Category Archives: Libertarian Thought

Colleges’ right to discriminate

Posted on by

Dennis L. Weisman writes,

On what basis can we credibly claim that a university that trades off academic talent for diversity or financial resources (to a degree disciplined by market forces) is discriminating and not simply selecting the optimal set of inputs to maximize its objective function in furthering the university’s institutional mission?

The court in the Harvard discrimination case may further delineate the boundaries of university discretion insofar as the admissions calculus is concerned. Whereas the court’s job is to enforce the law dispassionately, a ruling that eliminates or even tightly circumscribes the use of racial preferences while leaving athletic and legacy preferences largely intact would send a message that is likely to cut against the grain in the arena of social discourse: not all preferences in college admissions are created equal.

1. Note that if a university has the right to discriminate in favor of blacks, then it has a right to discriminate against them. That would seem rather awkward, except to a libertarian who subscribes to the view that only the government has an obligation not to discriminate.

2. I restate my suggestion, which is to abolish the admissions office and admit applicants by lottery. Then ruthlessly flunk out the lottery winners who cannot pass their courses. If the football team is more amateurish, so be it. If wealthy alumni have less incentive to contribute bribes on behalf of their children, so be it.

3. The issue of racial bias in college admissions is not high on my list of concerns. My concern is that the elite institutions of higher education may have reached a point where they do more harm than good, because of the way that they inculcate progressive dogmas.

4. Those of us who are worried about the issue of progressive dogmas in higher education have three avenues. One, which I call the Samizdat approach, is to utilize alternative media and hope that the availability of our point helps to save our culture. A second is to support Jonathan Haidt’s efforts to reform the academy from within, although I give these efforts almost no chance of succeeding. A third is to promote competing avenues for attaining access to wealth and status. The Thiel fellowship is one drop in what I would like to see fill a large bucket.

George Will’s Conservative Sensibility

Posted on by

Perhaps I will have finished the book by the time this post goes up. Or I will have finished without making it to the end.

Early on, he writes,

Politics originates in nature, in the constancy of human nature, which impels people to associate in society to avoid violent death and other inconveniences, and then to gain other, positive advantages. If, however, there is no universal human nature, then there can be no universal principles of political organization and action. If what we call human nature is but the distillation of a particular people’s traditions and experiences, then nature, at bottom, has no bottom. It is merely the most durable aspect of something that is ultimately not durable–the sediment of history from transitory cultures.

Will sees the left-right divide in these terms. The right sees human nature as fixed, and we must arrange our institutions to best accommodate this fixed human nature. The left sees human nature as malleable, and we must arrange our institutions to improve human nature.

There is something to this. But I think that Will’s emphasis on human nature, which leads to an emphasis on natural rights, is more libertarian than conservative.

For me, conservatism means a belief that cultural change is better accomplished by evolution than by revolution. There is wisdom in traditions, and we do not grasp that wisdom sufficiently well for it to be safe to impose dramatic changes. I see markets (or decentralized innovation) as a more effective evolutionary mechanism than government. Hence, I come down on the side of libertarianism from that perspective.

Moral intuition vs. tradition

Posted on by

From a comment:

Does your disagreement with Bryan Caplan really hinge on a contrast between reason and tradition? Bryan (like Michael Huemer and Jason Brennan) grounds his arguments for radical policies in widely shared, fundamental moral intuitions, and in the best evidence from the disciplines that study human behavior. Bryan starts from where people are.

But he does not start from where culture is. Moral intuition is largely grounded in sub-Dunbar society. Our intuition tells us what is fair and just in a small tribe doing simple tasks. Tradition is how we were able to achieve cooperation at scale and complexity. We gradually evolved cultural norms and institutions that allow millions of people to cooperate and to participate in complex enterprises. Markets, corporations, and government are among these evolved institutions.

If you think that you can radically re-engineer society based on moral intuition, you risk taking us back to a primitive state. This is true whether your moral intuition is derived from Communism (our governing principle should be caring and sharing), environmental sustainability (we should leave the environment exactly as we found it), or libertarianism (don’t let a government do to us what we would not let another private individual do to us).

