Vital Ideas in Conflict—Sen versus Bauer
Tibor R. Machan
A most influential book by Harvard Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen
is Development as Freedom (Knopf, 1999). At first glance the title
suggests that Sen shares the late Peter Bauer’s ideas who argued that
global free market policies would best help the poor everywhere. But that
isn't Sen's message at all. What Sen means by freedom is the capability
of people to take active part in politics so they can demand support for
their various needs and projects. This is the democratic welfare state.
Sen holds that the legal infrastructure of a country is to be decided upon
by way of a national conversation. In other words, there are no
principles such as the American Founder’s believed in, basic individual
rights governments must secure. The principles, if we can even call them
that, are conventional, decided upon in a national dialogue. This is in contrast to
natural rights or natural laws that are supposed to be discovered and on
which the law ought to rest. This vital idea of the American Founders is absent
from Sen’s position. Fro him everything is open for debate and discussion and only
after the discussion has ended can we talk of constitutional principles,
fundamental laws, justice and the like. As he puts it,
“Indeed, the connection between public reasoning and the formulation and
use of human rights is extremely important to understand. Any general
plausibility that these ethical claims, or their denials, have is
dependent, on this theory, on their survival and flourishing when they
encounter unobstructed discussion and scrutiny, along with adequately wide
informational availability.” (“Elements of a Theory of Rights,” Philosophy
& Public Affairs 32.4 [2004] p. 349.)
Now, this idea sounds coherent until one digs a bit into some of
what is presupposed in Sen’s position. One thing, for example, that does
not appear to rest on debate and discussion is the right of everyone to
take part in the discussion! So it appears there is, after all, a natural
base for Sen’s idea of freedom—everyone, because of his or her humanity,
has the right to take part in political deliberations. Why? The one good
answer to this is that by virtue of our human nature we are entitled to
have our political ideas aired in a human community. Being human and thus
moral agents is what this entitlement or right rests on, not on a
discussion or debate. But now other rights could also exist independently
of a national discussion.
Such rights that are immediately evident are those to one’s life,
one’s liberty of thought and conduct, as well as to private property,
meaning that one’s ownership of one’s labor and time, for example,
couldn’t be up for public debate—no one has the proper authority to decide
that you or I may or may not make decisions respecting the disposition of
our labor, our time, indeed, our lives!
Sen’s idea of freedom, however, strongly implies that
participants in a democratic discussion and political debate could
conclude with the idea that my or your or anyone’s life could be
conscripted to serve various goals to which no consent has been given. But
then the same could hold for the right of participation in political
discussion—that right, too, could be debated away. And in some countries
it has been and is, because the foundation of the right to take part in
politics is not deemed to be natural but conventional. In the United
States Professor Cass Sunstein, a very influential party in the team of
President Barrack Obama, holds this view about rights.
In any case, a well integrated theory of freedom cannot accept
that some of our rights are firmly grounded while others up for debate.
These rights are all unalienable, meaning that democratic debate may not
end with conclusions leading to the abrogation of these rights. And that
is just the kind of freedom that the classical liberals, like Peter Bauer,
believed is fundamental and not up for compromise. It is also the best
avenue for development and emergence from poverty because it encourages
initiative and voluntary cooperation, not coercion.
Professor Sen’s bifurcated theory of the right to freedom,
whereby political participation is an absolute but others, such as
property rights, are conventional rights, just will not hold up when fully
scrutinized.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Resisting Statism
Tibor R. Machan
A recent exchange between Michael Moore, the filmmaker, and Sean Hannity, the increasingly famous commentator at Fox TV-News, went surprisingly well, considering how both men are widely seen as unrestrained hotheads. Instead of badmouthing each other, this time they actually debated a few important points—at least gave it a try, although without complete success since both insisted on interrupting the other no matter how he pleaded to be heard out.
Nonetheless, some points came across from both, which is probably more than what happens in similar circumstances (ever since Crossfire ruined the art of TV conversation). One particularly important point that came up and is worth exploring occurred when Hannity tried to make the case for restricting the scope the federal government, especially as regards the current efforts of Obama & Co., to practically nationalize the health care/insurance industry. (By the way, “nationalization” as National Socialism has taught us, doesn’t have to involve actually taking over and running an industry. It can simply involve making various industries subject to extensive government direction, regulation,regimentation, supervision or, as some would say, nudging!)
In reply to Hannity’s expression of concern about this prospect, Mr. Moore gave the perfect answer: We already have the US Postal Service, AMTRAK, all the national and state highways, public schools—including colleges and universities—and a myriad other state run endeavors—Moore actually included the military—throughout the country. So, the implication came across clearly, surely you cannot make any kind of principled objection to doing the same with healthcare/insurance? Especially when you already have Medicare and have had it for decades without it being seriously challenged by Republicans, the only opponents or critics of Obama’ plan who are worth considering in the eyes of someone like Michael Moore and even Hannity.
Moore is right, of course. To object consistently now to what Obama & Co. are embarking upon it would have been necessary for the opponents to protest most of the statist measures Moore rattled off. Why do the Republicans accept so complacently that the federal government runs a postal service? Moore mentioned that this is a vital service that benefits the poor and so it is fully justified. Actually, of course, by that account the federal government should nationalize the shoe industry and hundreds of others that clearly provide goods and services to poor folks. All of agriculture would have to be removed from the free or semi-free marketplace. Grocery stores everywhere would also have to become state enterprises. Poverty isn’t decisive and freedom is better for it, anyway,that is statism.
The point is that Hannity and his anti-Obama pals just have no leg to stand on when it comes to objecting to the state taking over any portion of the society, having completely acclimated themselves to public institutions galore. What about parks, forests,lakes, oceans, highways, streets, museums, theaters, and on and on,endlessly? What basis is there for the highly selective, even arbitrary opposition to the government’s takeover of the society? Only newspapers and churches are provided with a reasonably solid protection against this trend, and only so long as the U. S. Supreme Court escapes being packed by someone like the president who appears to believe that everything is the province of the state,just as it used to be under monarchies of the past and in certain places around the globe globe today.
Of course, the American Founders had a much better,principled, consistent answer to Mr. Moore and all the others who believe that the feds and other governments really should be running everything. As they put it in the Declaration of Independence, governments are instituted so as to secure the rights of the citizenry, and that’s it. Today a few legal theorists, like Randy Barnett at Georgetown University’s law school,and most hard-nosed—or as Harvard University’s Amartya Sen calls them, “no-nonsense libertarians”—are in the position to argue against Obama & Co.’s runaway statism, along with the more incremental sort that’s been around for decades if not centuries. After all, the all-powerful state cannot be dismantled in one fell swoop, so despite the Founders’ efforts,America is still hostage to its statist past, not to mention to all those who never found much wrong with statism from the outset (e.g., Alexander Hamilton).
What Mr. Hannity has to learn is to bite the bullet and fess up to the insight that human liberty is indivisible. Unless this is realized, the statists are always going be able to have the logical upper hand.
Tibor R. Machan
A recent exchange between Michael Moore, the filmmaker, and Sean Hannity, the increasingly famous commentator at Fox TV-News, went surprisingly well, considering how both men are widely seen as unrestrained hotheads. Instead of badmouthing each other, this time they actually debated a few important points—at least gave it a try, although without complete success since both insisted on interrupting the other no matter how he pleaded to be heard out.
Nonetheless, some points came across from both, which is probably more than what happens in similar circumstances (ever since Crossfire ruined the art of TV conversation). One particularly important point that came up and is worth exploring occurred when Hannity tried to make the case for restricting the scope the federal government, especially as regards the current efforts of Obama & Co., to practically nationalize the health care/insurance industry. (By the way, “nationalization” as National Socialism has taught us, doesn’t have to involve actually taking over and running an industry. It can simply involve making various industries subject to extensive government direction, regulation,regimentation, supervision or, as some would say, nudging!)
In reply to Hannity’s expression of concern about this prospect, Mr. Moore gave the perfect answer: We already have the US Postal Service, AMTRAK, all the national and state highways, public schools—including colleges and universities—and a myriad other state run endeavors—Moore actually included the military—throughout the country. So, the implication came across clearly, surely you cannot make any kind of principled objection to doing the same with healthcare/insurance? Especially when you already have Medicare and have had it for decades without it being seriously challenged by Republicans, the only opponents or critics of Obama’ plan who are worth considering in the eyes of someone like Michael Moore and even Hannity.
Moore is right, of course. To object consistently now to what Obama & Co. are embarking upon it would have been necessary for the opponents to protest most of the statist measures Moore rattled off. Why do the Republicans accept so complacently that the federal government runs a postal service? Moore mentioned that this is a vital service that benefits the poor and so it is fully justified. Actually, of course, by that account the federal government should nationalize the shoe industry and hundreds of others that clearly provide goods and services to poor folks. All of agriculture would have to be removed from the free or semi-free marketplace. Grocery stores everywhere would also have to become state enterprises. Poverty isn’t decisive and freedom is better for it, anyway,that is statism.
The point is that Hannity and his anti-Obama pals just have no leg to stand on when it comes to objecting to the state taking over any portion of the society, having completely acclimated themselves to public institutions galore. What about parks, forests,lakes, oceans, highways, streets, museums, theaters, and on and on,endlessly? What basis is there for the highly selective, even arbitrary opposition to the government’s takeover of the society? Only newspapers and churches are provided with a reasonably solid protection against this trend, and only so long as the U. S. Supreme Court escapes being packed by someone like the president who appears to believe that everything is the province of the state,just as it used to be under monarchies of the past and in certain places around the globe globe today.
Of course, the American Founders had a much better,principled, consistent answer to Mr. Moore and all the others who believe that the feds and other governments really should be running everything. As they put it in the Declaration of Independence, governments are instituted so as to secure the rights of the citizenry, and that’s it. Today a few legal theorists, like Randy Barnett at Georgetown University’s law school,and most hard-nosed—or as Harvard University’s Amartya Sen calls them, “no-nonsense libertarians”—are in the position to argue against Obama & Co.’s runaway statism, along with the more incremental sort that’s been around for decades if not centuries. After all, the all-powerful state cannot be dismantled in one fell swoop, so despite the Founders’ efforts,America is still hostage to its statist past, not to mention to all those who never found much wrong with statism from the outset (e.g., Alexander Hamilton).
What Mr. Hannity has to learn is to bite the bullet and fess up to the insight that human liberty is indivisible. Unless this is realized, the statists are always going be able to have the logical upper hand.
Brooks Gets Giddy
Tibor R. Machan
So David Brooks attended a neuroscience conference in lower Manhattan and got giddy from all the youth taking part in works in this relatively recent field. We learn this from his Tuesday, October 13, 2009, column in The New York Times.
Most of his report is fluff but he does say at one point something provocative and basically misleading. He writes, that “Economists, political scientists and policy makers treat humans as ultrarational creatures because they can’t define and systematize the emotions.”
In fact economists and the rest simply posit the generalization--mainly for purposes of thought experimentation--that people act rationally and by this they mean nothing much more fancy apart from the fact that people normally think about how to achieve their goals, whatever those goals may be. That is the extent of the rationality these folks assume and so the idea that they “treat humans as ultrarational creatures” is bunk. (Why, by the way, “ultra”?)
From such folks as the leading Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises to Milton Friedman, economists tend to work with the conception of human action as instrumentally rational, yes. All this means is that we tend to consider the most effective means by which to achieve our ends. Hey, even lower animals do this much “thinking”. There is nothing ultra rational about it.
Milton Friedman made it clear, in his seminal paper on economic methodology, that the assumptions with which most economists work are not strictly realistic but more along lines of the assumptions we make in applied geometry about straight lines, circles and such. None of those in real life are perfect but when we analyze the world with the aid of such geometrical objects, we assume them to be perfect. Not much harm in this if we mind our ways. Economists and such are indeed advised not to take their theoretical assumptions too literally but they do the work of making the world more understandable, just as the assumption would that David Brooks probably pays attention to what he writes when he writes his columns (even though in fact he may get up for a cup of coffee or even to answer the phone in the middle of it all).
But Brooks seems to be gaga about findings the show that the theoretical model with which the social scientists work does not perfectly match the actual world. (He must not have read his Plato very carefully who taught that point many moons ago!) Moreover, Brooks should listen more closely to the people conducting the neuroscientific research who themselves attribute far less significance to their discoveries. Mostly what they have found confirms what those awful economists, political scientists and policy makers have believed by way of a close inspection of the brain with the aid of cat scans and MRIs.
Nor did most of those older folks ever contend that people are always, uniformly rational--i. e., ultrarational--even instrumentally, although because they mostly left it open what people’s goals must be, they did suggest that even the craziest among us calculate well enough how to get where they wish to go. Why not?
Surely there are other important questions left once this is decided but this much is not negligible. We can figure, with this assumption, that when David Brooks wants to write a column about something, he will most likely find a way to do it that doesn’t waste a lot of his resources but instead economizes with them. Not a brilliant but certainly useful assumption about people, most people, not everyone!
But I guess there is no fund in reporting that neuroscientists are confirming common sense. They mostly are, actually, even the most radical of them. They have even given some measure of credibility to free will, what with the introduction, by Benjamin Libet, of the notion of the brain’s veto power when people undertake their various activities. They can, at the last nanosecond, opt out if they deem their plans to be unwise. What a finding that is!
Tibor R. Machan
So David Brooks attended a neuroscience conference in lower Manhattan and got giddy from all the youth taking part in works in this relatively recent field. We learn this from his Tuesday, October 13, 2009, column in The New York Times.
Most of his report is fluff but he does say at one point something provocative and basically misleading. He writes, that “Economists, political scientists and policy makers treat humans as ultrarational creatures because they can’t define and systematize the emotions.”
In fact economists and the rest simply posit the generalization--mainly for purposes of thought experimentation--that people act rationally and by this they mean nothing much more fancy apart from the fact that people normally think about how to achieve their goals, whatever those goals may be. That is the extent of the rationality these folks assume and so the idea that they “treat humans as ultrarational creatures” is bunk. (Why, by the way, “ultra”?)
From such folks as the leading Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises to Milton Friedman, economists tend to work with the conception of human action as instrumentally rational, yes. All this means is that we tend to consider the most effective means by which to achieve our ends. Hey, even lower animals do this much “thinking”. There is nothing ultra rational about it.
Milton Friedman made it clear, in his seminal paper on economic methodology, that the assumptions with which most economists work are not strictly realistic but more along lines of the assumptions we make in applied geometry about straight lines, circles and such. None of those in real life are perfect but when we analyze the world with the aid of such geometrical objects, we assume them to be perfect. Not much harm in this if we mind our ways. Economists and such are indeed advised not to take their theoretical assumptions too literally but they do the work of making the world more understandable, just as the assumption would that David Brooks probably pays attention to what he writes when he writes his columns (even though in fact he may get up for a cup of coffee or even to answer the phone in the middle of it all).
But Brooks seems to be gaga about findings the show that the theoretical model with which the social scientists work does not perfectly match the actual world. (He must not have read his Plato very carefully who taught that point many moons ago!) Moreover, Brooks should listen more closely to the people conducting the neuroscientific research who themselves attribute far less significance to their discoveries. Mostly what they have found confirms what those awful economists, political scientists and policy makers have believed by way of a close inspection of the brain with the aid of cat scans and MRIs.
Nor did most of those older folks ever contend that people are always, uniformly rational--i. e., ultrarational--even instrumentally, although because they mostly left it open what people’s goals must be, they did suggest that even the craziest among us calculate well enough how to get where they wish to go. Why not?
Surely there are other important questions left once this is decided but this much is not negligible. We can figure, with this assumption, that when David Brooks wants to write a column about something, he will most likely find a way to do it that doesn’t waste a lot of his resources but instead economizes with them. Not a brilliant but certainly useful assumption about people, most people, not everyone!
But I guess there is no fund in reporting that neuroscientists are confirming common sense. They mostly are, actually, even the most radical of them. They have even given some measure of credibility to free will, what with the introduction, by Benjamin Libet, of the notion of the brain’s veto power when people undertake their various activities. They can, at the last nanosecond, opt out if they deem their plans to be unwise. What a finding that is!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Why the Nobel for Obama?
Tibor R. Machan
OK, I will no longer try to resist the temptation to chime in on this one. I try not to jump on the bandwagon with every hot topic but this one bothers me because so many people feign mystification. What is the big deal here?
Back when F. A. Hayek received the prize in economic science, in 1974, the committee felt so uncomfortable about rewarding a champion of the free market that it split the prize between him and Gunnar Myrdal, and Swedish supporter of the welfare state. Over the years the prize in economic science has gone back and forth, with Chicago School people some and Keynesians or similar big government interventionists winning others. with a few technicians to break up the pattern. Clearly then whenever there is some chance of brouhaha about the prize, the committee has played it safe.
Perhaps with the Peace prize it is a little different, although it is hardly likely that it would be won by someone who helped bring down the Berlin Wall, given that however much the soft Left didn't like Stalin's system, socialism is still the ideal it is committed to realizing, somehow, even if it takes squaring the circle. Norway is, after all, a welfare state and no one likes to admit that as with so many mid-eastern countries, what sustains it is oil, not political economic wisdom.
