Category Archives: Libertarian Thought

Ideology and Polarity

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Jordan Peterson says,

In a sophisticated religious system, there is a positive and negative polarity. Ideologies simplify that polarity and, in doing so, demonize and oversimplify.

That sentence really bolsters my approach in the Three Axes Model. The whole interview is interesting.

In fact, I have been binge-watching his lectures. Reviews of his book suggested that it might be inaccessible, but his lectures are very accessible, albeit with a big investment of time. If you don’t have the patience for his style, you might want to jump to lecture 5, part 1. But my view is that you should have patience for his style.

Peterson, like Jung, believes that ancient myths tell us a lot about how we are wired. In my eBook, I say that the Progressive oppressor-oppressed axis can be found in the Exodus story. I think that Peterson would locate what I call the civilization-barbarism axis in a lot of ancient myths in which the death of a king or the emergence of a terrible king leads to chaos until a hero fights the chaos and is crowned the new king.

The libertarian liberty-coercion axis may be more modern. In Peterson’s terms, government (and our cultural inheritance in general) always enbodies both the good father who provides order and the tyrant who chains people. The liberty-coercion axis sees the tyrant and not the good father. Peterson probably would find libertarian utopianism to be akin to other utopianisms. In that sense, he would view a really dogmatic libertarian as dangerous, the way that Whitaker Chambers famously remarked that reading Ayn Rand made him feel as though there was lurking a “To a gas chamber–go!” mindset.

I think that embedded in his course is a philosophy of science that is profound. I think it can be applied usefully as a perspective on economic models. I will say more about that when I finish the course.

Right-scaling the Polity

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Eli Dourado writes,

if economic integration prevails, the optimal country size is small, maybe even a city-state.

Given what we know about optimal country size, a monolithic America makes less sense today than it did a century ago. What made America into the superpower that it is today is its massive internal free trade area. Now that trade barriers have declined worldwide, this is less of an advantage than ever before. It’s not at all clear that this diminishing advantage outweighs the cost of our divisive politics based on unshared cultural assumptions.

I have been interested in this issue for a long time. In 2005, I wrote We need 250 states. Among other things, I pointed out that

In 1790, the largest state in the union, Virginia, had a population of under 700,000. Today, Montgomery County has a population of over 900,000. Our nine-member County Council answers to about the same number of registered voters as the entire House of Representatives of the United States at the time of the founding of the Republic.

Switzerland, although it is much smaller than the U.S., is even more decentralized. We have way too much policy made in Washington relative to what could be made more appropriately at local levels. But right now Washington is the only city that can borrow huge sums of money, and that makes it hard to shift responsibilities around.

Richard Florida on Autonomy for Cities

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He writes,

The world has become spikier and spikier, across nations, across regions, and within cities. The clustering of talent and economic assets also makes the city the new economic and social organizing unit, undermining two core institutions of the old order: the large vertical corporation and the nation-state.

…this age of urbanized knowledge capitalism requires a shift in power from the nation-state to cities, which are the key economic and social organizing unit of the knowledge economy. That means also means that cities must take on the outsized power of the nation-state and the imperial presidency. We must devolve power and resources back to the local level — raking back their tax money from the federal government so they can spend it on themselves.

In a way, he is suggesting the the wealthy (and blue) cities should secede from Donald Trump’s America. Whatever merits the concept may have (and I try to encourage ideas of this sort), I doubt that Florida has thought through the details of “raking back their tax money.”

We are headed to a point (already past it?) where at the Federal level cutting 100 percent of discretionary spending that is not related to national security will still leave a deficit. That means that could wind up giving the cities responsibility for housing, education, infrastructure, etc. without any tax revenue to rake back to pay for those functions.

You could let the cities do what the Feds do, and run big deficits, but that seems rather dangerous. Or you could transfer a lot of budget dollars from the Federal government and states to cities by giving them Medicaid, but that does not sound like fun.

Look, the consequences of devolution of power to cities could turn out to be very good. But they might be more radical than what Richard Florida has in mind.

Tyler Cowen Sets a Trap

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In an NPR discussion about the deal struck by President-elect Trump with Carrier to keep a plant in Indiana, he says,

There’s plenty of talk that the reason Carrier went along with the deal was because they were afraid their parent company would lose a lot of defense contracts. So this now creates the specter of a president always being willing to punish or reward companies depending on whether or not they give him a good press release.

Why would progressives be inclined to agree with Cowen?

