Paradoxes Abound

I have written several posts about political and economic paradoxes in the past 18 years. Here are the highlights (with some commentary).

The paradox of libertarianism:

Liberty rests on an agreed definition of harm, and on an accompanying agreement to act with mutual restraint and in mutual defense. Given the variety of human wants and preferences, the price of mutual restraint and mutual defense is necessarily some loss of liberty. That is, each person must accept, and abide by, a definition of harm that is not the definition by which he would abide were he able to do so. But, in return for mutual restraint and mutual defense, he must abide by that compromise definition.

That insight carries important implications for the “anything goes” or “do your own thing” school of pseudo-libertarianism. That school consists of those libertarians who believe that harm is in the mind of the doer, or who believe that they can define harm while standing on the outside of society looking in. Thus they proclaim abortion and same-sex “marriage” (among other things) to be harmless — just because they favor abortion and same-sex “marriage” or cannot see the harm in them.

I am therefore a conservative libertarian.

Conservative because voluntarily evolved social norms are binding and civilizing, and therefore should not be dismissed out of hand or altered peremptorily.
Libertarian in a minarchistic way. The urge to power makes a state inevitable; the best state is therefore the one that only defends its citizens from predators, domestic and foreign.

A non-paradox for libertarians:

What if a society’s transition from a regulatory-welfare regime to a regime of liberty were to result in losers as well as winners? How could one then justify such a transition? Must the justification rest on an intuitive judgment about the superiority of liberty? Might the prospect of creating losers somehow nullify the promise of creating winners?

I argue … that my justification for libertarianism — although it is of the consequentialist-utilitarian variety — rests on a stronger foundation than an intuitive judgment about the superiority of liberty…. The virtue of libertarianism … is not that it must be taken on faith but that, in practice, it yields superior consequences. Superior consequences for whom, you may ask. And I will answer: for all but those who don’t wish to play by the rules of libertarianism; that is, for all but predators and parasites.

By predators, I mean those who would take liberty from others, either directly (e.g., through murder and theft) or through the coercive power of the state (e.g., through smoking bans and licensing laws). By parasites, I mean those who seek to advance their self-interest through the coercive power of the state rather than through their own efforts (e.g., through corporate welfare and regulatory protection)….

[A] transition to liberty might not instantly make everyone better off … but everyone could be better off. That’s simply not the case with the regulatory-welfare state, which robs some for the benefit of others, and ends up making almost everyone poorer than they would be in a state of liberty.

Liberty is a win-win proposition for everyone except those who deserve to lose.

The interest-group paradox:

Pork-barrel legislation exemplifies the interest-group paradox in action, though the paradox encompasses much more than pork-barrel legislation. There are myriad government programs that — like pork-barrel projects — are intended to favor particular classes of individuals. Here is a minute sample:

- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, for the benefit of the elderly (including the indigent elderly)

- Tax credits and deductions, for the benefit of low-income families, charitable and other non-profit institutions, and home buyers (with mortgages)

- Progressive income-tax rates, for the benefit of persons in the mid-to-low income brackets

- Subsidies for various kinds of “essential” or “distressed” industries, such as agriculture and automobile manufacturing

- Import quotas, tariffs, and other restrictions on trade, for the benefit of particular industries and/or labor unions

- Pro-union laws (in many States), for the benefit of unions and unionized workers

- Non-smoking ordinances, for the benefit of bar and restaurant employees and non-smoking patrons.

What do each of these examples have in common? Answer: Each comes with costs. There are direct costs (e.g., higher taxes for some persons, higher prices for imported goods), which the intended beneficiaries and their proponents hope to impose on non-beneficiaries. Just as importantly, there are indirect costs of various kinds (e.g., disincentives to work and save, disincentives to make investments that spur economic growth). (Exercise for the reader: Describe the indirect costs of each of the examples listed above.)

You may believe that a particular program is worth what it costs… The problem is millions of your fellow Americans believe the same thing about each of their favorite programs. Because there are thousands of government programs (federal, State, and local), each intended to help a particular class of citizens at the expense of others, the net result is that almost no one in this fair land enjoys a “free lunch.” Even the relatively few persons who might seem to have obtained a “free lunch” — homeless persons taking advantage of a government-provided shelter — often are victims of the “free lunch” syndrome….

The paradox that arises from the “free lunch” syndrome is much … like the paradox of panic, in that there is a crowd of interest groups rushing toward a goal — a “pot of gold” — and (figuratively) crushing each other in the attempt to snatch the pot of gold before another group is able to grasp it. The gold that any group happens to snatch is a kind of fool’s gold: It passes from one fool to another in a game of beggar-thy-neighbor, and as it passes much of it falls into the maw of bureaucracy.

The interest-group paradox has dominated American politics since the advent of “Progressivism” in the late 1800s. Today, most Americans are either “progressives” or victims of “progressivism”. All too often they are both.

The capitalist paradox meets the interest-group paradox:

An insightful post at Imlac’s Journal includes this quotation:

Schumpeter argued the economic systems that encourage entrepreneurship and development will eventually produce enough wealth to support large classes of individuals who have no involvement in the wealth-creation process. This generates apathy or even disgust for market institutions, which leads to the gradual takeover of business by bureaucracy, and eventually to full-blown socialism. [Matt McCaffrey, “Entrepreneurs and Investment: Past, Present, … Future?,” International Business Times, December 9, 2011]

This, of course, is the capitalist paradox, of which the author of Imlac’s Journal writes. He concludes with these observations:

[U]nder statist regimes, people’s choices are limited or predetermined. This may, in theory, obviate certain evils. But as McCaffrey points out, “the regime uncertainty” of onerous and ever changing regulations imposed on entrepreneurs is, ironically, much worse than the uncertainties of the normal market, to which individuals can respond more rapidly and flexibly when unhampered by unnecessary governmental intervention.

The capitalist paradox is made possible by the “comfort factor” invoked by Schumpeter. (See this, for example.) It is of a kind with the foolishness of extreme libertarians who decry defense spending and America’s “too high” rate of incarceration, when it is such things that keep them free to utter their foolishness.

The capitalist paradox also arises from the inability and unwillingness of politicians and voters to see beyond the superficial aspects of legislation and regulation. In Bastiat‘s words,

a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.

The unseen effects — the theft of Americans’ liberty and prosperity — had been foreseen by some (e.g., Tocqueville and Hayek). But their wise words have been overwhelmed by ignorance and power-lust. The masses and their masters are willfully blind and deaf to the dire consequences of the capitalist paradox because of what I have called the interest-group paradox [see above].

The paradox that is Western civilization:

The main weakness of Western civilization is a propensity to tolerate ideas and actions that would undermine it. The paradox is that the main strength of Western civilization is a propensity to tolerate ideas and actions that would strengthen it. The survival and improvement of Western civilization requires carefully balancing the two propensities. It has long been evident in continental Europe and the British Isles that the balance has swung toward destructive toleration. The United States is rapidly catching up to Europe. At the present rate the intricate network of social relationships and norms that has made America great will be destroyed within a decade. Israel, if it remains staunchly defensive of its heritage, will be the only Western nation still worthy of the name.

I wrote that almost five years ago. America network of social relationships and norms is (sadly) on schedule for destruction — unless there is a sharp and lasting turnaround in the governance of the country.

A paradox for (old-fashioned) liberals:

[A definition of old-fashioned liberalism is] given here by one Zack Beauchamp:

[L]iberalism refers to a school of thought that takes freedom, consent, and autonomy as foundational moral values. Liberals agree that it is generally wrong to coerce people, to seize control of their bodies or force them to act against their will….

Beauchamp, in the next paragraph, highlights the paradox inherent in liberalism:

Given that people will always disagree about politics, liberalism’s core aim is to create a generally acceptable mechanism for settling political disputes without undue coercion — to give everyone a say in government through fair procedures, so that citizens consent to the state’s authority even when they disagree with its decisions.

Which is to say that liberalism does entail coercion [how much is “undue” depends on whose ox is being gored]. Thus the paradox. (What is now called “liberalism” in America is so rife with coercion [link added] that only a person who is ignorant of the meaning of liberalism can call it that with a straight face.)

Socialism, communism, and three paradoxes:

The only substantive difference between socialism and communism, in theory, is that communism somehow manages to do away with the state. This, of course, never happens, except in real communes, most of which were and are tiny, short-lived arrangements. (In what follows, I therefore put communism in “sneer quotes”.)

The common thread of socialism and “communism” is collective ownership of “equity”, that is, assets (including the means of production). But that kind of ownership eliminates an important incentive to invest in the development and acquisition of capital improvements that yield more and better output and therefore raise the general standard of living. The incentive, of course, is the opportunity to reap a substantial reward for taking a substantial risk. Absent that incentive, as has been amply demonstrated by the tragic history of socialist and “communist” regimes, the general standard of living is low and economic growth is practically (if not actually) stagnant.

So here’s the first paradox: Systems that, by magical thinking, are supposed to make people better off do just the opposite: They make people worse off than they would otherwise be.

All of this because of class envy. Misplaced class envy, at that. “Capitalism” (a smear word) is really the voluntary and relatively unfettered exchange of products and services, including labor. Its ascendancy in the West is just a happy accident of the movement toward the kind of liberalism exemplified in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. People were liberated from traditional economic roles and allowed to put their talents to more productive uses, which included investing their time and money in capital that yielded more and better products and services.

Most “capitalists” in America were and still are workers who make risky investments to start and build businesses. Those businesses employ other workers and offer things of value that consumers can take or leave, as they wish (unlike the typical socialist or “communist” system).

So here’s the second paradox: Socialism and “communism” actually suppress the very workers whom they are meant to benefit, in theory and rhetoric.

The third paradox is that socialist and “communist” regimes like to portray themselves as “democratic”, even though they are quite the opposite: ruled by party bosses who bestow favors on their protegees. Free markets are in fact truly democratic, in that their outcomes are determined directly by the participants in those markets.

The paradoxes and consequences of liberty and prosperity:

The soil in which the seeds of [America’s] decline were to be planted was broken in the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The seeds were planted and nourished by “leaders”, “intellectuals”, and “activists” from TR’s time to the present. The poisonous crop burst blossomed brightly in the 1930s and again in the 1960s, but it had not yet engulfed the land. It continued to spread slowly (and often unheeded) for several decades before racing across the land in recent years. Its poisonous vines are now strangling liberty and prosperity.