Another way to stick it to capitalism--never mind that there isn't and hasn't been any evidence of that system in its unvarnished form in America--is to give some prize, any prize, to someone like Barack Obama, an avowed leftist who hasn't had a good thing to say about the distinctively American idea of applied free market economics. Even though Obama has himself held an adjunct professorship at the University of Chicago where the late Milton Friedman lead the Chicago School of free market economics, he was in the School of Law and probably never bothered to learn anything about how bad a mistake it is to entrust the economy to a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats. He is in fact a celebrity on the American political stage who is, since FDR, one of the few making no bones about liking statism, about trusting some people to micromanage the lives of others. Since the Nobel committee is firmly committed to that kind of system, it made perfectly good sense to give the peace prize to Obama, never mind how misnamed it was for him. (They already gave the economic science prize last year to a like-minded fellow, Professor Paul Krugman, a most enthusiastic champion of the political management of the economy.)
Sure, it is a bit gross to give out this prize to someone who hasn't done much for peace except to talk it up on and off but, hey, why be picky? After all, everyone in Europe and a whole lot of people in America are enamored of him, so giving Obama the prize is a gesture toward the Left without much substance or risk.
There was just one comment from someone about this that I found sensible. This was that Mr. Obama should have turned the prize down saying, "Get back to me later, once I have achieved some of what I want to in the direction of peace around the globe." Would have shown some class, me thinks. Alas, that might have been too much to ask for someone who seems to be fond of power the way Mr. Obama clearly is. Anyone whose solution to all the problems of a country amounts to nothing more subtle than through borrowed or printed--i. e., fake--money after it cannot be counted upon to show tact and subtlety. Yet this may not be feasible, actually. that is because there is a famous and highly influential moral philosophy that may have something to do with the award of the prize to Mr. Obama at this point of his presidency.
I am thinking of Immanuel Kant, the German thinker who argued, in the 18th century that what matters in moral matters is that one has a good will, nothing else. It is the thought that counts, in other words, since human beings have no effective impact on the world which is governed by the impersonal laws of nature. The only thing that is free is the will, which governs ineffectual intentions and nothing else. I don't know if the Nobel committee is staffed with Kantians but what happened here suggests it. The consequences of Mr. Obama's policies do not matter--all that matters is his his good intentions, period.
Tibor R. Machan
OK, I will no longer try to resist the temptation to chime in on this one. I try not to jump on the bandwagon with every hot topic but this one bothers me because so many people feign mystification. What is the big deal here?
Back when F. A. Hayek received the prize in economic science, in 1974, the committee felt so uncomfortable about rewarding a champion of the free market that it split the prize between him and Gunnar Myrdal, and Swedish supporter of the welfare state. Over the years the prize in economic science has gone back and forth, with Chicago School people some and Keynesians or similar big government interventionists winning others. with a few technicians to break up the pattern. Clearly then whenever there is some chance of brouhaha about the prize, the committee has played it safe.
Perhaps with the Peace prize it is a little different, although it is hardly likely that it would be won by someone who helped bring down the Berlin Wall, given that however much the soft Left didn't like Stalin's system, socialism is still the ideal it is committed to realizing, somehow, even if it takes squaring the circle. Norway is, after all, a welfare state and no one likes to admit that as with so many mid-eastern countries, what sustains it is oil, not political economic wisdom.
Another way to stick it to capitalism--never mind that there isn't and hasn't been any evidence of that system in its unvarnished form in America--is to give some prize, any prize, to someone like Barack Obama, an avowed leftist who hasn't had a good thing to say about the distinctively American idea of applied free market economics. Even though Obama has himself held an adjunct professorship at the University of Chicago where the late Milton Friedman lead the Chicago School of free market economics, he was in the School of Law and probably never bothered to learn anything about how bad a mistake it is to entrust the economy to a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats. He is in fact a celebrity on the American political stage who is, since FDR, one of the few making no bones about liking statism, about trusting some people to micromanage the lives of others. Since the Nobel committee is firmly committed to that kind of system, it made perfectly good sense to give the peace prize to Obama, never mind how misnamed it was for him. (They already gave the economic science prize last year to a like-minded fellow, Professor Paul Krugman, a most enthusiastic champion of the political management of the economy.)
Sure, it is a bit gross to give out this prize to someone who hasn't done much for peace except to talk it up on and off but, hey, why be picky? After all, everyone in Europe and a whole lot of people in America are enamored of him, so giving Obama the prize is a gesture toward the Left without much substance or risk.
There was just one comment from someone about this that I found sensible. This was that Mr. Obama should have turned the prize down saying, "Get back to me later, once I have achieved some of what I want to in the direction of peace around the globe." Would have shown some class, me thinks. Alas, that might have been too much to ask for someone who seems to be fond of power the way Mr. Obama clearly is. Anyone whose solution to all the problems of a country amounts to nothing more subtle than through borrowed or printed--i. e., fake--money after it cannot be counted upon to show tact and subtlety. Yet this may not be feasible, actually. that is because there is a famous and highly influential moral philosophy that may have something to do with the award of the prize to Mr. Obama at this point of his presidency.
I am thinking of Immanuel Kant, the German thinker who argued, in the 18th century that what matters in moral matters is that one has a good will, nothing else. It is the thought that counts, in other words, since human beings have no effective impact on the world which is governed by the impersonal laws of nature. The only thing that is free is the will, which governs ineffectual intentions and nothing else. I don't know if the Nobel committee is staffed with Kantians but what happened here suggests it. The consequences of Mr. Obama's policies do not matter--all that matters is his his good intentions, period.
Magical Wishing
Tibor R. Machan
Whenever I encounter the sentiment expressed in the following, I get pretty pessimistic about how today's commentators tend to think: "Goodman [the author of a free market bashing book, Past Due (Henry Holt, 2009)], a fair-minded reporter and a clear writer, demonstrates how both Bernake and Summers, along with most other major economists and Well Street plutocrats of the past two decades, became entranced by the Greenspan-Chicago School notion that financial institutions can be trusted to police one another in the absence of rigorous government oversight...." (NYTimes Book Review, 10/11/09, p. 17) Just consider that while the reviewer, the†Business Week managing editor Paul M. Barrett, shares Goodman's severe dislike of free markets and those who consider it, or whatever bits and piece of it exist, a promising instrument for dealing with the country's economy, he has complete faith in "rigorous government oversight."
How is this possible for any person who has even the slightest claim to being rational? The market, after all, is a place where economic decisions are made by agents who normally pay a heavy price for making mistakes. †Maybe not immediately but in time--the Enron fiasco is a case in point, as is the recent meltdown within what amounts to, in fact, a highly mixed--rather than a free market--American economy. No one in his right mind believes that market agents are all omniscient and/or supremely decent. There are rogues in all areas of life.
However it takes a very foolish individual to notice mistakes in the market--market failures, so called--while being oblivious to errors made by bureaucrats--political failures, that is. The so called rigorous government oversight is treated by such foolish folks as somehow guaranteed, as if people who move to Washington and other centers of regulatory power cannot err and all their oversight will be pure and wise. Not only is such an outlook naive and ignorant of one of the best ideas to emerge from economics, namely, public choice theory. †I is simply self-contradictory. †People in free markets are so prone to corruption while people in government are not! †How is this possible when both groups are people and in centers of power the incentives to guard against error are virtually nil?
Of course, the claim that Bernake, Summers, and Wall Street were all "entranced by the Greenspan-Chicago School notion" is balderdash to begin with. †Geenspan's early admiration for Ayn Rand's political economic philosophy has had very little if any impact on his work at the Fed. †Te very idea of the Fed is anathema to Rand's viewpoint and in the end also of the views of the late Milton Friedman who wrote Capitalism and Freedom (1961). †Ad the self-interest Greenspan referred to in October 2008 as the culprit has nothing at all to do with Rand's classical notion that what people ought to do in their lives is promote their rational self-interest, to pursue their human happiness in their lives.
So the premise of the idea Goodman advances and Barrett supports is flawed to the core. But even more importantly, where is the common sense of these people as they express such total faith in rigorous government oversight when, in fact, the government has had the power of such oversight since the Fed was founded back in 1913? A the Harvard economists Niall Ferguson pointed out in, of all places, The New York Times Magazine, back in May 2009, "The biggest blunder of all had nothing to do with deregulation...."
Someone needs to explain to Goodman and Barrett that when people have political power at their disposal, they cannot be counted upon to apply it fairly, sensibly, consistently, and competently to the task of managing other people, including those in the economy. What they can be counted upon to do is to push for an agenda of their own. This is for two reasons. First, they have no clue what their job description as "public servants" means since the public is, of course, a huge variety of human beings with extremely diverse interests; and most of these folks have goals of their own they are free to pursue with impunity while in office. That is what having sovereign immunity means, not having to answer personally to objections from the citizenry! †S that rigorous government oversight is but magical wishful thinking, nothing else.
Tibor R. Machan
Whenever I encounter the sentiment expressed in the following, I get pretty pessimistic about how today's commentators tend to think: "Goodman [the author of a free market bashing book, Past Due (Henry Holt, 2009)], a fair-minded reporter and a clear writer, demonstrates how both Bernake and Summers, along with most other major economists and Well Street plutocrats of the past two decades, became entranced by the Greenspan-Chicago School notion that financial institutions can be trusted to police one another in the absence of rigorous government oversight...." (NYTimes Book Review, 10/11/09, p. 17) Just consider that while the reviewer, the†Business Week managing editor Paul M. Barrett, shares Goodman's severe dislike of free markets and those who consider it, or whatever bits and piece of it exist, a promising instrument for dealing with the country's economy, he has complete faith in "rigorous government oversight."
How is this possible for any person who has even the slightest claim to being rational? The market, after all, is a place where economic decisions are made by agents who normally pay a heavy price for making mistakes. †Maybe not immediately but in time--the Enron fiasco is a case in point, as is the recent meltdown within what amounts to, in fact, a highly mixed--rather than a free market--American economy. No one in his right mind believes that market agents are all omniscient and/or supremely decent. There are rogues in all areas of life.
However it takes a very foolish individual to notice mistakes in the market--market failures, so called--while being oblivious to errors made by bureaucrats--political failures, that is. The so called rigorous government oversight is treated by such foolish folks as somehow guaranteed, as if people who move to Washington and other centers of regulatory power cannot err and all their oversight will be pure and wise. Not only is such an outlook naive and ignorant of one of the best ideas to emerge from economics, namely, public choice theory. †I is simply self-contradictory. †People in free markets are so prone to corruption while people in government are not! †How is this possible when both groups are people and in centers of power the incentives to guard against error are virtually nil?
Of course, the claim that Bernake, Summers, and Wall Street were all "entranced by the Greenspan-Chicago School notion" is balderdash to begin with. †Geenspan's early admiration for Ayn Rand's political economic philosophy has had very little if any impact on his work at the Fed. †Te very idea of the Fed is anathema to Rand's viewpoint and in the end also of the views of the late Milton Friedman who wrote Capitalism and Freedom (1961). †Ad the self-interest Greenspan referred to in October 2008 as the culprit has nothing at all to do with Rand's classical notion that what people ought to do in their lives is promote their rational self-interest, to pursue their human happiness in their lives.
So the premise of the idea Goodman advances and Barrett supports is flawed to the core. But even more importantly, where is the common sense of these people as they express such total faith in rigorous government oversight when, in fact, the government has had the power of such oversight since the Fed was founded back in 1913? A the Harvard economists Niall Ferguson pointed out in, of all places, The New York Times Magazine, back in May 2009, "The biggest blunder of all had nothing to do with deregulation...."
Someone needs to explain to Goodman and Barrett that when people have political power at their disposal, they cannot be counted upon to apply it fairly, sensibly, consistently, and competently to the task of managing other people, including those in the economy. What they can be counted upon to do is to push for an agenda of their own. This is for two reasons. First, they have no clue what their job description as "public servants" means since the public is, of course, a huge variety of human beings with extremely diverse interests; and most of these folks have goals of their own they are free to pursue with impunity while in office. That is what having sovereign immunity means, not having to answer personally to objections from the citizenry! †S that rigorous government oversight is but magical wishful thinking, nothing else.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Property Rights are Human Rights
Tibor R. Machan
A sad confusion that has once again made its way into general circulation is that the right to private property is a mere invention designed to legitimate greed and obscene riches. Actually, this is like claiming that the right to life is a mere invention designed to legitimate crude selfishness and unrestrained personal ambition. And actually there is something to this but nothing insidious, nothing bad in the end.
One's right to one's life is indeed a moral and political bulwark against others making use of one against one's will. The right to life is the principle by which slavery and involuntary servitude are morally and politically rebuffed, so they ought to be part of the legal system of any civilized, just human community even if they can be unwisely, imprudently applied by some. Greed is far more rife among those who would violate this right, even of the very fortunate and rich, for once anyone is subject to the willful intervention of others, there is no limit--it is an easy slippery slope. Kind of like the idea that well, very tall or healthy people should have their rights less vigilantly respected and protected then others since they are, well, so much better off and others need to be able to subdue them when in need. This is the old and wholly misplaced egalitarian--Procrustean--impulse, cutting everyone down to one size. Of course, it also means that those who supervise and administer the cutting will have far greater--unequal--powers over other people than will those whom they regiment about for this egalitarian purpose.
The way the attack on the right to private property gains some minimal moral mileage is by associating it with ruthless self-indulgence, say the activities we have recently witnessed by Bernie Madoff. Yet, of course, what made Madoff the criminal he is was precisely that he violated this right of thousands of trusting clients.
Besides that, the right to private property is most vital for those who are struggling to build up a nest egg, some resources beyond the minimum. And while sometimes what results is enormous wealth--Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are contemporary cases in point--mostly this right secures for people a decent, ongoing livelihood, not a whole lot more. Yet common sense suggests that most of us would welcome more and that there really is nothing wrong with that.
It is mostly the vice of green envy that motivates people to begrudge that this right gets at least a bit of respect and protection in modern societies, one that is of course very tentative. The wealth redistribution juggernaut just will not leave people's property in peace. The simple fact that some have unmet needs gives demagogues like Michael Moore the ammunition to attack the system of capitalism which, if it did exists at all, would be based on strict protection of private property rights. (Instead, of course, what is ubiquitous is not capitalism but state corporatism and the out of control welfare state, a welfare state the beneficiaries aren't poor unwed mothers, as the caricature would have it, but massive powerful institutions such as universities, farming conglomerates, corporations and all who are savvy at lobbying the government!)
The source of private property rights, judging by the most famous defender of the principle in modern political philosophy--yes, Virginia, it was also defended in ancient times, for example, in Aristotle's Politics--the English classical liberal John Locke, is that one is a sovereign individual, a self-governing, independent moral agent not to be bullied by others, not for others to manipulate, intrude upon or even nudge (a recent preferred public policy device of President Obama's favorite legal advisor, Professor Cass Sunstein). You and I and every human being is properly in charge of his or her life, not other people who may gain from that life only if you and I and anyone else chooses to be helpful and generous. Indeed, being helpful and generous would not be moral virtues if one didn't get the chance to be so freely, at one's own initiative--governments cannot make people decent!
It used to be thought that you and I and other people belong to a monarch or czar or some hotshot bully but this has been thoroughly discredited by the likes of Locke. Only now it is being brought back under the guise of fostering communities and avoiding the fallout of rugged individualism. But this is all a ruse aimed to intimidate any resistance there may be to the demagoguery that would enslave us, make us into serfs, once again. Let us hope it is competently resisted.
Tibor R. Machan
A sad confusion that has once again made its way into general circulation is that the right to private property is a mere invention designed to legitimate greed and obscene riches. Actually, this is like claiming that the right to life is a mere invention designed to legitimate crude selfishness and unrestrained personal ambition. And actually there is something to this but nothing insidious, nothing bad in the end.
One's right to one's life is indeed a moral and political bulwark against others making use of one against one's will. The right to life is the principle by which slavery and involuntary servitude are morally and politically rebuffed, so they ought to be part of the legal system of any civilized, just human community even if they can be unwisely, imprudently applied by some. Greed is far more rife among those who would violate this right, even of the very fortunate and rich, for once anyone is subject to the willful intervention of others, there is no limit--it is an easy slippery slope. Kind of like the idea that well, very tall or healthy people should have their rights less vigilantly respected and protected then others since they are, well, so much better off and others need to be able to subdue them when in need. This is the old and wholly misplaced egalitarian--Procrustean--impulse, cutting everyone down to one size. Of course, it also means that those who supervise and administer the cutting will have far greater--unequal--powers over other people than will those whom they regiment about for this egalitarian purpose.
The way the attack on the right to private property gains some minimal moral mileage is by associating it with ruthless self-indulgence, say the activities we have recently witnessed by Bernie Madoff. Yet, of course, what made Madoff the criminal he is was precisely that he violated this right of thousands of trusting clients.
Besides that, the right to private property is most vital for those who are struggling to build up a nest egg, some resources beyond the minimum. And while sometimes what results is enormous wealth--Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are contemporary cases in point--mostly this right secures for people a decent, ongoing livelihood, not a whole lot more. Yet common sense suggests that most of us would welcome more and that there really is nothing wrong with that.
