Krugmann’s Failed Analogy
Tibor R. Machan
Ok, so I’ll give him this: finally Dr. Krugmann put forth something akin to an argument instead of merely demonizing those with whom he disagrees! (See his column, The Hijacked Crisis, The New York Times, August 11, 2011.) The argument, however, is an analogy and as with many analogies, it fails to be an apt one.
Krugmann tells us that suggesting that what the US government should do is significantly cut back on spending is misguided because the economy is in need of immediate and drastic emergency treatment. Like a man who is bleeding profusely, this is not the time to counsel greater prudence and preventive treatment. What it needs is the infusion of massive doses of blood, as some patients require blood transfusions so as to save them from imminent death. We may assume, then, that once the infusion has done its job, the long term remedy of cutting spending can get under way. As he wrote recently, "For the fact is that right now the economy desperately needs a short-run fix. When you're bleeding profusely from an open wound, you want a doctor who binds that wound up, not a doctor who lectures you on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle as you get older. When millions of willing and able workers are unemployed, and economic potential is going to waste to the tune of almost $1 trillion a year, you want policy makers who work on a fast recovery, not people who lecture you on the need for long-run fiscal sustainability. ... What would a real response to our problems involve? First of all, it would involve more, not less, government spending."
Looks like a good piece of advice initially, but it misses the mark. The economy, first of all, isn’t some biological system. (And Krugmann has never ever conceded that spending cuts are needed, ever! Government must always spend and thus stimulate the economy.) As to the first point, the government’s taking massive amounts of money from people so as to spend it on "public" works, as per the priorities of government officials and their advisers, doesn’t constitute an emergency measure but only a change of who will do the stimulation. Instead of having the citizenry spend its labor and resources on what it chooses to spend it on, it will be government officials--politicians and bureaucrats--who will do so.
Even if the analogy had some promise, there is no reason to believe that these officials are going to spend our labor and funds on projects that will stimulate anything, certainly nothing that will do so better than were the citizens themselves to spend their own labor and resources as they see fit. If anything, when government takes over what by right we should be doing, they are far more likely to misspend than we would. You and I have some pretty good idea as to what we need to spend our funds on, whereas those in government are at best getting their priorities via the political process which very likely distorts the feedback system that informs the economy about what is most important to invest in, to spend on. Worse than that, they actually get it from their own imagination and fantasy, as when they want to build huge dams or highways where they are not at all needed.
The radical remedy Krugmann favors could well work in the case of a human individual, a biological entity whose medical needs can be ascertained by most physicians. But when it comes to an economy such as that of the USA, wherein the “demands” of the citizenry are inordinately diverse and can, thus, be best assessed locally, not by planners from Washington or even state capitols, doing the kind of stimulus Krugmann favors is just impossible (a la Hayek’s good teachings). Which is why the stimulus didn’t work before and isn’t working now.
So, yes we finally have something of an argument from Paul Krugmann. But it involves a misguided analogy. Individual human organisms are one thing; economic systems of a huge country another entirely. So what he attempts to derive from his analogy is in fact a colossal non-sequitor. It doesn’t follow and never has.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Further Distortions of Libertarianism
Tibor R. Machan
In his essay “The Tea Party Jacobins,” with its hyperbolic and besmirching title, Mark Lilla, whose The Reckless Minds: Intellectuals in Politics I once favorably reviewed, advances the notion that the Tea Party’s “libertarian irruptions … [attracted] individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone.”
I am reminded of this point by Andrew Hacker’s essay “The Next Election: The Surprising Reality,” in The New York Review of Books (August 18, 2011), which quotes Lilla favorably. But check this: Libertarians demonstrably do not believe what Lilla claims they do. Libertarians aren’t “convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone.” What they believe, instead, is that free men and women can do things much better than bureaucrats and politicians, mostly in voluntary associations. Teams, orchestras, clubs, corporations, choirs, and many other such associations aren’t “individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves.” No libertarian I have every known--and I have known a great many, having edited one of the first collection of essays by libertarians for Nelson-Hall Publishers of Chicago back in 1973 (The Libertarian Alternative)--is convinced of such an idiotic idea. None want to do things “themselves.” What they want is not to be coerced into associations to which they may object, especially by the government. They don’t believe people ought to be forced to contribute to social security, medicate, and similar programs not of their own choosing. It is a complete non-sequitor to hold that this means they want to do things by themselves.
Comments like those by Lilla suggest to me that critics of libertarianism are running very low on bona fide objections to the position. Instead they need to make it appear that the libertarian positions embraces ideas that it clearly does not embrace or even remotely implies. Only that way can they come of up with criticisms of it.
This has been going on for centuries, actually. For example, Marx argued that individualists, the libertarians of yesteryear, think they are self-sufficient and defend the right to private property so as to make use of what they own arbitrarily and selfishly. As he put it, “the right of man to property is the right to enjoy his possessions and dispose of the same arbitrarily, without regard for other men, independently from society, the right of selfishness.” This line of criticism, along with the charge that free market advocates believe in atomistic individualism, has been repeated over and over again, not just by the Left but also by the Right. And it is bunk.
In fact, the main thing that the right to private property secures is the individual’s liberty to choose how to dispose of his or her labor or resources. It is this choice that bothers the critics who all contend that they, not you or I, can decided best how we ought to use our labor and goods. Indeed, under socialism your and my labor is public property and to be allocated as the party leaders decide because they have the requisite knowledge, something you and I supposedly lack. (Why they but not we is an unanswered question!)
Anyway, Lilla and his ilk just don’t want to deal with the bona fide libertarian viewpoint. They need the nonsense they impute to libertarians so as to make the position appear ridiculous. But contrary to what they suggest, it is not at all ridiculous. It does not hold that people are all isolated atoms who believe they can fend for themselves, all alone. No sane person believes this. But once you allege that some people do, they can be dismissed as nut cases, which is just what it seems Lilla & Co. would like to do with the Tea Party folks. One cannot help thinking that what these critics are after isn’t to get it right about politics and economics but to secure for themselves the exclusive authority to call the shots for everyone.
Tibor R. Machan
In his essay “The Tea Party Jacobins,” with its hyperbolic and besmirching title, Mark Lilla, whose The Reckless Minds: Intellectuals in Politics I once favorably reviewed, advances the notion that the Tea Party’s “libertarian irruptions … [attracted] individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone.”
I am reminded of this point by Andrew Hacker’s essay “The Next Election: The Surprising Reality,” in The New York Review of Books (August 18, 2011), which quotes Lilla favorably. But check this: Libertarians demonstrably do not believe what Lilla claims they do. Libertarians aren’t “convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone.” What they believe, instead, is that free men and women can do things much better than bureaucrats and politicians, mostly in voluntary associations. Teams, orchestras, clubs, corporations, choirs, and many other such associations aren’t “individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves.” No libertarian I have every known--and I have known a great many, having edited one of the first collection of essays by libertarians for Nelson-Hall Publishers of Chicago back in 1973 (The Libertarian Alternative)--is convinced of such an idiotic idea. None want to do things “themselves.” What they want is not to be coerced into associations to which they may object, especially by the government. They don’t believe people ought to be forced to contribute to social security, medicate, and similar programs not of their own choosing. It is a complete non-sequitor to hold that this means they want to do things by themselves.
Comments like those by Lilla suggest to me that critics of libertarianism are running very low on bona fide objections to the position. Instead they need to make it appear that the libertarian positions embraces ideas that it clearly does not embrace or even remotely implies. Only that way can they come of up with criticisms of it.
This has been going on for centuries, actually. For example, Marx argued that individualists, the libertarians of yesteryear, think they are self-sufficient and defend the right to private property so as to make use of what they own arbitrarily and selfishly. As he put it, “the right of man to property is the right to enjoy his possessions and dispose of the same arbitrarily, without regard for other men, independently from society, the right of selfishness.” This line of criticism, along with the charge that free market advocates believe in atomistic individualism, has been repeated over and over again, not just by the Left but also by the Right. And it is bunk.