These are the paradoxes of liberty and prosperity: Without a moral foundation they lead to their own destruction.

If you value liberty, you do not countenance speech and actions that subvert it. If you value prosperity, you must be careful not to let it breed the kind of idleness (of mind and body) that gives rise to speech and actions that subvert liberty — and thus prosperity.

The Founders understood those things. They believed that the Constitution would preserve liberty and foster prosperity because they believed that Americans would remain religious and moral. They did not believe that Americans would undermine liberty by being soft on crime, by feeding masses (and elites) at the public trough (and at the expense of taxpayers), or by accommodating foreign aggression. They did not believe that Americans would countenance such things, nor that political leaders would suborn and join efforts to ostracize, suppress, and oppress those Americans who oppose such things.

The Founders, sadly, were wrong. The did not and could not foresee these events (and many more not mentioned):

- A goodly fraction of Americans would spurn religion and become morally slack and complacent about the preservation of liberty.
- Freedom of speech and assembly would be turned against liberty, to foster crime, lack of personal responsibility, and the accommodation of deadly enemies, within and without.
- Firearms, always omnipresent in America for useful purposes, would become violent, murderous extensions of a growing tendency to toward psychological instability in a morally rootless populace.
- Governments, political “elites”, and corporations would celebrate and reward (or fail to punish) persons based on the color of their skin (as long as it isn’t white or “yellow”)*, their pro-constitutional political views (which “exonerate” many whites), and their sex (preferably female or confused).
- Abortion would become legal and support for abortion would be openly and boastfully proclaimed by political leaders and “elites”. Unborn human beings would be disposed of as inconveniences and treated like garbage.
- Parents would lose control of the upbringing of their children, who might be cajoled into psychologically devastating treatments and surgeries by teachers and others under the rubric of “gender-affirming care”.
- Women and girls would be forced to room with, shower with, and compete against males who “identify” as females (or “other”).
- Intelligence and superior (non-athletic) skills would be denounced as unfair and “white supremacist” (with Asians counting as white).
- Lawlessness and pathological deviancy would be rewarded (or not punished).
- Leading politicians and “activists” would bay and howl for the confiscation of arms, under the rubric of “gun control”, when the underlying problem isn’t gun ownership by moral and mental depravity.
- Political “leaders” would enable and allow a virtual invasion of the country, despite its negative consequences for the “little people” whom those “leaders” and other “elites” claim to champion.
- The national government (and many others) would ignore science and invoke pseudo-science to force Americans into isolation, disrupt the economy, and burden the poorest Americans because of a virus that would have run its course naturally and less destructively than had it been combated scientifically.
- The national government (and many others) would ignore science and invoke pseudo science to make Americans (especially poor Americans) poorer in an unnecessary and futile quest to “save the planet” from the use of fossil fuels, fertilizers, and other productive substances that the majority of the world’s populace will not refrain from using. (Regarding the state of science, see Maggie Kelly’s, “Professors Publish ‘Controversial’ Paper Defending Merit in Science”, The College Fix, May 2, 2023.)
- Prosperity — a fruit of liberty — would foster the moral softness and the mental laxity that gives rise to addle-pated schemes such as those outlined above.
- Vast numbers of Americans — having been indoctrinated in public schools, in left-dominated universities, and by the Democrat-allied media — would believe and subscribe to such schemes, which are made palatable by the application of double-speak labels to them (e.g., “defense of the homeland”, “combating misinformation”, “following the science”).
- Government officials, including law-enforcement officers, would collude with and encourage the press and other purveyors of “information” to distort and suppress facts about much that is alluded to above, to discredit and hound a president (Trump) who opposed them, and to help elect and protect possibly the most corrupt president in America’s history (Biden) because it is through him that the left’s agenda is being implemented.
- All of this (and more) would occur because almost-absolute power would accrue to the morally (and sometimes venally) corrupt politicians and their powerful enablers who advance and enforce such schemes.

….

In the best of possible worlds, there would be a voluntary return to something much closer to the America that the Founders envisioned. (Even a return to the post-New Deal 1940s and 1950s would do.) …

I don’t mean something like the turnaround in the House of Representatives following the elections of 1994 and 2010 (GOP gains of 12 and 15 percent). I mean something like the turnaround of 1930-1932 (total Democrat gains of 91 percent). In the wake of that turnaround, Democrats went on to control the House for the next 60 years (except for a post-World War II reaction of two years).

But the mass rejection of the GOP in 1930 and 1932 was a consequence of an economic upheaval, the Great Depression, that hit vast numbers of Americans and hit them suddenly and hard where it hurts: in the pocketbook. The policies that are now engulfing the land, onerous as they may be, are insidious by comparison — and are practically ignored or touted as “good things” by most media (including “entertainment” media).

Moreover, “woke” America is the laughing-stock of its enemies. And too weak [under the present regime] to stare them down. The growing unwillingness and inability of America’s “leaders” to deter and fight enemies really doesn’t matter to those enemies. In the end, the will to resist aggression and to accede to the wishes of aggressors depends on the will of the populace to stand together against aggression. That will, in turn, depends on broad (if not unanimous) allegiance to the survival and success of the nation.

There is no longer such an allegiance. The left hates what America long was and will not relent until that America is destroyed. The right hates what America is rapidly becoming at the hands of the left. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

I used to believe that an event that threatened the lives and livelihoods of all Americans would re-unite them. I no longer believe that.

I now believe that a national divorce — a negotiated partition of the nation — is a dire necessity. (Its precursor, a concerted secession, is legal under the Constitution.) It would allow a large fraction of Americans, perhaps half of them, to break free of the economic and social oppressions that emanate from Washington. It would also allow those same Americans to defend themselves against invaders from the south and overseas enemies instead of wasting their treasure on the left’s destructive agenda.

Absent a national divorce, everyone will go down with a sinking ship. Across the land there will be declining material comfort, rising criminality, rampant social acrimony, the suppression of views that threaten the grip of the ruling class, the oppression of persons who express those views, and a fascistic arrangement between politicians and favored corporations — those that subscribe to the quasi-religion of “climate change” and the “wokeness” that propels schemes that put skin color, sex (or lack of it), and other personal characteristics above truth, above merit, and above the rule of law.

Which leads me to promote “Can America Be Saved?“, if you haven’t yet read it.

The Fourth Great Awakening

Be sure to see the related-reading list at the end of this post.

If you pay much attention to the posturings of the left — and how could you not? — you probably have concluded that leftism is a quasi-religious* cult.

Leftism, as we know it today, is quasi-religious because of its strongly moralistic bent, given its readiness to condemn anything that can be associated (by leftists) with white supremacy/white privilege/racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, climate-change denialism, elitism, etc., etc., etc. (Condemnation of elitism, coming from leftist elites, epitomizes irony.)

Leftism of yore was aimed mainly at the realization of a material heaven on Earth through communism, socialism, and various forms of income and wealth redistribution. Today’s leftism, without having abandoned the objective of economic equality (or less inequality), has conjoined that objective to social equality.

In both cases, the left rejects the obvious fact that inequality is due mainly to innate differences that have deep roots in genetic inheritance, as influenced by eons of selection for traits deemed socially and economically desirable. It is possible to have equality under the law (though not when the law is written to favor certain groups), but that is the end of it. Leftists implicitly acknowledge this through their insufferably paternalistic words and deeds.

Leftists nevertheless try to impose economic and social equality because it is their desideratum. It is their religion-substitute, if you will. Why is this so? What drives leftists? I refer you to “Leftism” for at least some of the answers.

Force is necessarily required to attain equality, which is otherwise unattainable. The force wielded by government is supplemented by the power and influence of oligopolistic institutions controlled by leftists: public schools, universities, the “news” and “entertainment” media, and the information-technology industry. It has never been truer that knowledge (or, more properly, propaganda) is power.

The imposition of social and economic equality (or something nearer to it than is possible in a state of liberty), requires the abasement of those who are deemed superior (elite leftists excluded, of course). Leftism, in other words, embodies an inherently envious, vindictive, and destructive worldview. As a quasi-religion, leftism is in a league with militant Islam. The bombs and guns are at hand in the arsenal of the state, just not deployed on a massive scale — yet.

The rise of militant leftism eerily echoes the First, Second, and Third Great Awakenings, which were Protestant religious revivals. The Wikipedia article about the Third Great Awakening says that it

was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would occur after mankind had reformed the entire earth. It was affiliated with the Social Gospel Movement, which applied Christianity to social issues and gained its force from the awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness movement and Nazarene movements, and Christian Science.

The era saw the adoption of a number of moral causes, such as the abolition of slavery and prohibition.

The delineation of historical epochs is arbitrary, Movements such as the one described above don’t appear from nowhere, and don’t suddenly or completely end. Born-Again Christianity, which overlaps and parallels the Great Awakenings, has been around for at least 300 years, and was prominent in the U.S. in the latter decades of the twentieth century. It is still going strong, though less prominently than a few decades ago.

The same is true of the Progressive movement, which “officially” lasted from the 1880s to the 1920s. That version of Progressivism attracted many religious figures and personages of a strong religious bent. William Jennings Bryan, for example, was not just a politician who held high office and ran thrice for the presidency as a Democrat. He injected his religious fervor into his practice of politics, which set the stage for his late-life role as a Bible-thumping anti-evolutionist. (Movie buffs will remember Fredric March’s portrayal of Bryan as the “villain” of the Scopes trial in Inherit the Wind.)

The Progressive movement, though it seemed to end in the 1920s, never really died. Its agenda, has in fact been adopted wholesale, in law and by a vast majority of the populace. The New Deal had a lot to do with it, but not everything by any means. Politicians before and after FDR rose to power and held onto it by discovering “problems” and promising to “solve” them. These “problems” have ranged from the so-called trusts (monopolies and cartels) of the late 19th century — trusts that in fact made the lives of working Americans easier — to the so-called crisis of “climate change” to the seemingly endless litany of perceived “injustices” due to skin color, gender, place of birth, and so on. (Genetic inheritance and personal responsibility are of no account to a person who has the time and inclination to find injustice everywhere, except among groups that he condescends to see as oppressed.) Those few “progressive” causes that seemed to have failed, such as prohibition and eugenics, merely resurfaced in the anti-tobacco, anti-sex (of the normal kind), and pro-abortion movements.