It is mostly the vice of green envy that motivates people to begrudge that this right gets at least a bit of respect and protection in modern societies, one that is of course very tentative. The wealth redistribution juggernaut just will not leave people's property in peace. The simple fact that some have unmet needs gives demagogues like Michael Moore the ammunition to attack the system of capitalism which, if it did exists at all, would be based on strict protection of private property rights. (Instead, of course, what is ubiquitous is not capitalism but state corporatism and the out of control welfare state, a welfare state the beneficiaries aren't poor unwed mothers, as the caricature would have it, but massive powerful institutions such as universities, farming conglomerates, corporations and all who are savvy at lobbying the government!)
The source of private property rights, judging by the most famous defender of the principle in modern political philosophy--yes, Virginia, it was also defended in ancient times, for example, in Aristotle's Politics--the English classical liberal John Locke, is that one is a sovereign individual, a self-governing, independent moral agent not to be bullied by others, not for others to manipulate, intrude upon or even nudge (a recent preferred public policy device of President Obama's favorite legal advisor, Professor Cass Sunstein). You and I and every human being is properly in charge of his or her life, not other people who may gain from that life only if you and I and anyone else chooses to be helpful and generous. Indeed, being helpful and generous would not be moral virtues if one didn't get the chance to be so freely, at one's own initiative--governments cannot make people decent!
It used to be thought that you and I and other people belong to a monarch or czar or some hotshot bully but this has been thoroughly discredited by the likes of Locke. Only now it is being brought back under the guise of fostering communities and avoiding the fallout of rugged individualism. But this is all a ruse aimed to intimidate any resistance there may be to the demagoguery that would enslave us, make us into serfs, once again. Let us hope it is competently resisted.
Friday, October 09, 2009
The Desperate Defense of Obamacare
Tibor R. Machan
The political arena has abandoned all civility, it seems. It was coming our way once folks like Ralph Nader and Michael Moore got to be big wigs, speaking up in support of populism and a massive federal government.
The American citizenry tends to be middle of the road, championing a mixed economy but resisting either extensive statism or full freedom from coercive government. Most people seem to want the chance to get government to do their special bidding, so they will not sign up to restrain its powers completely. Neither, however, will they grant the government all the powers its most avid advocates would like. I have in mind the likes of Chuck Shumer and Henry Waxman among the Democrat politicians and some of the Republicans who border on authoritarianism.
But these days if you opposed government health care, you are a right-wing lunatic, a wild person or barbarian so there is use trying to argue with those who are committed to socialize the American medical system. They have dismissed all serious skeptics. The train must not be stopped as it is hurling toward full government involvement in all areas of society, at every level. This may not be objected to without getting those who love it to call you names and flatly ignore your concerns. Only compromisers will get some attention since they don't question the policies at their foundations.
I am a regular reader of the center left magazine The New Republic and even it is having a hard time remaining somewhat civil about opponents of President Obama's mission. In a recent issue the editors jump on board with those who have declare Americans who fervently oppose Obama's health care and insurance plans as racists of some kind. The writers said they don't much worry about this racism but insisted that it was that, not bona fide political disagreement about the direction the federal government is taking under this president. And The New York Review of Books, which I also read regularly, has rolled out Elizabeth Drew who tries to tarnish everyone who doesn't genuflect at the altar of medical statism.
Some in this administration are really quite un-American, seriously! I have in mind, among others, Obama's regulatory czar, Professor Cass Sunstein, who believes that (a) government is the source of our rights and (b) government should grant animals rights of the sort human beings have.
This is no small matter. After all, what is distinctive about the American political tradition is what it says in the Declaration of Independence, namely, that the rights everyone has, every human being, are ours by virtue of the fact that we are human beings. All of us except the hopelessly incapacitated have these rights, yet Professor Sunstein and his boss, we may assume, think that governments, in the fashion of monarchs of days gone by, hand out rights, meaning, grant privileges or permissions. (I always cringe when people say "Government allows us to...." because government as the American Founders and their teachers knew haven't any magical powers to allow anyone anything.) Government doesn't stand to us, the citizenry, as parents and nannies stand to children. Government is a group of hired administrators, not czars, kings or Caesars.
So when this president eagerly endorses the views of people such as Sunstein as he is charging ahead with transforming the country into something it had vehemently gotten away from when it was founded, opposition should be expected. And some of it will be loud, even a bit unruly.
Instead, however, of laying out a set of reasons for why this change ought to be undertaken and communicating them to us all, the critics are being denigrated, dismissed, and besmirched as right-wingers (which is a term that by rights should apply to people like Mussolini, Hitler and perhaps Peron, not to the likes of George Will and Dick Army). I am certainly no right-winger myself, having had a solid taste of Nazism in my early life. Nazism, by the way, refers to a German political party that worked to establish national socialism, not a system of private health care that's averse to collectivizing medicine.
But perhaps the hysterical attitude toward all who question Mr. Obama's rush to massive statism carries an implicitly hopeful message. The ideas behind this march are bankrupt so its champions will not talk them up. Instead they have to demonize those who are skeptical.
Tibor R. Machan
The political arena has abandoned all civility, it seems. It was coming our way once folks like Ralph Nader and Michael Moore got to be big wigs, speaking up in support of populism and a massive federal government.
The American citizenry tends to be middle of the road, championing a mixed economy but resisting either extensive statism or full freedom from coercive government. Most people seem to want the chance to get government to do their special bidding, so they will not sign up to restrain its powers completely. Neither, however, will they grant the government all the powers its most avid advocates would like. I have in mind the likes of Chuck Shumer and Henry Waxman among the Democrat politicians and some of the Republicans who border on authoritarianism.
But these days if you opposed government health care, you are a right-wing lunatic, a wild person or barbarian so there is use trying to argue with those who are committed to socialize the American medical system. They have dismissed all serious skeptics. The train must not be stopped as it is hurling toward full government involvement in all areas of society, at every level. This may not be objected to without getting those who love it to call you names and flatly ignore your concerns. Only compromisers will get some attention since they don't question the policies at their foundations.
I am a regular reader of the center left magazine The New Republic and even it is having a hard time remaining somewhat civil about opponents of President Obama's mission. In a recent issue the editors jump on board with those who have declare Americans who fervently oppose Obama's health care and insurance plans as racists of some kind. The writers said they don't much worry about this racism but insisted that it was that, not bona fide political disagreement about the direction the federal government is taking under this president. And The New York Review of Books, which I also read regularly, has rolled out Elizabeth Drew who tries to tarnish everyone who doesn't genuflect at the altar of medical statism.
Some in this administration are really quite un-American, seriously! I have in mind, among others, Obama's regulatory czar, Professor Cass Sunstein, who believes that (a) government is the source of our rights and (b) government should grant animals rights of the sort human beings have.
This is no small matter. After all, what is distinctive about the American political tradition is what it says in the Declaration of Independence, namely, that the rights everyone has, every human being, are ours by virtue of the fact that we are human beings. All of us except the hopelessly incapacitated have these rights, yet Professor Sunstein and his boss, we may assume, think that governments, in the fashion of monarchs of days gone by, hand out rights, meaning, grant privileges or permissions. (I always cringe when people say "Government allows us to...." because government as the American Founders and their teachers knew haven't any magical powers to allow anyone anything.) Government doesn't stand to us, the citizenry, as parents and nannies stand to children. Government is a group of hired administrators, not czars, kings or Caesars.
So when this president eagerly endorses the views of people such as Sunstein as he is charging ahead with transforming the country into something it had vehemently gotten away from when it was founded, opposition should be expected. And some of it will be loud, even a bit unruly.
Instead, however, of laying out a set of reasons for why this change ought to be undertaken and communicating them to us all, the critics are being denigrated, dismissed, and besmirched as right-wingers (which is a term that by rights should apply to people like Mussolini, Hitler and perhaps Peron, not to the likes of George Will and Dick Army). I am certainly no right-winger myself, having had a solid taste of Nazism in my early life. Nazism, by the way, refers to a German political party that worked to establish national socialism, not a system of private health care that's averse to collectivizing medicine.
But perhaps the hysterical attitude toward all who question Mr. Obama's rush to massive statism carries an implicitly hopeful message. The ideas behind this march are bankrupt so its champions will not talk them up. Instead they have to demonize those who are skeptical.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Letterman's Indiscretion
Tibor R. Machan
Just as with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, so with Letterman, the problem is that he is the boss, the top banana who wields considerable clout with the rest of those on the team. For their employees to say no to them is obviously somewhat difficult and risky. Never mind the law here, it is a matter of professional ethics. Just as teachers ought not to hit on students, so bosses should not hit on staff. It is taking advantage of one's legitimate power to exploit someone who did not sign up for romance but for work.
Sure, most adults know how to handle it all, with just a bit of integrity and courage. But staff ought not to be faced with a boss who strays from the standard of sticking to the parameters of the job. If it is the big love that comes up in the office, the parties ought to quit the professional relationship, move it outside the shop.
Obviously many people meet their one and only at work. That is to be expected. Better than at some bar, with the dim lights and booze coloring everyone's judgment. Work shows people virtually fully so others can see who they are and if there is appeal, acting on it often makes good sense. Except when it involves taking unfair advantage and the likelihood of intimidation which is quite frequently the case, unfortunately. Insisting that no one at work get involved personally is silly unless the job itself is seriously jeopardized, as it might be where, say, a doctor and nurse or pilot and flight attendant are involved. Even there a romance, even just casual dating, could commence but if the parties want to explore things fully, they will need to move outside the job situation.
What is not realistic is a demand for precise rules, some kind of exact code, about all this. Circumstances vary too much to be codified. But there are general principles by which one can be guided. The main one is that the duties involved in one's work may only very rarely be compromised and if there is even the smallest change they will be, the extracurricular activities must be taken off premises, so to speak.
Of course with Clinton it was gross. Ms. Lewinsky was an intern for heaven's sake, and he the president and commander in chief of the country. The man had a huge problem. And it was revealing how nearly all so called feminists gave him a pass--just goes to show you how much some people's principles manage to be flexible for them. Moreover, intern or not, fooling around with Monica violated the oath Clinton took upon marriage and pretty much discredited him, showed him to be untrustworthy. Which isn't what one would want from one's president or boss, for that matter.
Yes, much of these matters are within the purview of ethics, not of public policy or the law. Yes, there is a difference--when one is guided by ethics, one is supposed to do what is right of one's own free will, not under threat of punishment or sanctions. The right or wrong thing to do must be voluntary. But since these folks, both Bill Clinton and David Letterman, are very public in their different ways, even their private conduct is subject to widespread inspection and evaluation. (Too bad the lawyers get involved so often--it obscures the distinction between private and public malpractice. But malpractice it often is, nonetheless.)
It would be welcome to see these public figures managing their affairs more sensibly, at least discretely. They might then set something of an example for their admirers and viewers instead of becoming a disappointment for them. But it just goes to show you, there is no way to guarantee human decency. Even those granted considerable confidence by the rest of us keep falling down.
It all suggests that the last thing we ought to do is to entrust any of these people with power--doing the wrong thing comes much easier when you have it.
Tibor R. Machan
Just as with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, so with Letterman, the problem is that he is the boss, the top banana who wields considerable clout with the rest of those on the team. For their employees to say no to them is obviously somewhat difficult and risky. Never mind the law here, it is a matter of professional ethics. Just as teachers ought not to hit on students, so bosses should not hit on staff. It is taking advantage of one's legitimate power to exploit someone who did not sign up for romance but for work.
Sure, most adults know how to handle it all, with just a bit of integrity and courage. But staff ought not to be faced with a boss who strays from the standard of sticking to the parameters of the job. If it is the big love that comes up in the office, the parties ought to quit the professional relationship, move it outside the shop.
Obviously many people meet their one and only at work. That is to be expected. Better than at some bar, with the dim lights and booze coloring everyone's judgment. Work shows people virtually fully so others can see who they are and if there is appeal, acting on it often makes good sense. Except when it involves taking unfair advantage and the likelihood of intimidation which is quite frequently the case, unfortunately. Insisting that no one at work get involved personally is silly unless the job itself is seriously jeopardized, as it might be where, say, a doctor and nurse or pilot and flight attendant are involved. Even there a romance, even just casual dating, could commence but if the parties want to explore things fully, they will need to move outside the job situation.
What is not realistic is a demand for precise rules, some kind of exact code, about all this. Circumstances vary too much to be codified. But there are general principles by which one can be guided. The main one is that the duties involved in one's work may only very rarely be compromised and if there is even the smallest change they will be, the extracurricular activities must be taken off premises, so to speak.
Of course with Clinton it was gross. Ms. Lewinsky was an intern for heaven's sake, and he the president and commander in chief of the country. The man had a huge problem. And it was revealing how nearly all so called feminists gave him a pass--just goes to show you how much some people's principles manage to be flexible for them. Moreover, intern or not, fooling around with Monica violated the oath Clinton took upon marriage and pretty much discredited him, showed him to be untrustworthy. Which isn't what one would want from one's president or boss, for that matter.
Yes, much of these matters are within the purview of ethics, not of public policy or the law. Yes, there is a difference--when one is guided by ethics, one is supposed to do what is right of one's own free will, not under threat of punishment or sanctions. The right or wrong thing to do must be voluntary. But since these folks, both Bill Clinton and David Letterman, are very public in their different ways, even their private conduct is subject to widespread inspection and evaluation. (Too bad the lawyers get involved so often--it obscures the distinction between private and public malpractice. But malpractice it often is, nonetheless.)
It would be welcome to see these public figures managing their affairs more sensibly, at least discretely. They might then set something of an example for their admirers and viewers instead of becoming a disappointment for them. But it just goes to show you, there is no way to guarantee human decency. Even those granted considerable confidence by the rest of us keep falling down.
It all suggests that the last thing we ought to do is to entrust any of these people with power--doing the wrong thing comes much easier when you have it.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Problems with Pragmatism
Tibor R. Machan
In my columns I return to pragmatism now and then in part because so many prominent, influential folks embrace it and use it to justify the approach they take to public affairs. One such individual is President Barack Obama who has declared more than once that he is fiercely “loyal to economic pragmatism.” This in contrast to those he and many on his team regard as being ideological, people who, for example, adhere to a general economic viewpoint such as socialism, capitalism, welfare statism or the like.
Among the many 20th century thinkers, the economist John Maynard Keynes (the leading guide of Mr. Obama’s economic policies—via such figures as Princeton University’s Nobel Laureate and columnist for The New York Times Paul Krugman) was a dedicated pragmatist. About a decade before he wrote his most prominent and influential book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, Keynes wrote his very brief but packed little booklet, The End of Laissez Faire (1926), based on lectures he delivered in England and Germany the year before.
In this book, Keynes goes to great lengths to trace the history of both the term and the economic philosophy of laissez faire economics. After doing his best to keep a straight face about it all, he eventually shows his total disdain for the idea, mainly because he associates it with a somewhat vulgarized version of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, namely, the doctrine of the survival of the fittest in human social life, or Social Darwinism (as associated with Herbert Spencer).
Keynes is disgusted by this view, treating it as nothing but an excuse for the powerful in a society, including the economically successful, to remain undisturbed in their quest to remain powerful and rich. As Keynes saw it, the principles of laissez faire had as their purpose to make it easiest on the money seekers, to facilitate the pursuit of profit by the most lucky in society, never mind what wreckage they leave behind with all the poor who have to go without because of their greed and avarice. Keynes saw the free market as a zero sum game!
A particularly illustrious analogy of Keynes in his little book has to do with the wilds where in times of scarcity only the giraffes, with their long necks able to reach atop trees with abundant leaves, manage to survive and flourish, with all other animals left to suffer. He comments: “If we have the welfare of the giraffes at heart, we must not overlook the suffering of the shorter necks who are starved out, or the overfeeding of the long-necked ones, of the evil look of anxiety or struggling greediness which overcasts the mild faces of the herd.”
So as to remedy the unfairness the analogy is supposed to capture about laissez faire economic policy, Keynes recommends that governments must get involved an help level the playing field. In the process he dismisses the case for laissez faire as resting on nothing more than empty abstractions. As he put it, “We cannot … settle on abstract grounds, but must handle on its merits in detail what [Edmund] Burke termed ‘one of the finest problems in legislation, namely, to determine what the State ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual exertion.’”
There is much to chew over here but I will focus on just one thing, namely, the point that economic policy needs to be determined case by case. Each issue “must be handled on its merits in detail.”
This is a pragmatic myth. No issue can be handled divorced from history and theory. If it isn’t going to be laissez faire, it will be something else and, indeed, throughout the book Keynes is very sympathetic toward socialism except for the fact that it isn’t economically feasible. But the sentiments behind it have merit. And the cases then are to be dealt with on their merit, meaning, of course, on whether they conform to socialist aspirations or are still better left to be dealt with by individuals’ exertion.
There is no such thing as leaving problems to be solved on their individual merit—it is humanly impossible except for people who act randomly. From this it follows that the dispute isn’t between a pragmatist and a laissez faire economic policy but between some other system and laissez faire. And when it comes to that, laissez faire is indeed the most promising system and departing from it is simply very costly.
Only by inventing magical devices such as Keynes’ famous multiplier can this be denied, a device that plainly defies the laws of logic and metaphysics. This is one reason why Keynes wants to discourage us from considering abstract grounds! But it will not do. And the failure of the New Deal illustrates this clearly.