In fact, the main thing that the right to private property secures is the individual’s liberty to choose how to dispose of his or her labor or resources. It is this choice that bothers the critics who all contend that they, not you or I, can decided best how we ought to use our labor and goods. Indeed, under socialism your and my labor is public property and to be allocated as the party leaders decide because they have the requisite knowledge, something you and I supposedly lack. (Why they but not we is an unanswered question!)
Anyway, Lilla and his ilk just don’t want to deal with the bona fide libertarian viewpoint. They need the nonsense they impute to libertarians so as to make the position appear ridiculous. But contrary to what they suggest, it is not at all ridiculous. It does not hold that people are all isolated atoms who believe they can fend for themselves, all alone. No sane person believes this. But once you allege that some people do, they can be dismissed as nut cases, which is just what it seems Lilla & Co. would like to do with the Tea Party folks. One cannot help thinking that what these critics are after isn’t to get it right about politics and economics but to secure for themselves the exclusive authority to call the shots for everyone.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Getting Serious About Recovery
This is how economic recovery can be encouraged by all levels of governments in the U. S.:
1.Remove all preemptory government regulations of all the professions and businesses.
2.Cut taxes to the bone, when possible totally abolish them.
3.Cut all subsidies and protectionist measures.
4.Eliminate all minimum wage laws.
5.Close down all the alphabet soup agencies (a corollary of #1).
6.Sell off all government properties that do not relate to the military defense of the country.
7.Abolish the war on drugs.
8.Abolish all blue laws, everywhere (including states, counties, and municipalities).
9.Stop all non-defensive military endeavors.
10.Basically and most generally, follow the edict of the Declaration of Independence where it assigns to government the job of securing the basic rights of the citizenry.
It is by freeing up human productivity and creativity that economies are most likely to grow. Apart from natural calamities, governmental interventions are the worst obstacles to economic development. Makes perfectly good sense. Government is no good at picking winners and losers. Bureaucrats and politicians have no more wisdom and virtue than do the rest of us, so they must not take over the direction of our lives, including our economic affairs. The top down regimentation of economic affairs is perverse and will surely prolong our economic wows.
If these measures aren’t followed, the country will continue to struggle and decline.
This is how economic recovery can be encouraged by all levels of governments in the U. S.:
1.Remove all preemptory government regulations of all the professions and businesses.
2.Cut taxes to the bone, when possible totally abolish them.
3.Cut all subsidies and protectionist measures.
4.Eliminate all minimum wage laws.
5.Close down all the alphabet soup agencies (a corollary of #1).
6.Sell off all government properties that do not relate to the military defense of the country.
7.Abolish the war on drugs.
8.Abolish all blue laws, everywhere (including states, counties, and municipalities).
9.Stop all non-defensive military endeavors.
10.Basically and most generally, follow the edict of the Declaration of Independence where it assigns to government the job of securing the basic rights of the citizenry.
It is by freeing up human productivity and creativity that economies are most likely to grow. Apart from natural calamities, governmental interventions are the worst obstacles to economic development. Makes perfectly good sense. Government is no good at picking winners and losers. Bureaucrats and politicians have no more wisdom and virtue than do the rest of us, so they must not take over the direction of our lives, including our economic affairs. The top down regimentation of economic affairs is perverse and will surely prolong our economic wows.
If these measures aren’t followed, the country will continue to struggle and decline.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Cleaver’s Bad Theology
Tibor R. Machan
Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri produced a sound bite following the recent passage in Congress of the compromise bill on the dept ceiling and spending cuts. Even as this bill didn’t by any means manage to demonstrate Congress’s serious understanding of economic reality, Cleaver said that the bill amounts to a devil’s sandwich, by which he meant that it amounts to the defiance of centuries of teachings of the world’s greatest religions about how one must look out for the poor and needy as one lives one’s life.
The remark needed to be put in the sound bite form because any detailed investigation of those teachings would reveal something very different from what Cleaver had in mind. Let us grant that most religions do implore us to lend those in need a hand, to help the poor and indigent. Indeed, there is no ethical system that doesn’t make some room for this idea. Even the ethics of Aristotle implore us to be generous, even as we strive to achieve our happiness in life. Indeed, generosity or liberality is a virtue people ought to practice, or so Aristotle teaches. And comparable teachings can indeed be found in most of the world’s religions.
.
Yet the use to which Rep. Cleaver wants to put this idea is quite perverse. He doesn’t urge us to be generous, kind, compassionate, charitable and such. No he urges us to engage in robbery and to use the loot we obtain by this means to provide help to those the robbers believe should get some of it. Generosity and the like are supposed to be virtues that people ought to practice in their own lives. It’s individuals who ought to help out the needy. It is they who must choose to be generous, charitable and such. Nothing less will serve as virtuous, ethical or moral conduct then good deeds that are chosen by the agent.
Stealing from someone else and handing some of the loot to a needy individual will not do. It simply isn’t virtuous to do that since it is tainted by a serious immorality. Generosity or charity with other people’s labor or resources is impossible. Both Representative Cleaver and President Obama have shown their utter misconception of the nature of generosity or charity, claiming, falsely, that it involves robbing Peter so as to benefit Paul. This is very similar to the widespread misunderstanding of the legend of Robin Hood who didn’t rob the rich to help the poor but recovered the loot taken by the tax man and returned it to those who had been deprived of it by taxation.
And even the simplest common sense morality rejects that one can do good deeds on the backs of others. A good deed must come from oneself. It is into one’s very own picket that a generous person must dig in order to earn moral credit for giving away his or her own labor or resources. And that is certainly not what Rep. Cleaver had in mind. He was making devious and corrupt use of the idea that is taught by most of the world’s religions and morality, namely, that one ought to help those in dire straits. That is cynicism, not bona fide ethics or morality. Putting a gun to other people’s heads and thus enabling oneself to “help” others is morally wrong, plain and simple. It is a sign of how morally ignorant many in Congress and other centers of political power across the globe tend to be to hold otherwise.
As the old saying has it, charity must start at home--and it must end there, as well.
Tibor R. Machan
Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri produced a sound bite following the recent passage in Congress of the compromise bill on the dept ceiling and spending cuts. Even as this bill didn’t by any means manage to demonstrate Congress’s serious understanding of economic reality, Cleaver said that the bill amounts to a devil’s sandwich, by which he meant that it amounts to the defiance of centuries of teachings of the world’s greatest religions about how one must look out for the poor and needy as one lives one’s life.
The remark needed to be put in the sound bite form because any detailed investigation of those teachings would reveal something very different from what Cleaver had in mind. Let us grant that most religions do implore us to lend those in need a hand, to help the poor and indigent. Indeed, there is no ethical system that doesn’t make some room for this idea. Even the ethics of Aristotle implore us to be generous, even as we strive to achieve our happiness in life. Indeed, generosity or liberality is a virtue people ought to practice, or so Aristotle teaches. And comparable teachings can indeed be found in most of the world’s religions.
.
Yet the use to which Rep. Cleaver wants to put this idea is quite perverse. He doesn’t urge us to be generous, kind, compassionate, charitable and such. No he urges us to engage in robbery and to use the loot we obtain by this means to provide help to those the robbers believe should get some of it. Generosity and the like are supposed to be virtues that people ought to practice in their own lives. It’s individuals who ought to help out the needy. It is they who must choose to be generous, charitable and such. Nothing less will serve as virtuous, ethical or moral conduct then good deeds that are chosen by the agent.
Stealing from someone else and handing some of the loot to a needy individual will not do. It simply isn’t virtuous to do that since it is tainted by a serious immorality. Generosity or charity with other people’s labor or resources is impossible. Both Representative Cleaver and President Obama have shown their utter misconception of the nature of generosity or charity, claiming, falsely, that it involves robbing Peter so as to benefit Paul. This is very similar to the widespread misunderstanding of the legend of Robin Hood who didn’t rob the rich to help the poor but recovered the loot taken by the tax man and returned it to those who had been deprived of it by taxation.
And even the simplest common sense morality rejects that one can do good deeds on the backs of others. A good deed must come from oneself. It is into one’s very own picket that a generous person must dig in order to earn moral credit for giving away his or her own labor or resources. And that is certainly not what Rep. Cleaver had in mind. He was making devious and corrupt use of the idea that is taught by most of the world’s religions and morality, namely, that one ought to help those in dire straits. That is cynicism, not bona fide ethics or morality. Putting a gun to other people’s heads and thus enabling oneself to “help” others is morally wrong, plain and simple. It is a sign of how morally ignorant many in Congress and other centers of political power across the globe tend to be to hold otherwise.
