming Research Is Creating a Climate of Fear

Ego, Testosterone, and the Academy: Why the Controversy Over Larry Summers Is Important

And that’s only the teeny-tiny pointy tip of the iceberg — as you know well, unless your only source of news is Dan Rather.

Academic freedom isn’t an end unto itself, it’s a means to an end, which is to debate the truth. Where there is no debate, the truth (or something approaching it) is unlikely to emerge, to the detriment of education, in particular, and human progress, in general. As I wrote here (apropos Ward Churchill’s aborted appearance at Hamilton College): Educators are paid not only to educate but also to educate well. Maybe it’s time for political-point-of-view quotas for professorships.

Favorite Posts: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech

Feminist Balderdash

Judith Shulevitz, writing in The New York Times, reviews Judith Warner’s Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety:

Warner has two points to make. The first is that, in affluent America, mothering has gone from an art to a cult, with devotees driving themselves to ever more baroque extremes to appease the goddess of perfect motherhood. Warner, who has two children, made this discovery upon her return from a stay in Paris, where, she says, mothers who benefit from state-subsidized support systems — child care, preschools, medical services — never dream of surrendering jobs or social lives to stay home 24/7 with their kids. In the absence of such calming assistance, however, American moms are turning themselves into physically and financially depleted drones.

Did I miss the part about where someone has held a gun to the collective head of those “drones” and forced them have children and work outside the home? And what kind of model is France, for goodness sake?

Later, Shulevitz notes that

Warner tends toward hyperbole, but she strikes me as right about the basic phenomenon. In a society that measures status in consumer goods and hard-to-come-by symbols of achievement — grades, awards, brand-name colleges — the scramble for advantage is bound to propel American upper-middle-class parents into exponentially goofier displays of one-upsmanship. Try giving your 3-year-old an old-fashioned cake-and-balloon birthday party at home, with neither facilitator nor gift bags, and you’ll see that Warner’s onto something, and that it’s harder to opt out than you’d think.

It’s not hard at all, if you have a sense of values. For instance, you might save the money for your children’s education. But catered birthday parties and other status symbols are more important that bringing up baby:

Take the woman who decides to scale back when her baby is born. Her smaller paycheck makes her husband feel that he must bring in a bigger one, or at least make sure not to slip into a lower income bracket. That means longer hours and less time at home. Before long, the wife cuts back her hours even more to cope with the increased housework, shopping and cooking she has to do, and to care for the baby, who, as he gets older, needs more love and educational enrichment, not less. Soon she is wondering whether to keep her expensive part-time baby sitter (who is probably looking around for a full-time position) and whether her career, now barely recognizable as such, is worth what it costs to maintain it. ”Was I really a good enough writer to justify the sacrifice?” Warner wondered when she found herself in that situation. ”Or should I, at long last, just hang it up?”

Why doesn’t she write at home or tell hubby that he’s in charge of the kids?

It gets worse:

Warner’s second point, which is more openly political than her first. Our neurotic quest to perfect the mechanics of mothering, she says, can be interpreted as an effort to do on an individual level what we’ve stopped trying to do on a society-wide one. In her view, it is the lack of family-friendly policies common in Europe that backs American mothers into the corner described above — policies that would promote ”flexible, affordable, locally available, high-quality” day care; mandate quality controls for that day care; require or enable businesses to give paid parental leave; make health insurance available for part-time workers; and so on.

Since when is mothering a society-wide function? It’s a responsibility that flows directly from the decision to become a parent. The so-called family-friendly policies common in Europe discourage mothering by encouraging women to work outside the home, and they foster unemployment (the rate of which is much higher in Europe than in the U.S.) by raising labor costs. There’s no free lunch, even for the sake of motherhood.

After dispensing with Warner’s book, Shulevitz slogs on:

[A] Families and Work Institute study…found that, compared with members of the baby boom generation, younger college-educated workers seem markedly less willing to sacrifice everything to advance in their careers. Many of the younger workers yearn to work fewer hours, and say they would turn down promotions if the new jobs required longer days and more work brought home — claims that may well prove untrue in practice, but nonetheless say a lot about the people making them. More young professionals rank their families as equal in importance to their jobs, or even greater….