Tibor R. Machan
In my columns I return to pragmatism now and then in part because so many prominent, influential folks embrace it and use it to justify the approach they take to public affairs. One such individual is President Barack Obama who has declared more than once that he is fiercely “loyal to economic pragmatism.” This in contrast to those he and many on his team regard as being ideological, people who, for example, adhere to a general economic viewpoint such as socialism, capitalism, welfare statism or the like.
Among the many 20th century thinkers, the economist John Maynard Keynes (the leading guide of Mr. Obama’s economic policies—via such figures as Princeton University’s Nobel Laureate and columnist for The New York Times Paul Krugman) was a dedicated pragmatist. About a decade before he wrote his most prominent and influential book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, Keynes wrote his very brief but packed little booklet, The End of Laissez Faire (1926), based on lectures he delivered in England and Germany the year before.
In this book, Keynes goes to great lengths to trace the history of both the term and the economic philosophy of laissez faire economics. After doing his best to keep a straight face about it all, he eventually shows his total disdain for the idea, mainly because he associates it with a somewhat vulgarized version of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, namely, the doctrine of the survival of the fittest in human social life, or Social Darwinism (as associated with Herbert Spencer).
Keynes is disgusted by this view, treating it as nothing but an excuse for the powerful in a society, including the economically successful, to remain undisturbed in their quest to remain powerful and rich. As Keynes saw it, the principles of laissez faire had as their purpose to make it easiest on the money seekers, to facilitate the pursuit of profit by the most lucky in society, never mind what wreckage they leave behind with all the poor who have to go without because of their greed and avarice. Keynes saw the free market as a zero sum game!
A particularly illustrious analogy of Keynes in his little book has to do with the wilds where in times of scarcity only the giraffes, with their long necks able to reach atop trees with abundant leaves, manage to survive and flourish, with all other animals left to suffer. He comments: “If we have the welfare of the giraffes at heart, we must not overlook the suffering of the shorter necks who are starved out, or the overfeeding of the long-necked ones, of the evil look of anxiety or struggling greediness which overcasts the mild faces of the herd.”
So as to remedy the unfairness the analogy is supposed to capture about laissez faire economic policy, Keynes recommends that governments must get involved an help level the playing field. In the process he dismisses the case for laissez faire as resting on nothing more than empty abstractions. As he put it, “We cannot … settle on abstract grounds, but must handle on its merits in detail what [Edmund] Burke termed ‘one of the finest problems in legislation, namely, to determine what the State ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual exertion.’”
There is much to chew over here but I will focus on just one thing, namely, the point that economic policy needs to be determined case by case. Each issue “must be handled on its merits in detail.”
This is a pragmatic myth. No issue can be handled divorced from history and theory. If it isn’t going to be laissez faire, it will be something else and, indeed, throughout the book Keynes is very sympathetic toward socialism except for the fact that it isn’t economically feasible. But the sentiments behind it have merit. And the cases then are to be dealt with on their merit, meaning, of course, on whether they conform to socialist aspirations or are still better left to be dealt with by individuals’ exertion.
There is no such thing as leaving problems to be solved on their individual merit—it is humanly impossible except for people who act randomly. From this it follows that the dispute isn’t between a pragmatist and a laissez faire economic policy but between some other system and laissez faire. And when it comes to that, laissez faire is indeed the most promising system and departing from it is simply very costly.
Only by inventing magical devices such as Keynes’ famous multiplier can this be denied, a device that plainly defies the laws of logic and metaphysics. This is one reason why Keynes wants to discourage us from considering abstract grounds! But it will not do. And the failure of the New Deal illustrates this clearly.
Coercion and Laziness
Tibor R. Machan
When people have a strong urge to get something accomplished they cannot--or perhaps better put are unwilling to--do by themselves, they often insist that it must be done by the government. This is what has been happening with the whole health care/insurance fiasco. Yes, it is very desirable to be insured against medical mishap or disaster. Yes, many are uninsured, though not so many as the alarmists in the debate claim. And yes, those most alarmed aren't going to be able to afford to insure everyone they want to see insured. So, presto, government is urged to force everyone to contribute to the system whether or not this is a priority for them.
A good example came to light this last Sunday (October 3rd, 2009) when The New York Times Magazine profiled the actress Anna Deavere Smith who is about to open a show at the Second Stage Theater in Manhattan, "Let Me Down Easy," in which she plays 20 characters and unabashedly promotes the Obama type health care reform. She will recite monologues on this topic, mostly attempts to intimidate those who think that people should obtain their own insurance or should seek help from volunteers. It doesn't even occur to the lady that help is supposed to be granted voluntarily, not at the point of the gun. Here is part of her screed:
"...And if you fail, It's your own fault-- Why should anybody else have to help you? And I reject that. It's inconsistent with my values. I disagree very strongly with it...."
Notice that this is all a distortion of the real issue. Health insurance is every adult's own responsibility and if some are simply unable to buy it, there is the option of appealing to others for help. (When they neglect to buy it and spend the money on other, more satisfying purchases, that is no one's fault but their own.) And the appeal may have to be persistent. And, yes, at times it will fail.
But none of that authorizes anyone to take out a gun and conscript the support of other people, people who may well have important matters to accomplish with their limited resources. Or even if they do not, they aren't to be used by Ms. Smith and Mr. Obama against their own will. Has Ms. Smith never heard that slavery and involuntary servitude were abolished? Does she not grasp the simple truth that one has a right to one's own life and that to give of that life one must be free to do so, not be coerced by others? Has she never figured out that charity, generosity, compassion and such are all morally worthwhile only if volunteered? And has she never realized that she is not the boss of everyone with whom she disagrees?
To disagree very strongly with the idea that others ought to obtain health insurance or health care without coercing anyone is no justification for violating their human rights. Even if it were a terribly greedy, heartless thing not to help those who need health insurance and health care, that would still not suffice as a reason to violate their right to life, liberty or property. But by no means does it have to be for that reason that many refuse to buckle under Obama's massive wealth redistribution health program.
Suppose back in the days of chattel slavery the masters could make out a pretty good case that they desperately needed the work of their slaves, that without that work they would be very hard up. Would that have made slavery OK? No, not at all. So the dire needs of many for health insurance and health care similarly fail to support any kind of coercion against the rest.
Perhaps it is just plain laziness. It is far more cool to put on a play in Manhattan than to start up a charitable foundation and go out to solicit sufficient funds to help those who need health insurance and health care. Or to get out and solicit the unpaid work of health care professionals who could remedy matters for those who cannot afford health care.
It is sad that so many civilized human beings so cavalierly resort to forcing others to do their bidding, even granting that their cause is a respectable one.
Tibor R. Machan
When people have a strong urge to get something accomplished they cannot--or perhaps better put are unwilling to--do by themselves, they often insist that it must be done by the government. This is what has been happening with the whole health care/insurance fiasco. Yes, it is very desirable to be insured against medical mishap or disaster. Yes, many are uninsured, though not so many as the alarmists in the debate claim. And yes, those most alarmed aren't going to be able to afford to insure everyone they want to see insured. So, presto, government is urged to force everyone to contribute to the system whether or not this is a priority for them.
A good example came to light this last Sunday (October 3rd, 2009) when The New York Times Magazine profiled the actress Anna Deavere Smith who is about to open a show at the Second Stage Theater in Manhattan, "Let Me Down Easy," in which she plays 20 characters and unabashedly promotes the Obama type health care reform. She will recite monologues on this topic, mostly attempts to intimidate those who think that people should obtain their own insurance or should seek help from volunteers. It doesn't even occur to the lady that help is supposed to be granted voluntarily, not at the point of the gun. Here is part of her screed:
"...And if you fail, It's your own fault-- Why should anybody else have to help you? And I reject that. It's inconsistent with my values. I disagree very strongly with it...."
Notice that this is all a distortion of the real issue. Health insurance is every adult's own responsibility and if some are simply unable to buy it, there is the option of appealing to others for help. (When they neglect to buy it and spend the money on other, more satisfying purchases, that is no one's fault but their own.) And the appeal may have to be persistent. And, yes, at times it will fail.
But none of that authorizes anyone to take out a gun and conscript the support of other people, people who may well have important matters to accomplish with their limited resources. Or even if they do not, they aren't to be used by Ms. Smith and Mr. Obama against their own will. Has Ms. Smith never heard that slavery and involuntary servitude were abolished? Does she not grasp the simple truth that one has a right to one's own life and that to give of that life one must be free to do so, not be coerced by others? Has she never figured out that charity, generosity, compassion and such are all morally worthwhile only if volunteered? And has she never realized that she is not the boss of everyone with whom she disagrees?
To disagree very strongly with the idea that others ought to obtain health insurance or health care without coercing anyone is no justification for violating their human rights. Even if it were a terribly greedy, heartless thing not to help those who need health insurance and health care, that would still not suffice as a reason to violate their right to life, liberty or property. But by no means does it have to be for that reason that many refuse to buckle under Obama's massive wealth redistribution health program.
Suppose back in the days of chattel slavery the masters could make out a pretty good case that they desperately needed the work of their slaves, that without that work they would be very hard up. Would that have made slavery OK? No, not at all. So the dire needs of many for health insurance and health care similarly fail to support any kind of coercion against the rest.
Perhaps it is just plain laziness. It is far more cool to put on a play in Manhattan than to start up a charitable foundation and go out to solicit sufficient funds to help those who need health insurance and health care. Or to get out and solicit the unpaid work of health care professionals who could remedy matters for those who cannot afford health care.
It is sad that so many civilized human beings so cavalierly resort to forcing others to do their bidding, even granting that their cause is a respectable one.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Must Corporations Be In Bed With Government?
Tibor R. Machan
For Karl Marx one reason laissez-faire capitalism would not last is that he believed big corporations would always subvert governments. The idea in support of such an economic system is that government can and must stay out of economic affairs. Economics, for champions of the fully free market, should be like religion, completely separate from government. Only that way would there be a level playing field in the economy, at least as level as that is realistically possible. (Clearly some people are born more talented, of parents with more resources than others, with physical advantages others don't have--so the idea of a completely level playing field is ridiculous.)
But critics of capitalism maintain that this level playing field is impossible to obtain when big corporations can appeal for support from governments. After all, even the most fair minded politician in a democracy requires support so as to get elected to office. And big corporations are in a better position to supply such support that small shops, universities, or other special interest groups. Which means big corporations will always be able to gain unfair advantages from governments. And so there really is no hope for a system of pure laissez faire capitalism, a fully free market such as advocated by libertarians. Business will always have the government on its side with all the powers it can offer to help out.
And this does sound like a good point. It is made these days by the likes of Ralph Nader, Michael Moore and others who claim that capitalism is inherently corrupt. Except for the fact that such a system is not actually a free market capitalist one, they are right. Once the government is legally allowed to accept favors from the citizenry, it is no big wonder that the richest of those citizens, mostly corporations, will be favored by governments. The task for those who support the idea of a genuine--bona fide free market, laissez faire--capitalist system is to establish legal bans against government and business coziness. Again, this is in principle akin to the ban on cozy church and state relations
Is this some kind of pie in the sky aspiration, to have a system in which it is illegitimate for business and government to get into bed together? Well, it would appear to be difficult, of course, since corporations do have the resources to seek out government favors--although so do some other institutions, such as unions and universities. But just because they can, it doesn't follow that they have to and will. Quite possibly laws and public policy can be established that make the ties between business and government illegal. What this requires is vigorous education, plain and simple, just as do all the provisions that make a political system less and less corrupt. Corruption is always a temptation and there is never any guarantee against it. All that is available to guard against corruption is citizenship vigilance and intelligence.
But many difficult objectives have been achieved throughout human history, so why not this? Slavery, which is so tempting for some, got abolished. The military draft is gone, at least in America. There is a first amendment in the USA that prohibits government censorship and any religious influence in government. Such improvements, and many others that rendered legal systems more and more just, could be accomplished and have been, despite enormous resistance. So why not the separation between business and government?
There is much to be said for such separation, even for big corporations--leaving them all to compete in a genuine free market without special help from government would seem to be something desirable all around. Yes, some will try to defeat that kind of system, thinking they can gain advantages not available to others. But over the long haul this is a myth. Corruption tends to undermine the whole system and produce harm to all those who are part of it, at least intermittently. So the case for cleaning up the system, for vigilant opposition to favoritism even when big powerful moneyed interest are vying for it, is a good one.
So while it is undoubtedly true that freedom is always susceptible to being undermined, in the last analysis there really isn't any better alternative. Such modern thinkers as John Maynard Keynes have tried to deny this--check out Kaynes' little 1926 book, The End of Laissez Faire--but they could present no alternative, nothing but the myth of the educated ruling elite. Yet throughout history this alternative has proven to be even more vulnerable to corruption than capitalism has ever been.
Tibor R. Machan
For Karl Marx one reason laissez-faire capitalism would not last is that he believed big corporations would always subvert governments. The idea in support of such an economic system is that government can and must stay out of economic affairs. Economics, for champions of the fully free market, should be like religion, completely separate from government. Only that way would there be a level playing field in the economy, at least as level as that is realistically possible. (Clearly some people are born more talented, of parents with more resources than others, with physical advantages others don't have--so the idea of a completely level playing field is ridiculous.)
But critics of capitalism maintain that this level playing field is impossible to obtain when big corporations can appeal for support from governments. After all, even the most fair minded politician in a democracy requires support so as to get elected to office. And big corporations are in a better position to supply such support that small shops, universities, or other special interest groups. Which means big corporations will always be able to gain unfair advantages from governments. And so there really is no hope for a system of pure laissez faire capitalism, a fully free market such as advocated by libertarians. Business will always have the government on its side with all the powers it can offer to help out.
And this does sound like a good point. It is made these days by the likes of Ralph Nader, Michael Moore and others who claim that capitalism is inherently corrupt. Except for the fact that such a system is not actually a free market capitalist one, they are right. Once the government is legally allowed to accept favors from the citizenry, it is no big wonder that the richest of those citizens, mostly corporations, will be favored by governments. The task for those who support the idea of a genuine--bona fide free market, laissez faire--capitalist system is to establish legal bans against government and business coziness. Again, this is in principle akin to the ban on cozy church and state relations
Is this some kind of pie in the sky aspiration, to have a system in which it is illegitimate for business and government to get into bed together? Well, it would appear to be difficult, of course, since corporations do have the resources to seek out government favors--although so do some other institutions, such as unions and universities. But just because they can, it doesn't follow that they have to and will. Quite possibly laws and public policy can be established that make the ties between business and government illegal. What this requires is vigorous education, plain and simple, just as do all the provisions that make a political system less and less corrupt. Corruption is always a temptation and there is never any guarantee against it. All that is available to guard against corruption is citizenship vigilance and intelligence.
But many difficult objectives have been achieved throughout human history, so why not this? Slavery, which is so tempting for some, got abolished. The military draft is gone, at least in America. There is a first amendment in the USA that prohibits government censorship and any religious influence in government. Such improvements, and many others that rendered legal systems more and more just, could be accomplished and have been, despite enormous resistance. So why not the separation between business and government?
There is much to be said for such separation, even for big corporations--leaving them all to compete in a genuine free market without special help from government would seem to be something desirable all around. Yes, some will try to defeat that kind of system, thinking they can gain advantages not available to others. But over the long haul this is a myth. Corruption tends to undermine the whole system and produce harm to all those who are part of it, at least intermittently. So the case for cleaning up the system, for vigilant opposition to favoritism even when big powerful moneyed interest are vying for it, is a good one.
So while it is undoubtedly true that freedom is always susceptible to being undermined, in the last analysis there really isn't any better alternative. Such modern thinkers as John Maynard Keynes have tried to deny this--check out Kaynes' little 1926 book, The End of Laissez Faire--but they could present no alternative, nothing but the myth of the educated ruling elite. Yet throughout history this alternative has proven to be even more vulnerable to corruption than capitalism has ever been.
My Economic Vindication
Tibor R. Machan
When I was an undergraduate at Claremont Men's (now McKenna) College back
in the early 1960s, I took introductory economics from the now late
Professor Proctor Thomson, one of the less well-known Chicago Boys,
economists who studied under the late Milton Friedman and his colleagues at
the University of Chicago. He was a fascinating teacher and worked very
hard at explaining to us the mysteries of contemporary neo-classical
economics.
One of his lessons I recall well dealt with the concept of marginal
utility. He illustrated it by his own coffee drinking, pointing out that
the first cup for him was far more important than the next, and the next
was more important than the one that followed, etc. "More important" meant
pretty much the same thing as "of greater utility," utility in economics
being something entirely subjective, determined by the individual consumer
of goods and services, with no possibility of what was referred to as
"interpersonal utility comparison," which is to say of comparing one
person's preference with those of others. (I was a bit skeptical about
this myself since I thought my own preference for a painkiller when I have
a powerful headache might indeed be more important than your preference
for an M&M. Though this doesn’t by any means imply that I may take your
M&M away so I could get a painkiller!)