As the old saying has it, charity must start at home--and it must end there, as well.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Just Say “No”
Tibor R. Machan
After sustained profligacy comes the dreaded cold turkey. Any kind of habitual indulgence can only be stopped if at some point the “addict” says “no,” with no excuses.
I would assume most people have been through this. I know a few personally. They have kept up spending in the face of lacking funds an even lacking the promise of funds. Credit card companies accept clients with hardly any creditworthiness--indeed, I have been there myself. So how is this to be brought to a halt?
I would suggest that deep cuts in one`s spending habits is the best way. Sure, few people can go cold turkey on food or necessary medicine. But what about going to fancy nail salons? What about having premium coffees every morning, noon and afternoon? What about getting top of the line clothing and cars?
The trick profligate politicians use is to raise the specter of Draconian elimination of, say, social security and medicare benefits but this is a phony ploy. After all, both of these programs are supposedly funded by beneficiaries themselves. They are supposed to be more like insurance than like welfare.
What is certainly not essential to anyone is, for instance, subsidies to all the varieties of special interest groups. Or huge public works that only benefit some select but influential citizens. What about selling off some public lands? Why does the government, any government, own and maintain national forests and parks? Who will go without basic necessities if these are seriously cut back?
One could continue forever with the list of available cuts in federal and other government spending that would not impact the indigent or elderly. Never mind that even here the idea that government exists to fund such programs is perverse. Does that count as securing our rights? Certainly not--no one has a right to other people`s money and work, not unless there has been a mutually agreed to deal about these.
The debt ceiling must be dealt with by administering a total halt and this may well be the time to fess up to that fact. Think of it as indispensible financial house cleaning, something every family needs now and then. It would be unthinkable to dump all of one`s debts on total strangers who happen to live nearby. And it would be even less thinkable to dump it all on members of future generations who aren`t even around to protest or consent.
Of course some people will feel the pinch of the ceiling. But that is the price that has to be paid when so many people think they can get something from nothing. However drastic the remedy, it is indeed a remedy.
Tibor R. Machan
After sustained profligacy comes the dreaded cold turkey. Any kind of habitual indulgence can only be stopped if at some point the “addict” says “no,” with no excuses.
I would assume most people have been through this. I know a few personally. They have kept up spending in the face of lacking funds an even lacking the promise of funds. Credit card companies accept clients with hardly any creditworthiness--indeed, I have been there myself. So how is this to be brought to a halt?
I would suggest that deep cuts in one`s spending habits is the best way. Sure, few people can go cold turkey on food or necessary medicine. But what about going to fancy nail salons? What about having premium coffees every morning, noon and afternoon? What about getting top of the line clothing and cars?
The trick profligate politicians use is to raise the specter of Draconian elimination of, say, social security and medicare benefits but this is a phony ploy. After all, both of these programs are supposedly funded by beneficiaries themselves. They are supposed to be more like insurance than like welfare.
What is certainly not essential to anyone is, for instance, subsidies to all the varieties of special interest groups. Or huge public works that only benefit some select but influential citizens. What about selling off some public lands? Why does the government, any government, own and maintain national forests and parks? Who will go without basic necessities if these are seriously cut back?
One could continue forever with the list of available cuts in federal and other government spending that would not impact the indigent or elderly. Never mind that even here the idea that government exists to fund such programs is perverse. Does that count as securing our rights? Certainly not--no one has a right to other people`s money and work, not unless there has been a mutually agreed to deal about these.
The debt ceiling must be dealt with by administering a total halt and this may well be the time to fess up to that fact. Think of it as indispensible financial house cleaning, something every family needs now and then. It would be unthinkable to dump all of one`s debts on total strangers who happen to live nearby. And it would be even less thinkable to dump it all on members of future generations who aren`t even around to protest or consent.
Of course some people will feel the pinch of the ceiling. But that is the price that has to be paid when so many people think they can get something from nothing. However drastic the remedy, it is indeed a remedy.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
“Not Guilty” isn’t “Innocent”
Tibor R. Machan
An indication of the sad state of journalism is how often when people show support for the Casey Anthony verdict they are labeled as Casey Anthony supporters. But they could very well be supporting just one thing. That would be to accept the “not guilty” verdict. It is, after all, the result of an arguably elaborate jury trial in what is supposedly an entirely legitimate court of law. Once the jury reached its verdict, Anthony and any other accused person must be regarded not guilty as charged, in her instance primarily of murder. She wasn’t judged innocent, which would require omniscience on the jury’s part. Like her or not, believe what you will, the process that one must go through in this kind of situation resulted in “not guilty.”
It is odd that standing up for the result once it is reached is considered supporting Casey Anthony. Only in one respect is it a kind of “support.” That is that within the framework of the criminal law, the case against the accused wasn’t made successfully. She wasn’t shown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Some folks, on the other hand, appear to believe that the prosecution had to make the insurmountable achievement of proving Ms. Anthony guilty beyond a shadow of doubt. That would be impossible to do since shadows include fantasies, imagination, wild guesses and so forth. Instead the prosecution needed to prove only that all reasonable doubt about her guilt had been rebuffed. And as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out in his book On Certainty, such a doubt must be well grounded. But every member of the jury agreed that they didn’t manage to overcome all reasonable doubt, so they reached the only verdict they could reach.
As Voltaire is supposed to have said, better for a thousand guilty to go free than one who isn’t be convicted. Why so? Well, for one--aside from how precious human liberty is--because the prosecution has enormous resources with which to mount its efforts to get a conviction. It is, after all, THE PEOPLE vs. Casey Anthony. Symbolically or literally, the entire state of Florida was at work to convict Ms. Anthony before its legal representatives, namely the members of the jury. And it couldn’t do so.
The O. J. Simpson trial resulted in a similar acquittal because the jury didn’t find the prosecution’s efforts to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt successful. In a civilized country that is the end of the case. Another reason is that members of the jury are presumed to have had the best opportunity for studying the pros and cons. The defense had to concentrate on refuting what the prosecution produced, while the latter had the responsibility and ample opportunity to make the case against the defendants. You and I didn’t, nor did all those who were outside the courtroom dissatisfied with what resulted from these trials and many others.
Of course, hope isn’t often rational, so once the prosecutors pick a likely suspect, many of those who have been aggrieved--whose relative has been murdered or otherwise violated--will become partisans instead of objective evaluators of the case made as the jury must be. But civilized men and women must resist such partisanship in the pursuit of justice which is supposed to be blind to favors and sentiments.
It is most important here to remember that these trials are a decent enough approximation to the best search for justice human beings can come up with. Only if someone has been shown to be guilty in the eyes of members of the community, represented by the jury, may the accused be deprived of his or her liberty. That liberty is, in a reasonably free country, a very if not the most precious element of a citizen’s public life. So the only way to lose it is if the accusation of a severe crime is proven true beyond any reasonable doubt.
As one of the signs said outside the jail from which Casey Anthony emerged on Sunday morning, July 17th: “She is not guilty! Live with it.”
Tibor R. Machan
An indication of the sad state of journalism is how often when people show support for the Casey Anthony verdict they are labeled as Casey Anthony supporters. But they could very well be supporting just one thing. That would be to accept the “not guilty” verdict. It is, after all, the result of an arguably elaborate jury trial in what is supposedly an entirely legitimate court of law. Once the jury reached its verdict, Anthony and any other accused person must be regarded not guilty as charged, in her instance primarily of murder. She wasn’t judged innocent, which would require omniscience on the jury’s part. Like her or not, believe what you will, the process that one must go through in this kind of situation resulted in “not guilty.”
