The Legitimacy of the Constitution

REVISED 05/10/05 (9:18 AM)

Thanks to a pointer from Randy Barnett (The Volokh Conspiracy), I read Lysander Spooner’s 1870 essay, “The Constitution of No Authority.” Spooner’s anarchistic thesis is that the Constitution never was and never will be binding because it isn’t a voluntary contract entered into by those presumed to be bound by it. That is, by Spooner’s reckoning, the Constitution was simply imposed on us.

Spooner’s right: The Constitution was simply imposed on us by those who actually consented to it. But so what? That doesn’t necessarily make the imposition of the Constitution a bad thing. Consider this:

  • There are two competing systems: one would tax everyone in order to protect people from murderers; the other would require everyone to rely on self-defense, which would be inadequate in most instances.
  • Those who wish neither to murder nor to be murdered comprise 80 percent of the population, whereas the other 20 percent are of a suicidally murderous bent.
  • Murderous proclivities are unknowable in advance, so that it’s impossible to create a society that consists solely of non-murderous people and erect a barrier between that society and a society of murderous people.
  • A powerful fraction of the 80 percent, knowing that they cannot identify the murderers in advance, make a rule that says “murder is wrong and will be punished.”
  • The powerful minority then collects enough taxes to defray the cost of protecting everyone from murder — even potential murderers. The protection enables non-murderous persons to go about their lives without being constantly on guard. And many non-murderous persons who might have been murdered are not murdered, though their identity is unknowable and they cannot be taxed additionally for the service.
  • Thus all non-murderous persons become more productive members of society. There is a positive net benefit for everyone — except persons with a strong taste for murdering others.

There’s nothing wrong with that outcome, unless you’re a murderer — or an anarchist. It strikes me as a good thing to impose a set of rules designed to protect life, liberty, and property from those who would deprive others of life, liberty, and property.

The Constitution is such a set of rules. It’s an instrument of self-defense. Even anarchists believe in self-defense.

It’s true that the Constitution isn’t always properly interpreted or enforced, but the alternative is no common set of rules — a state of anarchistic bliss in which Spooner and his ilk repose misplaced faith. As we have seen time and time again — especially in America’s cities — lawlessness spreads like a cancer when the state does not or cannot enforce the rule of law. The ranks of the “20 percent” swell and a barbarous minority holds sway over a peaceable majority. And there’s never an anarchist cop around when you need one.

Traffic-Congestion Hysteria

The construction and maintenance of streets and highways — a government-dominated enterprise — is experiencing “government failure”:

Congestion delayed travelers 79 million more hours and wasted 69 million more gallons of fuel in 2003 than in 2002, the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2005 Urban Mobility Report found….

“Urban areas are not adding enough capacity, improving operations or managing demand well enough to keep congestion from growing,” the report concluded….

The report was released Monday, the same day the Senate resumes debate on a bill that would spend $284 billion on highways over the next six years.

But that’s not enough money to solve traffic problems, according to highway and transit advocates.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimated it would take as much as $400 billion in federal spending over the next six years to solve traffic problems, based on a 2002 study.

Roads aren’t being built fast enough to carry all the people who now drive on them, according to the Transportation Development Foundation, a group that advocates transportation construction.

Well, of course a group that advocates transportation construction would say that roads aren’t being built fast enough. The Transportation Development Foundation, as you might have suspected, is an arm of an industry lobbying group, specifically the American Road & Transporation Builders’ Association, which bills itself as “the U.S. transportation construction industry’s representative in Washington, D.C.” Its mission: “advocating strong federal investment in the nation’s transportation infrastructure to meet public demand for a safe and efficient business transportation network.” Enuff said.

Anyway, the likely outcome of a study sponsored by highway builders is the pouring of more tax dollars into the soil of America, in a futile effort to reduce traffic congestion.

That’s a bad and unnecessarily costly solution to a so-called problem. Why? Because there is no problem. If people are willing to endure long commutes in snarled traffic, they’re revealing a preference for that activity over other uses of their time. In short, it’s worth it to them; otherwise, they wouldn’t be doing it.

Instead of paving America — at vast expense — we should simply let the market solve the problem. When commuters have truly had enough they will turn to alternatives that will arise to meet the demand. Those alternatives — if government will stay out of the way — will be offered by private transportation companies, automobile manufacturers, employers (who may finally get serious about telecommuting, for example), and workers (some of whom will opt for simpler lives or forms of employment that don’t require commuting).

The Huffington Post

Ariana Huffington’s new group-blog is up and…not exactly running. Huffington’s stable of celebrity bloggers is heavy on name recognition and light on original thought. For example:

  • Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall (a heterosexual, married, Hollywood couple) predictably defend gay marriage because it doesn’t affect them (or so they think).
  • Mike Nichols (the former comedian and successful film director) babbles on about the purpose of the blog, fundamentalists, evil market forces, and the need for better metaphors. Mike needs to find a metaphor and stick with it.
  • Film actor John Cusack eulogizes Hunter S. Thompson, probably unaware that Thompson was the antithesis of a Hollywood liberal.
  • Comedien(ne) Ellen DeGeneres laments that fact that 1,000 wild horses have been turned into dog food. Did I miss the part where she offered to pay for their care and feeding?
  • Director David Mamet rambles as if under the influence of a hallucinatory drug, though he manages to slip in a predictable, Hollywoodish dig about “a vast coup…in our government.”