Another lesson that Professor Thomson tried to teach us had to do with
what was then considered to be a powerful concept of the famous British
economist, John Maynard Keynes, namely, the multiplier. This is the idea
that when the government injects funds into the economy, those funds
actually turn out to multiply and thus amount to greater economic value
(stimulus) than what they initially amounted to as taxes collected or
money borrowed. This is one reason that contemporary champions of
Keynesian economics such as Princeton University's Nobel Laureate in
economic science--and very influential columnist for The New York
Times--Paul Krugman are enthusiastic supporters of government stimulus
packages, so much so that they are critical of President Obama for not
injecting even more such stimulus into the economy (via public works,
borrowing, and such projects as clunkers for new cars).
When I was being instructed in the workings of the multiplier way back
then, I was a skeptic. I could not grasp how something could come from
nothing--if one injects $5 billion by way of government spending, how
could one get $7 billion worth of economic run for one's money? Never
mind that the entire scheme seemed thoroughly immoral to me--taking from
Peter to beef up the economic welfare of Paul just doesn't square with
admonitions such as "Do not steal."
But most economists--especially macroeconomists who focused on the total
economic system of the country and even the globe--were not very
interested in morality back then and few are interested in it now, come to
think of it. Yet even as a part of pure, value-free science the
multiplier just baffled me. You rob Peter of $5 and hand it to Paul and
it becomes $6 or $7. How is that possible? Especially when those who
administer the process will take their own bit from the original
amount--politicians and bureaucrats certainly don't do their part in all
this without compensation and are also prone to waste a lot of resources!
Professor Thomson nearly flunked me--I got a gentleman's C--in the course,
despite my having grasped well enough most of the rest of micro and
macroeconomics he taught us. (He was memorable, by the way, for
encouraging debates in class--I recall having many arguments with one
classmate who was an avid socialist!) He thought, however, that I had
this blind spot and didn't want to reward it, while I thought I would be
betraying my own loyalty to the metaphysics of Aristotle who thought
something couldn't come from nothing (as opposed to the modern philosopher
David Hume, who believed that if we could imagine it, at least it is
conceivable that something would emerge from nothing).
Well, I read this piece in the October 1 issue of The Wall Street Journal,
by Harvard Professor Robert J. Barro and recent graduate Charles J.
Redlick in which lo and behold the multiplier is debunked, good and hard.
According to the authors "The available empirical evidence does not
support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus
spending stimulus programs will likely raise GDP by less than the increase
in government spending." Moreover, they add, "there is empirical support
for the proposition that tax rate reductions will increase real GDP."
I must say I feel vindicated!
Tibor R. Machan
When I was an undergraduate at Claremont Men's (now McKenna) College back
in the early 1960s, I took introductory economics from the now late
Professor Proctor Thomson, one of the less well-known Chicago Boys,
economists who studied under the late Milton Friedman and his colleagues at
the University of Chicago. He was a fascinating teacher and worked very
hard at explaining to us the mysteries of contemporary neo-classical
economics.
One of his lessons I recall well dealt with the concept of marginal
utility. He illustrated it by his own coffee drinking, pointing out that
the first cup for him was far more important than the next, and the next
was more important than the one that followed, etc. "More important" meant
pretty much the same thing as "of greater utility," utility in economics
being something entirely subjective, determined by the individual consumer
of goods and services, with no possibility of what was referred to as
"interpersonal utility comparison," which is to say of comparing one
person's preference with those of others. (I was a bit skeptical about
this myself since I thought my own preference for a painkiller when I have
a powerful headache might indeed be more important than your preference
for an M&M. Though this doesn’t by any means imply that I may take your
M&M away so I could get a painkiller!)
Another lesson that Professor Thomson tried to teach us had to do with
what was then considered to be a powerful concept of the famous British
economist, John Maynard Keynes, namely, the multiplier. This is the idea
that when the government injects funds into the economy, those funds
actually turn out to multiply and thus amount to greater economic value
(stimulus) than what they initially amounted to as taxes collected or
money borrowed. This is one reason that contemporary champions of
Keynesian economics such as Princeton University's Nobel Laureate in
economic science--and very influential columnist for The New York
Times--Paul Krugman are enthusiastic supporters of government stimulus
packages, so much so that they are critical of President Obama for not
injecting even more such stimulus into the economy (via public works,
borrowing, and such projects as clunkers for new cars).
When I was being instructed in the workings of the multiplier way back
then, I was a skeptic. I could not grasp how something could come from
nothing--if one injects $5 billion by way of government spending, how
could one get $7 billion worth of economic run for one's money? Never
mind that the entire scheme seemed thoroughly immoral to me--taking from
Peter to beef up the economic welfare of Paul just doesn't square with
admonitions such as "Do not steal."
But most economists--especially macroeconomists who focused on the total
economic system of the country and even the globe--were not very
interested in morality back then and few are interested in it now, come to
think of it. Yet even as a part of pure, value-free science the
multiplier just baffled me. You rob Peter of $5 and hand it to Paul and
it becomes $6 or $7. How is that possible? Especially when those who
administer the process will take their own bit from the original
amount--politicians and bureaucrats certainly don't do their part in all
this without compensation and are also prone to waste a lot of resources!
Professor Thomson nearly flunked me--I got a gentleman's C--in the course,
despite my having grasped well enough most of the rest of micro and
macroeconomics he taught us. (He was memorable, by the way, for
encouraging debates in class--I recall having many arguments with one
classmate who was an avid socialist!) He thought, however, that I had
this blind spot and didn't want to reward it, while I thought I would be
betraying my own loyalty to the metaphysics of Aristotle who thought
something couldn't come from nothing (as opposed to the modern philosopher
David Hume, who believed that if we could imagine it, at least it is
conceivable that something would emerge from nothing).
Well, I read this piece in the October 1 issue of The Wall Street Journal,
by Harvard Professor Robert J. Barro and recent graduate Charles J.
Redlick in which lo and behold the multiplier is debunked, good and hard.
According to the authors "The available empirical evidence does not
support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus
spending stimulus programs will likely raise GDP by less than the increase
in government spending." Moreover, they add, "there is empirical support
for the proposition that tax rate reductions will increase real GDP."
I must say I feel vindicated!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The Price of Compromise
Tibor R. Machan
Politics is sometimes said to be the art of compromise and this rings true enough, given the messiness of contemporary politics. Over the centuries those who aspired to rule and the later govern others had to contend with the fact that many don't like to be ruled and when it comes to being governed, they hold that certain standards apply to those who would govern. So compromises became the norm between the two factions. (There is no necessary progress revealed toward a just and free world in human history although there has been some. Compromises may just give away the bit of progress that has been made.)
The most important standard for making progress in governance is to institute a legal order that amounts to the protection of the rights of citizens, to secure their individual human rights. However much matters may vary from time to time and place to place, so long as what is at issue is human community life, some matters remain the same and this is such a one, namely that human beings require for their flourishing in life to be free of coercion. Oppression, regimentation, forcible manipulation are all enemies of humanity, even when many people fail to acknowledge this and placidly submit. (In personal relations, too, people often refuse to assert themselves but this doesn't make their subservience a good thing for them!)
The principles of human liberty, however universally valid for all individuals, are always under threat from people who would rather subdue others than deal with them on mutually agreed to terms. This is evident today in nearly all the controversies that dominate public affairs. Take that horrible war on drugs. Here is a cause that is mostly pushed by conservatives and it is a clear compromise of the principle of individual liberty. Or take such by now complied to policies as social security and Medicare. For the sake of some people running some other people's lives to secure them certain apparent benefits--often promoted under the banner of the public or common good--freedom is tossed aside.
Oh, there are numerous excuses for this, yes, but one thing is for sure. Once the compromise is accomplished, it is nearly impossible to recover the principle that is being violated. Consider, for example, that one argument in favor of a public option--that is to say, government provision of health insurance paid for by taxpayers whether they choose to or not--is that Americans have already accepted Medicare and many other government welfare measures, so how can they insist on rejecting government interference in this case? Surely not on principle! So why now, why here?
Yes, perhaps the answer is that enough is enough but this just will not work. The logic of the slippery slope defeats it. Once you accept that government ought to take care of our personal, private, and social--as distinct from public--problems, there is no principled reason to reject the next step toward further government encroachment. It may cost too much but then it is always possible to soak the rich or something, since no principle protects them or anyone else whose resources can be confiscated to fund it all--or just borrow against members of future generations who aren't around to even vote!
Republicans who protest that the public option is socialized medicine have no leg to stand on, given AMTRAK and the US Postal Service and hundreds, even thousands of other measures they accept which amount to robbing Peter to pay Paul in our society. That is the price of compromise--you have lost the argument since you have no principle on which to base it. Once you have accepted just a little slavery, a bit of involuntary servitude for the citizens of your community, why not go further? Why not conscript their labors and resources whenever you see something important to pursue, just go for it. The pragmatists say, you need to judge things on an individual basis but this is basically nonsense, like saying we should judge rape that way.
Without principles there is no way to judge, to evaluate. All that's left is power--do you have it to get your way or don't you?
Tibor R. Machan
Politics is sometimes said to be the art of compromise and this rings true enough, given the messiness of contemporary politics. Over the centuries those who aspired to rule and the later govern others had to contend with the fact that many don't like to be ruled and when it comes to being governed, they hold that certain standards apply to those who would govern. So compromises became the norm between the two factions. (There is no necessary progress revealed toward a just and free world in human history although there has been some. Compromises may just give away the bit of progress that has been made.)
The most important standard for making progress in governance is to institute a legal order that amounts to the protection of the rights of citizens, to secure their individual human rights. However much matters may vary from time to time and place to place, so long as what is at issue is human community life, some matters remain the same and this is such a one, namely that human beings require for their flourishing in life to be free of coercion. Oppression, regimentation, forcible manipulation are all enemies of humanity, even when many people fail to acknowledge this and placidly submit. (In personal relations, too, people often refuse to assert themselves but this doesn't make their subservience a good thing for them!)
The principles of human liberty, however universally valid for all individuals, are always under threat from people who would rather subdue others than deal with them on mutually agreed to terms. This is evident today in nearly all the controversies that dominate public affairs. Take that horrible war on drugs. Here is a cause that is mostly pushed by conservatives and it is a clear compromise of the principle of individual liberty. Or take such by now complied to policies as social security and Medicare. For the sake of some people running some other people's lives to secure them certain apparent benefits--often promoted under the banner of the public or common good--freedom is tossed aside.
Oh, there are numerous excuses for this, yes, but one thing is for sure. Once the compromise is accomplished, it is nearly impossible to recover the principle that is being violated. Consider, for example, that one argument in favor of a public option--that is to say, government provision of health insurance paid for by taxpayers whether they choose to or not--is that Americans have already accepted Medicare and many other government welfare measures, so how can they insist on rejecting government interference in this case? Surely not on principle! So why now, why here?
Yes, perhaps the answer is that enough is enough but this just will not work. The logic of the slippery slope defeats it. Once you accept that government ought to take care of our personal, private, and social--as distinct from public--problems, there is no principled reason to reject the next step toward further government encroachment. It may cost too much but then it is always possible to soak the rich or something, since no principle protects them or anyone else whose resources can be confiscated to fund it all--or just borrow against members of future generations who aren't around to even vote!
Republicans who protest that the public option is socialized medicine have no leg to stand on, given AMTRAK and the US Postal Service and hundreds, even thousands of other measures they accept which amount to robbing Peter to pay Paul in our society. That is the price of compromise--you have lost the argument since you have no principle on which to base it. Once you have accepted just a little slavery, a bit of involuntary servitude for the citizens of your community, why not go further? Why not conscript their labors and resources whenever you see something important to pursue, just go for it. The pragmatists say, you need to judge things on an individual basis but this is basically nonsense, like saying we should judge rape that way.
Without principles there is no way to judge, to evaluate. All that's left is power--do you have it to get your way or don't you?
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Public Funding Morally Odious Projects
Tibor R. Machan
Reportedly representative Bart Stupak, a Democrat representing Michigan's 1st Congressional district who opposes abortion, wants to impose a ban on federal health care funding for abortions. The reason, obviously, is that he and those who agree with him consider it objectionable that they are being forced to pay for something they find seriously morally odious, something that as they understand it amounts to the murder of "unborn children." (This is, of course, a question begging way of referring to the early fetuses slated for most abortions.)
But let me not enter the morass of the abortion debate but stick to the issue of public funding of projects many members of the public find morally wrong. Of course Mr. Stupak has no legal case, not the way our federal system works these days. A great many people object to all kinds of projects funded by the federal government. Some even consider such funding morally objectionable even when they support the projects since it involves robbing Peter to support Paul, a practice that is arguably wrong. Yet in our bloated, illiberal democratic system of governance such practices are ubiquitous and legally authorized.
In order for Mr. Stupak to be credible in his stance on the issue of federal funding of abortion, by whatever method this is brought off, he must oppose all such transfers of resources from citizens to projects these citizens oppose. And that is hardly going to work since as a politician he is routinely involved in supporting such transfer of resources. Why privilege the abortion issue, then? Yes, abortion is a hotly debated matter, very controversial. But then so is the war in Iraq, even in Afghanistan. The war on drugs is perhaps opposed by the majority of Americans, both because it is evil to convict citizens who have violated no one's rights and because it is a colossal failure. Yet I have not read anything about representative Stupak protesting these policies. Why?
I gather Mr. Stupak is not a very principled person and from what we know about most contemporary politicians, this should be no surprise. So his stance on federal funding of abortions isn't likely to bear on his moral conscience. It probably has to do with his particular constituency. And then it is mostly about trying to win their support for his continued service in the U. S. House of Representatives.
Notice, by the way, that Representative Stupak seems to have no objection to a government managed health insurance/care system per se. I doubt he ever objected to Medicare and he doesn't seem to be opposed to the current efforts either. All he frets about is whether abortions will be funded federally. But how about whether citizens will be forced to pay for liposuction or fixing up someone who got into an auto crash because of reckless driving? Many citizens would rather not fund such treatments. Indeed, there are millions of us who oppose vigorously, on moral grounds, federal involvement in medical care or insurance. Does this politician give that any thought? Or is he merely trying to capitalize on his own constituency's agenda?
The big problem with the bloated, illiberal democracy so prominent across the globe is that it lumps us all into a mob that's to be dictated to by those who are most politically active and savvy within that mob. Democracy should never have been expanded to be so applied. It should have be left to the limited task of selecting representatives who were to expand the provisions of the U. S. Constitution to new areas, ones impossible to anticipate fully by the Founders and Framers.
Yes, there are some gray areas there but what we now have, where majorities can dictate to us about nearly everything, is absurd. It is spawning a citizenry at constant odds with itself, where no individual realm of sovereignty is left, where individual rights are treated as grants of privilege from the government with no other basis (say, in human nature).
Well, I suppose Mr. Stupak should not be expected to think of all this but when he mouths off about his own pet projects, he should expect that he will be called upon to account for his inconsistencies.
Tibor R. Machan
Reportedly representative Bart Stupak, a Democrat representing Michigan's 1st Congressional district who opposes abortion, wants to impose a ban on federal health care funding for abortions. The reason, obviously, is that he and those who agree with him consider it objectionable that they are being forced to pay for something they find seriously morally odious, something that as they understand it amounts to the murder of "unborn children." (This is, of course, a question begging way of referring to the early fetuses slated for most abortions.)
But let me not enter the morass of the abortion debate but stick to the issue of public funding of projects many members of the public find morally wrong. Of course Mr. Stupak has no legal case, not the way our federal system works these days. A great many people object to all kinds of projects funded by the federal government. Some even consider such funding morally objectionable even when they support the projects since it involves robbing Peter to support Paul, a practice that is arguably wrong. Yet in our bloated, illiberal democratic system of governance such practices are ubiquitous and legally authorized.
In order for Mr. Stupak to be credible in his stance on the issue of federal funding of abortion, by whatever method this is brought off, he must oppose all such transfers of resources from citizens to projects these citizens oppose. And that is hardly going to work since as a politician he is routinely involved in supporting such transfer of resources. Why privilege the abortion issue, then? Yes, abortion is a hotly debated matter, very controversial. But then so is the war in Iraq, even in Afghanistan. The war on drugs is perhaps opposed by the majority of Americans, both because it is evil to convict citizens who have violated no one's rights and because it is a colossal failure. Yet I have not read anything about representative Stupak protesting these policies. Why?
I gather Mr. Stupak is not a very principled person and from what we know about most contemporary politicians, this should be no surprise. So his stance on federal funding of abortions isn't likely to bear on his moral conscience. It probably has to do with his particular constituency. And then it is mostly about trying to win their support for his continued service in the U. S. House of Representatives.
Notice, by the way, that Representative Stupak seems to have no objection to a government managed health insurance/care system per se. I doubt he ever objected to Medicare and he doesn't seem to be opposed to the current efforts either. All he frets about is whether abortions will be funded federally. But how about whether citizens will be forced to pay for liposuction or fixing up someone who got into an auto crash because of reckless driving? Many citizens would rather not fund such treatments. Indeed, there are millions of us who oppose vigorously, on moral grounds, federal involvement in medical care or insurance. Does this politician give that any thought? Or is he merely trying to capitalize on his own constituency's agenda?
The big problem with the bloated, illiberal democracy so prominent across the globe is that it lumps us all into a mob that's to be dictated to by those who are most politically active and savvy within that mob. Democracy should never have been expanded to be so applied. It should have be left to the limited task of selecting representatives who were to expand the provisions of the U. S. Constitution to new areas, ones impossible to anticipate fully by the Founders and Framers.