Regarding non-profits

Posted on by

A reader asks my thoughts on these remarks by Russ Roberts.

As much as I like the nonprofit world as an alternative to government and business, in my experience, they often tend toward mission creep, to expand budget rather than to achieve what was their original goal and the problem they were trying to solve.

That’s a tragedy. It’s evidently a very human tragedy. It’s very hard to avoid that, so I think that’s a very good reason for philanthropists to sunset their foundations and have them die after a certain amount of time.

The reader asks whether this also might apply to think tanks. Perhaps. I don’t know enough about the inner workings of think tanks. I’ve never had an office at one or been on salary at one. I’ve only had “adjunct” status, and that is a comparable to being an adjunct professor.

My general view on non-profits is that their status is too high relative to profit-seeking firms. In the for-profit sector, I think of the example of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos. The company had a noble vision, and she made compelling presentations, but the product didn’t work. Because she claimed that the product worked better than it did, she got in trouble. She was ousted as CEO, and she faces a lot of legal jeopardy.

In the non-profit world, there are no end-users to hold you accountable if what you are doing doesn’t work. Just having the noble mission and being able to make compelling presentations to donors is sufficient.

I think that on the margin out society should invest less money in non-profits and more money in profit-seeking enterprises. and we should have fewer people making a living at non-profits and more people making a living in profit-seeking enterprises.

Daniel Klein’s perspective on libertarianism and other ideologies

Posted on by

He writes,

CLs [classical liberals] and libertarians favor smaller government. Government operations, such as schools, rely on taxes or privileges (and sometimes partially user fees). Even apart from the coercive nature of taxation, they don’t like the government’s playing such a large role in social affairs, for its unhealthy moral and cultural effects.

There are some libertarians, however, who have never seen an intervention that meets the burden of proof. They can be categorical in a way that CLs are not, believing in liberty as a sort of moral axiom. Sometimes libertarians ponder a pure-liberty destination. They can seem millenarian, radical, and rationalistic.

Part of a longer post.

Government with Chinese characteristics?

Posted on by

Ts’ang Chung-shu and Jennifer Dodgson write,

Under such a system, a leader is the individual who can render the greatest number of people dependent upon the advantages that he can provide, and threats to his power come not from rival offers of protection, but from redistribution networks that escape his control. Thus, the defining quality of statehood is not the monopoly of legitimate violence, but the monopoly of legitimate benevolence.

They claim that this explains how Singapore and China differ from Western governments.

The Western perspective on this comes from North, Weingast, and Wallis. To hold onto power, a government must be able to keep violent competitors at bay. The authors claim that it works differently in the Chinese tradition.

Comments on college students and free speech

Posted on by

1.

Can you describe the points make by the African American speakers that were anti-free-speech? I am curious as to what those positions were?

Both white and black students spoke vehemently against my position on free speech. I cannot remember who said what. As best I remember, the arguments were what one would expect, about hate speech causing harm. One student (white) cited two ultra-racist YouTube channels I had never heard of, which he claimed had millions of viewers, as something that showed that we cannot just accept free speech.

2.

Libertarians will have to choose between a society in which one can speak his mind and express his honest sentiments, or one in which the state allows socially powerful private institutions and the modern mob to enforce the evolving progressive zeitgeist on everyone.

I would choose to keep the state out of it, which means allowing Twitter and/or the mob to convince private actors to de-platform speakers. The First Amendment at most protects us from government infringement on free speech. But I am certainly in favor of naming, shaming, and de-funding institutions like Brandeis that have given into the mob and disinvited speakers.

That is why I put the emphasis on a culture of free speech. If the most articulate and engaged people in the society do not believe in free speech, then we are not really going to enjoy it, even if the First Amendment remains technically in force. And my guess is that if current cultural trends continue, even infringement by government will come to be welcomed, and the First Amendment will be a dead letter.

By the way, I just came across this story.