There’s more, but that’s more than enough for me. The Huffington Post won’t appear on my blogroll, nor will I visit it regularly. There’s no “there” there.

How Not to Fix Social Security

On reading Mickey Kaus’s post, “Let’s Not Save Social Security,” I had the following reactions to his nine points:

1. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a “universal” Social Security program that pays benefits to rich and poor. Yes there is, because Social Security itself is inherently wrong.

2.The only problem with this system is we can’t afford it! We can “afford” it in the sense that we can impose ever-larger taxes on workers. But why should we do that when privatization would eventually remove the burden from workers?

3. We should be sticking it to today’s recipients! Well, yes, if you think it’s all right to renege on promises made, however rash those promises were.

4. Bush’s proposed plan isn’t quite ‘means-testing’. So what? Means-testing may appeal to quasi-hardboiled socialists, but it’s just a symptom of an essentially corrupt system.

5. Democrats would fiddle with the benefit schedules too! You bet they would. But why should they be given the chance to do so? Let’s privatize Social Security before Democrats regain power.

6. Indeed, the Democrats’ solvency plans are grimmer than you’d think. Any “solvency” plan that tries to preserve the essential character of Social Security — a transfer-payment Ponzi scheme — is bound to be grim. (See #2.)

7. We could radically cut the cost of Social Security. If complete privatization is out of the question, politically, the best way to cut the cost of Social Security is to make it a “safety net” for the truly poor.

8. Even a radical means test wouldn’t turn Social Security into welfare. Any scheme that takes from the “rich” and gives to the “poor” is a form of welfare.

9. Do we really want to save Social Security now? Absolutely not! What we want to do is phase it out, as quickly as possible, in favor of a scheme that enables workers to make real investments in growth-producing stocks and bonds.

Slippery Sunstein

Legal Affairs Debate Club this week hosted an exchange between Cass Sunstein and Randy Barnett (“Constitution in Exile?“), in which Sunstein exuded his usual slipperiness. I was taken especially by this bit of casuistry:

Let’s define judicial activism neutrally, as invalidation of government action.

Sunstein, in his zeal to discredit judges who try to enforce the Constitution, attempts to smear them with the term “judicial activism,” which was coined to describe judges who try to rewrite the Constitution. Moreover, Sunstein subtly tries to illegitimate the judiciary by separating it from “government,” which he — as a knee-jerk majoritarian — identifies with the legislature.

Redeeming the Promise of Liberty

These are excerpts of Part VII of my series, “Practical Libertarianism for Americans.”

I ended Part VI by saying that

liberty has been vanquished in the mistaken belief (or hope) that government can effectively and efficiently make us better off, salve our woes, and put an end to social and racial divisions. To those ends, the governed and their governors, walking hand in hand, have taken liberty for a stroll down a slippery slope. Every step they have taken down that slope has made more problematic our journey back up the slope.

Is it possible to journey back up the slope — even part of the way — toward something resembling liberty? And if so, by what route?…

At this moment in history, federalism seems the most promising option because the Left is now beginning to understand that the power of the federal government may be used not only to advance its agenda but also to thwart that agenda. Leftists, like conservatives and pragmatic libertarians, may be willing to settle for a “good” solution rather than hold out for the “best” of all possible worlds. But, as I will explain, the way to federalism isn’t through a collaboration between Left and Right….

The Left’s vision of federalism is to devolve the central government’s acquired anti-libertarian powers to somewhat less remote commissars at the State and local level. The Left simply isn’t to be trusted as a partner in the shaping of a new federalism. A pro-libertarian federalism would not only limit the power of the central government but would also limit the power of State and local governments to advance the Left’s anti-libertarian agenda.

The only way to advance pro-libertarian federalism is to ensure that the Left neither controls the central government nor has little influence over its policies. This is especially true of the Supreme Court….

Something resembling pro-libertarian federalism will come about only if a Republican president, aided by a strongly Republican Senate, is able to stock the courts with judges who are committed to the restraint of government power — at all levels of government….

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POST.

On Seeing "Dumbo" Again

I first saw Walt Disney’s rollicking Dumbo in the 1940s. I’m sure that the “pink elephant” scene gave me nightmares. Dumbo is an early pearl in the string of Disney’s greatest animated features:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Pinocchio (1940)
Fantasia (1940)
Dumbo (1941)
Bambi (1942)
Song of the South (1946)
Cinderella (1950)
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Peter Pan (1953)

I include the ponderous Fantasia only because of its visual effects. The rest are good old-fashioned packages of fun, produced by the best animators ever to have been assembled in one studio. You can skip Fantasia, but if you haven’t seen the others — ever, or in a long time — don’t delay. Put them on your DVD wish list today.