Yes, there are some gray areas there but what we now have, where majorities can dictate to us about nearly everything, is absurd. It is spawning a citizenry at constant odds with itself, where no individual realm of sovereignty is left, where individual rights are treated as grants of privilege from the government with no other basis (say, in human nature).
Well, I suppose Mr. Stupak should not be expected to think of all this but when he mouths off about his own pet projects, he should expect that he will be called upon to account for his inconsistencies.
Why are our selves demeaned?
Tibor R. Machan
If there is a common theme among nearly all political factions here or abroad it is that selfishness is bad, unselfishness is good. Yet, at the same time, no one can fully live up to this idea. We wake up and endeavor to take care of ourselves and those we love, not our neighbors, let alone strangers. As the poet W. H. Auden pointed up this paradox, "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know."
One plausible explanation is that the human self had suffered from a very bad reputation via the theological doctrine of original sin. If we are corrupt at birth, we should reject ourselves and care for others most. We aren't worthy of being benefited except to the extend necessary for us to serve others. Yet this is odd, just as Auden noted, because why are others worthy of all the care we ought to give them when we aren't?
In addition to the original sin besmirching of the human ego, there was also the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes's very influential idea that the human self is a bundle of unruly passions, mostly vicious or psychologically troubled. Hobbes argued that all of us live in fear of death, mainly, from which all our other motivation flows. Only by means of an absolute monarch will we behave peacefully toward one another.
With such a pedigree, which went against the ancient Greek idea that human beings are rational animals and their emotions are shaped by their good or bad thinking--which is up to them to initiate--no wonder opinions about the human self or ego became nearly all negative. But for the control over us by the government, we could all turn out like the Marquis de Sade! What a prospect!
To mitigate this, nearly all subsequent moral philosophy, especially the influential system developed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, advanced ideas that meant to tame us, to contain us, to make us more sociable and direct us away from selfishness (which meant something insidious). Of course, if the self is so bad, then the selves of those who were to tame us couldn't be so nice either, so government slowly became something to be feared, too. But that fear is now subsiding and intellectuals and even most of the general population is putting its faith in government again, in the chief of state, essentially, who knows best. Sure, there is democracy but how could the population keep a check on the huge Leviathan effectively? So government is getting out of hand. But anyone who points this out is branded selfish and greedy and insensitive and all because of the ego's bruised reputation over the last several hundred years.
Too bad because, in fact, people are innately neither good nor bad but free to become either or somewhere in between (like most are). And such people fare best in a fully free society, not in one the bullies run pretending that they can do so well and wisely. If the human ego's reputation could be improved, the belief that people need to be regimented, regulated, nudged and so forth might change. (Yet, of course, even with its current undeserved bad reputation, there is no justification for all the regimenting since those who would do this job must also, then, have corrupt egos.)
One option that is being floated by some people is that no self or ego exists at all, that it is all a myth, that what we are is cells in the body of humanity or society, not in any respect independent, sovereign individuals. This will not work for one reason, among many, namely that those who are advancing the idea are also individuals and pitted against, in this view, many other individuals. Human nature is individualistic, although by no means anti-social--our egos are both social and individual. We have wills of our own but we flourish best among others like us.
If only this constant badgering of the human self ended, there would be hope for much better relations among us.
Tibor R. Machan
If there is a common theme among nearly all political factions here or abroad it is that selfishness is bad, unselfishness is good. Yet, at the same time, no one can fully live up to this idea. We wake up and endeavor to take care of ourselves and those we love, not our neighbors, let alone strangers. As the poet W. H. Auden pointed up this paradox, "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know."
One plausible explanation is that the human self had suffered from a very bad reputation via the theological doctrine of original sin. If we are corrupt at birth, we should reject ourselves and care for others most. We aren't worthy of being benefited except to the extend necessary for us to serve others. Yet this is odd, just as Auden noted, because why are others worthy of all the care we ought to give them when we aren't?
In addition to the original sin besmirching of the human ego, there was also the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes's very influential idea that the human self is a bundle of unruly passions, mostly vicious or psychologically troubled. Hobbes argued that all of us live in fear of death, mainly, from which all our other motivation flows. Only by means of an absolute monarch will we behave peacefully toward one another.
With such a pedigree, which went against the ancient Greek idea that human beings are rational animals and their emotions are shaped by their good or bad thinking--which is up to them to initiate--no wonder opinions about the human self or ego became nearly all negative. But for the control over us by the government, we could all turn out like the Marquis de Sade! What a prospect!
To mitigate this, nearly all subsequent moral philosophy, especially the influential system developed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, advanced ideas that meant to tame us, to contain us, to make us more sociable and direct us away from selfishness (which meant something insidious). Of course, if the self is so bad, then the selves of those who were to tame us couldn't be so nice either, so government slowly became something to be feared, too. But that fear is now subsiding and intellectuals and even most of the general population is putting its faith in government again, in the chief of state, essentially, who knows best. Sure, there is democracy but how could the population keep a check on the huge Leviathan effectively? So government is getting out of hand. But anyone who points this out is branded selfish and greedy and insensitive and all because of the ego's bruised reputation over the last several hundred years.
Too bad because, in fact, people are innately neither good nor bad but free to become either or somewhere in between (like most are). And such people fare best in a fully free society, not in one the bullies run pretending that they can do so well and wisely. If the human ego's reputation could be improved, the belief that people need to be regimented, regulated, nudged and so forth might change. (Yet, of course, even with its current undeserved bad reputation, there is no justification for all the regimenting since those who would do this job must also, then, have corrupt egos.)
One option that is being floated by some people is that no self or ego exists at all, that it is all a myth, that what we are is cells in the body of humanity or society, not in any respect independent, sovereign individuals. This will not work for one reason, among many, namely that those who are advancing the idea are also individuals and pitted against, in this view, many other individuals. Human nature is individualistic, although by no means anti-social--our egos are both social and individual. We have wills of our own but we flourish best among others like us.
If only this constant badgering of the human self ended, there would be hope for much better relations among us.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Keynes and the Ideology of Planning
Tibor R. Machan
In recent months John Maynard Keynes has enjoyed a renewed prominence. In the course of doing so he has been presented to the current population of interested parties as a scientist or at least non-ideological thinker. Several books are out now giving Keynes much praise, despite the arguable failure of his policy recommendations (and the dubious honor of having said the Nazis could make the best use of the policies he advocates). This is in sharp contrast to the alleged lost dominance of so called market fundamentalists, as Paul Krugman likes to refer to those who prefer a free society to one run by the likes of him and other Keynesians.
Just to set the record straight, here are a couple of quotations from Keynes from a book that didn't make him famous and few now mention, The End of Laissez Faire, published in 1927 and based on lectures he gave in Berlin in June of 1926.
“Let us clear from the ground the metaphysical or general principles upon which, from time to time, laissez-faire has been founded. It is not true that individuals possess a prescriptive ‘natural liberty’ in their economic activities. There is no ‘compact’ conferring perpetual rights on those who Have or on those who Acquire. The world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always coincide. It is not so managed here below that in practice they coincide. It is not a correct deduction from the principles of economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest. Nor is it true that self-interest generally is enlightened; more often individuals acting separately to promote their own ends are too ignorant or too weak to attain even these. Experience does not show that individuals, when they make up a social unit, are always less clear-sighted than when they act separately.
“We cannot therefore settle on abstract grounds, but must handle on its merits in detail what Burke termed ‘one of the finest problems in legislation, namely, to determine what the State ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual exertion’.” John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez Faire (Hogarth Press, 1926; London, L. & Virginia Woolf, 1927.)
The attitude for which Keynes is often praised, of looking at economic matters without bias and only with an eye to how to promote stability, especially in the labor market, is not in evidence here. Keynes shows clearly that he was completely opposed to the free market and considered it perfectly legitimate for government to plan aspects of the economy. He may have even had some sympathies for laissez-faire but these were not convictions, only weak preferences.
What Keynes was eager to promote is the idea of the government's unbridled authority to tinker with economic affairs. That is the point of insisting so vehemently that nothing exists that stands opposed to that authority, no notion of Adam Smith's natural liberty, John Locke's natural rights, and other classical liberal ideas that were at one time beginning to be used so as to pull the rug from under those who saw fit to interfere with other people's economic decisions and circumstances.
In the little book he wrote, way before his General theory, of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) for which he is so famous, Keynes compares the free market to a jungle where some animals have the natural attribute of being able to reach the leaves on top of the trees in the midst of a draught, thus making out far better than fellow creatures who are left hungry, unable to obtain food any longer. In this he was in agreement with another champion of egalitarianism, the recently deceased Harvard political theorist John Rawls, who in his A Theory of Justice (1971) also embraces the idea that men and women are pretty much helpless as to the place they hold in the economy and society in general. No one is really able to escape his or her fate. We are all like those giraffes and gazelles in the wild, with the former naturally advantaged while the letter naturally disadvantages when there is scarcity of food.
Now of course in the wild no one rises to the powerful position of a government to remedy matters, which is what Keynes is clearly lamenting. But he says that people are in much better shape because those unable to fend can be helped by governments if we only empower it to do this.
Without entering a lengthy debate, the one Burke was referring to, it is worth noting that Keynes is contradicting himself. In the first place people are helpless and end up economically disadvantaged but then it turns out that they aren't at all helpless but are able to empower governments to remedy their situation.
Now if they are able to do this complicated thing, why are they unable to improve their lot in the market place, by education, networking, innovation, entrepreneurship, and some luck? It seems that for Keynes the sole avenue for self-improvement is to go to governments and seek their coercive support. Among other things what he fails to notice, as did Burke and other statists, is that government is composed of people and all the people with the power (some) others bestow upon them (or they grab) are susceptible to all the foibles Keynes attributed to people in general. But while in the free market place--and in free societies, more generally--there are checks against people inflicting their will on others--such as the protection of their rights, a minimal government function that may actually be carried out successfully--when governments gain the power to plan an economy they tend not to do this with justice and wisdom but with arbitrary force. And that is indeed inescapable because governments don't really have a clue as to what to do for millions and millions of people from on high. So what is left for them to do? To advance the visions of government officials, that's what, visions that have to do with their agendas and not with any mythical public interest or common good.
Keynes was wrong back then and his followers are wrong now, thinking that our salvation lies with government.
Tibor R. Machan
In recent months John Maynard Keynes has enjoyed a renewed prominence. In the course of doing so he has been presented to the current population of interested parties as a scientist or at least non-ideological thinker. Several books are out now giving Keynes much praise, despite the arguable failure of his policy recommendations (and the dubious honor of having said the Nazis could make the best use of the policies he advocates). This is in sharp contrast to the alleged lost dominance of so called market fundamentalists, as Paul Krugman likes to refer to those who prefer a free society to one run by the likes of him and other Keynesians.
Just to set the record straight, here are a couple of quotations from Keynes from a book that didn't make him famous and few now mention, The End of Laissez Faire, published in 1927 and based on lectures he gave in Berlin in June of 1926.
“Let us clear from the ground the metaphysical or general principles upon which, from time to time, laissez-faire has been founded. It is not true that individuals possess a prescriptive ‘natural liberty’ in their economic activities. There is no ‘compact’ conferring perpetual rights on those who Have or on those who Acquire. The world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always coincide. It is not so managed here below that in practice they coincide. It is not a correct deduction from the principles of economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest. Nor is it true that self-interest generally is enlightened; more often individuals acting separately to promote their own ends are too ignorant or too weak to attain even these. Experience does not show that individuals, when they make up a social unit, are always less clear-sighted than when they act separately.
“We cannot therefore settle on abstract grounds, but must handle on its merits in detail what Burke termed ‘one of the finest problems in legislation, namely, to determine what the State ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual exertion’.” John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez Faire (Hogarth Press, 1926; London, L. & Virginia Woolf, 1927.)
The attitude for which Keynes is often praised, of looking at economic matters without bias and only with an eye to how to promote stability, especially in the labor market, is not in evidence here. Keynes shows clearly that he was completely opposed to the free market and considered it perfectly legitimate for government to plan aspects of the economy. He may have even had some sympathies for laissez-faire but these were not convictions, only weak preferences.
What Keynes was eager to promote is the idea of the government's unbridled authority to tinker with economic affairs. That is the point of insisting so vehemently that nothing exists that stands opposed to that authority, no notion of Adam Smith's natural liberty, John Locke's natural rights, and other classical liberal ideas that were at one time beginning to be used so as to pull the rug from under those who saw fit to interfere with other people's economic decisions and circumstances.
In the little book he wrote, way before his General theory, of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) for which he is so famous, Keynes compares the free market to a jungle where some animals have the natural attribute of being able to reach the leaves on top of the trees in the midst of a draught, thus making out far better than fellow creatures who are left hungry, unable to obtain food any longer. In this he was in agreement with another champion of egalitarianism, the recently deceased Harvard political theorist John Rawls, who in his A Theory of Justice (1971) also embraces the idea that men and women are pretty much helpless as to the place they hold in the economy and society in general. No one is really able to escape his or her fate. We are all like those giraffes and gazelles in the wild, with the former naturally advantaged while the letter naturally disadvantages when there is scarcity of food.
Now of course in the wild no one rises to the powerful position of a government to remedy matters, which is what Keynes is clearly lamenting. But he says that people are in much better shape because those unable to fend can be helped by governments if we only empower it to do this.
Without entering a lengthy debate, the one Burke was referring to, it is worth noting that Keynes is contradicting himself. In the first place people are helpless and end up economically disadvantaged but then it turns out that they aren't at all helpless but are able to empower governments to remedy their situation.
Now if they are able to do this complicated thing, why are they unable to improve their lot in the market place, by education, networking, innovation, entrepreneurship, and some luck? It seems that for Keynes the sole avenue for self-improvement is to go to governments and seek their coercive support. Among other things what he fails to notice, as did Burke and other statists, is that government is composed of people and all the people with the power (some) others bestow upon them (or they grab) are susceptible to all the foibles Keynes attributed to people in general. But while in the free market place--and in free societies, more generally--there are checks against people inflicting their will on others--such as the protection of their rights, a minimal government function that may actually be carried out successfully--when governments gain the power to plan an economy they tend not to do this with justice and wisdom but with arbitrary force. And that is indeed inescapable because governments don't really have a clue as to what to do for millions and millions of people from on high. So what is left for them to do? To advance the visions of government officials, that's what, visions that have to do with their agendas and not with any mythical public interest or common good.
Keynes was wrong back then and his followers are wrong now, thinking that our salvation lies with government.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Radicalization
Tibor R. Machan
Nearly everyone has complaints about the way others use words. One of my pet peeves is when people are referred to as "that," as in "the person that wrote this book," instead of "who," as in "the person who wrote this book." Rejecting the distinction between "that" and "who" suggests to me insufficient awareness of what it means to be human and of a willingness to think of persons as objects of some kind, non-human animals, instead of human beings proper. As anyone can gather, this beef of mine rests on certain views I have about the world, views the targets of my complaint appear not to share--such as that human beings are unique enough to deserve to be referred to differently from how other stuff in the world is.
So now I was watching the news recently and the reporters were discussing the several people who have been indicted or are said to be suspects in various terrorist plots. In one report it was mentioned that some suspects in these cases are thought to have been radicalized while in prison. And throughout the report the term "radical" or "radicalize" kept being used as if being indoctrinated into a point of view that can prompt someone to indiscriminately maim and kill hundreds, even thousands of human beings, amounted to being a radical.
In my dictionary a radical is someone who thinks about matters relating to how to conduct oneself and influence public institutions by way of considering the foundations of ethics and politics. Radical is supposed to contrast with conservative because the latter refers to approaches to forging actions and policies by gaining guidance from established, tried and true, traditional ideas. In a certain respect all major scientists are radicals because they think things through thoroughly, from the ground up, all the way from the roots of their discipline. A radical in politics is someone who believes that to find the best approach to problems in the policies of one's community requires one to go to the basics, the fundamentals.
The people to whom the reporters referred as radicals are, in contrast, simply brutal, mindless, dogmatic men and women, quite opposed to thinking things through thoroughly, as radicals are supposed to. So why did they get labeled with this perfectly honorable term?
Perhaps another use of "radical" is in reference to someone who departs completely from the mainstream, who has no respect for any of the ordinary practices civilized individuals would normally consider as they go about planning their conduct and institutions. It is indeed a drastic or radical departure from civilized conduct to kill and maim indiscriminately, with no regard for who has been found guilty by means of due process. That is to say, such people are drastically different in how they act, monsters if you ask me.
But it is too bad that "radical" is used this way. It thus besmirches a very appropriate alternative to dealing with problems, namely, one that goes to the roots, that examines everything very carefully before launching into action. Indeed, the conventional opposition between liberal and conservative fails to capture an important element of the dispute. This is that conservatives recommend a method for dealing with problems, be these private/personal, social, public, or international, that relies heavily on what is learned from traditions, customs, and long established habits of thought. And while, of course, these are very useful shortcuts to what is true and right, they cannot be the best answer since there are so many conflicting traditions, customs, etc. To be able to navigate among these when, as so often, they are in conflict, a firmer source of understanding is required. This, as the Ancient Greeks taught, is human reason which is supposed to be able to help identify, with the aid of experience, what is what, at least as best as possible for the time being. Radicalism is, in turn, reliance on reason.