It is odd that standing up for the result once it is reached is considered supporting Casey Anthony. Only in one respect is it a kind of “support.” That is that within the framework of the criminal law, the case against the accused wasn’t made successfully. She wasn’t shown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Some folks, on the other hand, appear to believe that the prosecution had to make the insurmountable achievement of proving Ms. Anthony guilty beyond a shadow of doubt. That would be impossible to do since shadows include fantasies, imagination, wild guesses and so forth. Instead the prosecution needed to prove only that all reasonable doubt about her guilt had been rebuffed. And as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out in his book On Certainty, such a doubt must be well grounded. But every member of the jury agreed that they didn’t manage to overcome all reasonable doubt, so they reached the only verdict they could reach.
As Voltaire is supposed to have said, better for a thousand guilty to go free than one who isn’t be convicted. Why so? Well, for one--aside from how precious human liberty is--because the prosecution has enormous resources with which to mount its efforts to get a conviction. It is, after all, THE PEOPLE vs. Casey Anthony. Symbolically or literally, the entire state of Florida was at work to convict Ms. Anthony before its legal representatives, namely the members of the jury. And it couldn’t do so.
The O. J. Simpson trial resulted in a similar acquittal because the jury didn’t find the prosecution’s efforts to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt successful. In a civilized country that is the end of the case. Another reason is that members of the jury are presumed to have had the best opportunity for studying the pros and cons. The defense had to concentrate on refuting what the prosecution produced, while the latter had the responsibility and ample opportunity to make the case against the defendants. You and I didn’t, nor did all those who were outside the courtroom dissatisfied with what resulted from these trials and many others.
Of course, hope isn’t often rational, so once the prosecutors pick a likely suspect, many of those who have been aggrieved--whose relative has been murdered or otherwise violated--will become partisans instead of objective evaluators of the case made as the jury must be. But civilized men and women must resist such partisanship in the pursuit of justice which is supposed to be blind to favors and sentiments.
It is most important here to remember that these trials are a decent enough approximation to the best search for justice human beings can come up with. Only if someone has been shown to be guilty in the eyes of members of the community, represented by the jury, may the accused be deprived of his or her liberty. That liberty is, in a reasonably free country, a very if not the most precious element of a citizen’s public life. So the only way to lose it is if the accusation of a severe crime is proven true beyond any reasonable doubt.
As one of the signs said outside the jail from which Casey Anthony emerged on Sunday morning, July 17th: “She is not guilty! Live with it.”
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Public Works on Steroids
Tibor R. Machan
What the Obama administration and its cheerleaders call “the stimulus” is by all sensible accounts the macroeconomic version of steroids. And you can get quite addicted to these--just as some athletes can to their versions.
Now there are lots of things wrong with these artificial public works projects although sometimes they look benign enough. Many folks will not objects to having extra upgrades and improvements on their roads and highways. After all, nearly everything suffers from some measure of wear and tear. And who can tell without considerable expertise when it is time for justified improvements on the infrastructure. Usually such matters are decided upon by individuals in their particular lives--like when should their cars be washed, when should they get an oil change, when is it time to visit the dentist again. Or when is it time to get a complete medical check up! Or get one’s pants cleaned or shirts laundered. These are individual matters and highly contingent on personal and family factors, such as needs and budgets.
When it comes to roads and highways the local public work departments make these kinds of decisions based on the advice of the road engineers and on the budget bureaucrats. Some kind of rationale is arrived at, although with public works there is always the problem of some version of the tragedy of the commons. Too much attention to the parks may get in the way of enough attention to the recreation facilities or city pools. But when one adds the artificial stimuli provided by politics that’s guided by the fantasy of Keynesian economics--you know, the multiplier and such--no rationale is possible. It is nearly all guesswork. Unless one has roads with gaping pot holes that just cannot accommodate traffic anymore, the time to spend funds on upgrades and fixes turns out to be arbitrary. Kind of like how many steroids should a body builder use--it is an artificial aid and no one can tell just how much if any of it is the right amount.
In my region of the country, Orange County, California, ever since I moved here about 12 years ago there’s always been some road construction afoot. But not so much as to cause too many delays and detours. After years of experience with the local needs, those responsible manage to figure reasonably accurately just when the work is needed. But the stimulus funds arrived, which enabled the local authorities to spend on all kinds of projects whether any real need exists, it becomes a spectacle of arbitrary public works. Dozens of roads get shut down out of the blue. Thousands and more commuters need to stand and wait in long lines so the work can get done. Gasoline is wasted, not to mention people’s time--life, actually--and who knows what other unintended harmful consequences result.
Never even mind for now the fact that the stimulus consists of loot extorted from citizens who are imposed and encroached upon with all kinds of cost that no one can tell buys anything worthwhile. I am certainly unable to tell if that shovel-ready road job that is keeping me from getting to work on time is required or invented by Keynes-inspired magical economics. I cannot judge whether the gasoline used standing idly by at innumerable road blocs is being wasted or not. No one can, I bet. We are all simply informed to put up and shut up--these are, after all, public works and interference from ordinary citizens can land one in jail!
It is bad enough that people are so much at the mercy of the decisions that are made about public works and, more generally, public affairs and not unless they vote out the team is there a chance of changing the guard. But when the policy if injecting funny money into the system is carried out, nothing resembling a rational system can be expected.
I believe it was my very first scholarly paper in a philosophy journal, titled “Justice and the Welfare State,” that laid out the case showing that under the welfare state simple justice is impossible. Causes and results cannot be linked, responsibilities are vague and defuse.
The current policy with stimulus-driven public works is just another case in point.
Tibor R. Machan
What the Obama administration and its cheerleaders call “the stimulus” is by all sensible accounts the macroeconomic version of steroids. And you can get quite addicted to these--just as some athletes can to their versions.
Now there are lots of things wrong with these artificial public works projects although sometimes they look benign enough. Many folks will not objects to having extra upgrades and improvements on their roads and highways. After all, nearly everything suffers from some measure of wear and tear. And who can tell without considerable expertise when it is time for justified improvements on the infrastructure. Usually such matters are decided upon by individuals in their particular lives--like when should their cars be washed, when should they get an oil change, when is it time to visit the dentist again. Or when is it time to get a complete medical check up! Or get one’s pants cleaned or shirts laundered. These are individual matters and highly contingent on personal and family factors, such as needs and budgets.
When it comes to roads and highways the local public work departments make these kinds of decisions based on the advice of the road engineers and on the budget bureaucrats. Some kind of rationale is arrived at, although with public works there is always the problem of some version of the tragedy of the commons. Too much attention to the parks may get in the way of enough attention to the recreation facilities or city pools. But when one adds the artificial stimuli provided by politics that’s guided by the fantasy of Keynesian economics--you know, the multiplier and such--no rationale is possible. It is nearly all guesswork. Unless one has roads with gaping pot holes that just cannot accommodate traffic anymore, the time to spend funds on upgrades and fixes turns out to be arbitrary. Kind of like how many steroids should a body builder use--it is an artificial aid and no one can tell just how much if any of it is the right amount.
In my region of the country, Orange County, California, ever since I moved here about 12 years ago there’s always been some road construction afoot. But not so much as to cause too many delays and detours. After years of experience with the local needs, those responsible manage to figure reasonably accurately just when the work is needed. But the stimulus funds arrived, which enabled the local authorities to spend on all kinds of projects whether any real need exists, it becomes a spectacle of arbitrary public works. Dozens of roads get shut down out of the blue. Thousands and more commuters need to stand and wait in long lines so the work can get done. Gasoline is wasted, not to mention people’s time--life, actually--and who knows what other unintended harmful consequences result.
Never even mind for now the fact that the stimulus consists of loot extorted from citizens who are imposed and encroached upon with all kinds of cost that no one can tell buys anything worthwhile. I am certainly unable to tell if that shovel-ready road job that is keeping me from getting to work on time is required or invented by Keynes-inspired magical economics. I cannot judge whether the gasoline used standing idly by at innumerable road blocs is being wasted or not. No one can, I bet. We are all simply informed to put up and shut up--these are, after all, public works and interference from ordinary citizens can land one in jail!
It is bad enough that people are so much at the mercy of the decisions that are made about public works and, more generally, public affairs and not unless they vote out the team is there a chance of changing the guard. But when the policy if injecting funny money into the system is carried out, nothing resembling a rational system can be expected.
I believe it was my very first scholarly paper in a philosophy journal, titled “Justice and the Welfare State,” that laid out the case showing that under the welfare state simple justice is impossible. Causes and results cannot be linked, responsibilities are vague and defuse.