The zombie-like nature of Progressivism is openly (if unwittingly) acknowledged by leftists. Having rejected “liberal” as a besmirched label, most of them now proudly call themselves “progressives”, albeit uncapitalized ones. So-called progressives are distinguishable from overt socialists only in their wise refusal to embrace all-out socialism, inasmuch as they are mostly from the upper echelons of the income and wealth distributions. But as affluent children of capitalism, they are willing to embrace some amount of income redistribution, just as long as their huge homes, gas-guzzling vehicles, and gross consumerism aren’t jeopardized.

The standard-issue progressive is nevertheless indistinguishable from a socialist in his unextinguishable faith in the power of the state to create heaven on Earth. Thus we have the Fourth Great Awakening.

It is, however, an Awakening with a decidedly anti-theistic ethos, and an especially anti-Christian one. The anti-Christian, neo-Pharisees of the left believe that it is right for the state to impose Christian charity, Christian “love” for one’s neighbor (as long as the neighbor is gender-confused or of another land, race, or ethnicity). Coerced “charity” is not charity, of course, but the contradiction that is lost on “progressives”.

There’s a lot more to “progressivism” than “charity”, of course. But all of its causes have the same thing in common: the worship of Power to attain the nirvana of social and economic equality (as long as the elites remain more equal than the rest).
___________

* I say “quasi-religious” because of my respect for Bill Vallicella’s arguments about the misuse of “religion” as a descriptor of a secular worldview. Vallicella rejects “religion” as a label for a worldview that doesn’t satisfy his seven point definition of religion, which begins with this:

The belief that there is what William James calls an “unseen order.” (Varieties of Religious Exerience, p. 53) This is a realm of absolute reality that lies beyond the perception of the five outer senses and their instrumental extensions. It is also inaccessible to inner sense or introspection. It is also not a realm of mere abstracta or thought-contents.

A religion, in Vallicella’s view, must be founded on a belief in a supernatural being — a being that is, if nothing else, responsible for the creation and design of the sensible (material) order. All else, in Vallicella’s view, flows from that belief; thus:

[T]here is a supreme good for humans and that “our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves” to the “unseen order.” (Varieties, p. 53) …

[W]e are morally deficient, and … this deficiency impedes our adjustment to the unseen order….

[O]ur moral deficiency cannot be made sufficiently good by our own efforts to afford us ready access to the unseen order.

[A]djustment to the unseen order requires moral purification/transformation.

[H]elp from the side of the unseen order is available to bring about this purification and adjustment.

[T]he sensible order … is ontologically and axiologically derivative. It is a manifestation or emanation or creation of the unseen order.

Related reading:

Graham Dennis, “Pawns in Tabloid Kingdom of Likes“, The Public Discourse, November 19, 2018

Ross Douthat, “The Huxley Trap“, The New York Times, November 18, 2018

Jim Goad, “Talking Down to the Blacks“, Taki’s Magazine, December 3, 2018

Thomas Jackson, “The Religion of anti-Racism“, American Renaissance, April 1999

Arnold Kling, “Social Justice and Moral Tribalism“, askblog, January 7, 2019

Theodore Kupfer, “What’s the Matter with White Liberals?“, National Review, November 29, 2018

Gerald J. Russello, “Our New Religion“, City Journal, December 6, 2018

Gilbert T. Sewall, “Pitrim Sirokin Revisited“, The American Conservative, January 8, 2019

Andrew Sullivan, “America’s New Religions“, New York, December 7, 2018 (the springboard for Vallicella’s post referred to above)

Joanna Szurmak and Pierre Desrochers, “The One-sided Worldview of Eco-Pessimists“, Quillette, December 3, 2018

Brandeis’s Ignorance

Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941; Supreme Court justice, 1916-1939) penned many snappy aphorisms. Here’s one that “progressives” are especially fond of: “Behind every argument is someone’s ignorance.” Here it is in larger context:

Behind every argument is someone’s ignorance. Re-discover the foundation of truth and the purpose and causes of dispute immediately disappear.

Spoken like the true technocrat that Brandeis was. The “truth” was his to know, and to enforce through government action, beginning long before his ascent to the Supreme Court.

There are fundamental and irreconcilable differences that Brandeis’s “truth” cannot bridge. Brandeis and his intellectual kin would never admit that, of course, so bent were (and are) they on imposing their “truth” on all Americans.

Is it ignorant to value liberty over the promise of economic security, especially when it’s obtained at the expense of liberty?

Is it ignorant to treat terrorism as a risk that’s categorically different than a traffic accident or lightning strike?

Is it ignorant to defend traditional values and their civilizing influence against the depradations of one’s cultural and physical enemies?

Is is ignorant to fear that America’s police and armed forces will become less able to defend peaceful citizens when those forces are weakened in the name of “sexual equality”?

Is it ignorant to oppose the subversion of the institution of marriage, which is the bedrock of civil society, in the name of “marriage equality”?

“Progressives” will answer “yes” to all the questions. Thus proving the ignorance of “progressives” and the wisdom of opposing “progressivism.”

Another Look at Political Labels

Arnold Klng’s three-axis model is a good place to start:

My model of political language is that it is driven by heuristics. The standard definition of a heuristic is that it is an aid to learning or problem-solving. I think of heuristics as mental shortcuts.…

…I claim that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians each use a different heuristic. Because they use different heuristics, they speak different languages.Each heuristic sets up an axis of favorable and unfavorable. Ps [progressives] use the heuristic of the oppressed-oppressor axis. Ps view most favorably those groups who can be regarded as oppressed or standing with the oppressed. They view most unfavorably those groups who can be regarded as oppressors. Cs [conservatives] use the heuristic of the civilization-barbarism axis. Cs view most favorably the institutions that they believe constrain and guide people toward civilized behavior, and they view most unfavorably those people who they see as trying to tear down such institutions. Ls [libertarians] use the heuristic of the freedom-coercion axis. Ls view most favorably those who defer to decisions that are made on the basis of personal choice and voluntary agreement, and they view most unfavorably those people who favor government interventions that restrict personal choice.

For the sake of grammatical consistency and accuracy, I would use characterize the three axes as follows:

Ps — privileged-underprivileged

Cs — civilized-barbaric

Ls — free-oppressed.

How Ps Think

Privilege, for Ps, implies that the possessors of certain positive attributes (high intelligence, good looks, high income, access to political power) have come by those things undeservedly, and even at the expense of those who lack them: the underprivileged. Ps believe implicitly in a state of nature wherein everyone would have equal endowments of intelligence, looks, etc., if only it weren’t for “bad luck.” Ps believe it necessary to use the power of government to alleviate (if not eliminate) unequal endowments and to elevate the “victims” of inequality.

As Kling puts it elsewhere, “Progressives tend to believe that we just need the right leaders to bring out the good that is in everyone,” as if nature were subject to the dictates of government. Thus the push for the “living wage,” “affordable housing,” “free” college education, access to the restroom of one’s choice, and the suppression of uncomfortable ideas that reflect traditional mores and morals — and the facts of life (e.g., gender isn’t “assigned,” it just is). The realization of such desiderata justifies (for Ps) the power of government to nullify and override constitutional and social norms, including property rights, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of conscience.

How Cs Think

Cs don’t view endowments (intelligence, looks, etc.) as matters of luck; they just are, and no blame attaches to anyone for his endowments or lack of them. Cs recognize “bad luck,” but only as a transitory phenomenon from which its recipients can rebound — with the voluntary help of family, friends, and other members of their (true) society — if they adhere to traditional mores and morals, that is, behave civilly.

Civility is manifested in three essential traits: respect for others (including their rightful possessions), self-reliance, and self-control. As Kling puts it elsewhere, “Conservatives tend to believe that we need traditional institutions and restraints to control the evil impulses that are in everyone.” Cs view economic cooperation as part and parcel of social comity, which requires civility and is damaged by the divisive identity politics fostered by Ps.

Privilege, for Cs, is the status or wealth that accrues to a person who has earned it through self-reliance and self-control, while being respectful of others. That kind of privilege is earned, and it doesn’t come at the expense of others. Cs, unlike Ps, don’t view the world as a zero-sum game, in which someone’s “good luck” somehow causes “bad luck” for others. Rather, Cs view persistent “bad luck” as arising in large part from a lack of self-reliance and self-control. Such behavior, to Cs, is barbaric and shouldn’t be countenanced, let alone encouraged as it is by the unrealistic worldview of Ps.

How Ls Think

Ls are like Cs in the value that they place on respect for others, self-reliance, and self-control. But Ls are more sanguine than Cs about the distribution of those traits, and they see traditional mores and morals as unnecessarily burdensome. Ls believe that the world would be a more prosperous and happier place if people were free of the governmental restraints that deny them the full exercise of their powers. As Kling puts it elsewhere, “Libertarians tend to believe that we just need smaller government to bring out the good that is in everyone.”

Ls and Ps Compared

Most Ls and Ps adhere to traditional mores and morals themselves, but nevertheless view some of those mores and morals as oppressive. Thus abortion and same-sex “marriage” are widely favored among Ls and Ps, and drug use one of their “victimless” crimes.

Most Ls, unlike Ps, would refrain from using the power of government to adjust economic inequalities, except to remedy “crony capitalism” and perhaps to replace a host of welfare programs with a simpler income guarantee. Many Ls also favor government actions meant to attain “equality” (e.g., public-accommodation laws), even though such actions actually restrict freedom.

Ls, in other words, are selective in their abhorrence of government action. And Ls are like Ps in that they presume to know precisely how to rearrange the social and economic order to make everyone happier.

Introducing Os

Ps, Cs, and Ls — persons who actually have the somewhat coherent views sketched above — are in the vast minority of Americans. To the extent that the views of Ps, Cs, or Ls hold sway, it is because of the backing of non-philosophical citizens whose votes and influence tip the balance in favor of one philosophy or another. I will call them Others (Os).

Why Ps Usually Prevail

Ps have a great advantage over Cs and Ls when it comes to attracting supporters among the Os. There are all of the “free” goodies, of course, and the various “equality” policies that attract identity groups and people whose self-esteem is boosted by thinking and saying “nice” things.

The economic and social effects of the progressive agenda are only indirectly and slowly realized through stagnation and moral decay, and so Ps need not fear the wrath of voters for the consequences of their policies. In fact, every dire consequence of government action (e.g., economic stagnation, reduced labor-force participation, rising medical costs, higher housing costs, financial crises) is seen by Ps as a reason for yet more government action — and most of the Os go along with it.