1. They hate Mr. Trump.

2. They do not agree that keeping this plant in Indiana served a compelling and long-standing public purpose. They might even understand that we have an economy in which free trade ultimately is what serves the public purpose.

3. They do not like the idea of businesses being offered carrots and sticks to do things to allow a president to score points with a constituency (“give him a good press release.”)

4. They do not like the idea of policy made in an ad hoc manner between the president and an individual firm, as opposed to policy that is embedded in legislation that affects all firms.

The trap here is that because of (1) progressives might start to reflect on (2) – (4).

Consider, for example, the Obama Administration’s mandate for contraception coverage in health insurance. This forced some businesses, such as Hobby Lobby, to offer contraception coverage when they did not want to do so. How did this differ from what Mr. Trump did to Carrier?

1. Progressives do not hate Obama. However, on reflection they would realize that this cannot be a defense of the contraception mandate.

2. Progressives believe that contraception coverage is important. However, if you took a vote, I bet that more people would prioritize “keeping jobs in America” than having contraception coverage in health insurance. It seems to me that the “compelling and long-standing public purpose” argument would be a stretch.

3. The contraception mandate certainly allowed the Democrats to score points with a constituency that they consider important. It was an important issue for feminists. So I do not think that you can find the difference between the contraception mandate and the Carrier deal here.

That leaves only (4). The contraception mandate was given to all health insurance providers under the Obama Administration’s interpretation of the Affordable Care Act. It represents the rule of law (ish) and not a one-off transaction. Even there, Donald Evans makes the counterpoint (in the same NPR discussion) that

I don’t think it’s a bad thing for the president to send the strong message to the workers of America that he’s going to create the environment for them to do well right here and – and send that same message to the corporations of America.

Mr. Evans seems to me to be saying that Mr. Trump will put generic policies in place that will pursue the goal of keeping plants in America. One can argue that the goal of this deal was not to set a precedent for one-off deals but instead to signal a forthcoming change in policies that will be administered under the rule of law.

As a libertarian, I do not believe that “keeping plants in America” should be a goal for public policy. I believe instead in patterns of sustainable specialization and trade, which includes making efficient use of labor and other resources from other countries. I also believe that contraception coverage is something that should be negotiated between individual households and health insurance providers. Maybe if progressives fall into the trap set by Tyler Cowen, a few of them will start to see where I am coming from in my point of view.

A Note on the Oppressor-Oppressed Axis

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A commenter writes,

It seemed obvious to me that one could apply the oppressor-oppressed axis by noting that Castro was the oppressor and the Cuban people were the oppressed.

I need to clarify that the oppressor-oppressed axis is not about oppression per se. It is about classifying certain groups as inherently oppressed and others as inherently oppressors. A couple of generations ago, the Left would have considered manufacturing workers to be oppressed. Today American manufacturing workers (and former manufacturing workers) are treated as oppressors, because they are white. Meanwhile, very affluent people can be seen as oppressed, because of their skin color or sexual orientation.

In the case of Cuba, poor Cubans were granted the status of “oppressed,” and rich individuals and corporations had the status of oppressors. Castro, who personally accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars in net worth while he was dictator, was regarded as a friend of the oppressed because the government provided the health care system.

When it is applied appropriately (for example, during the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s), the oppressor-oppressed model is to the Left’s credit. However, when applied unthinkingly or hypocritically, I think it discredits the Left. Some progressives realize this, but many do not. I think they would benefit from reading my revised Three Languages of Politics when it appears next year.

The Fake News Problem

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Typical Washington Post Headline:

D.C. Council to vote on nation’s most generous family leave law: 11 weeks off, up to 90 percent pay

Note the modifier “generous.” Not “intrusive” or “coercive” or “attempting to be generous with other people’s money” or “blithely unaware of unintended consequences.” Just “generous.” Why didn’t every government think of that? Why not have a whole year off, with 150 percent of pay? That would be even more “generous.”

Interestingly, the print edition had a much more neutral headline, but the lead paragraph still refers to the potential for a “generous” paid leave policy.

I see this editorial bias in many stories, particularly the local ones. I have remarked before how the Montgomery County School system is always described as having an “excellent reputation,” when the only thing that is excellent about it is the pay and benefits lavished on the employees, most of whom are not classroom teachers. The outcomes, which the Post never looks at, but which are readily available on the state department of education web site, are mediocre.