The current policy with stimulus-driven public works is just another case in point.
Ignorance Amidst Erudition
Tibor R. Machan
Stanley Kauffmann is the film reviewer of The New Republic and his work in this area is worth the time it takes to read it, at least for me. He is what I would consider an erudite film critic, drawing on a vast familiarity with the history of cinema. Indeed, while the magazine has been turning more and more statist--in it early days it was actually an interesting ideological hybrid, guided by old or classical as well as new or modern liberal values--most of its good stuff comes from the back of the book, namely, the reviews it publishes. And from Kauffmann’s comments on films.
So I was taken aback when in a recent review of the movie Too Big to Fail by Curtis Hanson translation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book on the recent financial fiasco, Kauffmann opines that “The economy requires radical political intervention and we ducked that.” Just goes to show you that being knowledgeable and smart about movies can go hand in hand with utter ignorance of economic theory and history.
One need not be what Paul Kurgmann and even President Obama likes to refer to, disdainfully, as a market fundamentalist--i.e., someone who holds that as a general policy it is better to rely on free market processes than to trust the bureaucrats--to see that Kauffmann is way out of his depth. For starters, political intervention has been part of the norm in the American economic system from the beginning, with but very few lulls in that approach. (I once ran across a book published in the 1840s in which the author severely criticizes government involvement in the American economy and for its thwarting of free trade on innumerable fronts!) Alexander Hamilton, one of the prominent founders, had supported many measures that run against the principles of a free market economy and involve extensive and “radical political invention” in the economy. What is it that Kauffmann refers to when he states that “we ducked” such intervention? Does he mean the country never did opt for out and out socialism? On that score he is correct but such a remark assumes that financial and other economic messes are avoidable under a socialist economy. Yeah? Tell that to the former Soviet Union and its colonies and to the many European near-socialist governments that have been struggling with such problems.
Of course, Kauffmann’s idea is rather routine among intellectuals who take their economic education from the likes of the late Paul Samuelson (whose introductory text, Principles of Economics, was the main source of readings in college economics course for decades). While there have been some free market economists whose influence has been felt throughout higher education--and this is true now as well--the majority of students who take econ courses get mostly lessons in the wisdom of the mixed economy, the kind we see in most of Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia. Such systems are riddled with political intervention!
The idea that such intervention is what an economic system needs so as to be functional itself rests on the myth that some people--politicians and bureaucrats--have special talents for guiding the economic conduct of others. This is quite literally a fascist conviction! It is diluted by mixing in democratic and capitalist and other features in the system--that’s why it is called a mixed economy--and it seems Kauffmann does not hesitate to embrace it.
Now mind you, what is really off in Kauffmann’s remark is the association with political intervention with radicalism. In fact it is the free market system that has brought to the fore a radical economic idea given that political intervention has been around from time immemorial. Mercantilism, which was the dominant economic doctrine prior to Adam Smith’s writings, especially his The Wealth of Nations (1776), is a thoroughly politicized economic system! Feudalism and nearly all the economic ideas and policies of the old order were nothing if not completely political.
So it seems that Mr. Kauffmann, who must be at least as old as I am by now, needs to go back to night school and take a good course in economic history. He would then perhaps admit that his comments about what the economy needs could at least use serious revision.
Tibor R. Machan
Stanley Kauffmann is the film reviewer of The New Republic and his work in this area is worth the time it takes to read it, at least for me. He is what I would consider an erudite film critic, drawing on a vast familiarity with the history of cinema. Indeed, while the magazine has been turning more and more statist--in it early days it was actually an interesting ideological hybrid, guided by old or classical as well as new or modern liberal values--most of its good stuff comes from the back of the book, namely, the reviews it publishes. And from Kauffmann’s comments on films.
So I was taken aback when in a recent review of the movie Too Big to Fail by Curtis Hanson translation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book on the recent financial fiasco, Kauffmann opines that “The economy requires radical political intervention and we ducked that.” Just goes to show you that being knowledgeable and smart about movies can go hand in hand with utter ignorance of economic theory and history.
One need not be what Paul Kurgmann and even President Obama likes to refer to, disdainfully, as a market fundamentalist--i.e., someone who holds that as a general policy it is better to rely on free market processes than to trust the bureaucrats--to see that Kauffmann is way out of his depth. For starters, political intervention has been part of the norm in the American economic system from the beginning, with but very few lulls in that approach. (I once ran across a book published in the 1840s in which the author severely criticizes government involvement in the American economy and for its thwarting of free trade on innumerable fronts!) Alexander Hamilton, one of the prominent founders, had supported many measures that run against the principles of a free market economy and involve extensive and “radical political invention” in the economy. What is it that Kauffmann refers to when he states that “we ducked” such intervention? Does he mean the country never did opt for out and out socialism? On that score he is correct but such a remark assumes that financial and other economic messes are avoidable under a socialist economy. Yeah? Tell that to the former Soviet Union and its colonies and to the many European near-socialist governments that have been struggling with such problems.
Of course, Kauffmann’s idea is rather routine among intellectuals who take their economic education from the likes of the late Paul Samuelson (whose introductory text, Principles of Economics, was the main source of readings in college economics course for decades). While there have been some free market economists whose influence has been felt throughout higher education--and this is true now as well--the majority of students who take econ courses get mostly lessons in the wisdom of the mixed economy, the kind we see in most of Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia. Such systems are riddled with political intervention!
The idea that such intervention is what an economic system needs so as to be functional itself rests on the myth that some people--politicians and bureaucrats--have special talents for guiding the economic conduct of others. This is quite literally a fascist conviction! It is diluted by mixing in democratic and capitalist and other features in the system--that’s why it is called a mixed economy--and it seems Kauffmann does not hesitate to embrace it.
Now mind you, what is really off in Kauffmann’s remark is the association with political intervention with radicalism. In fact it is the free market system that has brought to the fore a radical economic idea given that political intervention has been around from time immemorial. Mercantilism, which was the dominant economic doctrine prior to Adam Smith’s writings, especially his The Wealth of Nations (1776), is a thoroughly politicized economic system! Feudalism and nearly all the economic ideas and policies of the old order were nothing if not completely political.
So it seems that Mr. Kauffmann, who must be at least as old as I am by now, needs to go back to night school and take a good course in economic history. He would then perhaps admit that his comments about what the economy needs could at least use serious revision.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
What’s With Social Security?
Tibor R. Machan
When shortly after I arrived on these shores I got my first job as an usher in a cinema in Philadelphia, back in the fall of 1956, I asked about the deduction from my paycheck that went to social security. I had no agenda, just curiosity.
My employer said those funds are taken by the federal government and put aside so that when I get old I would have a nice little bundle instead of spending it now and being left with nothing for old age. I recall asking but why not just rely on my own worries about my old age, worries that would surely prompt me to put away something for my old age. My employer had no answer to this. But he did try to assure me that I should relax because at least there will be this stash awaiting me when I get old and won’t be making much money anymore.
Well, I never bought the paternalism of this policy but neither did I have the savvy and know-how to resist paying the feds. They are clever in how they make employers do the dirty work so that if you resist they don’t need to deal with it but leave it to their unwilling subjects to handle the matter. (I guess when it comes to extortion, the feds like to farm it out rather than deal with it directly.)
At this point in my life, having reached the age a while back when the feds allow me to get back some of the funds taken for me for my own good, I hear noises from the President of the United States of America that unless the debt ceiling is increased now, it may lead the feds to stop paying social security to those legally entitle to it. How’s that? Wasn’t the money that was taken from my paycheck put into a fund from which I would later be able to get some support, support I was told I couldn’t arrange for on my own, only with the intervention of the feds? If that is what they did with my funds, namely put it away for me for my old age, how could it be that they will have to stop paying it out to me? What on earth did they do with those funds? I was never asked about this, no one appealed to me for permission to raid them instead of holding them for me what I became old. Had I had the option of putting the funds aside, I would most likely have invested it so that these funds would have gained a good deal of interest or made me prosper some other way. But no, the feds claimed they know better how to provide me with financial security in my old age than I do! And yet now the president tells me that the feds need to borrow money so as to make sure I get my money back?