Conservatives have often scoffed at this reliance. As the most famous conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, put it, "each man's private capital of intelligence is petty; it is only when a man draws upon the bank and capital of the ages, the wisdom of our ancestors, that he can act wisely." Yet, Burke himself uses his own reasoning to arrive at this insight, so it cannot be entirely true even in his own terms.
It would be best, I think, to counsel people to make use of what the past offers but not before they have thought it over and made sure it holds up to reason.
Tibor R. Machan
Nearly everyone has complaints about the way others use words. One of my pet peeves is when people are referred to as "that," as in "the person that wrote this book," instead of "who," as in "the person who wrote this book." Rejecting the distinction between "that" and "who" suggests to me insufficient awareness of what it means to be human and of a willingness to think of persons as objects of some kind, non-human animals, instead of human beings proper. As anyone can gather, this beef of mine rests on certain views I have about the world, views the targets of my complaint appear not to share--such as that human beings are unique enough to deserve to be referred to differently from how other stuff in the world is.
So now I was watching the news recently and the reporters were discussing the several people who have been indicted or are said to be suspects in various terrorist plots. In one report it was mentioned that some suspects in these cases are thought to have been radicalized while in prison. And throughout the report the term "radical" or "radicalize" kept being used as if being indoctrinated into a point of view that can prompt someone to indiscriminately maim and kill hundreds, even thousands of human beings, amounted to being a radical.
In my dictionary a radical is someone who thinks about matters relating to how to conduct oneself and influence public institutions by way of considering the foundations of ethics and politics. Radical is supposed to contrast with conservative because the latter refers to approaches to forging actions and policies by gaining guidance from established, tried and true, traditional ideas. In a certain respect all major scientists are radicals because they think things through thoroughly, from the ground up, all the way from the roots of their discipline. A radical in politics is someone who believes that to find the best approach to problems in the policies of one's community requires one to go to the basics, the fundamentals.
The people to whom the reporters referred as radicals are, in contrast, simply brutal, mindless, dogmatic men and women, quite opposed to thinking things through thoroughly, as radicals are supposed to. So why did they get labeled with this perfectly honorable term?
Perhaps another use of "radical" is in reference to someone who departs completely from the mainstream, who has no respect for any of the ordinary practices civilized individuals would normally consider as they go about planning their conduct and institutions. It is indeed a drastic or radical departure from civilized conduct to kill and maim indiscriminately, with no regard for who has been found guilty by means of due process. That is to say, such people are drastically different in how they act, monsters if you ask me.
But it is too bad that "radical" is used this way. It thus besmirches a very appropriate alternative to dealing with problems, namely, one that goes to the roots, that examines everything very carefully before launching into action. Indeed, the conventional opposition between liberal and conservative fails to capture an important element of the dispute. This is that conservatives recommend a method for dealing with problems, be these private/personal, social, public, or international, that relies heavily on what is learned from traditions, customs, and long established habits of thought. And while, of course, these are very useful shortcuts to what is true and right, they cannot be the best answer since there are so many conflicting traditions, customs, etc. To be able to navigate among these when, as so often, they are in conflict, a firmer source of understanding is required. This, as the Ancient Greeks taught, is human reason which is supposed to be able to help identify, with the aid of experience, what is what, at least as best as possible for the time being. Radicalism is, in turn, reliance on reason.
Conservatives have often scoffed at this reliance. As the most famous conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, put it, "each man's private capital of intelligence is petty; it is only when a man draws upon the bank and capital of the ages, the wisdom of our ancestors, that he can act wisely." Yet, Burke himself uses his own reasoning to arrive at this insight, so it cannot be entirely true even in his own terms.
It would be best, I think, to counsel people to make use of what the past offers but not before they have thought it over and made sure it holds up to reason.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The Proper Role of Government
Tibor R. Machan
Most of the time those of us who write columns address fairly specific issues and have only a little space to call upon general principles. But it is such general principles that guide the thinking behind the comments on special topics. Even the most pragmatic among us, who think principles are a myth, implicitly invoke principles, if only the principle that power is the ultimate arbiter of right versus wrong.
In my own reflections and comments about various topics, I do invoke certain basic principles of political life and perhaps it will be useful to lay these out, briefly. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of these principles concerns the nature and limit of a proper, just government. And where the position I hold is most challenged is how much government ought to do for those who lack the ability and resources to get into various areas of social life with some reasonable hope of success.
The government's role in helping to get people into the game, so to speak, when they are virtually or completely out of it, is, as I understand it, nil: this just isn't the state's proper and safe function. Putting it another way, the government isn't there to be generous, kind, helpful, supportive, charitable and so forth -- it exists so as to make sure peace prevails and justice is done. We, as human beings in our various relations to one another, must deal with innumerable challenges as the government protects our rights mainly so we are then free to choose to do what is right on our own initiative. (The government, like referees at a sports event, must take care of the rules, not play the sport, as it were. The players must do that!) And the system of rules, or justice, requires that no one's rights be violated, no one's rights to life, liberty and property and all the derivative rights that flow from these.
Now this is of course something not likely to be fully realized, even if it is in fact realizable. (Here a very handy work is Tom G. Palmer’s Realizing Freedom [2009].) But it is imperative for those who understand it never to give up the fight. That is a duty of citizenship -- to strive to advance and uphold the principles of justice as much as that is possible to do, whatever disagreements and opposition one faces.
It is not that the government might not here and there, now and then, do some extra good besides maintain peace and justice -- even help deserving people. But on average it does so at paying a price that is prohibitive, namely, becoming a criminal organization that subdues and robs Peter to "help" Paul. Government isn't able to produce wealth with which to help -- it must forcibly get people to work and confiscate their wealth to provide its support. And that is plain assault and robbery, however much cost-benefit analysis has gone into the process.
When government gets into helping people by hurting other people, it loses sight of its proper job and that encourages very serious malpractice. One reason so much goes awry in countries around the globe is that the governments do not devote themselves to their proper task of securing individual rights but have gone about doing innumerable other things that destroyed its integrity as a peacekeeping organization. And once the government lends its hand -- its legitimate tool of physical force when properly limited -- to purposes other than keeping the peace -- securing our rights -- there is no end to the corruption. Everyone will want to have the same done for his or her vested or special interest. So, even those exceptions that may seem so minor and have such good reasons behind them contribute to the corruption of the proper function of governments.
As to democracy, its role isn't to set the rules or establish the principles governments should uphold but to select the personnel who will administer the rules and work hard, often valiantly, to protect those principles. Otherwise democracy becomes complicit in perpetrating injustice -- as when people vote to take property from each other, to restraint trade, to set wages or to control peaceful sexual practices and otherwise attempt to regiment people to behave well. This is an assault on the dignity of the human individual and democracy cannot justify that.
Obviously no brief discussion can do this topic sufficient justice. Still, it might be of some use to know where some of us concerned about the growth of the scope and size of government are coming from as we offer our criticisms of its expanding scope and power.
Tibor R. Machan
Most of the time those of us who write columns address fairly specific issues and have only a little space to call upon general principles. But it is such general principles that guide the thinking behind the comments on special topics. Even the most pragmatic among us, who think principles are a myth, implicitly invoke principles, if only the principle that power is the ultimate arbiter of right versus wrong.
In my own reflections and comments about various topics, I do invoke certain basic principles of political life and perhaps it will be useful to lay these out, briefly. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of these principles concerns the nature and limit of a proper, just government. And where the position I hold is most challenged is how much government ought to do for those who lack the ability and resources to get into various areas of social life with some reasonable hope of success.
The government's role in helping to get people into the game, so to speak, when they are virtually or completely out of it, is, as I understand it, nil: this just isn't the state's proper and safe function. Putting it another way, the government isn't there to be generous, kind, helpful, supportive, charitable and so forth -- it exists so as to make sure peace prevails and justice is done. We, as human beings in our various relations to one another, must deal with innumerable challenges as the government protects our rights mainly so we are then free to choose to do what is right on our own initiative. (The government, like referees at a sports event, must take care of the rules, not play the sport, as it were. The players must do that!) And the system of rules, or justice, requires that no one's rights be violated, no one's rights to life, liberty and property and all the derivative rights that flow from these.
Now this is of course something not likely to be fully realized, even if it is in fact realizable. (Here a very handy work is Tom G. Palmer’s Realizing Freedom [2009].) But it is imperative for those who understand it never to give up the fight. That is a duty of citizenship -- to strive to advance and uphold the principles of justice as much as that is possible to do, whatever disagreements and opposition one faces.
It is not that the government might not here and there, now and then, do some extra good besides maintain peace and justice -- even help deserving people. But on average it does so at paying a price that is prohibitive, namely, becoming a criminal organization that subdues and robs Peter to "help" Paul. Government isn't able to produce wealth with which to help -- it must forcibly get people to work and confiscate their wealth to provide its support. And that is plain assault and robbery, however much cost-benefit analysis has gone into the process.
When government gets into helping people by hurting other people, it loses sight of its proper job and that encourages very serious malpractice. One reason so much goes awry in countries around the globe is that the governments do not devote themselves to their proper task of securing individual rights but have gone about doing innumerable other things that destroyed its integrity as a peacekeeping organization. And once the government lends its hand -- its legitimate tool of physical force when properly limited -- to purposes other than keeping the peace -- securing our rights -- there is no end to the corruption. Everyone will want to have the same done for his or her vested or special interest. So, even those exceptions that may seem so minor and have such good reasons behind them contribute to the corruption of the proper function of governments.
As to democracy, its role isn't to set the rules or establish the principles governments should uphold but to select the personnel who will administer the rules and work hard, often valiantly, to protect those principles. Otherwise democracy becomes complicit in perpetrating injustice -- as when people vote to take property from each other, to restraint trade, to set wages or to control peaceful sexual practices and otherwise attempt to regiment people to behave well. This is an assault on the dignity of the human individual and democracy cannot justify that.
Obviously no brief discussion can do this topic sufficient justice. Still, it might be of some use to know where some of us concerned about the growth of the scope and size of government are coming from as we offer our criticisms of its expanding scope and power.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
No Omniscience or Incorruptibility
Tibor R. Machan
Aristotle was a sage and his reply to Plato's presentation of an ideal society, The Republic, which was to have an incorruptible leader--an idea some think even Plato didn't mean for anyone to try to implement--was to admit that in theory a perfect leader might be swell but no one can guarantee incorruptibility. Actually, corruption is most likely in such cases. So it is better to embrace a system closer to one wherein citizens share in governing themselves instead of relying on the great, wise leader.
This lesson of Aristotle should be kept in mind by the dreamers, such as Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University and of The New York Times, and some other fans of the early 20th century British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes liked free markets up to a point but because he associated them with cyclical problems--failing to see, as the Austrians have taught us, that the business cycle is mostly a government induced phenomenon--he also believed that some regulations, some government tinkering is necessary to keep the system stable. Stability is a big deal to the interventionists and since they do not trust that the spontaneous market place is going to be stable enough, they champion government intervention in the expectation that that's going to avert the problem.
I know a fairly famous individual who has recently rediscovered Keynes and seems, based on his latest writings, sympathetic to these notions now even though in the past he has championed the free market, mostly on grounds of its overall superior productivity. By this is meant that free markets enable, even encourage people to make wealth, more wealth than any alternative system. A utilitarian would find this an irresistible reason for embracing a system since wealth to the utilitarian is nearly everything, including freedom. One can buy freedom if one is wealthy enough, goes the argument, so just get a system that is highly productive and have it done with, no need to argue about the individual's right to economic liberty endlessly. But because in relatively free markets there are occasional ups and downs of the entire system, my pal suggests that the Keynesian policy of injecting (artificial) demand into an economy is a good idea, at least in dire enough circumstances.
OK, it is not in much dispute that if there were some omniscient governmental agent or agency that could tell what needs to be done, it could help an economy to recover from down turns. Never mind what caused these down turns, let's just grant they exist now and then. And a super duper economic czar or committee may be just what could come in handy.
But here is the rub and where Aristotle's teaching, along with modern public choice theory, needs to be taken very, very seriously. For one, if the czar is corruptible, which by a sensible understanding of human nature and politics is undeniable, the expected and hoped for wise intervention is not going to be forthcoming. All the bright Keyneses and Krugmans and whoever will not be able to make sure that the best conceivable approach is taken to rescuing the economy, no sir. The best and the brightest can--and when they have massive power at their disposal will--go bad.
Furthermore there is that fatal conceit of which F. A. Hayek reminded us, the belief by the would be leaders, enamored by their smarts, that they can know what the economy needs--public works here, printing some money there, borrowing more somewhere else, funding infrastructure projects, etc. Oh how promising it all looks until you think it through and realize that, just as public works theory predicts, the funds meant for all this good stuff are going to be ignorantly--as well as and in part because of it corruptly--used. What in the imagination of a Plato or Keynes comes off as God sent turns into a disaster or, at most, a pretty messy effort to do something, anything whatever, to help matters.
My acquaintance, who appears to be a new Keynesian now, may find this too pessimistic, even misanthropic. I just think of it as Aristotelian realism and prudence.
Tibor R. Machan
Aristotle was a sage and his reply to Plato's presentation of an ideal society, The Republic, which was to have an incorruptible leader--an idea some think even Plato didn't mean for anyone to try to implement--was to admit that in theory a perfect leader might be swell but no one can guarantee incorruptibility. Actually, corruption is most likely in such cases. So it is better to embrace a system closer to one wherein citizens share in governing themselves instead of relying on the great, wise leader.
This lesson of Aristotle should be kept in mind by the dreamers, such as Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University and of The New York Times, and some other fans of the early 20th century British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes liked free markets up to a point but because he associated them with cyclical problems--failing to see, as the Austrians have taught us, that the business cycle is mostly a government induced phenomenon--he also believed that some regulations, some government tinkering is necessary to keep the system stable. Stability is a big deal to the interventionists and since they do not trust that the spontaneous market place is going to be stable enough, they champion government intervention in the expectation that that's going to avert the problem.
I know a fairly famous individual who has recently rediscovered Keynes and seems, based on his latest writings, sympathetic to these notions now even though in the past he has championed the free market, mostly on grounds of its overall superior productivity. By this is meant that free markets enable, even encourage people to make wealth, more wealth than any alternative system. A utilitarian would find this an irresistible reason for embracing a system since wealth to the utilitarian is nearly everything, including freedom. One can buy freedom if one is wealthy enough, goes the argument, so just get a system that is highly productive and have it done with, no need to argue about the individual's right to economic liberty endlessly. But because in relatively free markets there are occasional ups and downs of the entire system, my pal suggests that the Keynesian policy of injecting (artificial) demand into an economy is a good idea, at least in dire enough circumstances.
OK, it is not in much dispute that if there were some omniscient governmental agent or agency that could tell what needs to be done, it could help an economy to recover from down turns. Never mind what caused these down turns, let's just grant they exist now and then. And a super duper economic czar or committee may be just what could come in handy.
But here is the rub and where Aristotle's teaching, along with modern public choice theory, needs to be taken very, very seriously. For one, if the czar is corruptible, which by a sensible understanding of human nature and politics is undeniable, the expected and hoped for wise intervention is not going to be forthcoming. All the bright Keyneses and Krugmans and whoever will not be able to make sure that the best conceivable approach is taken to rescuing the economy, no sir. The best and the brightest can--and when they have massive power at their disposal will--go bad.
Furthermore there is that fatal conceit of which F. A. Hayek reminded us, the belief by the would be leaders, enamored by their smarts, that they can know what the economy needs--public works here, printing some money there, borrowing more somewhere else, funding infrastructure projects, etc. Oh how promising it all looks until you think it through and realize that, just as public works theory predicts, the funds meant for all this good stuff are going to be ignorantly--as well as and in part because of it corruptly--used. What in the imagination of a Plato or Keynes comes off as God sent turns into a disaster or, at most, a pretty messy effort to do something, anything whatever, to help matters.
My acquaintance, who appears to be a new Keynesian now, may find this too pessimistic, even misanthropic. I just think of it as Aristotelian realism and prudence.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Survey Says!
Tibor R. Machan
Very, very rarely I am contacted by some survey organization and I usually volunteer to answer the questions posed to me. Just a few minutes ago a taped interviewer, identifying herself as calling for the Rasmussen Group, called me up and I answered all the questions I was asked. Some of these dealt with my views on President Obama's current and expected performance and I answered pretty much as anyone who knows me would expect; I said, in essence, that his economic policies sucked.
I was also asked, however, a bunch of questions unrelated to my views, having to do with my ethnicity, age, income, etc. I reluctantly answered these except for one that I lied about. When asked my race I said "other" instead of "white." That was in my effort to discourage the outfit from taking race into consideration as surveys are being conducted. Answering such questions seem to me to amount to complicity in racial profiling, although the others, about my income or age, came pretty close to doing something like that too.
It is really annoying that a major, by many and by most mainstream news outfits regarded legitimate survey group engages in such profiling, something often condemned when done by, say, the police in the effort to flight crime. Why is it OK to deploy such profiling when people's views are being recorded? For one, I have held my views back when I earned a fraction of my present income, when I was a fraction of my present age, etc., etc. So what do these have to do with what an American citizen thinks about politics or President Obama's performance in office?