Finally, I would note that the Post‘s coverage of Fidel Castro was much less antagonistic than its coverage of Donald Trump. This is a case where I think that the attempt to view a phenomenon along the progressive oppressor-oppressed axis, and accepting Castro’s self-designation as a savior of the oppressed, is pathetically misguided. Instead, conservatives who view Castro as barbaric along the civilization-barbarism axis and libertarians who view him as coercive along the liberty-coercion axis strike me as much more sensible.

One of my fantasy jobs is “conservative curmudgeon” at the Post. I would write a weekly column listing all of the biases I find each week in the paper, most of which are not even in the editorial section. Maybe next year I will start a regular weekly series of blog posts along those lines.

If California Wants a Divorce, We Need a Pre-Nup

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Reportedly, the election of Trump has caused some Californians to talk about secession. Secession got a bad name when the slave states did it, but the concept appeals to me. In general, I wish secession were easier in this country. I would like to see little towns be able to secede from counties, or counties secede from states, or what have you.

However, I have a hard time figuring out the logistics of a California secession. Take Social Security (please). On secession day, I assume that Californians stop paying taxes to the Federal government. So, somebody somewhere has to pay taxes in order for a Californian to continue to receive Social Security benefits. (You do know, don’t you, that the government never “saved up” your taxes to pay for your Social Security?) Will California taxpayers pick up the tab? Or will elderly Californians be encouraged to emigrate back to the legacy U.S. in order to get their benefits? And if the latter happens, will the legacy U.S. agree to let them in and give them their benefits?

Somebody needs to work out a generic pre-nup agreement if we are going to sort out the logistics of a state getting a divorce.

Reassurance from The New Yorker

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William Finnegan [link fixed] tells readers

Understanding Venezuela’s failing state as just another failure of socialism, and of statism generally, is ahistorical. Venezuela before Chávez was often extravagantly statist. Corruption has been a major problem in every era. Even dire food shortages are not new. These things happened under capitalism, too, as did intense political repression. Today’s crisis is for most people the worst in memory, but it is not all about socialism. The predatory state, the extreme insecurity, the sheer weakness of the rule of law—these are problems more profound, at this stage, than a traditional left-right analysis can clarify, let alone begin to solve.

The actual reporting in the story makes clear how bad things have become. If he would only let the readers make up their own minds about what it says about socialism, it would be an excellent essay.

Trolling Libertarians

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Noah Smith does it again.

Instead of spinning theories that extol the virtue of unfettered markets — theories that by now, no one outside the profession actually believes — they should be diving into the gritty details of the regulatory state, or gathering evidence on how best to curb government’s excesses.

He cites Will Wilkinson .

The war against the welfare state hasn’t slowed growth in welfare-state spending so much as it has made our system unusually loathed and unusually shoddy. Mostly, it has fostered a divisive, racially-tinged “makers vs. takers” narrative while encouraging opposition to reform measures that might have made our safety net fairer, more efficient, and better at minimizing the economic anxieties that drive populist political sentiments fundamentally at odds with an open society of free markets, free trade, liberal migration, and peace.

My thoughts.

1. I do not believe that either Smith or Wilkinson is sincerely trying to appeal to libertarians. (Of course, with my last-minute decision to write in Paul Ryan on Tuesday, I am in no position to claim to speak for the libertarian movement.) They are not trying to pass an ideological Turing test. Instead, they employ slurs and charges against libertarians that are popular on the left, which suggests to me that the motive is not to offer constructive suggestions to libertarians. It is not Cato and Reason that are trying to inject racial overtones into American politics. And it is not that I believe in the absolute perfection of markets–what I believe is that markets are better than government at adapting to solve problems.

2. I am not going to be bullied into supporting policies that I believe are bad just because they are popular. If you want to talk me out of my position against a policy, tell me what is good about the policy.

3. The welfare state, like any Ponzi scheme, can be quite popular as long as it is still functioning. However, some time in the next decade, I think it is probable that one of the major welfare states is going to be unable to borrow enough to meet all of its current obligations (this sounds like a prediction on which one can construct a bet), and so it will be faced with a need for either sharp government austerity, hard default on its debt, or soft default (high inflation). The U.S. will not be the first country to suffer from this, because our reputation as a safe haven is so good that the world always will lend to us. But Italy does not enjoy that status. Nor does Japan. Neither does Greece, but they are small enough to be bailed out. Once one country that is “too big to bail” has to resort to extreme budget austerity or money-printing, this will call attention to the precariousness of the others, including the U.S.