Cs also have the disadvantage of being associated with groups who hate the groups that are privileged by Ps. The backing of such groups (e.g., “rednecks”) puts Cs on the defensive, and leads many of them to compromise with Ps in the (vain) hope of seeming “compassionate.” Calvin Coolidge was the most recent truly conservative president, and probably the last one.

Ls are just Ps who don’t offer “free” goodies. (The Ls who favor a guaranteed income are clear that it should replace other welfare programs, and despite that come under fire from other Ls — which is most of them — for their naive belief that guaranteed income wouldn’t be added to the other programs.) Further, when Ls insist that government should be smaller, they are attacking the god (or Santa Claus) so beloved by Ps and most Os. Ls, in other words, don’t stand a snowball’s chance of making a serious electoral dent.

* * *

America’s Political Profile

This is a long post, contrary to my new blogging style, but much of it is quoted material.

REVISED 03/26/16 to incorporate the 9-question survey from Arnold Kling’s book, The Three Languages of Politics. The item linked in the earlier version of this post was an older, 10-question version of the survey, which doesn’t match the scoring key in Kling’s book that’s reproduced here.

Here is the estimable Arnold Kling, writing in The Three Languages of Politics:

I claim that progressives [Ps*], conservatives [Cs], and libertarians [Ls] each use a different heuristic. Because they use different heuristics, they speak different languages.

Each heuristic sets up an axis of favorable and unfavorable. Ps use the heuristic of the oppressed-oppressor axis. Ps view most favorably those groups who can be regarded as oppressed or standing with the oppressed. They view most unfavorably those groups who can be regarded as oppressors. Cs use the heuristic of the civilization-barbarism axis. Cs view most favorably the institutions that they believe constrain and guide people toward civilized behavior, and they view most unfavorably those people who they see as trying to tear down such institutions. Ls use the heuristic of the freedom-coercion axis. Ls view most favorably those who defer to decisions that are made on the basis of personal choice and voluntary agreement, and they view most unfavorably those people who favor government interventions that restrict personal choice.

I find a lot to like in Kling’s trichotomy. If you wonder where you stand, take Kling’s survey. Here it is, followed by a discussion of the scoring key and the key itself:

1. Late in 2012, in Newtown Connecticut, about two dozen school children were murdered in a shooting incident. What this indicates is

a) the need for teachers to be empowered and armed to fight back

b) the need for society to exert more control over the mentally ill

c) the need to reduce the power of the gun lobby 2. In the latter half of 2012, UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on news programs as an Administration spokesperson and described the deaths of Americans

2. In the latter half of 2012, UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on news programs as an Administration spokesperson and described the deaths of Americans at the Libyan consulate in Benghazi as resulting from a protest demonstration. The media should have assigned more significance to the fact that

a) Islamic militants were to blame for the murders

b) Politicians were seeking to assign or deflect blame

c) Susan Rice is a female African-American

3. In the 1940s, ordinary Germans participated in atrocities against Jews. This shows us

a) The dangers of a totalitarian system of government

b) The dangers of a collapse of moral values when a country’s institutions have failed

c) The dangers of anti-Semitism

4. When the issue of changing the tax code comes up, what question is most important?

a) how will the change affect the reward that people get for hard work and thrift?

b) does the government spend money more wisely than individuals?

c) how will the change affect inequality?

5. What is notable about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is that

a) Israelis share American values much more than do Palestinians

b) Palestinians are an oppressed people

c) The government of Israel, Arab governments, the governments of other nations, and the UN are all at fault.

6. In 1992, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found a high rejection rate for mortgage applications by African-Americans. What explains this?

a) racial discrimination

b) African-Americans were more likely to have poor credit histories or insufficient incomes to qualify for mortgages

c) the officials who directed the study had an agenda

7. The wave of mortgage defaults known as the “sub-prime crisis” was caused by mortgage loans that were

a) given to unqualified and undeserving borrowers

b) government-induced

c) predatory

8. The large number of unwed mothers with low income reflects

a) lack of economic opportunities, education, and access to birth control

b) cultural decay, which over-values sexual gratification and undervalues marital responsibility

c) incentives built into our tax and welfare system

9. Since 9/ 11, Presidents have employed controversial powers, such as warrantless surveillance and targeted killing. What do you think of the use of these powers?

a) Because Islamist terrorism is such a difficult and dangerous problem, I support the use of these powers to protect the American people.

b) I am totally against the use of these powers.

c) I am not sure about these powers, but I definitely trust the Obama-Biden administration to use them more judiciously than the Bush-Cheney administration.

Before we score the quiz and interpret your score, please answer one more question. Remember, the answer is not how you would respond. Instead, have in mind someone who agrees with you on many political issues. Which of the following paragraphs best describes how this person feels?

X) My heroes are people who have stood up for the underprivileged. The people I cannot stand are people who do not seem to care about the oppression of working people, minorities, and women.

Y) My heroes are people who have stood up for Western values. The people I cannot stand are the people who do not seem to mind the assault on the moral virtues and traditions that are the foundation for our civilization.

Z) My heroes are people who have stood up for the individual’s right to his or her own choices. The people I cannot stand are people who want government to impose their value system on everyone….

The first dominant heuristic is the one I associate with progressives (henceforth Ps). Ps, who are likely to respond X to the basic question, are most comfortable with language that frames political issues in terms of oppressors and oppressed.

The second dominant heuristic is one I associate with conservatives (henceforth Cs). Cs, who are likely to respond Y to the basic question, are most comfortable with language that frames political issues in terms of civilization and barbarism.

The third dominant heuristic is one I associate with libertarians (henceforth Ls). Ls, who are likely to respond Z to the basic question, are most comfortable with language that frames political issues in terms of freedom and coercion.

In short, my hypothesis is that someone who picked X on the basic question will tend to give corresponding progressive answers to the other nine questions. Someone who picked Y will tend to give conservative answers. Someone who picked Z will tend to pick libertarian answers. Now, go back and score your quiz to find out how many Ps, Cs, and Ls you picked. Match your answers as indicated below.

Give yourself one P for each of the following: 1c, 2c, 3c, 4c, 5b, 6b, 7c, 8a, 9c.

Give yourself one C for each of the following: 1b, 2a, 3b, 4a, 5a, 6c, 7a, 8b, 9a.

Give yourself one L for each of the following: 1a, 2b, 3a, 4b, 5c, 6a, 7b, 8c, 9b.

My guess is that progressives will have at least 6 Ps. My guess is that conservatives will have at least 4 Cs and fewer than 3 Ps. My guess is that libertarians will have at least 4 Ls and fewer than 3 Ps.

You may not agree in every case with Kling’s alignment of an answer with a political point of view (I don’t), but the overall result is probably in the ballpark. I chose Y for the basic question, and scored 6 Cs, 2 Ls, and 1 P (which I attribute to an error in Kling’s scoring scale); my actual score is 7 Cs and 2 Ls.** Inasmuch as traditional conservatism (my brand) is tantamount to true libertarianism (e.g., this post), I’m pleased to be classified as a conservative with libertarian leanings.

As for sorting progressives, conservatives, and libertarians, here’s my take: Someone with a lot of (i.e., 6 or more) Cs is unlikely to have even 1 P. (I don’t, really.) Someone with a lot of Ps is unlikely to have even 1 C, though he might have a few Ls. Someone with a lot of Ls is more likely to have some Ps, than some Cs.

But Kling’s survey is unlikely to be encountered by a more typical denizen of the United States. Such a person doesn’t think deeply or consistently about politics, but is more likely to be preoccupied with paying a mortgage or the rent, raising children or ignoring them to the extent possible, boozing with buddies (male and/or female), reading trashy novels (if anything), watching TV fare on a par with Dancing with the Stars, and so on. Such a person would probably weigh in with a mix of Cs, Ps, and Ls — and would prefer to give more than one answer to most of the questions. Such a person would be an adherent of America’s dominant political strain, which I call wishy-washy.

In short, I think the political landscape boils down to this:

A fringe of true Conservatives, some of them with a libertarian streak

A larger fringe of all-out progressives

A minuscule fringe of all-out libertarians

A microscopic fringe of left-libertarians, whose oxymoronic belief in libertarian communitarianism leads them to sympathize with progressives rather than conservatives

The wishy-washy masses in the vast middle, who go with what seems “nice” or “in style.” (Some wishy-washiers like to call themselves “centrists,” which is the verbal equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig.)

Conservatives and progressives are irreconcilable, as are conservatives and all-out libertarians. I also see no way of reconciling left-libertarians with all-out libertarians or conservatives.

But none of that matters much. Wishy-washiness dominates, which is why election outcomes seem to careen from one extreme to the other.
__________
* “Progressive” and its variants set my teeth on edge. There’s nothing progressive about so-called liberalism. I suspect that Kling uses “progressive” instead of “liberal” because he would otherwise have L for liberal and L for libertarian. I follow his usage here only to avoid confusion.

** Regarding question 6, Kling says that answer a) is libertarian, but pinning the blame on racial discrimination strikes me as progressive (racial discrimination is a kind of oppression, and blacks are victims of it). Kling says that answer b) is progressive, but answer b) — my answer — is a realistic but unfavorable appraisal of the economic status of blacks, which strikes me as conservative (i.e., attributing to blacks an “uncivilized” or negative trait that stems from their generally lower intelligence and greater dependence on the welfare state). Kling says that answer c) is conservative, but it really pins the blame on government, which is a libertarian response. My two libertarian responses were to items 1 and 7.

Political Philosophies in Brief

The libertarian wants everything to be legal and nothing to be free.

The conservative wants some stuff to be illegal and nothing to be free.

The fascist wants to tell everyone what they should like because it’s the “national will.”

The socialist wants to tell everyone what they should like because it’s “good for them,” and he’ll make the rich pay for most of it.

The modern liberal is a socialist who tries to hide it by calling himself a progressive.