What’s curious, also, is that no one appears to have noticed this funny accounting by the feds and called the president on the carpet for putting social security payers in a bind. He keeps warning about the good faith and credit of the feds but right here, up front, this good faith and credit appears to have been betrayed already. And even though I read a bunch of Op Ed pieces in the major papers, especially The New York Times, no one seems to be aware of this; certainly no one is throwing a fuss, pointing an accusing finger at Washington for having betrayed all social security payers like this. Why not? Why is everyone so silent about this dirty deal? Is there some kind of secret pact here that no one wishes to make public?
And this is the organization that millions of Americans, especially prominent and influential ones, want to entrust with our health insurance? And with taking care of us in innumerable other areas of our lives like guarding us against financial mismanagement and pharmaceutical malpractice?
Isn’t that a joke? Why are people so gullible? Sure, they don’t mean to be stupid but stupidity isn’t something people consciously intend to cultivate. No, stupidity is mostly a function of gross negligence and when it comes to light people usually say, “But I didn’t mean it.” Yeah, well but you didn’t bother to think about it either. The result is malfeasance and imprudence galore, usually with other people’s resources.
Tibor R. Machan
When shortly after I arrived on these shores I got my first job as an usher in a cinema in Philadelphia, back in the fall of 1956, I asked about the deduction from my paycheck that went to social security. I had no agenda, just curiosity.
My employer said those funds are taken by the federal government and put aside so that when I get old I would have a nice little bundle instead of spending it now and being left with nothing for old age. I recall asking but why not just rely on my own worries about my old age, worries that would surely prompt me to put away something for my old age. My employer had no answer to this. But he did try to assure me that I should relax because at least there will be this stash awaiting me when I get old and won’t be making much money anymore.
Well, I never bought the paternalism of this policy but neither did I have the savvy and know-how to resist paying the feds. They are clever in how they make employers do the dirty work so that if you resist they don’t need to deal with it but leave it to their unwilling subjects to handle the matter. (I guess when it comes to extortion, the feds like to farm it out rather than deal with it directly.)
At this point in my life, having reached the age a while back when the feds allow me to get back some of the funds taken for me for my own good, I hear noises from the President of the United States of America that unless the debt ceiling is increased now, it may lead the feds to stop paying social security to those legally entitle to it. How’s that? Wasn’t the money that was taken from my paycheck put into a fund from which I would later be able to get some support, support I was told I couldn’t arrange for on my own, only with the intervention of the feds? If that is what they did with my funds, namely put it away for me for my old age, how could it be that they will have to stop paying it out to me? What on earth did they do with those funds? I was never asked about this, no one appealed to me for permission to raid them instead of holding them for me what I became old. Had I had the option of putting the funds aside, I would most likely have invested it so that these funds would have gained a good deal of interest or made me prosper some other way. But no, the feds claimed they know better how to provide me with financial security in my old age than I do! And yet now the president tells me that the feds need to borrow money so as to make sure I get my money back?
What’s curious, also, is that no one appears to have noticed this funny accounting by the feds and called the president on the carpet for putting social security payers in a bind. He keeps warning about the good faith and credit of the feds but right here, up front, this good faith and credit appears to have been betrayed already. And even though I read a bunch of Op Ed pieces in the major papers, especially The New York Times, no one seems to be aware of this; certainly no one is throwing a fuss, pointing an accusing finger at Washington for having betrayed all social security payers like this. Why not? Why is everyone so silent about this dirty deal? Is there some kind of secret pact here that no one wishes to make public?
And this is the organization that millions of Americans, especially prominent and influential ones, want to entrust with our health insurance? And with taking care of us in innumerable other areas of our lives like guarding us against financial mismanagement and pharmaceutical malpractice?
Isn’t that a joke? Why are people so gullible? Sure, they don’t mean to be stupid but stupidity isn’t something people consciously intend to cultivate. No, stupidity is mostly a function of gross negligence and when it comes to light people usually say, “But I didn’t mean it.” Yeah, well but you didn’t bother to think about it either. The result is malfeasance and imprudence galore, usually with other people’s resources.
Tea Party Confusion
Tibor R. Machan
The idea that politicians should sign a pledge to promote personal morality is contrary to the avowed Tea Party commitment to small government. If you want the government to have a restricted scope, you should stick to the US Declaration as your guide: Government is instituted so as to secure our rights! It is not instituted, at least in the American political tradition, so as to be our moral police!
This is the kind of inconsistency that will bode very ill for the Tea Party and the Republicans. IT is just like the liberals’ inconsistency of preaching choice in the abortion debate but loving to take it from us in nearly everything else. Obama care comes to mind which commands people to buy health insurance and is, thus, anything but pro choice. And what about coercing us all to buy green light bulbs?
Who are these people, imposing their standards of right conduct on the rest? Both sides of the political spectrum are still wedded to their tyrannical ways. No wonder so few people vote.
Here is the pledge Tea Party Republican Rep. Michell Bachmann wants candidates to sign:
“Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman. I vow* to do so through my:
Personal fidelity to my spouse.
Respect for the marital bonds of others.
Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.
Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.
Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”
Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.
Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.
Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA‟s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
Fierce defense of the First Amendment‟s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.”
Some of this is of course redundant--anyone who takes the oath to defend the US Constitution has made many of these pledges, namely, those that involve protection of individual rights. But many of them are meddling pieces of political posturing as the citizenry’s moral guide, as our nannies, just as Al Gore wants to be our moral guide vis-a-vis global warming or other environmental issues.
Tibor R. Machan
The idea that politicians should sign a pledge to promote personal morality is contrary to the avowed Tea Party commitment to small government. If you want the government to have a restricted scope, you should stick to the US Declaration as your guide: Government is instituted so as to secure our rights! It is not instituted, at least in the American political tradition, so as to be our moral police!
This is the kind of inconsistency that will bode very ill for the Tea Party and the Republicans. IT is just like the liberals’ inconsistency of preaching choice in the abortion debate but loving to take it from us in nearly everything else. Obama care comes to mind which commands people to buy health insurance and is, thus, anything but pro choice. And what about coercing us all to buy green light bulbs?
Who are these people, imposing their standards of right conduct on the rest? Both sides of the political spectrum are still wedded to their tyrannical ways. No wonder so few people vote.
Here is the pledge Tea Party Republican Rep. Michell Bachmann wants candidates to sign:
“Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman. I vow* to do so through my:
Personal fidelity to my spouse.
Respect for the marital bonds of others.
Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.
Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.
Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”
Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.
Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.
Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA‟s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
Fierce defense of the First Amendment‟s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.”
Some of this is of course redundant--anyone who takes the oath to defend the US Constitution has made many of these pledges, namely, those that involve protection of individual rights. But many of them are meddling pieces of political posturing as the citizenry’s moral guide, as our nannies, just as Al Gore wants to be our moral guide vis-a-vis global warming or other environmental issues.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Live and Let Live: not in Silverado
Tibor R. Machan
Where I live quite a few neighbors are what are affectionately called Tree Huggers. What such neighbors, by no means even the majority, have in common is that they oppose anything that remotely resembles development (e.g., including a tiny wine tasting structure one of their neighbors wants to erect). But of course their main targets are any new homes that might be built, not to mention any groups of homes someone might build on his or her rightly owned land. It makes no difference at all that the members of the Tree Huggers do not own the land on which the development might occur. No sir. They don’t mean to actually purchase such places, to put their money where there mouths are, only to prevent those who own them to make use of it, especially built any homes there.
It has been a long fight around the globe to establish the institution of private property rights. In most previous eras monarchs owned the realm and ordinary people were sometimes privileged to live and work on it. Private property rights, while always discussed by some political theorists and economists, had for centuries been denied to the bulk of the population. Only select folks could own land and built on it as they deemed desirable. The rest were, essentially, serfs or at least men and women without their rights acknowledged and protected in the law.