The city of Takoma Park postponed last week’s screening of the controversial film “The Occupation of the American Mind” while it arranges a post-film discussion.

But the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, which criticized the film as “extremely one-sided and does not present an accurate picture of the overall Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” is hoping [to] ensure the film isn’t screened in the city at all.

Oy. I am absolutely opposed to trying to stop the film. If you’ve seen it, and you think it’s misleading, then put together a polite flyer spelling out the misleading aspects, and hand out the flyer to people going into the film.

I think that propaganda documentaries in general are an awful idea. Whether you are on the side of the film-maker or not, you should only watch such a film with a frame of mind of picking it apart.

College students and free speech

Posted on by

The Knight Foundation reports,

Students are divided over whether it’s more important to promote an inclusive society that welcomes diverse groups or to protect the extremes of free speech, even if those protections come at the expense of inclusivity. Nearly six in 10 students believe that hate speech ought to be protected under the First Amendment. However, students who belong to historically marginalized groups — African American students, gender nonconforming students, and gay and lesbian students —are far more sensitive to unrestricted free speech, particularly hate speech.

… Roughly one-third (32 percent) of students say that it is always acceptable to engage in protests against speakers who are invited to campus, while six in 10 (60 percent) say this type of activity is sometimes acceptable. Only 8 percent say it is never acceptable.

Pointer from Ethan Cai, who highlights other findings from the survey.

I want to talk about a personal experience I had Tuesday night, speaking to college students brought to DC by The Fund for American Studies. The mission of the organization is to “teach the principles of limited government, free-market economics and honorable leadership.”

If there are 330 students in this year’s program, then I would say at least half of them showed up for my talk. I took about 15 questions, and each student said where they were from. I don’t recall anyone from an institution in the Northeast or the West Coast. Several were from schools in Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, or North Carolina. Only one was from an elite school (Duke).

This was not Berkeley or Swarthmore. These were not the spoiled children of elite parents competitively gaming the admissions system. In terms of ethnic appearance, there were more African-Americans and fewer Asians than you would find in a class of that size on an elite campus. I’m guessing few Jews, if any.

My topic was the three-axes model. By the way, you can pre-order the new edition of the book (only $3.99 on Kindle), which will come out in August.

Given all of this background, I would not have expected to find a hotbed of hostility toward liberty and free speech. I was wrong about that.

Continue reading →

Three problems with capitalism

Posted on by

I write,

Who receives high status in society? Cultures can vary. We may assign high status to the brave warrior, to the gifted athlete, to the talented artist, to the holy priest, to the martyr, to the politician, to the craftsman, or to the intellectual. Because relative status is a zero-sum game, the more status points we assign to merchants, bankers, and entrepreneurs, the less status points are available for other categories.

There is much more. This essay was stimulated by one of the questions Erik Torenberg sent me to prepare for our podcast.

John Samples on identity and free speech

Posted on by

Responding to me, he writes,

Arnold Kling notes that Progressives generally see the world as divided between oppressors and the oppressed. (I would add a third group, the Guardians or the political class). Some social groups are oppressors, others their victims, the oppressed. The job of the Guardians is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” or more generally, help the oppressed in their endless struggle against their oppressors. In this view of the world, speech may just be a weapon used in several ways by the oppressors to subjugate the oppressed. It directly attacks the dignity of the oppressed. Oppressors cast doubt on the harms to the dignity of the oppressed. The speech of the oppressor justifies a society marked by oppression. He demands recognition of a universal self that excludes the lived experiences of the oppressed. In this world with these harms, censorship is not really an abuse of power. It is an obligation of the Guardians, a necessary task for the good ruler. It is this view of politics – oppressed versus oppressor – that transforms identity into censorship.

I think that the only response to this is to reject identity politics. The only version of equality that I can support is equality under the law. Any other attempt to manufacture equality is seems likely to undermine equality under the law. I am not saying that equality under the law can be achieved in some perfect, ideal sense. But let’s stick with that as the goal. Treat people as individuals, not as members of oppressor or oppressed classes.