The Capitalist Paradox Meets the Interest-Group Paradox

An insightful post at Imlac’s Journal includes this quotation:

Schumpeter argued the economic systems that encourage entrepreneurship and development will eventually produce enough wealth to support large classes of individuals who have no involvement in the wealth-creation process. This generates apathy or even disgust for market institutions, which leads to the gradual takeover of business by bureaucracy, and eventually to full-blown socialism. [Matt McCaffrey, “Entrepreneurs and Investment: Past, Present, … Future?,” International Business Times, December 9, 2011]

This, of course, is the capitalist paradox, of which the author of Imlac’s Journal writes. He concludes with these observations:

[U]nder statist regimes, people’s choices are limited or predetermined. This may, in theory, obviate certain evils. But as McCaffrey points out, “the regime uncertainty” of onerous and ever changing regulations imposed on entrepreneurs is, ironically, much worse than the uncertainties of the normal market, to which individuals can respond more rapidly and flexibly when unhampered by unnecessary governmental intervention.

The capitalist paradox also arises from the inability and unwillingness of politicians and voters to see beyond the superficial aspects of legislation and regulation. In Bastiat‘s words,

a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.

The interest-group paradox is a paradox of mass action….

…Pork-barrel legislation exemplifies the interest-group paradox in action, though the paradox encompasses much more than pork-barrel legislation. There are myriad government programs that — like pork-barrel projects — are intended to favor particular classes of individuals. Here is a minute sample:

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, for the benefit of the elderly (including the indigent elderly)

Tax credits and deductions, for the benefit of low-income families, charitable and other non-profit institutions, and home buyers (with mortgages)

Progressive income-tax rates, for the benefit of persons in the mid-to-low income brackets

Subsidies for various kinds of “essential” or “distressed” industries, such as agriculture and automobile manufacturing

Import quotas, tariffs, and other restrictions on trade, for the benefit of particular industries and/or labor unions

Pro-union laws (in many States), for the benefit of unions and unionized workers

Non-smoking ordinances, for the benefit of bar and restaurant employees and non-smoking patrons.

What do each of these examples have in common? Answer: Each comes with costs. There are direct costs (e.g., higher taxes for some persons, higher prices for imported goods), which the intended beneficiaries and their proponents hope to impose on non-beneficiaries. Just as importantly, there are indirect costs of various kinds (e.g., disincentives to work and save, disincentives to make investments that spur economic growth). (Exercise for the reader: Describe the indirect costs of each of the examples listed above.)

You may believe that a particular program is worth what it costs — given that you probably have little idea of its direct costs and no idea of its indirect costs. The problem is millions of your fellow Americans believe the same thing about each of their favorite programs. Because there are thousands of government programs (federal, State, and local), each intended to help a particular class of citizens at the expense of others, the net result is that almost no one in this fair land enjoys a “free lunch.” Even the relatively few persons who might seem to have obtained a “free lunch” — homeless persons taking advantage of a government-provided shelter — often are victims of the “free lunch” syndrome. Some homeless persons may be homeless because they have lost their jobs and can’t afford to own or rent housing. But they may have lost their jobs because of pro-union laws, minimum-wage laws, or progressive tax rates (which caused “the rich” to create fewer jobs through business start-ups and expansions).

The paradox that arises from the “free lunch” syndrome is…. like the paradox of panic, in that there is a crowd of interest groups rushing toward a goal — a “pot of gold” — and (figuratively) crushing each other in the attempt to snatch the pot of gold before another group is able to grasp it. The gold that any group happens to snatch is a kind of fool’s gold: It passes from one fool to another in a game of beggar-thy-neighbor, and as it passes much of it falls into the maw of bureaucracy.

[The interest-group paradox] has dominated American politics since the advent of “progressivism” in the late 1800s. Today, most Americans are either “progressives” (whatever they may call themselves) or victims of “progressivism.” All too often they are both.

Save Me from Self-Appointed Saviors

A recent NYT piece by Richard Zacks (“How Dry We Aren’t“) highlights the antics of Theodore Roosevelt:

When Theodore Roosevelt was police commissioner [of New York City], from 1895 to 1897, he tried to stop the sales of beer, wine and liquor on Sundays in saloons.

Men and women, who worked six days a week in that era, were not amused. New York State Sabbath laws already forbade attending sporting events or theater performances, or selling groceries, after 10 a.m. on Sundays; the excise laws also made it illegal to sell alcohol in bars, saloons and taverns all 24 hours of the Lord’s Day.

New Yorkers in droves defied that particular edict. (Sunday actually marked the barkeep’s biggest sales day.) Saloon owners handed a bribe to precinct cops who forwarded some loot to Tammany politicians, and the city’s thirsty could discreetly slip in the side doors of saloons. For almost 40 years, it was a popular pragmatic compromise.

Enter Roosevelt. Fearless and bullheaded, the new commissioner vowed to enforce the law, both to root out bribery in the Police Department and also to reunite families on Sundays….

Roosevelt’s liquor crackdown backfired…. The city’s spirit of place, what Stephen Crane once dubbed New York’s “wild impulse,” refused to be tamed.

Theodore Roosevelt the reformer was deeply proud of his efforts to clean up New York but in his illustrious later days, running for governor, then for vice president, then president, he never won a majority vote in the city. Never take a beer away from a New Yorker.

If only it were that easy to subvert the intentions of zealous office-holders.

In another recent NYT piece (“The C.E.O. in Politics“), David Brooks observes that

great leaders tend to have an instrumental mentality. They do not feel the office is about them. They are just God’s temporary instrument in service of a larger cause. Lincoln felt he was God’s instrument in preserving the union. F.D.R. felt he was an instrument to help the common man and defeat fascism.

Whatever FDR felt, he was not a great leader. Nor was his distant cousin, Teddy Roosevelt. What they shared with other so-called great leaders was overwhelming ego: the belief that their wishes should be everyone’s wishes. And, with the help of compliant Congresses and Supreme Courts, they made it so.

TR spoke and acted as if he were God’s instrument. As president, his aspiration to savior-hood led him to embrace Progressivism (e.g., trust-busting). His actions brought an end to 40 years of rapid economic growth, which — contrary to myth — had uplifted the masses as well as the “robber barons.” After a too-brief respite from dictatorship, under Taft, Woodrow Wilson (another “leader” who thought he was an instrument of God) extended the Progressive state, and economic growth slowed further.

The Great Depression, predictably enough, swept out Hoover, whose “do something” ethic turned a recession into a depression, and brought in FDR, with his second-rate mind. He soon enough began to think of himself as a savior, empowered (by perverse logic) to uplift the downtrodden by running roughshod over America’s businesses. What he accomplished, in fact, was a deeper and longer depression. (By contrast, the economy quickly rebounded from the deep recession of 1920-21 because “do nothing” Harding did nothing but encourage business.) LBJ’s deliberate mimicking of FDR’s New Deal put in motion the Great Society, the aftermath of which has been economic growth on a par with that of the TR-Wilson era.

Now comes Barack Obama, a storefront version of TR, FDR, and LBJ. “Bush fatigue” elected him and presented him with a Democrat-controlled Congress. He took his luck for a kind of divine mandate, which he exploited to impose upon Americans his ruinous visions of universal health care, Keynesian deficit-spending, and defensive weakness (masked by the inconsequential if satisfying erasure of bin Laden).

God save us from “leaders” who want to be our saviors. For every Lincoln — whose principal legacy was the forcible stitching up of a union that has yet to heal — there are too many TRs, WWs, FDRs, LBJs, and BHOs.

Election 2010: Post-Mortem

UPDATED 11/05/10

This is a followup on my election-morning predictions, a prognosis about the next two years, and a diagnosis of the “progressive” disease.

I expected the GOP to gain eight seats in the Senate. But that prediction ran aground on the narrow wins by Democrats Michael Bennet and Harry Reid in Colorado and Nevada. The race in Washington has~~n’t~~ been decided, ~~but it seems that~~ Patty Murray will retain her seat. The Alaska seat will wind up in GOP hands — it’s just a question of whose hands. So, when the dust settles, the GOP will have gained 6 seats and the Dems will retain a majority. That’s as good as it was likely to get. And it’s good enough, because with 47 seats (and only two or three RINOs in the mix) the GOP will command a cloture-proof minority.

Things turned out better in the House. I expected the GOP to end up with 237 seats. But when the dust settles on 10 9 undecided races, the GOP probably will hold between 239 seats (the current count) and 242 seats (adding 3 races now led by GOP candidates). Needless to say, the GOP will command the agenda in the House. The incoming tide of new Republican members will put a lot of pressure on GOP leaders to undo what Pelosi and company wrought. The stumbling blocks will be the Democrat-controlled Senate and the veto pen of BHO.

Republicans gained a lot of ground in the States, as indicated by the pickup of 12 governorships. (The Democrat pickup in California makes little difference in cloud-cuckoo-land, where the main difference between Arnold Schwarzenegger and his successor, Moonbeam Brown, is their accents.) Greater GOP strength at the State level will mean two things: more resistance to the expansion of federal power, and redistricting of the House in ways favorable to future Republican prospects.

The next two years at the “seat of government” (SOG) in D.C. will be filled with GOP initiatives to roll back the Obama agenda, name-calling by Democrats, and (I hope) gridlock combined with some rollback of Obamacare.

The next two years also will be filled with rationalizations by “progressives,” who — in so many words — will blame the backwardness of the American electorate for the events of November 2. “Progressives,” like their putative leader in the White House, already have adopted the myth that things would have turned out differently if only they had found a way to get their “message” across. Well, they did get their “message” across:

Pork disguised as stimulus, which did not and will not stimulate because the economy isn’t a hydraulic mechanism that responds automatically to pump-priming.

Financial regulations that will make it harder for Americans to borrow money.

A Rube Goldberg plan for reforming the health care “system” that will make it harder for Americans to obtain insurance and less rewarding for doctors and other providers to deliver medical services.

Such is “progressivism” at work: Good intentions (to put the best face on it) thwarted by unintended consequences because “progressives” believe that “hope and change” trump the realities of economic (and social behavior) — realities that “the masses” are able to grasp, if only viscerally.

Moreover, there was — and is — the disdain in which “progressives” hold “the masses,” who exist (in the “progressive” imagination) to be talked down to and led by the hand to the promised land of economic and social bliss — as it is envisioned by “progressives.”

I have news for “progressives.” When you talk down to most adults — and even to a lot of children — they quickly perceive three things: (a) you don’t respect their intelligence and (b) you are therefore trying to do something that’s against their interest. You really lose them when you promise things that they know (or suspect) will cost them liberty as well as money.