Then such developments as the establishment of the United States of America changed things somewhat. The doctrine of individual natural rights was worked out and implemented on the American continent and a few other places, although the assignment of private property had always been controversial. Still, the idea that ordinary citizens could own property--from a shack all the way to a huge ranch or factory--caught on. And when this occurred the liberty of millions became more secure then ever before. On your own land you can do as you will and if the law backs this up, you can be secure in what you choose to do. It is this realm of individual choice--applied to single individuals or voluntary groups of them--that served as a basic liberator. Churches, businesses, homes, recreation facilities, communes, kibbutzes, farms, ranches, and so forth could all exist with substantial legal protection--that, at least, was the idea even if not consistently and fully implemented. But it gained respect and that itself was a big leap forward in the realization of human liberty and independence, not to mention productivity and prosperity.
But this idea never quite became widespread enough public policy. Even the U. S. Constitution mostly assumed it, although it is mentioned in the 5th amendment. And many state constitutions make explicit mention of it and its protection in the law.
Yet, the idea and its institution met with much resistance from those who believe that they may run roughshod over other people and what belongs to them, just as the monarchs did all along when they wouldn’t recognized the private property and other rights of the people who lived in the realms they often brutally ruled. Fancy arguments had been invented and deployed to rationalize the ongoing violation of private property rights. For socialists like Karl Marx and Frederick Engels the denial or abolition of private property rights was a necessary step toward their ideal collectivist system, one in which a few people get to plan how everyone else is to live, work, create, etc.
In our era, at least in the West, it is under the guise of caring for the environment that many eagerly violate individual private property rights. In Silverado, a canyon community in Orange County, California, the Tree Huggers carry on this crusade to plan the lives of others, never mind that they have no proper authority to do so, only sometimes the legal power they have immoral obtained. In protest of this, I have placed a bumper sticker on my car that reads: “Share the Canyons,” indicating that it would be right and proper not to interfere with people who want to come to live here and make use of their land and other property in peaceful ways.
Many of my neighbors have stopped to comment on and quite interestingly approve the idea on that bumper sticker. As long as one doesn’t use one’s property to invade someone else’s or injure another person, there is every reason to uphold and respect private property rights--for everyone. Everyone has a right to liberty and without private property no liberty can flourish, only permissions and privileges granted to people by their more powerful neighbors.
Recently I was picking up my mail at the tiny post office in Silverado and as I was getting back into my vehicle someone from behind shouted out asking what my bumper sticker meant. I told him that it means that whoever can obtain, via free exchange or any other voluntary means, a piece of property in the canyon ought to be at liberty and welcome to do so. Upon having said this the person who posed the question started to shout at me, angrily voicing the idea that he doesn’t want anyone to come into his canyon and do stuff he doesn’t welcome. I don’t recall exactly the sentences he shouted at me but I do recall that he kept repeating the phrase “my canyon” over and over again. It was amazing, actually, since there were a few other canyon residents standing by, observing this, not to mention me who lives there as well. But evidently with no self-awareness whatsoever this person kept shouting as if the canyon community belonged only to him.
Just like the old monarchs, who believed they ruled the realm. Right here in the United States of America, a country founded on the abolition of monarchical rule! Go figure!
Tibor R. Machan
Where I live quite a few neighbors are what are affectionately called Tree Huggers. What such neighbors, by no means even the majority, have in common is that they oppose anything that remotely resembles development (e.g., including a tiny wine tasting structure one of their neighbors wants to erect). But of course their main targets are any new homes that might be built, not to mention any groups of homes someone might build on his or her rightly owned land. It makes no difference at all that the members of the Tree Huggers do not own the land on which the development might occur. No sir. They don’t mean to actually purchase such places, to put their money where there mouths are, only to prevent those who own them to make use of it, especially built any homes there.
It has been a long fight around the globe to establish the institution of private property rights. In most previous eras monarchs owned the realm and ordinary people were sometimes privileged to live and work on it. Private property rights, while always discussed by some political theorists and economists, had for centuries been denied to the bulk of the population. Only select folks could own land and built on it as they deemed desirable. The rest were, essentially, serfs or at least men and women without their rights acknowledged and protected in the law.
Then such developments as the establishment of the United States of America changed things somewhat. The doctrine of individual natural rights was worked out and implemented on the American continent and a few other places, although the assignment of private property had always been controversial. Still, the idea that ordinary citizens could own property--from a shack all the way to a huge ranch or factory--caught on. And when this occurred the liberty of millions became more secure then ever before. On your own land you can do as you will and if the law backs this up, you can be secure in what you choose to do. It is this realm of individual choice--applied to single individuals or voluntary groups of them--that served as a basic liberator. Churches, businesses, homes, recreation facilities, communes, kibbutzes, farms, ranches, and so forth could all exist with substantial legal protection--that, at least, was the idea even if not consistently and fully implemented. But it gained respect and that itself was a big leap forward in the realization of human liberty and independence, not to mention productivity and prosperity.
But this idea never quite became widespread enough public policy. Even the U. S. Constitution mostly assumed it, although it is mentioned in the 5th amendment. And many state constitutions make explicit mention of it and its protection in the law.
Yet, the idea and its institution met with much resistance from those who believe that they may run roughshod over other people and what belongs to them, just as the monarchs did all along when they wouldn’t recognized the private property and other rights of the people who lived in the realms they often brutally ruled. Fancy arguments had been invented and deployed to rationalize the ongoing violation of private property rights. For socialists like Karl Marx and Frederick Engels the denial or abolition of private property rights was a necessary step toward their ideal collectivist system, one in which a few people get to plan how everyone else is to live, work, create, etc.
In our era, at least in the West, it is under the guise of caring for the environment that many eagerly violate individual private property rights. In Silverado, a canyon community in Orange County, California, the Tree Huggers carry on this crusade to plan the lives of others, never mind that they have no proper authority to do so, only sometimes the legal power they have immoral obtained. In protest of this, I have placed a bumper sticker on my car that reads: “Share the Canyons,” indicating that it would be right and proper not to interfere with people who want to come to live here and make use of their land and other property in peaceful ways.
Many of my neighbors have stopped to comment on and quite interestingly approve the idea on that bumper sticker. As long as one doesn’t use one’s property to invade someone else’s or injure another person, there is every reason to uphold and respect private property rights--for everyone. Everyone has a right to liberty and without private property no liberty can flourish, only permissions and privileges granted to people by their more powerful neighbors.
Recently I was picking up my mail at the tiny post office in Silverado and as I was getting back into my vehicle someone from behind shouted out asking what my bumper sticker meant. I told him that it means that whoever can obtain, via free exchange or any other voluntary means, a piece of property in the canyon ought to be at liberty and welcome to do so. Upon having said this the person who posed the question started to shout at me, angrily voicing the idea that he doesn’t want anyone to come into his canyon and do stuff he doesn’t welcome. I don’t recall exactly the sentences he shouted at me but I do recall that he kept repeating the phrase “my canyon” over and over again. It was amazing, actually, since there were a few other canyon residents standing by, observing this, not to mention me who lives there as well. But evidently with no self-awareness whatsoever this person kept shouting as if the canyon community belonged only to him.
Just like the old monarchs, who believed they ruled the realm. Right here in the United States of America, a country founded on the abolition of monarchical rule! Go figure!
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Am I A Corporate Shill?
Tibor R. Machan
It has always been my view that corporations are groups of people united for various purposes, often to benefit from a business venture guided by competent management. Initially I worried little about the legal details, nor even about the legal history. A bunch of people incorporate or form a company to achieve certain perfectly acceptable, even admirable goals. Sometimes this can be done via a partnership, sometimes by incorporating, sometimes for profit, sometimes not.
Then I started to get involved in political philosophy and found that there is a whole lot of hostility toward these outfits, mainly from Leftists but also from some so called left-libertarians. I am not sure why from the latter. I figured why from the former, though, namely because promoting one’s economic prosperity either alone or in the company of a large number of others had to amount to ugly greed. And that I found to be way off course, just the sort of nonsense that they tried drumming into me in my native Hungary back in the lovely days of Stalinism.
These days, for example, if you are not falling in line with the anthropogenic global warming message, it is very likely that you will be labeled by the true believers a shill for corporations. Sure enough, a few days ago I sent some numbers and analyses to someone I know who is an AGW champion because I get along with him reasonably well (although we aren’t friends, merely pals, perhaps) and I always hold out hope that people will consider arguments that go against their beliefs and support mine.