The Threat of the Anti-Theocracy

The following is an adaptation of Stanley Kurtz’s parody of the left’s view of the religious right’s political agenda.

What is the real agenda of the anti-religious far Left? I’’ll tell you what it is. These nuts have practically taken over the federal government. Now they want to effect total control of the populace through Hitlerian eugenics, namely, abortion and euthanasia. They want to perpetuate our enslavement to the state by raising taxes to confiscatory levels and by regulating every mode of social and economic intercourse. They want to execute anyone found guilty of thinking that abortion and pre-martial, extramarital, or homosexual sex are wrong. Otherwise, they want to abolish the death penalty, empty the prisons, and allow criminals to roam the streets, where they can prey on innocent, disarmed citizens.

But aren’’t extremists like this far from political power? On the contrary, the anti-religious political movement called “Liberalism” or “Leftism” has gained control of the Democrat party, and often controls Congress and the White House as well. Having already taken over most of the judiciary, the conversion of America to a politically correct, socialist, slave state is well in hand.

It is estimated that 100 million Americans are Liberals or Leftists, although many of them are unaware of the true effects of their beliefs and goals on liberty. It would be a mistake, by the way, to think of Liberals and Leftists as simple working people. Their leadership and funding comes from the super-rich, the influential intelligentsia, and political power brokers at all levels of government. The quest of these cryptofascists for power and world domination is a self-conscious program of pure, unmitigated evil.

You don’’t believe me? Well, consider the fact that Hillary Clinton is positioning herself to run from the center-right in the 2008 election. From that point on the political spectrum, she will draw enough votes to capture the White House and bring in a Democrat Congress on her skirt-tails. She will then be in a position to appoint Leftist justices to the Supreme Court, ensuring permanent dominion of the Leftist agenda in America.

For Leftists, the most important event of the last half of the 20th century occurred when Bill Clinton proved that Leftists would support a demonstrably corrupt leader for the sake of gaining and holding onto power.

There is an infection, an anti-religious and political pathology that has corrupted our politics. The Left has embraced evil. Let us pray that Americans will go to the voting booth and finally free this country from the Democrat Leftist menace.

Janice Rogers Brown for Chief Justice

According to Stuart Taylor (link via Volokh), there’s some good news about Judge Janice Rogers Brown, Bush’s nominee “to the nation’s second-most-powerful court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has the last word on the legality of many federal environmental, health, and safety regulations.” Taylor doesn’t think it’s good news, but I do, because it seems that Brown has:

  • • Expressed approval of constitutional theories that might well (as I read them) doom Bush’s own signature Medicare prescription drug benefit and proposed Social Security “personal accounts,” along with the rest of the Medicare and Social Security programs and many workplace safety and environmental laws.
  • • Called for the Supreme Court to return to its pre-1937 pattern of sweeping away many federal and state economic regulations by imposing severe limits on Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce and by reviving long-dead precedents such as Lochner v. New York, a now-infamous 1905 decision that conservative legal hero Robert Bork (among many others) has denounced as an “abomination.”
  • • Portrayed the federal government as a “leviathan” that is “crushing everything in its path” and fostering “a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.”
  • • Declared that “in the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery. And we no longer find slavery abhorrent. We embrace it. We demand more. Big government is not just the opiate of the masses. It is … the drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms; for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens.” And senior citizens, Brown has said, “blithely cannibalize their grandchildren [to] get as much ‘free’ stuff as the political system will permit them to extract.”

Right on, Judge. May you be confirmed to the appellate court and rise to the Supreme Court.

The Advantages of Introversion

Compare and contrast:

The terms Introvert and Extrovert…[pertain to] how a person orients and receives…energy. In the extr[o]verted attitude the energy flow is outward, and the preferred focus is on people and things, whereas in the introverted attitude the energy flow is inward, and the preferred focus is on thoughts and ideas. [Emphasis mine.]

In sum, an introvert — compared with an extrovert — is likely to be analytical and deliberate. Unfortunately, the Framers of the Constitution, whose work connotes introversion, were followed by a succession of extroverted office-seekers.

Affirmative Action, One More Time

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution points to a paper in this month’s Journal of Law and Economics by Nobel-prize-winning economist James Heckman and colleagues. Heckman et al. conclude their thorough analysis of “Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors” with this:

Gaps in [IQ] test scores of the magnitude found in recent studies were found in the earliest tests developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, before the results of testing were disseminated and a stereotype threat could have been “in the air.” The recent emphasis on the stereotype threat as a basis for black white test scores ignores the evidence that tests are predictive of schooling attainment and market wages. It diverts attention away from the emergence of important skill gaps at early ages, which should be a target of public policy.

Effective social policy designed to eliminate racial and ethnic inequality for most minorities should focus on eliminating skill gaps, not on discrimination in the workplace of the early Twenty-First Century. Interventions targeted at adults are much less effective and do not compensate for early deficits. Early interventions aimed at young children hold much greater promise than strengthened legal activism in the workplace.