I was also asked about taxes, whether I consider raising or lowering them a good thing, as well as government involvement in the economy, ditto. Why would my age or race or income have any bearing on this? (And why was I not asked whether I consider the questions I was asked germane to figuring out what Americans think about foreign policy and the economy?)
OK, so those folks are supposed to know a thing or two about gathering information this way, by phone, on a Sunday afternoon, but some of what they did sounds fishy to me. Especially at a time when much of the citizenry throughout the country has given up on racism, agism, and similar kinds of categorizations with which bigots tend to assess the merits of someone's thoughts and actions. I am convinced that there should be a lot more about why one holds this or that view in the list of questions being posed--"Why do you consider raising taxes wrong?" "Why do you consider it wrong for the government to intrude on people's economic lives?" OK, this would take a bit longer to discover about us all--although they could do what they did here, namely select four or five possible answers and ask you to select from these--but it may be worth it since then it would foster critical thinking rather than political demagoguery.
Yes, that is one purpose of getting this information, namely, for politicians to gauge what the public is like so they can then appeal to their various irrelevant attributes and tempt them with offers they aren't likely to refuse. What age are you? Well, if there are lots of you that age, I will promise you retirement benefits and such. And so it goes for the other attributes that should have no bearing on anyone's political opinions, given that politics is supposedly about public affairs, not one's personal tastes and preferences. Ah, but who cares about what politics should be about? It is about bringing home the bacon, is it not?
Well, these are my reactions to being quizzed in the way the Rasmussen people go about quizzing those whom they contact by phone. I can fully appreciate it, by the way, that when the government takes its census, many people would find it very annoying and even inappropriate to be questioned along these similar lines.
Just thought I would make a public response to the Rasmussen people's approach to recording my views. It sadly tends not to be so much about my views but about the type or kind of sort of person I am, which should be completely off limits for responsible surveyors.
Tibor R. Machan
Very, very rarely I am contacted by some survey organization and I usually volunteer to answer the questions posed to me. Just a few minutes ago a taped interviewer, identifying herself as calling for the Rasmussen Group, called me up and I answered all the questions I was asked. Some of these dealt with my views on President Obama's current and expected performance and I answered pretty much as anyone who knows me would expect; I said, in essence, that his economic policies sucked.
I was also asked, however, a bunch of questions unrelated to my views, having to do with my ethnicity, age, income, etc. I reluctantly answered these except for one that I lied about. When asked my race I said "other" instead of "white." That was in my effort to discourage the outfit from taking race into consideration as surveys are being conducted. Answering such questions seem to me to amount to complicity in racial profiling, although the others, about my income or age, came pretty close to doing something like that too.
It is really annoying that a major, by many and by most mainstream news outfits regarded legitimate survey group engages in such profiling, something often condemned when done by, say, the police in the effort to flight crime. Why is it OK to deploy such profiling when people's views are being recorded? For one, I have held my views back when I earned a fraction of my present income, when I was a fraction of my present age, etc., etc. So what do these have to do with what an American citizen thinks about politics or President Obama's performance in office?
I was also asked about taxes, whether I consider raising or lowering them a good thing, as well as government involvement in the economy, ditto. Why would my age or race or income have any bearing on this? (And why was I not asked whether I consider the questions I was asked germane to figuring out what Americans think about foreign policy and the economy?)
OK, so those folks are supposed to know a thing or two about gathering information this way, by phone, on a Sunday afternoon, but some of what they did sounds fishy to me. Especially at a time when much of the citizenry throughout the country has given up on racism, agism, and similar kinds of categorizations with which bigots tend to assess the merits of someone's thoughts and actions. I am convinced that there should be a lot more about why one holds this or that view in the list of questions being posed--"Why do you consider raising taxes wrong?" "Why do you consider it wrong for the government to intrude on people's economic lives?" OK, this would take a bit longer to discover about us all--although they could do what they did here, namely select four or five possible answers and ask you to select from these--but it may be worth it since then it would foster critical thinking rather than political demagoguery.
Yes, that is one purpose of getting this information, namely, for politicians to gauge what the public is like so they can then appeal to their various irrelevant attributes and tempt them with offers they aren't likely to refuse. What age are you? Well, if there are lots of you that age, I will promise you retirement benefits and such. And so it goes for the other attributes that should have no bearing on anyone's political opinions, given that politics is supposedly about public affairs, not one's personal tastes and preferences. Ah, but who cares about what politics should be about? It is about bringing home the bacon, is it not?
Well, these are my reactions to being quizzed in the way the Rasmussen people go about quizzing those whom they contact by phone. I can fully appreciate it, by the way, that when the government takes its census, many people would find it very annoying and even inappropriate to be questioned along these similar lines.
Just thought I would make a public response to the Rasmussen people's approach to recording my views. It sadly tends not to be so much about my views but about the type or kind of sort of person I am, which should be completely off limits for responsible surveyors.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Homo Economicus vs. True Selfishness
Tibor R. Machan
For a year now much abuse has been heaped upon homo economicus or "economic man." The abuse got exacerbated when former Federal Reserve Bank Chief Alan Greenspan claimed that he had too much confidence in the idea. But what he said was very misleading despite the fact that he had been closely associated with Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy, the ethical portion of which considers selfish conduct morally virtuous.
Greenspan's reference to "self-interest" is radically different from Ayn Rand's. The latter means by self-interest "whatever will enhance the objective well being of an agent." It calls to mind the exchange between Crito and Socrates in one of Plato's dialogues, the Phaedo, where Crito asks, "When you are gone, Socrates, how can we best act to please you?" and Socrates replies: "Just follow my old recipe, my friend: do yourselves concern yourselves with your own true self-interest; then you will oblige me, and mine and yourself too."
This is pretty much the substance of Ayn Rand's ethics of Objectivism: Do what in fact advances your best interest as the individual human being you are! In contrast, Greenspan was talking about the contemporary idea prominent in neo-classical economics, namely, homo economicus, according to which every free person always acts in his or her interest which is simply whatever anyone does if one is free to choose for oneself. The former idea of self-interest or selfishness requires of people to adhere to strict standards of conduct while the latter requires no standards for them to follow only to choose to do whatever they want to do.
Once again it is evident that the enemies of human liberty are desperately trying to stick it to the free market system by claiming that the empty homo economicus idea underlies it. In fact that idea underlies nearly all economics in our time, including that of John Maynard Keynes who is paraded around now as the great sage whose advices we did not follow and for which we are now paying with the current economic fiasco. Both Keyneseans and non-Keyneseans accept the "everyone is always selfish" view of market agents, the one Greenspan claims misled him.
That idea is in point of fact nearly useless since what it produces is vacuous claims, such as "Everyone will do whatever he or she will do if left alone, unregulated by the government." This is a wholly uninformative claim and that is, in fact, its main merit as far as many economist claim. Economists tend to stay away from morally or otherwise evaluating how people act in the free market. At least as economists they have no concern about that--as fathers, friends, citizens and so forth they may very well make such judgments but as economists all they care about is to explain what happens in markets. And they believe that assuming the truth of their idea of self-interested conduct, they can provide such explanations. This very, very broad "explanation" amounts, in essence, to the claim, "People do what they do in the free market because that is what they want to do."
The proper defense of the free market system is far more substantial than this. It states that if people aren't pushed around by governments and criminals, they will most likely do their best at figuring out what they should do, including how to earn and spend their resources. What the "best" is, however, cannot be told in general terms. But it can be told in particular cases, if one knows the agent well. And free men and women tend, in the main, to figure out what is best for them to do and pursue, objectively.
Whether the above is true is an important matter to determine but it isn't what Greenspan and other economists advance in defense of the free market place. (I think they should but that's another issue entirely.) Greenspan and most other prominent economists who favor markets tend to say simply that in free markets people are able to seek whatever they want. That is all they claim for freedom. But there is far more to it than this.
Tibor R. Machan
For a year now much abuse has been heaped upon homo economicus or "economic man." The abuse got exacerbated when former Federal Reserve Bank Chief Alan Greenspan claimed that he had too much confidence in the idea. But what he said was very misleading despite the fact that he had been closely associated with Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy, the ethical portion of which considers selfish conduct morally virtuous.
Greenspan's reference to "self-interest" is radically different from Ayn Rand's. The latter means by self-interest "whatever will enhance the objective well being of an agent." It calls to mind the exchange between Crito and Socrates in one of Plato's dialogues, the Phaedo, where Crito asks, "When you are gone, Socrates, how can we best act to please you?" and Socrates replies: "Just follow my old recipe, my friend: do yourselves concern yourselves with your own true self-interest; then you will oblige me, and mine and yourself too."
This is pretty much the substance of Ayn Rand's ethics of Objectivism: Do what in fact advances your best interest as the individual human being you are! In contrast, Greenspan was talking about the contemporary idea prominent in neo-classical economics, namely, homo economicus, according to which every free person always acts in his or her interest which is simply whatever anyone does if one is free to choose for oneself. The former idea of self-interest or selfishness requires of people to adhere to strict standards of conduct while the latter requires no standards for them to follow only to choose to do whatever they want to do.
Once again it is evident that the enemies of human liberty are desperately trying to stick it to the free market system by claiming that the empty homo economicus idea underlies it. In fact that idea underlies nearly all economics in our time, including that of John Maynard Keynes who is paraded around now as the great sage whose advices we did not follow and for which we are now paying with the current economic fiasco. Both Keyneseans and non-Keyneseans accept the "everyone is always selfish" view of market agents, the one Greenspan claims misled him.
That idea is in point of fact nearly useless since what it produces is vacuous claims, such as "Everyone will do whatever he or she will do if left alone, unregulated by the government." This is a wholly uninformative claim and that is, in fact, its main merit as far as many economist claim. Economists tend to stay away from morally or otherwise evaluating how people act in the free market. At least as economists they have no concern about that--as fathers, friends, citizens and so forth they may very well make such judgments but as economists all they care about is to explain what happens in markets. And they believe that assuming the truth of their idea of self-interested conduct, they can provide such explanations. This very, very broad "explanation" amounts, in essence, to the claim, "People do what they do in the free market because that is what they want to do."
The proper defense of the free market system is far more substantial than this. It states that if people aren't pushed around by governments and criminals, they will most likely do their best at figuring out what they should do, including how to earn and spend their resources. What the "best" is, however, cannot be told in general terms. But it can be told in particular cases, if one knows the agent well. And free men and women tend, in the main, to figure out what is best for them to do and pursue, objectively.
Whether the above is true is an important matter to determine but it isn't what Greenspan and other economists advance in defense of the free market place. (I think they should but that's another issue entirely.) Greenspan and most other prominent economists who favor markets tend to say simply that in free markets people are able to seek whatever they want. That is all they claim for freedom. But there is far more to it than this.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Free Markets vs. Pope Benedict XVI
Tibor R. Machan
It is of course the time now, with everyone pretty confused about just how much free market capitalism had to do with the economic mess for the enemies of economic liberty to rise up and seize the day! That way they may get some mileage out of it all for their ongoing mission, namely, to prepare people throughout the society for being ruled, managed, regimented, regulated by, you guessed it, them!
In his recent book, Caritas in Veritate: On Integral Human Develpment in Charity and Truth (Ignatius Press, 2009), we are implored by the Pope to love all instead of trade, as if this really were possible among billions of people. Such dreaming has done terrible damage to humanity for centuries, so why should the current Pope not buy into it? The kind of Christian love the Pope is promoting seems to him to be anathema to free markets. His reason? That the pursuit of profit precludes love among human beings.
As one reviewer of the Pope's book, Professor David Nirenberg of the University of Chicago's Committee of Social Thought, points out in The New Republic (9/23/09)--in an attempt to simplify the book's message, I assume--"In pursuit of profit, every individual attempts to extract the highest possible price, treating fellow citizens not as friends but as 'foemen,' thereby destroying the love of fellow citizens that is necessary for the common good of the polity." The reviewer brings in Socrates/Plato in support of his and the Pope's point against self-interest.
But in fact while Plato warned against crude self-interest, he also wrote, "Crito, 'When you are gone, Socrates, how can we best act to please you?' Socrates: 'Just follow my old recipe, my friend: do yourselves concern yourselves with your own true self-interest; then you will oblige me, and mine and yourself too.'" What the Pope and the reviewer of his book miss is that love cannot be spread thin across the world, not even across the market place. Trade does respect individual sovereignty and thus shows a certain sensible measure of love for others. But the deeper love that the Pope and so many others, among them most notably Karl Marx, demand of us all (in opposition to self-love and a measured respect we show other people in the course of trade) is impossible except among intimates--family, friends, maybe some comrades in arms and colleagues. That kind of love requires detailed knowledge of others and such knowledge is simply unavailable to us except about very few other people (not all of whom, moreover, will deserve our love).
The dreamers, like the Pope and his allies, would destroy genuine, realistically possible love of some few people for the sake of the shallow kind professed by politicians and celebrities. Interestingly enough, Socrates and Plato knew this when they sketched the ideal city in which love rules as against trade by quite arguably making it a utopia, something that cannot actually exist. The ideal city, like the ideal woman on the covers of Vogue or Elle, is a model imagined not a blueprint to be implemented. Yes it needs to be kept in mind but only a fool or fanatic would attempt to imitate it.
Socrates and Plato, when closely read, are clearly warning us against political idealism, against trying to transform the polity--or city or country--into an intimate group that's governed by principles of loving friendship. Trade, contrary to what is intimated by these idealists, by no means precludes genuine love among people. It doesn't insists, admittedly, that all who trade ought to love one another. The trade relationship is sensibly limited in scope--when you go shopping you need not get involved in the butcher's family life, the car dealers hobbies, or the dentist's personal problems. It is friends and relatives who do that, not those who populate the market place for the limited purpose of striking a good deal. And that purpose not only does not preclude pursuing friendship and other intimacies elsewhere but makes that pursuit economically possible, affordable, if you will.
As that saying I like so much states, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Markets are not the highest of human institutions but they are excellent for the purpose for which most of us use them.
Tibor R. Machan
It is of course the time now, with everyone pretty confused about just how much free market capitalism had to do with the economic mess for the enemies of economic liberty to rise up and seize the day! That way they may get some mileage out of it all for their ongoing mission, namely, to prepare people throughout the society for being ruled, managed, regimented, regulated by, you guessed it, them!
In his recent book, Caritas in Veritate: On Integral Human Develpment in Charity and Truth (Ignatius Press, 2009), we are implored by the Pope to love all instead of trade, as if this really were possible among billions of people. Such dreaming has done terrible damage to humanity for centuries, so why should the current Pope not buy into it? The kind of Christian love the Pope is promoting seems to him to be anathema to free markets. His reason? That the pursuit of profit precludes love among human beings.
As one reviewer of the Pope's book, Professor David Nirenberg of the University of Chicago's Committee of Social Thought, points out in The New Republic (9/23/09)--in an attempt to simplify the book's message, I assume--"In pursuit of profit, every individual attempts to extract the highest possible price, treating fellow citizens not as friends but as 'foemen,' thereby destroying the love of fellow citizens that is necessary for the common good of the polity." The reviewer brings in Socrates/Plato in support of his and the Pope's point against self-interest.
But in fact while Plato warned against crude self-interest, he also wrote, "Crito, 'When you are gone, Socrates, how can we best act to please you?' Socrates: 'Just follow my old recipe, my friend: do yourselves concern yourselves with your own true self-interest; then you will oblige me, and mine and yourself too.'" What the Pope and the reviewer of his book miss is that love cannot be spread thin across the world, not even across the market place. Trade does respect individual sovereignty and thus shows a certain sensible measure of love for others. But the deeper love that the Pope and so many others, among them most notably Karl Marx, demand of us all (in opposition to self-love and a measured respect we show other people in the course of trade) is impossible except among intimates--family, friends, maybe some comrades in arms and colleagues. That kind of love requires detailed knowledge of others and such knowledge is simply unavailable to us except about very few other people (not all of whom, moreover, will deserve our love).
The dreamers, like the Pope and his allies, would destroy genuine, realistically possible love of some few people for the sake of the shallow kind professed by politicians and celebrities. Interestingly enough, Socrates and Plato knew this when they sketched the ideal city in which love rules as against trade by quite arguably making it a utopia, something that cannot actually exist. The ideal city, like the ideal woman on the covers of Vogue or Elle, is a model imagined not a blueprint to be implemented. Yes it needs to be kept in mind but only a fool or fanatic would attempt to imitate it.
Socrates and Plato, when closely read, are clearly warning us against political idealism, against trying to transform the polity--or city or country--into an intimate group that's governed by principles of loving friendship. Trade, contrary to what is intimated by these idealists, by no means precludes genuine love among people. It doesn't insists, admittedly, that all who trade ought to love one another. The trade relationship is sensibly limited in scope--when you go shopping you need not get involved in the butcher's family life, the car dealers hobbies, or the dentist's personal problems. It is friends and relatives who do that, not those who populate the market place for the limited purpose of striking a good deal. And that purpose not only does not preclude pursuing friendship and other intimacies elsewhere but makes that pursuit economically possible, affordable, if you will.
As that saying I like so much states, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Markets are not the highest of human institutions but they are excellent for the purpose for which most of us use them.
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