“Progressives” seem to believe in economic stability at any price, including the price of liberty and prosperity. A lot of “the masses” aren’t buying it. Good for them.

The Illusion of Prosperity and Stability

For reasons I outlined in “The Price of Government,” the post-Civil War boom of 1866-1907 finally gave way to the onslaught of Progressivism. Real GDP grew at the rate of 4.3 percent annually during the post-Civil War boom; it has since grown at an annual rate of 3.3 percent. The difference between the two rates of growth, compounded over a century, is the difference between $13 trillion (2009’s GDP in 2005 dollars) and $41 trillion (2009’s potential GDP in 2005 dollars).

As I said in “The Price of Government,” this disparity

may seem incredible, but scan the lists here and you will find even greater cross-national disparities in per capita GDP. Go here and you will find that real, per capita GDP in 1790 was only 4.6 percent of the value it had attained 218 years later. Our present level of output seems incredible to citizens of impoverished nations, and it would seem no less incredible to an American of 1790. In sum, vast disparities can and do exist, across nations and time.

The main reason for the disparity is the intervention of the federal government in the economic affairs of Americans and their businesses. I put it this way in “The Price of Government”:

What we are seeing [in the present recession and government’s response to it] is the continuation of a death-spiral that began in the early 1900s. Do-gooders, worry-warts, control freaks, and economic ignoramuses see something “bad” and — in their misguided efforts to control natural economic forces (which include business cycles) — make things worse. The most striking event in the death-spiral is the much-cited Great Depression, which was caused by government action, specifically the loose-tight policies of the Federal Reserve, Herbert Hoover’s efforts to engineer the economy, and — of course — FDR’s benighted New Deal. (For details, see this, and this.)

But, of course, the worse things get, the greater the urge to rely on government. Now, we have “stimulus,” which is nothing more than an excuse to greatly expand government’s intervention in the economy. Where will it lead us? To a larger, more intrusive government that absorbs an ever larger share of resources that could be put to productive use, and counteracts the causes of economic growth.

One of the ostensible reasons for governmental intervention is to foster economic stability. That was an important rationale for the creation of the Federal Reserve System; it was an implicit rationale for Social Security, which moves income to those who are more likely to spend it; and it remains a key rationale for so-called counter-cyclical spending (i.e., “fiscal policy”) and the onerous regulation of financial institutions.

Has the quest for stability succeeded? If you disregard the Great Depression, and several deep recessions (including the present one), it has. But the price has been high. The green line in the following graph traces real GDP as it would have been had economic growth after 1907 followed the same path as it did in 1866-1907, with all of the ups and down in that era of relatively unregulated “instability.” The red line, which diverges from the green one after 1907, traces real GDP as it has been since government took over the task of ensuring stable prosperity.

Only by overlooking the elephant in the room — the Great Depression — can one assert that government has made the economy more stable. Only because we cannot see the exorbitant price of government can we believe that it has had something to do with our “prosperity.”

What about those fairly sharp downturns along the green line? If it really is important for government to shield us from economic shocks, there are much better ways of getting the job done that they ways now employed. There was no federal income tax during the post-Civil War boom (one of the reasons for the boom). Suppose that in the early 1900s the federal government had been allowed to impose a small, constitutionally limited income tax of, say, 0.5 percent on gross personal incomes over a certain level, measured in constant dollars (with an explicit ban on exemptions, deductions, and other adjustments, to keep it simple and keep interest groups from enriching themselves at the expense of others). Suppose, further, that the proceeds from the tax had a constitutionally limited use: the payment of unemployment benefits for a constitutionally limited time whenever real GDP declined from quarter to quarter.

Perhaps that’s too much clutter for devotees of constitutional simplicity. But wouldn’t the results have been worth the clutter? The primary result would have been growth at a rate close to that of 1866-1907, but with some of the wrinkles ironed out. The secondary result — and an equally important one — would have been the diminution (if not the elimination) of the “need” for governmental intervention in our affairs.

The Death of the Democrat Party?

Democracy is incompatible with liberty. But democracy is nevertheless considered a “good thing.” To call a political party “Democratic” imparts to that party an unwarranted veneer of beneficence. I refuse to lend this blog to that bit of moral confusion. Thus, on these pages, the “Democratic Party” is and always will be the “Democrat Party. End of mini-rant.

“Liberalism,” “progressivism,” and their variants are incompatible with liberty and progress. That is why I always enclose those terms in quotation marks.

If you see opposition to same-sex marriage as anti-libertarian, I suggest that you re-think your position, beginning with this.

James Taranto, of WSJ‘s Opinion Journal, opines:

If the Ninth Circuit upholds Walker’s decision [for same-sex marriage, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger], the Supreme Court would almost certainly agree to hear an appeal….

…When the Supreme Court takes up Perry v. Schwarzenegger … the justices will rule 5-4, in a decision written by Justice Kennedy, that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

This accepts the conventional assumption that the court’s “liberal” and “conservative” wings will split predictably, 4-4. Yet while Kennedy cannot be pigeonholed in terms of “ideology,” on this specific topic, he has been consistent in taking a very broad view of the rights of homosexuals. He not only voted with the majority but wrote the majority opinions in two crucial cases: Romer v. Evans (1996) and Lawrence v. Texas (2003).

Romer struck down an amendment to the Colorado Constitution that nullified state or local ordinances barring discrimination on the basis of “homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships.” This provision, adopted by ballot initiative, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, Justice Kennedy wrote for the court….

In Lawrence, the court overturned a 1986 ruling and held that state laws criminalizing consensual homosexual sodomy violated the constitutional right of privacy….

Proposition 8 was adopted in “liberal” California by a margin of 52-48. This is the same California that has preferred the Democrat candidate over his Republican opponent in the last five presidential elections, culminating in an Obama-slide of 61 percent vs. 39 percent for McCain and assorted wing-nuts.

Clearly, same-sex marriage is not beloved by all Democrats, or even an overwhelming majority of them. Voters in 31 States have blocked same-sex marriage in their States by rejecting proposals to allow it or (in most cases) approving constitutional amendments banning it. Only five States and the District of Columbia recognizes same-sex marriage. Needless to say, the deeds were done in those six jurisdictions by legislative or judicial fiat, and not by consulting voters about one of the rare issues that merits “democratic” consultation because it impinges directly on deep-rooted social norms.

If/when Judge Vaughn Walker’s judicial abomination is upheld by Justice Kennedy, voters will know where the blame lies: with the left wing of the Democrat Party and the gay-rights lobby, which is one of the Democrat Party’s favored constituencies. The resulting backlash among not-so-leftish Democrats would spell electoral disaster for the Democrat Party. Party leaders would then have two options:

Overtly move the party back from the extreme edge of American political opinion, in the hope that enough voters are taken in by such a cynical ploy to avert long-term disaster for the party.

Remain on the left edge of American political opinion, in the hope and belief that voters will (before too long) slide toward that edge.

My money is on the second option, because the leaders of the Democrat Party are deeply committed, in thought and word, to the “progressive” agenda: the cultivation of radical ideas and constituencies. (Why? Read this exquisite rant by Tom Smith.) And that, in the face of growing discontent about the power and cost of government, is a recipe for political suicide.

One can only hope.

The Left

The “left” of the title refers, specifically, to left-statists or (usually) leftists.

I describe statism in “Parsing Political Philosophy“:

Statism boils down to one thing: the use of government’s power to direct resources and people toward outcomes dictated by government….

The particular set of outcomes toward which government should strive depends on the statist…. But all of them are essentially alike in their desire to control the destiny of others….

“Hard” statists thrive on the idea of a powerful state; control is their religion, pure and simple. “Soft” statists profess offense at the size, scope, and cost of government, but will go on to say “government should do such-and-such,” where “such-and such” usually consists of:

government grants of particular positive rights, either to the statist, to an entity or group to which he is beholden, or to a group with which he sympathizes

government interventions in business and personal affairs, in the belief that government can do certain things better than private actors, or simply should do [certain] things….

I continue by saying that left-statists (L-S)

prefer such things as income redistribution, affirmative action, and the legitimation of gay marriage….L-S prefer government intervention in the economy, not only for the purpose of redistributing income but also to provide goods and services that can be provided more efficiently by the private sector, to regulate what remains of the private sector, and to engage aggressively in monetary and fiscal measures to maintain “full employment.” It should be evident that L-S have no respect for property rights, given their willingness to allow government to tax and regulate at will….

L-S tend toward leniency and forgiveness of criminals (unless the L-S or those close to him are the victims)…. On defense, L-S act as if they prefer Chamberlain to Churchill, their protestations to the contrary….

L-S have no room in their minds for civil society; government is their idea of “community.”…

It is no wonder that most “liberals” (L) and “progressives” (P) try to evade the “leftist” label. (I enclose “liberal,” “progressive,” and forms thereof in quotation marks because L are anything but liberal, in the core meaning of the word, and the policies favored by P are regressive in their effects on economic and social liberty.) L and P usually succeed in their evasion because the center of American politics has shifted so far to the left that Franklin Roosevelt — a leftist by any reasonable standard — would stand at the center of today’s political spectrum.

Indeed, the growing dominance of leftism can be seen in the history of the U.S. presidency. It all started with Crazy Teddy Roosevelt, the first president to dedicate himself to the use of state power to advance his cause du jour. (I do not credit the anti-Lincoln zealotry of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.) TR’s leftism was evident in his “activist” approach to the presidency. No issue, it seems, was beneath TR’s notice or beyond the reach of the extra-constitutional powers he arrogated to himself. TR, in other words, was the role model for Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover (yes, Hoover the “do nothing” whose post-Crash activism helped to bring on the Great Depression), Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. (For more about American presidents and their predilections, see this, this, and this.) Countless members of Congress and State and local officials have been, and are, “activists” in the image of TR.

In sum, the problem with America — and it boils down to a single problem — is the left’s success in advancing its agenda. What is that agenda, and how does the left advance it?

The left advances its agenda in many ways, for example, by demonizing its opponents (small-government opponents are simply “mean”), appealing to envy (various forms of redistribution), sanctifying an ever-growing list of “victimized” groups (various protected “minorities”), making a virtue of mediocrity (various kinds of risk-avoiding regulations), and taking a slice at a time (e.g., Social Security set the stage for Medicare which set for Obamacare).