Back in December, I anticipated Heckman and company’s findings and offered a policy solution aimed specifically at skill gaps:

[I]ntelligence (and hence income) is a heritable trait, one that remains differentiated along racial lines (a consistent but controversial finding discussed here, for example). Thus the findings give further evidence, if any were needed, that affirmative action policies — whether government-prescribed or voluntarily adopted — tend to undermine the quality of workplaces and educational institutions. (I am speaking here of the quality of effort and thought, not the value of workers and students as human beings.)

The premise of affirmative action finds expression in a 1986 speech to the Second Circuit Judicial Conference by Justice Thurgood Marshall, where he

urged Americans to “face the simple fact that there are groups in every community which are daily paying the cost of the history of American injustice. The argument against affirmative action is… an argument in favor of leaving that cost to lie where it falls. Our fundamental sense of fairness, particularly as it is embodied in the guarantee of equal protection under the laws, requires us,” Marshall said, “to make an effort to see that those costs are shared equitably while we continue to work for the eradication of the consequences of discrimination. Otherwise,” Marshall concluded, “we must admit to ourselves that so long as the lingering effects of inequality are with us, the burden will [unfairly] be borne by those who are least able to pay.” [From “Looking Ahead: The Future of Affirmative Acton after Grutter and Gratz,” by Professor Susan Low Bloch, Georgetown University Law Center.]

In sum, affirmative action is a way of exacting reparations from white Americans for the sins of their slave-owning, discriminating forbears — even though most of those forbears didn’t own slaves and many of them didn’t practice discrimination. Those reparations come at a cost, aside from the resentment toward the beneficiaries of affirmative action and doubt about their qualifications for a particular job or place in a student body. As I wrote here:

Because of affirmative action — and legal actions brought and threatened under its rubric — employers do not always fill every job with the person best qualified for the job. The result is that the economy produces less than it would in the absence of affirmative action….

[A]ffirmative action reduces GDP by about 2 percent. That’s not a trivial amount. In fact, it’s just about what the federal government spends on all civilian agencies and their activities — including affirmative action….

Moreover, that effect is compounded to the extent that affirmative action reduces the quality of education at universities, which it surely must do. But let us work with 2 percent of GDP, which comes to about $240 billion a year, or more than $6,000 a year for every black American.

Thus my modest proposal to improve the quality of education and the productivity of the workforce: End affirmative action and give every black American an annual voucher for, say, $5,000 (adjusted annually for inflation). The vouchers could be redeemed for educational expenses (tuition, materials, books, room and board, and mandatory fees). Recipients who didn’t need or want their vouchers could sell them to others (presumably at a discount), give them away, or bequeath them for use by later generations. The vouchers would be issued for a limited time (perhaps the 25 years envisioned by Justice O’Connor in Grutter), but they would never expire.

That settles affirmative action, reparations, and school vouchers (for blacks), at a stroke.

Next problem.

Conservatism, Libertarianism, and Public Morality

In a recent post I reservedly endorsed limited-government conservatism:

I…reserve the right to agree with conservative positions. And I shall, when the consequences serve the general welfare. I also reserve the right to differ with conservative positions. And I shall, when the consequences disserve the general welfare.

In either case, I am confident that the general welfare is served best by liberty, and that liberty is not served when the state recklessly subverts socially evolved standards of behavior in the name of license masquerading as liberty.

That post was inspired by Edward Feser’s post about “Libertarianism and moral neutrality” at Right Reason. Feser there refers to his recent article (“Self-Ownership, Abortion, and the Rights of Children: Toward a More Conservative Libertarianism”), which appears in the Journal of Libertarian Studies. I’ve now read Feser’s article and find that I am in deep disagreement with him. My disagreement hinges on Feser’s constant resort to a particular conception of morality that seems disconnected from a deeper principle.

Feser seems to see morality as a set of a priori prohibitions of certain types of behavior. He argues that libertarians ought to embrace those prohibitions because they follow from the Self-Ownership Proviso (which he attributes to Erick Mack):

[R]espect for others’ self-ownership rights entails abiding by restrictions on the use of one’s own property and self-owned powers enshrined in…the Self-Ownership Proviso (SOP)….

Evens non-invasive us of one’s property and powers can violate another’s self-ownership if it effectively nullifies or disables the other’s ability to bring his self-owned powers to bear on the world….

Taking self-ownership seriously thus entails endorsing the SOP. But this, as we are now in a position to see, means that respecting self-ownership requires taking a decidedly conservative position concerning abortion and the the rights of children.

I reject the self-ownership principle as a valid basis for libertarianism because self-ownership is an a priori concept with no anchor in reality. That is why I am a consequentialist libertarian, who rests his libertarianism on the demonstrable belief that the enjoyment of liberty makes us better off. (For more, go here, then go here and follow the links.)

A consequentialist libertarian may — as I have done — reject abortion as a step down a slippery slope toward involuntary euthanasia. As for children, here is a sensible consequentialist principle: Bad behavior toward children breeds bad behavior in adults. Children should be treated well and brought up properly for the sake of general well-being (less crime, greater prosperity, etc.).

