Category Archives: Libertarian Thought

Reconstituting the Administrative State

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Ilan Wurman writes,

whenever an agency or independent commission wants to make a new rule, it must submit the rule directly to Congress by a certain deadline. Congress would then have three options for responding. First, Congress could take no action, leaving the rule idle. (Whether this happens because Congress cannot reach a consensus or because lawmakers in fact approve of the rule is immaterial here.) After seven months of inaction, the rule would take effect and become binding law, provided the president assents to it. Second, Congress could pass a bill containing the rule, or an amended version of the rule; the president would then need to approve the bill, and then the rule would become law. (This second case is no different than the ordinary legislative process described in the Constitution.) Third, Congress could pass a “resolution of disapproval,” which would effectively veto the rule, meaning it would not be presented to the president and would not become law.

Read the whole article, which is about trying to revive the principle of separation of powers while continuing to have agencies that exercise all three powers. The example above would provide a legislative check on the rule-making powers of agencies.

With this legislative veto in place, Wurman argues that the agencies would not longer need to be independent of the executive. The agencies could instead fall under the control of the President, which is what the executive branch is supposed to do.

Wurman also proposes a way to check agencies’ judicial power. I was not able to follow the legal technicalities of his suggestion.

The ideas are impressive. However, in the end, I came away thinking of the proposals as putting lipstick on a pig. The pig is the notion that experts are capable of engaging in planning for everyone. That is the idea that is behind the creation of the agencies and giving them power in the first place. If we continue to operate under the assumption that expertise works well, then Wurman’s proposals would change nothing. And if we challenge that assumption, then the solution is to restrict the powers of the agencies.

To put this another way, it is the cultural status of the administrative state that needs to be changed. Its (un-) constitutional status derives from its cultural status.

Three Axes Explains Soda Taxes

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Catherine Rampell writes,

Why not just target the output, rather than some random subset of inputs? We could tax obesity if we wanted to. Or if we want to seem less punitive, we could award tax credits to obese people who lose weight. A tax directly pegged to reduced obesity would certainly be a much more efficient way to achieve the stated policy goal of reducing obesity.

Because taxing obesity would be “blaming the victim” from a progressive perspective. Taxing soda fits the narrative in which the obese are oppressed and soda manufacturers are the oppressors. Never mind about efficiency, tax incidence, and other economic concepts. A soda tax advances the oppressor-oppressed narrative, and therein lies its appeal.

Fixing the DC Metrorail System

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Thomas A.Firey writes,

Proof of the system’s failure is reflected in the fares Metrorail customers pay. Currently, fares cover less than half of the system’s operating and maintenance expenses—and little to no capital costs. WMATA officials, fearing public backlash, have no interest in raising fares to recover more of the cost. Put simply, Metrorail’s own users judge the system to not be worth its cost.

He offers this shocking solution:

Public officials would better serve both Metrorail customers and the broader public by terminating the rail system and shifting attention to bus transit and the road system.

I think it is fair to say that the idea of terminating the DC Metro rail system is inconceivable to most people, no matter how much its costs exceed its consumer value.

Rail-based transit systems are a symbol of the central planning mindset. They are rigid, impersonal, and in most cases economically unsustainable.

My Essay on Cultural Intelligence

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Published in National Affairs. An excerpt:

Economists and scholars of public policy are not the only ones conducting this research; students of human behavior are also finding support for Burke and Hayek’s theses — that the knowledge embedded in social norms and practices is vast compared to the knowledge of even the brightest, most educated individuals. As individuals, we cannot figure out very much by ourselves, but we learn a remarkable amount from others. In short, some social scientists in recent years have been building (or rebuilding) a powerful case for cultural intelligence.

You can read it as an argument for a libertarian/conservative alliance rather than for a liberaltarian alliance. Please comment specifically on the essay itself, and only after reading the whole piece.

Liberty, Conformity, and Academic Diversity

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Miles Kimball writes,

John Stuart Mill argued that protecting civil liberty is not enough; social liberty must also be protected. It is possible to force most people into conformity with prevailing opinion by criticism, disapproving glances, and mockery of nonconformity.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

I am afraid that this is the price that we pay for living in society. Any cohesive society will reward cooperators and punish defectors. Social sanctions are going to be part of that.

To put this another way, I would argue that conformity is usually good and nonconformity is often bad. Yes, we want our society to accept some nonconformity. However, I believe that those who profess to want to live in a society with a much higher tolerance for nonconformity are probably kidding themselves. Note that in the 1960s how quickly the expressions of non-conformity (long hair, etc.) came to be themselves enforced by standards of conformity.

In another interesting paragraph, Kimball writes,

As an academic, I notice how powerfully the opinion of other economists–whether right or wrong–operates in controlling the behavior and the research priorities of the typical academic. It is hard to think of many people who could be more safe from harsh practical consequences for a dissenting opinion than tenured professors, yet most still meekly follow the opinion of the crowd within their discipline. Is this the way it should be? Is this the way to best advance science? I don’t think so. Surely, a bit greater variance in expressed opinion would be more productive of scientific progress than the degree of conformity that prevails within most scientific disciplines, including economics.

My comments.

1. Do you remember what Paul Romer said?

The only way I can see to protect scientific discourse is to limit entry into the discussions of science.

2. If you are looking for an optimum degree of tolerance for divergent ideas, I do not think you will find it at either 0 percent of 100 percent. I do think that right now in economics, the tolerance for divergent ideas is too low. However, it is better than it was 30 years ago.

Heartwarming Libertarian Story

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From Bretigne Shaffer.

Essentially, the DTMC [Detroit Threat Management Center] has done what libertarians like Murray Rothbard and David Friedman have long been saying could be done: They have turned the provision of public safety into a profitable business model, and they have done it in some of the worst neighborhoods in the country. The results have been incredible: According to Brown, crime has dropped dramatically in the areas where they work, and all without the loss of life to their staff or anyone else.

My Political Fortune Cookie

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I got it from taking this quiz, which said that the conservative thinker who most fits my views is Russell Kirk.

You are a traditionalist conservative. You emphasize tradition, order, the moral imagination, and the “permanent things.” Although you are alert to the threat of big government, you are also critical of atomistic individualism, as you emphasize man’s spiritual and social nature. As such, you are skeptical of finding much common ground with libertarians.

I prefer to frame things in terms of my three-axes model. I am certainly not a progressive, because I cannot think of a single issue that I view through the lens of the oppressor-oppressed axis. To the extent that I come out libertarian on issues, it is not so much because I frame them in terms of the freedom-coercion axis. More often, it is because I believe that people over-estimate the effectiveness of the political process and under-estimate the effectiveness of the market process.

I admit to thinking often these days in terms of the civilization vs. barbarism axis. I am old enough to be entitled to that as a natural inclination. But how can one not? Are Islamic radicals not barbaric? Does this year’s Presidential election give one confidence that our civilized values are securely in place? Are our college campuses reinforcing our civilized values? Do we believe that if there is a radical direction taken in American politics, that we will be happy with how that turns out?

And Another from the Monkey Cage Blog

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Wendy Rahn and Eric Oliver write,

Of course, authoritarians and populists can overlap and share dark tendencies toward nativism, racism and conspiracism. But they do have profoundly different perceptions of authority. Populists see themselves in opposition to elites of all kinds. Authoritarians see themselves as aligned with those in charge. This difference sets the candidates’ supporters apart.

Once again, I recommend the whole post.

I think of populism as a dangerously self-negating approach to politics. The problem is that the people attach themselves to a charismatic leader, and that leader is bound to have the sort of arrogance that populists supposedly resent.

Guess the Axis

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David French writes,

I grew up in Kentucky, live in a rural county in Tennessee, and have seen the challenges of the white working-class first-hand. Simply put, Americans are killing themselves and destroying their families at an alarming rate. No one is making them do it. The economy isn’t putting a bottle in their hand. Immigrants aren’t making them cheat on their wives or snort OxyContin. Obama isn’t walking them into the lawyer’s office to force them to file a bogus disability claim.

Call it the civilization-vs.-barbarism hypothesis to explain the increase in labor immobility. Pointer from Mark Thoma, who I am sure looks at this from the standpoint of a different axis.

French is commenting on a piece by Kevin Williamson. More coverage here.

“It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces,” the NR roving correspondent writes. “[N]obody did this to them. They failed themselves.”

Also from the Monkey Cage Blog

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Lilliana Mason writes,

Partisan identities have become increasingly aligned with religious and racial identities. Republicans tend toward Christian and white identities, and Democrats tend toward non-religious and non-white identities. With these highly aligned identities, people tend to be more sensitive to threats from outsiders, reacting with higher levels of anger than those with cross-cutting identities.

Read the whole post. I wanted to excerpt all of it. My one quibble is that I wish that she had not only used Trump supporters as examples of what she is talking about. I think she is saying that people on the left also react angrily to the identity threats posed by those with differing political beliefs and cultural traits, but my guess is that many of the readers of the post will miss that.

I have been interested in the issue of tribalism in politics for quite some time. See, of course, The Three Languages of Politics.