The left’s essential agenda is the repudiation of ordered liberty of the kind that arises from evolved social norms, and the replacement of that liberty by sugar-coated oppression. The bread and circuses of imperial Rome have nothing on Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, and the many other forms of personal and corporate welfare that are draining America of its wealth and élan. All of that “welfare” has been bought at the price of economic and social liberty (which are indivisible). (For a broad enumeration, see this post.)

Leftists like to say that there is a difference between opposition and disloyalty. But, in the case of the left, opposition arises from a fundamental kind of disloyalty. For, at bottom, the left pursues its agenda because it hates the idea of what America used to stand for: liberty with responsibility, strength against foreign and domestic enemies.

Most leftists are simply shallow-minded trend-followers, who believe in the power of government to do things that are “good,” “fair,” or “compassionate,” with no regard for the costs and consequences of those things. Shallow leftists know not what they do. But they do it. And their shallowness does not excuse them for having been accessories to the diminution of America. A rabid dog may not know that it is rabid, but its bite is no less lethal for that.

The leaders of the left — the office-holders, pundits, and intelligentsia — usually pay lip-service to “goodness,” “fairness,” and “compassion.” But their lip-service fails to conceal their brutal betrayal of liberty. Their subtle and not-so-subtle treason is despicable almost beyond words. But not quite…

On Liberty
Parsing Political Philosophy
The Indivisibility of Economic and Social Liberty
Greed, Cosmic Justice, and Social Welfare
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice
Fascism and the Future of America
Inventing “Liberalism”
Utilitarianism, “Liberalism,” and Omniscience
Utilitarianism vs. Liberty
Beware of Libertarian Paternalists
Negative Rights, Social Norms, and the Constitution
Rights, Liberty, the Golden Rule, and the Legitimate State
The Mind of a Paternalist
Accountants of the Soul
Rawls Meets Bentham
Is Liberty Possible?

The Commandeered Economy
The Price of Government
The Mega-Depression
Does the CPI Understate Inflation?
Ricardian Equivalence Reconsidered
The Real Burden of Government
The Rahn Curve at Work

Is Liberty Possible?

I must begin at the beginning, with my definition of liberty:

A state of liberty exists where people cohabit an extensive geographic area in peaceful, willing coexistence and its concomitant: beneficially cooperative behavior. The condition of peace requires mechanisms for thwarting fraud, coercion, and aggression inside the group, and from without. The condition of willing coexistence requires a combination of mutual restraint and mutual forbearance, that is, a general willingness to accept certain of others’ foibles and, in return, to honor certain constraints on one’s own behavior — even beyond fraud, coercion, and aggression.

Inherent in that definition, and essential to its fulfillment, are four things:

the general observance of evolved and evolving social norms and, accordingly, their enforcement through social censure

an accountable, minimal state, dedicated to the protection of its citizens and the enforcement of those social norms — and only those norms — that rise to the level of statutory law (e.g., acts that are generally recognized as fraudulent, coercive, and aggressive)

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

exit, the right to leave without penalty.

That we do not have liberty in the United States should be evident in the number of statutes and regulations that a far-from-minimal state imposes on us. With a few exceptions — most notably and laudably in the area of civil rights for blacks — liberty has been in retreat since the onset of the Progressive Era in the early 1890s. For, contrary to Fourth of July oratory, America has descended into statism. And, pace the The Star Spangled Banner, America is the land of the regulator and the home of the regulated.

Those of us lucky enough to have experienced life in small cities, towns, and villages in the 1940s know that something like liberty is possible. Ironically, and tragically, the small-town ethos that undergirds liberty has been the object of pseudo-intellectual scorn since the days of Main Street and Babbit.

Apropos the small-town ethos, I once said:

Think of life in a small town where “eveyone knows everyone else’s business.” The sense of being “watched” actually tends to foster liberty, in that it discourages crime. As a result, one’s life and property generally are safer in small towns than in large cities. By the same token, the sense of being “watched” can seem oppressive; one feels less free to do things that might draw social opprobrium, even if those things do no more than offend others’ sensibilities.

Why should everyone in a small town have to put up with small-town mores for the sake of a safer, saner life, you may ask? Well, if you don’t like small-town mores, fine, pack up and go to the big city, but don’t forget to take your handgun (if you’re allowed to have one in the big city), and keep your life and homeowner’s insurance paid up. (Alternatively, you can stay in the small town and try, through example and persuasion, to change its mores so that there is greater tolerance of social diversity.)

It seems to me that America began to lose its way as urban political machines came to dominate national politics in the early 1900s. It is true that populism, from which arose Progressivism, had its roots in small-town and rural America. But Progressivism and its later incarnations (“liberalism” a.k.a. “progressivism”) have hijacked the anti-elite rhetoric of populism in the service of a different kind of elitism: the “technocratic” regulation of personal and business conduct by puritanical, falsely omniscient bureaucrats.

Even in the unlikely event of a string of electoral victories by a Republican Party restored to its small-government roots, it seems unlikely that America can “go home” again. Urbanization — which leads citizens (wrongly) to believe that government must regulate our daily lives — is irreversible, barring an environmental or industrial catastrophe that throws us back onto the land.

Then there is the deep inculcation of statist habits of thought by schools, universities, the media, and various organizations with “progressive” agendas (e.g., teachers’ unions, labor unions, and issue-oriented organizations like AARP). As a result, a truly minimal state is beyond the imagination of most Americans.

Finally, there is the law itself, through which the “progressive” agenda has infiltrated almost every kind of decision made by Americans in their personal and business lives, from cradle to grave and from planting crops to disposing of waste. An electoral and intellectual revolution would have to be accompanied by a legal one, but the wheels of the law grind slowly and often in perverse ways.

Is liberty possible? Liberty, as I define it, seems impossible. All we can hope and fight for are second- or third-best outcomes. I would settle for an America like that of the 1940s and 1950s, with an overlay of equal treatment under the law (but not in private matters) for all citizens — even the putative white-male majority.

Selection Bias and the Road to Serfdom

Office-seeking is about one thing: power. (Money is sometimes a motivator, but power is the common denominator of politics.) Selection bias, as I argue here, deters office-seeking and voting by those (relatively rare) individuals who oppose the accrual of governmental power. The inevitable result — as we have seen for decades and are seeing today — is the accrual of governmental power on a fascistic scale.

Selection bias

most often refers to the distortion of a statistical analysis, due to the method of collecting samples. If the selection bias is not taken into account then any conclusions drawn may be wrong.

Selection bias can occur in studies that are based on the behavior of participants. For example, one form of selection bias is

self-selection bias, which is possible whenever the group of people being studied has any form of control over whether to participate. Participants’ decision to participate may be correlated with traits that affect the study, making the participants a non-representative sample. For example, people who have strong opinions or substantial knowledge may be more willing to spend time answering a survey than those who do not.

I submit that the path of politics in America (and elsewhere) reflects a kind of self-selection bias: On the one hand, most politicians run for office in order to exert power. On the other hand, most voters — believing that government can “solve problems” or one kind or another — prefer politicians who promise to use their power to “solve problems.” In other words, power-seekers and their enablers select themselves into the control of government and the receipt of its (illusory) benefits.

Who is self-selected “out”? First, there are libertarian* office-seekers — a rare breed — who must first attain power in order to curb it. Self-selection, in this case, means that individuals who eschew power are unlikely to seek it in the first place, understanding the likely futility of their attempts to curb the power of the offices to which they might be elected. Thus the relative rarity of libertarian candidates.

Second, there are libertarian voters, who — when faced with an overwhelming array of power-seeking Democrats and Republicans — tend not to vote. Their non-voting enables non-libertarian voters to elect non-libertarian candidates, who then accrue more power, thus further discouraging libertarian candidacies and driving more libertarian voters away from the polls.

As the futility of libertarianism becomes increasingly evident, more voters — fearing that they won’t get their “share” of (illusory) benefits — choose to join the scramble for said benefits, further empowering anti-libertarian candidates for office. And thus we spiral into serfdom.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

__________
* I use “libertarian” in this post to denote office-seekers and voters who prefer a government (at all levels) whose powers are (in the main) limited to those necessary for the protection of the people from predators, foreign and domestic.

Modernism in the Arts and Politics

David Friedman has a theory about the “modern” movement:

Suppose you are the first city planner in the history of the world. If you are very clever you come up with Cartesian coordinates, making it easy to find any address without a map, let alone a GPS—useful since neither GPS devices nor maps have been invented yet.

Suppose you are the second city planner. Cartesian coordinates have already been done, so you can’t make your reputation by doing them again. With luck, you come up with some alternative, perhaps polar coordinates, that works almost as well.

Suppose you are the two hundred and ninetieth city planner in the history of the world. All the good ideas have been used, all the so-so ideas have been used, and you need something new to make your reputation. You design Canberra. That done, you design the Combs building at ANU, the most ingeniously misdesigned building in my personal experience, where after walking around for a few minutes you not only don’t know where you are, you don’t even know what floor you are on.

I call it the theory of the rising marginal cost of originality—formed long ago when I spent a summer visiting at ANU.

It explains why, to a first approximation, modern art isn’t worth looking at, modern music isn’t worth listening to, and modern literature and verse not worth reading. Writing a novel like one of Jane Austen’s, or a poem like one by Donne or Kipling, only better, is hard. Easier to deliberately adopt a form that nobody else has used, and so guarantee that nobody else has done it better.

In other words, if you can’t readily do better than your predecessors, you take the easy way out by doing something different — ugly as it may be. And you call it “progress.” As I wrote here:

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the visual, auditory, and verbal arts became an “inside game.” Painters, sculptors, composers (of “serious” music), choreographers, and writers of fiction began to create works not for the enjoyment of audiences but for the sake of exploring “new” forms. Given that the various arts had been perfected by the early 1900s, the only way to explore “new” forms was to regress toward primitive ones — toward a lack of structure…. Aside from its baneful influence on many true artists, the regression toward the primitive has enabled persons of inferior talent (and none) to call themselves “artists.” Thus modernism is banal when it is not ugly.

Painters, sculptors, etc., have been encouraged in their efforts to explore “new” forms by critics, by advocates of change and rebellion for its own sake (e.g., “liberals” and “bohemians”), and by undiscriminating patrons, anxious to be au courant. Critics have a special stake in modernism because they are needed to “explain” its incomprehensibility and ugliness to the unwashed.