I am certainly not ruling out love — which matters greatly to the proper upbringing of children — nor empathy — which causes most of us instinctively to protect children. But empathy and love are human instincts that seem to operate independently of one’s political leanings.

Conservatives, a priori libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, and socialists all may feel love and empathy toward others, but each adheres to, and wishes to enforce, a different (if inchoate) code of behavior on others. It is that enforced code of behavior — that public morality — which shapes our ability to pursue happiness through social and economic intercourse.

I do not trust any public morality whose first principles are demonstrably inconsistent with the general welfare — general happiness, if you will. That is why I will stick to consequentialist libertarianism and leave the other “isms” to “true believers.”

RELATED POSTS:

The Origin and Essence of Rights
A Footnote to My Theory of Rights
Why I Am Not a Conservative
Libertarian Conservative or Conservative Libertarian?
The Trouble with Libertarianism?
Does Libertarian-Conservative Fusion Have a Future?
Libertarianism and Conservatism
Judeo-Christian Values and Liberty
Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values
Where Conservatism and (Sensible) Libertarianism Come Together
Getting Neolibertarianism Wrong
Fundamentalist Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists, and Self-Defense

Libertarian Paternalism

UPDATED TWICE BELOW

There’s a fuss about “libertarian paternalism,” which its proponents (Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago) say is intended to help individuals make better decisions by having corporations and governments shape choices more artfully. Zimran Ahmed (Winterspeak) defends the concept because he

spoke to Thaler about this and read the monograph he [Thaler] wrote with Sunstein.

“Libertarian Paternalism” is noting that people often just take whatever default choice is offered and therefore working hard to come up with good default choices. This does not limit choice because you don’t need to stick with the default. But since *something* has to be the default, you might as well put effort into making it something good.

I don’t think it’s quite that easy to defend libertarian paternalism, which strikes me as another paving brick on the road to hell.

Consider an example that’s used to explain libertarian paternalism. Some workers choose “irrationally” — according to libertarian paternalists — when they decline to sign up for an employer’s 401(k) plan. The paternalists characterize the “do not join” option as the default option. In my experience, there is no default option: An employee must make a deliberate choice between joining a 401(k) or not joining it. And if the employee chooses not to join it, he or she must sign a form certifying that choice. That’s not a default, it’s a clear-cut and deliberate choice which reflects the employee’s best judgment, at that time, as to the best way to allocate his or her income. Nor is it an irrevocable choice; it can be revisited annually (or more often under certain circumstances).

But to help employees make the “right” choice, libertarian paternalists would find a way to herd employees into 401(k) plans (perhaps by law). In one variant of this bit of paternalism, an employee is automatically enrolled in a 401(k) and isn’t allowed to opt out for some months, by which time he or she has become used to the idea of being enrolled and declines to opt out.

The underlying notion is that people don’t always choose what’s “best” for themselves. Best according to whom? According to libertarian paternalists, of course, who tend to equate “best” with wealth maximization. They simply disregard or dismiss the truly rational preferences of those who must live with the consequences of their decisions. Richard Thaler may want you to save your money when you’re only 22, but you may have other things to do with your money, such as paying off a college loan.

Libertarian paternalism incorporates two fallacies. One is what I call the “rationality fallacy,” the other is the fallacy of centralized planning.

As for the rationality fallacy, I once wrote this:

There is simply a lot more to maximizing satisfaction than maximizing wealth. That’s why some people choose to have a lot of children, when doing so obviously reduces the amount they can save. That’s why some choose to retire early rather than stay in stressful jobs. Rationality and wealth maximization are two very different things, but a lot of laypersons and too many economists are guilty of equating them.

Nevertheless, many economists (like Thaler) do equate rationality and wealth maximization, which leads them to propose schemes for forcing us to act more “rationally.” Such schemes, of course, are nothing more than centralized planning, dreamt up by self-anointed wise men who seek to impose their preferences on the rest of us. As I wrote more recently:

The problem with [rules aimed at shaping economic behavior] is that someone outside the system must make the rules to be followed by those inside the system.

And that’s precisely where [central] 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….

Of course, the whole point…is to produce outcomes that are desired by planners…

…and to hell with what the individual thinks is in his or her own best interest.

“Libertarian paternalism” consists of paternalism and a rather subtle form of socialism. There’s no libertarianism in it, no matter what its proponents may say.

Free people, free markets, no compromise.

UPDATE: And here comes “libertarian” paternalism — from the left, of course:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., who this year has proposed three pieces of retirement savings legislation, said Monday, “We need to work on strengthening Social Security, but if you look at where the immediate problems are, it’s not in Social Security, it’s in their ability to save for retirement and the amount they have saved.”….

…Peter Orszag, an economic policy adviser in the Clinton administration who now heads the Retirement Security Project.

…is recommending Emanuel’s proposals to extend the savings tax credit and automatically enroll workers in 401(k)s. Orszag also wants automatic increases in the percentage of income directed toward 401(k)s and the automatic diversification of assets in them as workers near retirement.

“This is an area where there is strong bipartisan interest,” Orszag said. “Why not do something that both sides agree on, and do something that will build a sense of bipartisanship, as a precursor to dealing with some of the more difficult issues down the road?”