Which brings us back to overparenting. Warner deplores its dangers both to us and to our children, who, she says, are likely to wind up as spoiled, callow, allergy-prone, risk-averse success machines with no inner lives. I rather doubt it….For all its excesses, overparenting is still preferable to its alternative, which was depicted with quiet sadness by the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her 1997 book, ”The Time Bind.” Hochschild studied a Fortune 500 company with exemplary work-life balance policies for both men and women and discovered that few mothers and almost no fathers took advantage of them. Some were afraid of losing their jobs; some couldn’t cope with the fear that they’d be diminished in their bosses’ eyes; some wanted overtime pay; but a majority eventually admitted that they liked life in the office and even on the plant floor better than life at home. Work was orderly and companionable. Home crackled with the anger and acting-out of children cycled through jury-rigged baby-sitting arrangements and yanked through their lives like tiny factory workers keeping pace with a speedup….

What Hochschild forces us to consider is that we’re losing the ability to imagine a world in which we work less and at more reasonable hours, and therefore that we no longer bother to fight to bring that world into being. It is our own internalized workaholism that threatens to devour us and our children — that, and the increasingly untenable absence of a public infrastructure of care.

Shulevitz almost gets it right, then she blows it by throwing the problems of parenthood — which is a choice made by individuals — back into the lap of “society.” Yes, working outside the home can be more immediately gratifying (both intellectually and financially) than facing up to the responsibilities of parenthood. But that’s an irresponsible and short-sighted attitude.

It’s irresponsible because there is no substitute for parenting (especially mothering). If you truly want and love your children, you don’t abandon them to others to raise.

It’s short-sighted because the often painful task of parenting — when done right — is rewarded, in the end, by the knowledge that you are responsible for those upstanding, hard-working adults who finally emerge from infancy, childhood, adolescence, and post-adolescence.

Related posts:

A Century of Progress?

The Marriage Contract

Socialist Calculation and the Turing Test

“The socialist calculation debate” is a provocative post by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution. Cowen links to a review he wrote of G.C. Archibald’s Information, Incentives and the Economics of Control: A Reexamination of the Socialist Calculation Debate. The jacket flap says:

This book examines methods for controlling or guiding a sector of the economy that do not require all the apparatus of economic planning or rely on the vain hope of sufficiently “perfect” competition, but instead rely entirely on the self-interest of economic agents and voluntary contract. The methods involved require trial-and-error steps in real time, with the target adjusted as the results of each step become known. The author shows that the methods are equally applicable to industries that are wholly privately owned, wholly nationalized, mixed or labor-managed.

The suggestion seems to be that one can emulate the outcomes that would be produced by competitive markets — if not something “better” — by writing rules that, if followed, would mimic the behavior of competitive markets. The problem with that suggestion — as I understand it — is that someone outside the system must make the rules to be followed by those inside the system.

And that’s precisely where socialist planning and regulation always fail. At some point not very far down the road, the rules will not yield the outcomes that spontaneous behavior would yield. Why? Because better rules cannot emerge spontaneously from rule-driven behavior. (It’s notable that the book’s index lists neither Hayek nor spontaneous order.)

Where, for instance, is there room in the socialist or regulatory calculus for a rule that allows for unregulated monopoly? Yet such an “undesirable” phenomenon can yield desirable results by creating “exorbitant” profits that invite competition (sometimes from substitutes) and entice innovation. (By “unregulated” I don’t mean that a monopoly should be immune from laws against force and fraud, which must apply to all economic actors.)

I suppose exogenous rules are all right if you want economic outcomes that accord with those rules. But such rules aren’t all right if you want economic outcomes that actually reflect the wants of consumers.

It reminds me of the Turing test:

The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine’s capability to perform human-like conversation. Described by Alan Turing in the 1950 paper “Computing machinery and intelligence“, it proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. It is assumed that both the human and the machine try to appear human. In order to keep the test setting simple and universal (to explicitly test the linguistic capability of some machine), the conversation is usually limited to a text-only channel.

And so, the machine might — sometimes — emulate human behavior, but only then if it can engage in an interaction that’s limited to textual conversation. And that’s as far as it goes. The machine cannot be human, nor can it emulate the many, many other aspects of human behavior.

If you want to interact with a human, don’t talk to a rule-based computer. If you want an economy that produces outcomes desired by humans, don’t rely on an economy that’s run by the equivalent of rule-based computer. Why settle for a machine when you can have the real thing?

Of course, the whole point of socialist planning is to produce outcomes that are desired by planners. Those desires reflect planners’ preferences, as influenced by their perceptions of the outcomes desired by certain subsets of the populace. The immediate result may be to make some of those subsets happier, but at a great cost to everyone else and, in the end, to the favored subsets as well. A hampered economy produces less for everyone.

A Century of Progress?

Many, many horrific things happened in the twentieth century, but — despite it all — America made tremendous economic progress. Consider real GDP per capita, which (in year 2000 dollars) was about $4,300 in 1900 and $34,900 in 2000. That increase represents an annualized rate of growth of 2.1 percent.

Before we throw a party to celebrate that great accomplishment, let’s look behind the numbers.

Monetary measures of GDP exclude a lot of things that might be captured in the term “quality of life”; for example:

[F]ailing to account for the output produced within households may lead to misleading comparisons of economy-wide production, as conventionally measured. The female labor force participation rate in the United States has grown enormously since the early part of the 20th century. To the extent that the entry of women into paid employment has reduced the effort women devote to household production, the long-term trend in output, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), may exaggerate the true growth in national output. [Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT), Designing Nonmarket Accounts for the United States: Interim Report (2003), p. 9 in HTML version]

The “effort that women devote to household production” involves a lot more than shopping, cooking, cleaning, and all of the other activities usually associated with the term “housewife.” Not the least among those activities is the raising of children. Child-rearing (a quaint but still meaningful phrase) includes more than feeding, bathing, and toilet training. Parents — and especially mothers — impart lessons about civility — lessons that are neglected when children are left on their own to disport with friends, watch TV, and imbibe the nihilistic lyrics that pervade popular music.

Yet, the apparently robust growth of real GDP per capita between owes much to the huge increase in the proportion of women seeking work outside the home. The labor-force participation rate for women of “working age” (14 and older in 1900, 16 and older in 2000) grew from 19 percent in 1900 to 60 percent in 2000, while the rate for men dropped only slightly, from 80 percent to 75 percent. Who knows how much damage society has suffered — and will yet suffer — because of the exodus into the workforce of women with children at home? These figures suggest the extent of that exodus in the latter half of the twentieth century:

Because estimates of GDP don’t capture the value of child-rearing and other aspects of “household production” by stay-at-home mothers, the best way to put 1900 and 2000 on the same footing is to estimate GDP for 2000 at the labor-force participation rates of 1900. The picture then looks quite different: real GDP per capita of $4,300 in 1900, real GDP per capita of $25,300 in 2000 (a reduction of 28 percent), and an annualized growth rate of 1.8 percent, rather than 2.1 percent.

The adjusted rate of growth in GDP per capita still overstates the expansion of prosperity in the twentieth century because it includes government spending, which is demonstrably counterproductive. A further adjustment for the cost of government — which grew at an annualized rate of 7.5 during the century (excluding social transfer payments) — yields these estimates: real GDP per capita of $3,900 in 1900, real GDP per capita of $19,800 in 2000, and an annualized growth rate of 1.6 percent. (In Part V of “Practical Libertarianism for Americans,” I will estimate how much greater growth we would have enjoyed in the absence of government intervention.)

The twentieth century was a time of great material progress. And we know that there would have been significantly greater progress had the hand of government not been laid so heavily on the economy. But what we don’t know is the immeasurable price we have paid — and will pay — for the exodus of mothers from the home. We can only name that price: greater incivility, mistrust, fear, property loss, injury, and death.

Most “liberal” programs have unintended negative consequences. The “liberal” effort to encourage mothers to work outside the home has vastly negative consequences. Unintended? Perhaps. But I doubt that many “liberals” would change their agenda, even if they were confronted with the consequences.