The unwashed have nevertheless rebelled against modernism, and so its practitioners and defenders have responded with condescension, one form of which is the challenge to be “open minded” (i.e., to tolerate the second-rate and nonsensical). A good example of condescension is heard on Composers Datebook, a syndicated feature that runs on some NPR stations. Every Composers Datebook program closes by “reminding you that all music was once new.” As if to lump Arnold Schoenberg and John Cage with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven.

All music, painting, sculpture, dance, and literature was once new, but not all of it is good. Much (most?) of what has been produced since 1900 is inferior, self-indulgent crap.

As it was in the arts, so it was in politics. Yes, there was sleaze before 1900, and plenty of it. But presidents, members of Congress, and justices of the Supreme Court generally remained faithful to the Constitution, especially its restraints on the power of the federal government. Then along came populism and “progressivisism” — the twin pillars of political modernism in the United States — and down went liberty and prosperity.

The Price of Government

UPDATED on 04/17/10, to include GDP estimates for 2009 and slight revisions to GDP estimates for earlier years. The bottom line remains the same: The price of government is exorbitant.

he federal government is mounting an economic intervention on a scale unseen since World War II. The excuse for this intervention is that without it the present recession will turn into a full-blown depression. Yet, with the Democrats’ and RINOs’ “stimulus” barely underway, the economy already shows signs of rebounding from an economic dip that bears no comparison with the calamitous gulch that was the Great Depression.

Despite the horror stories about a financial meltdown, what we have experienced since late 2007 is not much more than the downside of a typical, post-World War II business cycle. (For more on that score, see this post — especially the third graph and related discussion.) Would it have been worse were all failing financial institutions allowed to fail? I doubt it. Hard, fast failure leaves in its wake opportunities for the organization of new ventures by investors who still have money (and there are plenty of them). But those same investors are being shouldered out and scared off by Obama’s schemes for nationalization, taxation, regulation, and redistribution.

What we are seeing is the continuation of a death-spiral that began in the early 1900s. Do-gooders, worry-warts, control freaks, and economic ignoramuses see something “bad” and — in their misguided efforts to control natural economic forces (which include business cycles) — make things worse. The most striking event in the death-spiral is the much-cited Great Depression, which was caused by government action, specifically the loose-tight policies of the Federal Reserve, Herbert Hoover’s efforts to engineer the economy, and — of course — FDR’s benighted New Deal. (For details, see this, and this.)

But, of course, the worse things get, the greater the urge to rely on government. Now, we have “stimulus,” which is nothing more than an excuse to greatly expand government’s intervention in the economy. Where will it lead us? To a larger, more intrusive government that absorbs an ever larger share of resources that could be put to productive use, and counteracts the causes of economic growth.

Can we measure the price of government intervention? I believe that we can do so, and quite easily. The tale can be told in three graphs, all derived from constant-dollar GDP estimates available here. The numbers plotted in each graph exclude GDP estimates for the years in which the U.S. was involved in or demobilizing from major wars, namely, 1861-65, 1918-19, and 1941-46. GDP values for those years — especially for the peak years of World War II — present a distorted picture of economic output. Without further ado, here are the three graphs:

The trend line in the first graph indicates annual growth of about 3.7 percent over the long run, with obviously large deviations around the trend. The second graph contrasts economic growth through 1907 with economic growth since: 4.2 percent vs. 3.6 percent. But lest you believe that the economy of the U.S. somehow began to “age” in the early 1900s, consider the story implicit in the third graph:

1790-1861 — annual growth of 4.1 percent — a booming young economy, probably at its freest

1866-1907 — annual growth of 4.3 percent — a robust economy, fueled by (mostly) laissez-faire policies and the concomitant rise of technological innovation and entrepreneurship

1908-1929 — annual growth of 2.2 percent — a dispirited economy, shackled by the fruits of “progressivism” (e.g., trust-busting, regulation, the income tax, the Fed) and the government interventions that provoked and prolonged the Great Depression (see links in third paragraph)

1947-1969 — annual growth of 3.9 percent — a rejuvenated economy, buoyed by the end of the New Deal, the forced saving that occurred during World War II, and (possibly) the fruits of advances in technology and business operations that were made but not exploited during the Depression (all proof that the rate of growth didn’t decline in the preceding era simply because the economy had “aged”)

1970-2008 — annual growth of 3.1 percent — an economy sagging under the cumulative weight of “progressivism,” New Deal legislation, LBJ’s “Great Society” (with its legacy of the ever-expanding and oppressive welfare/transfer-payment schemes: Medicare, Medicaid, a more generous package of Social Security benefits), and an ever-growing mountain of regulatory restrictions.

Had the economy of the U.S. not been deflected from its post-Civil War course, GDP would now be about three times its present level. (Compare the trend lines for 1866-1907 and 1970-2008.) If that seems unbelievable to you, it shouldn’t: $100 compounded for 100 years at 4.3 percent amounts to $6,700; $100 compounded for 100 years at 3.1 percent amounts to $2,100. Nothing other than government intervention (or a catastrophe greater than any we have known) could have kept the economy from growing at more than 4 percent.

What’s next? Unless Obama’s megalomaniacal plans are aborted by a reversal of the Republican Party’s fortunes, the U.S. will enter a new phase of economic growth — something close to stagnation. We will look back on the period from 1970 to 2008 with longing, as we plod along at a growth rate similar to that of 1908-1940, that is, about 2.2 percent. Thus:

If GDP grows at 2.2 percent through 2109, it will be 58 percent lower than if we plod on at 3.1 percent.

If GDP grows at 2.2 percent for through 2109, it will be only 4 percent of what it would have been had it continued to grow at 4.3 percent after 1907.

The latter disparity may seem incredible, but scan the lists here and you will find even greater cross-national disparities in per capita GDP. Go here and you will find that real, per capita GDP in 1790 was only 4.6 percent of the value it had attained 218 years later. Our present level of output seems incredible to citizens of impoverished nations, and it would seem no less incredible to an American of 1790. In sum, vast disparities can and do exist, across nations and time. We have every reason to believe in the possibility of a sustained growth rate of 4.4 percent, as against one of 2.2 percent, because we have experienced both.

We should look on the periods 1908-1940 and 1970-2009 as aberrations, and take this lesson from those periods: Big government inflicts great harm on almost everyone (politicians and bureaucrats being the main exceptions), including its intended beneficiaries. Such is the price of government when it does more than “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, [and] provide for the common defence” in order to “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

The Interest-Group Paradox

The interest-group paradox is a paradox of mass action (my own coinage). In this post, I illustrate the concept of mass-action paradox with two examples, then turn to the interest-group paradox.

The paradox of thrift is probably the best-known paradox of mass action. According to an article at Wikipedia, the paradox (propounded by John Maynard Keynes) states that if, in the face of an economic downturn, large numbers of individuals try to save more money, the attempt to do so will worsen the downturn. That, in turn, will cause reductions in the incomes of large numbers of individuals, who will then be able to save less, not more. (The article continues with an explanation of the mechanism behind the paradox. The criticisms summarized in the article are unconvincing.)

Another familiar paradox of mass action has to do with the behavior of panicked crowds. If someone shouts “fire” in a crowded theater, many members of the audience may rush madly toward the exits instead of walking calmly, in lines. The mad rush likely will cause pileups at the exits, leading to more panic and worse pileups. As a result, many (perhaps most) of the theater-goers will die, if not from fire and smoke inhalation, then from being trampled and suffocated in a pileup. The paradox here is that the (panicked) effort by members of the crowd to save themselves may well result in their deaths. I call this the paradox of panic.

The paradox of thrift and the paradox of panic are paradoxes of mass action because, in both instances, large numbers of individuals come to harm when each of them tries to do something that he believes to be in his best interest.

I now turn to the main subject of this post: the paradox of mass action that I call the interest-group paradox. Pork-barrel legislation exemplifies the interest-group paradox in action, though the paradox encompasses much more than pork-barrel legislation. There are myriad government programs that — like pork-barrel projects — are intended to favor particular classes of individuals. Here is a minute sample:

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, for the benefit of the elderly (including the indigent elderly)

Tax credits and deductions, for the benefit of low-income families, charitable and other non-profit institutions, and home buyers (with mortgages)

Progressive income-tax rates, for the benefit of persons in the mid-to-low income brackets

Subsidies for various kinds of “essential” or “distressed” industries, such as agriculture and automobile manufacturing

Import quotas, tariffs, and other restrictions on trade, for the benefit of particular industries and/or labor unions

Pro-union laws (in many States), for the benefit of unions and unionized workers

Non-smoking ordinances, for the benefit of bar and restaurant employees and non-smoking patrons.

You may believe that a particular program is worth what it costs — given that you probably have little idea of its direct costs and no idea of its indirect costs. The problem is millions of your fellow Americans believe the same thing about each of their favorite programs. Because there are thousands of government programs (federal, State, and local), each intended to help a particular class of citizens at the expense of others, the net result is that almost no one in this fair land enjoys a “free lunch.” Even the relatively few persons who might seem to have obtained a “free lunch” — homeless persons taking advantage of a government-provided shelter — often are victims of the “free lunch” syndrome. Some homeless persons may be homeless because they have lost their jobs and can’t afford to own or rent housing. But they may have lost their jobs because of pro-union laws, minimum-wage laws, or progressive tax rates (which caused “the rich” to create fewer jobs through business start-ups and expansions).

The paradox that arises from the “free lunch” syndrome is much like the other two paradoxes discussed here. It is like the paradox of thrift, in that large numbers of individuals are trying to do something that makes certain classes of persons better off, but which in the final analysis makes those classes of persons worse off. It is like the paradox of panic, in that there is a crowd of interest groups rushing toward a goal — a “pot of gold” — and (figuratively) crushing each other in the attempt to snatch the pot of gold before another group is able to grasp it. The gold that any group happens to snatch is a kind of fool’s gold: It passes from one fool to another in a game of beggar-thy-neighbor, and as it passes much of it falls into the maw of bureaucracy.

I call this third, insidious, paradox the interest-group paradox. It is the costliest of the three — by a long shot. It has dominated American politics since the advent of “progressivism” in the late 1800s. Today, most Americans are either “progressives” (whatever they may call themselves) or victims of “progressivism.” All too often they are both.

(Related concepts: tragedy of the commons, ratchet effect. Related post: “Slopes, Ratchets, and the Death Spiral of Liberty.”)

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: