I have not noticed any libertarian commentary on the Planned Parenthood controversy. I assume that if there were such commentary, it would say

1. Planned Parenthood should not receive any government funding. Even if it gets out of the abortion business altogether.

2. There is nothing wrong with Planned Parenthood buying and selling organs from aborted fetuses.

Of course, as far as I know, there is no specifically libertarian position on when life begins. If a libertarian took the view that life begins at conception, then that would make abortion murder, and that would make commerce in organs problematic, because it would be an encouragement to murder.

But if you don’t think that abortion is murder (and please do not try to settle that issue in the comments section of this poor little blog), then should libertarians not be speaking up for the right to sell the organs of the aborted babies?

He writes,

The representative legislature has also been a victim of modern habits of mind, which tend to value identity over locality, rationalism over representation, and decision over deliberation. Each of the three branches of American government (which correspond to a division of functions found in all modern governments) has its own distinctive principles of operation and legitimacy. The judiciary’s principles are reason and resolution—courts determine the facts of a dispute, resolve the dispute by deduction and inference from texts and precedents, and explain their reasoning publically. The executive’s are (since the Age of Jackson) personality and action—presidents incarnate important features of national character and aspiration, dominate political attention and debate, and take personal actions that settle some matters in a stroke and redefine others by changing the “facts on the ground.”

The legislature’s principles, representation and compromise, are relatively unimpressive. Representing geographic localities is not what it used to be, because of the globalization of commerce and culture and increased personal mobility; locality is not without political importance, but many people today care much more about representation of their personal values, group identities, and vocational and avocational interests. Individual legislators have little capacity for decisive personal action: on their own they can campaign, give speeches and interviews, write letters, question hearing witnesses, and cast votes, none of which hardly ever resolves anything. Their primary assignment is to negotiate and horse-trade with other representatives of similar, differing, and conflicting interests and values, leading to collective decisions that no one is entirely happy with or, quite frequently, to no decision at all.

When you have time, read the whole thing (it’s long). Pointer from Carl Eric Scott.

I agree with much of DeMuth’s diagnosis, which is that the dangerously powerful regulatory state has emerged in part due to the structural weakness of Congress. However, I do not think that his proposed solutions, the most prominent of which is ending the Senate filibuster, even approach providing a solution.

Off the top of my head, the reform that I would propose is to regularly re-charter all regulatory agencies. Perhaps every three years. You could use that re-chartering to rein in the jurisdiction of agencies. You could re-charter the FCC in a way that takes away any authority to regulate the Internet. You could re-charter the EPA in a way that takes away any authority to regulate carbon dioxide, or at least make it regulate carbon dioxide within a well-defined Congressional mandate. Re-chartering the FDA. Re-chartering the Federal Reserve. It could get to be quite fun.

John Cochrane writes,

The agencies demand political support for themselves first of all. They are like barons in monarchies, and the King’s problems are secondary. But they can now demand broader support for their political agendas. And the larger partisan political system is discovering how the newly enhanced power of the regulatory state is ideal for enforcing its own political support.

Read the whole thing.

Perhaps the most persistent news story of 2015 has been the way that various policemen have responded with shockingly aggressive use of force when they encountered what they viewed as lack of cooperation, primarily from African-American suspects. Think of that as a metaphor for how regulatory agencies respond when they see lack of cooperation. At least, that is how I read Cochrane.

A simple topic for four of us to spend an hour discussing. The conclusion of my opening remarks:

one sort of maybe fictional type scenario would be that you would get a sudden sovereign debt crisis in the United States that would take place in an environment where the political feelings are frayed–there’s a lot of controversy; people no longer see the legislators and the executive as having legitimacy for solving their problems. They take to the streets. There’s fighting; there’s violence. And at that point the people are ready to turn to some kind of dictator to resolve the violence. So that’s kind of a fictional scenario. There’s certainly you can see either economic or political ways to avoid it. But that would be sort of my one pessimistic scenario relative to maintaining our open access order. Which, if we do maintain our open access order, I think eventually we do recover prosperity and we sort of maintain freedom.

John Cochrane worries about

the vast attempt of our government to control economics from the big Dodd-Frank and Obamacare down to the small regulations against Uber and occupational licensing for hairdressers, and so forth. This enterprise has vast power. It’s increasingly politicized. And right now it’s used already to silence opposition to the regulatory fiefdoms. What bank dares to speak out against the Dodd-Frank Act? What health insurer dares to speak out against Obamacare?

It seems to me that strong regulation often has the support, or at least the acquiescence, of incumbent business interests. The question is whether potential new competition is thwarted. Lee Ohanian, another speaker in this session, is pessimistic on that score.

Another recent study found that the decline in community banking accelerated considerably in the last few years, reflecting economies of scale in managing new regulation associated with Dodd-Frank. Small Business Administration says that lending to small businesses has declined by about 20% since 2008, which was of course the year of the Great Recession. And in 2013 only 1 new bank entered the banking industry. So you look at the outcome of Dodd-Frank–declining competition, fewer banks, lack of entry, higher costs, regulators with broad mandates who make vague and far-reaching rules–this represents a sharp departure from the clear and specific limits on government.

Two recent rants. Megan McArdle writes,

Hovering robs kids of resilience and what psychologists call “self-efficacy”: the sense that they themselves are capable of producing the outcomes they want. They’re used to functioning as closely supervised extensions of their parents, not autonomous adults.

For me, the telling symptom is the number of young people who do not attempt to get a driver’s license as soon as they are eligible. My generation prized the independence that came from having a driver’s license.

David Gelernter says,

My students today are much less obnoxious. Much more likable than I and my friends used to be, but they are so ignorant that it’s hard to accept how ignorant they are. You tell yourself stories; it’s very hard to grasp that the person you’re talking to, who is bright, articulate, advisable, interested, and doesn’t know who Beethoven is. Had no view looking back at the history of the 20th century – just sees a fog. A blank. Has the vaguest idea of who Winston Churchill was or why he mattered. And maybe has no image of Teddy Roosevelt, let’s say, at all. I mean, these are people who – We have failed.

…universities were being taken over by intellectuals and moving hard to the Left. Intellectuals have also been Leftist, have always been hard to the Left. So the dramatic steer to the Left coincides with a huge jump in the influence of American universities. We have a cultural revolution. And the cultural revolution is that we no longer love this country. We no longer have a high regard for this country or for the culture that produced it. We no longer have any particular feelings for Western Civilization.

So we have second-generation ignorance is much more potent than first-generation ignorance. It’s not just a matter of one generation, of incremental change. It’s more like multiplicative change. A curve going up very fast. And swamping us. Taking us by surprise.

It is hard to summarize his thoughts out of context.

This weekend, I was with an old friend who I used to think was on the left, and who I still think votes Democratic. But he complained about the mindless leftism on college campuses.

So, where are we? Some possibilities:

1. What I see as bugs (risk aversion, left-wing political beliefs) are really features. I am just on the wrong side of things.

2. What I see as bugs are bugs, but kids today have so many talents and skills that those bugs do not matter.

3. We are going to hell in a handbasket unless something changes.

As Gelernter admits, (3) has been the conservative viewpoint for many generations, and so far it has not proven correct.