So, instead of allowing workers to invest 12.4 percent of their income in a real retirement plan, they will be forced to continue paying that amount into the Social Security Ponzi scheme. On top of that, a chunk of their income will be forcefully diverted to 401(k) plans — because Big Brother thinks that’s the “rational” thing to do. Workers will have no say in the matter, because socialist paternalists know what’s best for them.

UPDATE II: Then there’s this, from an article about “neuronomics”:

The problem, of course, is that people don’t always behave rationally. They make decisions based on fear, greed, and envy. They buy plasma TVs and luxury vehicles they can’t afford. They don’t save enough for retirement. They indulge in risky behavior such as gambling. Economists understand this as well as anyone, but in order to keep their mathematical models tractable, they make simplifying assumptions.

As Steve Antler (EconoPundit) explains:

Look: economics teachers with good sense tell students they’re talking about how people would behave if they were rational.

Whether people actually are rational is another matter entirely.

And, to repeat myself, rationality isn’t the same thing as wealth maximization.

Today’s Quiz

1. Choose your preferred GDP per capita (in year 2000 dollars):

a. $36,000

b. $63,000

2. Choose between:

a. government that provides “free” services (most of which you don’t use), guarantees you a minimum income and a certain level of medical care when you retire, and tries to remove risk from your life

b. government that protects you from foreign enemies and domestic predators but otherwise leaves you alone to make the best of your life, which includes earning more money, enjoying a more comfortable retirement, and living at less risk (e.g., enjoying better health because health care and drugs are more readily available and affordable; enjoying less crime because there wouldn’t be government programs to keep people mired in poverty)

3. Choose between:

a. the level of taxation and regulation now extant in the United States

b. the level of taxation and regulation extant in the United States until about 100 years ago

If you choose “b” in question 1, you must also choose “b” in questions 2 and 3.

Some Ear Candy

Click here for Marian Anderson‘s 1941 recording of Georg Friedrich Händel‘s “He shall feed His flock,” from the Messiah.

And here for a 1930 recording by Ezio Pinza of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s “Fin ch’han dal vino,” from Don Giovanni.

Pasquale Amato made this recording of “Largo al factotum” (Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Giaocchino Rossini) in 1911. It’s as clear as a bell, and almost as thrilling as this 1917 version by Riccardo Stracciari.

Fundamentalist Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists, and Self-Defense

I recently chided another blogger for getting all hot and bothered about neolibertarianism. That blogger, you see, is a member of a strange sect that I call the fundamentalist branch of libertarianism. Fundamentalists — who tend to be anarcho-capitalists — believe that rights are somehow innate to humans. Those mysterious “natural rights” give us “self-ownership,” which is just another way of saying that rights are innate to us. Fundamentalists never explain — to my satisfaction — how rights invade our being, who decides precisely what those rights are, and why they are negative (e.g., the right to be left alone) and not positive (e.g., the right to be fed at the expense of others). (I agree that rights ought to be negative, but that’s the extent of my agreement with fundamentalists. For an exposition of my views on the origin and essence of rights, go here.)

In any event, fundamentalists derive from innate rights and self-ownership the principles of non-coercion and non-aggression: If everyone has innate rights and self-ownership, no one has the right to coerce or commit aggression against anyone else. (The fact that coerciveness and aggressiveness seem to be innate human behaviors doesn’t faze fundamentalists.)

The principles of non-coercion and non-aggression lead fundamentalists — anarcho-capitalists, in particular — to the position that the state shouldn’t exist, even if solely for the purpose of collective self-defense. Further, state or no state, it’s wrong to act aggressively against anyone, anywhere, until that someone already has acted against you. Wikipedia explains:

Anarcho-capitalists hold that a modern territorial state by its nature initiates coercion (for example, by implementing taxation), and therefore oppose the existence of such a state and argue that markets and individuals should operate free from this type of interference. If individual liberty is to be defended by an organization, they insist that it be in the form of a private business who [sic] sells its services to private individuals rather than a public institution that relies on taxation to fund its operations. Individuals unable to pay for their protection in such a system are left to the auspices of charity. Anarcho-capitalists reject all coercive aggressions of the state, from initiatory war to government monopolies….

[S]ome also oppose the use of retaliatory or punitive force, asserting that any use of force beyond self-defense is itself an initiation of force.

Because of their uncompromising antipathy to government, many fundamentalist libertarians claim no special allegiance to the United States and believe, further, that it is as wrong for the United States to act preemptively in the defense of its citizens as it is for you to punch your neighbor without provocation.

That’s jolly well easy to say if you happen to live in the United States, whose citizens (even allowing for Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and violent crime) are, on the whole, well protected from foreign enemies and domestic predators because

  • there is a United States,
  • its government has excellent (if imperfect) armed forces and intelligence systems, and
  • its government and the governments of the individual States and their political subdivisions have large and generally effective law-enforcement agencies.

Fundamentalist libertarians — especially anarcho-capitalists — are simply deluding themselves if they think that they don’t owe their liberty and physical security to the state and to its ability to exercise coercive power on their behalf. They are further deluding themselves if they believe that private agencies could possess the same coercive power without descending into gang warfare, if not coercing their “customers” at least as much as governments coerce their citizens.

It’s true that the state doesn’t perfectly protect Americans from foreign enemies and domestic predators. But we’re protected well enough that anarcho-capitalists and other fundamentalist libertarians have the luxury of imagining that, without the benefit of protection from the state, they could enter into enforceable contracts with protective agencies. The American state, at least, remains somewhat accountable and responsive to those who pay its bills. What will keep your local protection racket (oops, protective agency) in check, an even more predatory competitor?

There is a difference between the United States and other nations and extra-national terrorist organizations. The United States exists for the purpose of securing the rights so prized by fundamentalist libertarians. Yes, it’s far from perfect, but it’s the best deal available. It therefore makes sense to adhere to the United States and oppose its enemies, unless you’re prepared to move to a place that offers you a better combination of rights and physical security. If you’re not, stick around, pay your taxes, and use your freedom of speech in an effort to make the union more perfect. But don’t try to pretend that the United States is just another place on the map that has no special attributes worth defending.

As for defending those attributes, I will simply ignore as irrelevant those relatively few anarcho-capitalist, fundamentalist libertarians who profess outright pacifism. I am mainly concerned with the rather more prominent set of fundamentalist libertarians who oppose preemptive defense. Because they oppose preemptive defense but not self-defense, they are only arguing about where to draw the line in the sand. It’s an important argument, however, because if the line is drawn too close to home, that increases my chances of being killed by someone who is bent on killing me (and who will try to do so regardless of my views about preemptive self-defense). Fundamentalist libertarians and others who hide safely behind the wall of American might are just as much a target of foreign enemies as are those of us who would aggressively pursue those enemies.

There can be no quid pro quo with fanatical aggressors. Their stated “reasons” for hating America are cover stories for their twisted set of values. And if they do hate us because — among other things — we maintain a presence in the Middle East to protect our access to oil, that’s tough. We have just as much right to buy that oil as anyone else, and if we have to fight to protect that right, so be it. Why should we try, vainly, to assuage the hatred of our fanatical enemies by withdrawing from the Middle East and going into an economic decline deeper than that which we experienced during the Great Depression?

That leads to my first three (rhetorical) questions for fundamentalist libertarians: Where are our rights? Why aren’t you worried about our rights? Why are you so bloody worried about the rights of others and not about our rights?

My fourth question for fundamentalist libertarians is this: Where should the state draw the line in protecting the interests of its citizens? When our fanatical enemies are about to slit your throat? No, that may be too late. When they’re inside our country, planning to slit your throat? That, also, may be too late. Overseas, then, where they’re planning and training to slit your throat? Yes, overseas, where there are regimes that support — or turn a blind eye — to the planning and training that would enable our fanatical enemies to slit your throat? You see, we’re merely quibbling about where to draw the line in self-defense, and where you — my fundamentalist libertarian friends — want to draw it is in the wrong place.

Non-fundamentalist non-libertarians out there will ask — cynically — “Why don’t we deal with other regimes in other parts of the world that threaten us?” To them I say: You do what you can, when you can, and then you move on to the next enemy, who may — upon sober reflection — choose to limit his aggression to verbiage in light of our willingness to smite our enemies.

That’s self-defense.

Lamm (Sort Of) Lays It on the Line

Richard Lamm, a Democrat with impeccable civil rights credentials, who has taught at the University of Denver since 1969 (except for 12 years when he was Colorado’s governor) has this to say (punctuation errors in the original):

Most discussion of minority failure blames racism and discrimination. I m an old civil rights lawyer and such racism and discrimination clearly still exists. But the problem is, I fear, deeper than the current dialogue. We need to think honestly about these problems with new sophistication. One of these new areas is to recognize that increasingly scholars are saying culture matters.

I m impressed, for instance, that minorities that have been discriminated against earn the highest family incomes in America. Japanese Americans, Jews, Chinese Americans, and Korean Americans all out-earn white Americans by substantial margins and all have faced discrimination and racism. We put Japanese Americans in camps 60 years ago and confiscated much of their property. Yet today they out-earn all other demographic groups. Discrimination and racism are social cancers and can never be justified but it is enlightening that, for these groups, they were a hurdle, not a barrier to success.

The Italians, the Irish, the people from the Balkans America has viewed all these groups and many more with hostility and suspicion, yet all have integrated and succeeded. Hispanic organizations excuse their failure rates solely in terms of discrimination by white America and object vociferously when former Education Secretary Lauro Cavazos observes that Hispanic parents don t take enough interest in education. But Cuban Americans have come to America and succeeded brilliantly. Do we discriminate against Hispanics from Mexico but not Hispanics from Cuba?

I suggest that those groups whose culture and values stress delayed gratification, education, hard work, success and ambition are those groups that succeed in America regardless of discrimination. I further suggest that, even if discrimination was removed, other groups would still have massive problems until they develop the traits that lead to success. Asian and Jewish children do twice as much homework as Black and Hispanic students, and get twice as good grades. Why should we be surprised?

A problem well defined is a problem half-solved. We must recognize that all the civil rights laws in the world are not going to solve the problem of minority failure. Ultimately Blacks and Hispanics are going to have to see that the solution is largely in their own hands.

The solution was taken out of their hands because Hispanics and Blacks (especially Blacks) have been the preferred targets of welfare and affirmative-action programs. Yes, culture matters, but Black and Hispanic culture has come to include a heavy dose of dependence on government. Dependency breeds dependency, not initiative. I wonder if Lamm can see that, or if he thinks the solution is simply a different kind of special treatment?

Tolerance and Poverty

Wikipedia gives this definition of tolerance:

Tolerance is a social, cultural and religious term applied to the collective and individual practice of not persecuting those who may believe, behave or act in ways of which one may not approve….It is usually applied to non-violent, consensual behavior, often involving religion, sex, or politics.

I would go further. One may tolerate persons who engage in certain types of harmful behavior, without tolerating the behavior. We do it all the time; for example, parents continue to love their children even though parents often disapprove of — and punish — their children’s behavior.

Tolerance of a particular kind of behavior encourages more of that kind of behavior. That is why conservatives and libertarians oppose income redistribution, which is a legal form of theft. Income redistribution encourages the belief among those who are on the receiving end of it that rewards come without the acquisition of skills and the diligent application of those skills in gainful employment. (Income redistribution also discourages diligence, innovation, and job-creating investments among those who are on the “giving” end of it.) Conservatives and libertarians tolerate (and sometimes love) the poor, but conservatives and libertarians do not wish to tolerate the bad behavior of legal theft.

Liberals — ironically, in view of their increasingly rude and thuggish behavior toward their political enemies — often accuse conservatives and libertarians of being “haters,” because conservatives and libertarians oppose the cheap “compassion” of income redistribution. That such opposition arises from a supportable belief that it actually harms everyone — including its intended beneficiaries — is of no consequence to liberals. They would rather impugn the motives of conservatives and libertarians than face two uncomfortable facts: (1) It is liberal policies that are largely responsible for poverty. (2) In spite of those policies, and in spite of liberal propaganda to the contrary, most of the poor manage to escape poverty, though the fact remains that everyone (including the poor) is made worse off by liberal policies.

It seems to me that liberals ought to go back to tolerating the poor (in their condescending way) and leave the business of helping the poor to those “intolerant” conservatives and libertarians.

A Renewed Respect?

In response to a post in which I was critical of Christopher Hitchens and Timothy Sandefur’s reactions to the death of Pope John Paul II, Sandefur wrote (in part):

I quite respect the Vatican for refusing to budge in the face of so much opposition from Catholics and others: it shows a level of integrity that few institutions today possess.

The elevation of “hard liner” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy must renew Sandefur’s respect for the Vatican, if not for religion and Catholicism, about which he said,

I think religion is wrong, and a massive force for evil in the world, and I think Catholicism perverts the doctrines of Christ and is deeply un-Christian.

That aside, he “entirely” believes

in the right of all Catholics to profess and practice their faith, and I have nothing at all against Catholics personally–—quite the opposite, I usually get along with Catholics better than with Protestants.

It must be their uncompromising views that he finds so attractive. (Just kidding, Timothy. Another post is unnecessary, though you may be hearing more from “Feddie” at Southern Appeal.)

Getting Neolibertarianism Wrong

Justin Logan gets all hot and bothered about neolibertarianism. He can’t decide which he hates more: neolibertarian principles or prose. After thoroughly misreading and misrepresenting neolibertarianism, or at least some of what’s in the first issue of The New Libertarian (password tnlv1i1), Logan says:

Put me firmly down in the “libertarian” wing of the libertarian movement. Or maybe the better dichotomy is “anti-state” versus “anti-left.”

So, Pope Justin has decided that he is a true libertarian and those of us who call ourselves neolibertarians are a lesser species. Well, bully for him, but I guess I missed the conclave where he was elected supreme arbiter of libertarian principles. Two (or more) can play that game.

Logan’s rant makes it plain that he’s of the non-coercion school of libertarian thought. That’s the one where rights descend from some mysterious source on high — it’s sort of an anti-religious religion. Those mysterious rights make self-defense wrong until you’ve seen the whites of your assassin’s eyes, by which time it’s too late for self-defense. It’s a form of idealism about as relevant to the liberation of human beings as the singing of “Kumbaya” by a bunch of hippie pinkos sitting around a campfire.

If anti-state is where Logan wants to be, fine. He and his like-minded “religious” libertarians can form their own country somewhere and defend themselves, if they are able to — which I doubt. There’s a lot more to libertarianism than not shooting before you’re being shot at.

I am neither suicidal nor tolerant of the regulatory-welfare state that has “progressively” robbed Americans of their freedom and prosperity. That’s why I like my libertarianism with a touch of statism (just enough for aggressive self-defense) and a large portion of anti-leftism, thank you.