I received an email from this bloke dismissing what I sent to him as the production of corporate shills, specifically people funded by the Koch brothers, Charles and David. The Koch brothers are indeed wealthy from doing very solid business in oil-refinement, I think, but I am not sure. I know both of them just a tad, enough to know that they are honestly convinced of whatever they claim to believe and don’t put the cart before the horse by manufacturing evidence, argument and research so as to buttress their pet notions or personal or economic interests. As with me, so with them, if I recall right, the convictions in the sphere of political economy came way before the chance to make some money from working in support of them. Indeed, I became a libertarian and a defender of the free market system of economics, first and then I did make a few bucks from speaking at some conferences, publishing, etc. While I certainly wish I could have made much more money from all this, I didn’t and the idea of holding some belief about something not because I thought it reasonable and true but because it supported some prejudice of mine would be so self-debasing that I could not do it.
Nonetheless the pal of mine had no trouble implicating me in selling my soul to corporate interests. Just how does he know this? And how does he know that the Koch brothers do not sincerely believe in libertarianism but support it merely because they see economic benefit from it?
Now it is true that even some libertarian economists are reductionists and hold that everything someone does comes from the belief that it will promote one’s economic advantages. On this score Marxists and some free market theorists see eye to eye. But whatever the source of the idea, it is bunk. Most of us haven’t much of a clue about whether holding certain beliefs will advance our prosperity. We may come to accept that there is more hope for us being libertarians than being communitarians or Marxists but no one can be sure. In my own profession, as a university educator, I am pretty sure in retrospect that I would have made out much better financially and in terms of holding a prominent post had I never found libertarianism convincing, had I joined the bulk of academic political philosophers who tend to be located on the Left.
I suppose when you have no arguments it is then tempting to impugn your adversary’s integrity. It’s a coward’s escape, I believe.
Tibor R. Machan
It has always been my view that corporations are groups of people united for various purposes, often to benefit from a business venture guided by competent management. Initially I worried little about the legal details, nor even about the legal history. A bunch of people incorporate or form a company to achieve certain perfectly acceptable, even admirable goals. Sometimes this can be done via a partnership, sometimes by incorporating, sometimes for profit, sometimes not.
Then I started to get involved in political philosophy and found that there is a whole lot of hostility toward these outfits, mainly from Leftists but also from some so called left-libertarians. I am not sure why from the latter. I figured why from the former, though, namely because promoting one’s economic prosperity either alone or in the company of a large number of others had to amount to ugly greed. And that I found to be way off course, just the sort of nonsense that they tried drumming into me in my native Hungary back in the lovely days of Stalinism.
These days, for example, if you are not falling in line with the anthropogenic global warming message, it is very likely that you will be labeled by the true believers a shill for corporations. Sure enough, a few days ago I sent some numbers and analyses to someone I know who is an AGW champion because I get along with him reasonably well (although we aren’t friends, merely pals, perhaps) and I always hold out hope that people will consider arguments that go against their beliefs and support mine.
I received an email from this bloke dismissing what I sent to him as the production of corporate shills, specifically people funded by the Koch brothers, Charles and David. The Koch brothers are indeed wealthy from doing very solid business in oil-refinement, I think, but I am not sure. I know both of them just a tad, enough to know that they are honestly convinced of whatever they claim to believe and don’t put the cart before the horse by manufacturing evidence, argument and research so as to buttress their pet notions or personal or economic interests. As with me, so with them, if I recall right, the convictions in the sphere of political economy came way before the chance to make some money from working in support of them. Indeed, I became a libertarian and a defender of the free market system of economics, first and then I did make a few bucks from speaking at some conferences, publishing, etc. While I certainly wish I could have made much more money from all this, I didn’t and the idea of holding some belief about something not because I thought it reasonable and true but because it supported some prejudice of mine would be so self-debasing that I could not do it.
Nonetheless the pal of mine had no trouble implicating me in selling my soul to corporate interests. Just how does he know this? And how does he know that the Koch brothers do not sincerely believe in libertarianism but support it merely because they see economic benefit from it?
Now it is true that even some libertarian economists are reductionists and hold that everything someone does comes from the belief that it will promote one’s economic advantages. On this score Marxists and some free market theorists see eye to eye. But whatever the source of the idea, it is bunk. Most of us haven’t much of a clue about whether holding certain beliefs will advance our prosperity. We may come to accept that there is more hope for us being libertarians than being communitarians or Marxists but no one can be sure. In my own profession, as a university educator, I am pretty sure in retrospect that I would have made out much better financially and in terms of holding a prominent post had I never found libertarianism convincing, had I joined the bulk of academic political philosophers who tend to be located on the Left.
I suppose when you have no arguments it is then tempting to impugn your adversary’s integrity. It’s a coward’s escape, I believe.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
The Pleasures of Humiliation?
Tibor R. Machan
Call me old fashioned, and in some matters I proudly am, but for me entertainment needs to contain a solid dose of enjoyment. So when I select my movies or TV fare, I usually check whether I will be enjoying what I am about to encounter. Of course, sometimes I want to experience tragedy, information, complexity, and other ingredients in what I chose for my entertainment but even then some upbeat stuff must be a feature of it.
I have only very few contemporary television programs I choose to watch -- mostly some science and wilderness shows (the latter usually with the sound muted so I don’t have to hear the lopsided pleadings of environmentalists while I get the benefits of learning about and witnessing the Russian or Alaskan wilderness). Then there are some news programs I watch almost regularly, although if they are too lopsided in their viewpoint, like Bill O'Reilly or Fareed Zakaria, I will quickly, after watching for just several minutes, delete them from my list of recorded shows.
As far as entertainment is concerned, there are again only a few offerings I find pleasurable. One is White Collar, another Burnt Notice (most of the time, especially when Michael’s mother, played by Sharon Gless, who’s a consummate guilt warrior, is absent). Mostly I stick to reruns of Perry Mason, Have Gun Will Travel, Rockford Files, or Maverick. I did enjoy Boston Legal, even though the political and public policy values guiding it, apart from the respectable bits of the rule of law, were often despicable -- corporation and profit bashing were running themes.
I usually check out new shows, once or twice, and that’s what I did with the recently begun Suits. So far it has proved to be a disappointment for me, mostly because the two initial shows contained orgies of humiliation among the characters as the primary means of entertainment, of the fun being offered up viewers. Yes, the repartee has been bright and fast but mostly at someone’s expense. Indeed, the most likable character, the one with the brains and with solid work habits and ethics, is constantly subjected to one-upmanship by other characters who are cads and usually play his administrative superiors. And those, then, are also subjected to humiliation by their superiors, and on and on and on. I suspect that somewhere down the line most of these arseholes will get their comeuppance but in the meantime viewers must endure this ongoing torture by the nitwits of their betters. It is like those violent programs, including movies, in which a great deal of brutality is depicted, relentlessly, before finally the perpetrators get what’s coming to them.
I am just not one who finds such cruelty, whether psychological or physical, enjoyable. Some of this may well have to do with me personally, since I have experienced a fairly hefty dosage of both early in my life. And, yes, entertainment is, to a significant extent, personal, maybe even subjective -- although that is a misleading characterization of playing to people’s idiosyncrasies. But in fact I am quite baffled when I find that someone I respect and like finds programs enjoyable in which such devices are routinely deployed. In Suits -- and the two installments I’ve seen may not be representative of what’s coming -- not only is humiliation a constant among the players but there is little of substance beyond it. Boston Legal, even when morally obtuse, had at least the steady dosage of fictional law to keep one’s interest. While most television fiction, as well as movies, dwell too much on relationship issues, at the expense of seeing anyone doing any kind of creative, productive work, the legal fictions tend to have some substance, too. But in the two episodes of Suits there was nothing much to demonstrate the competence of any of the characters. Mostly it was all about mutual and nasty manipulation, with very few admirable attributes on display.
By the way, I am an avid reader of novels, especially WW II spy stories by, among others, Philip Kerr, and also of legal thrillers (when they get to the attempt to solve crimes, resolve disputes in court, etc.), as well as a few plain old whodunits. (I am a fan of Henning Mankell, despite his naive politics. And I am a great fan of Daniel Silva and Alan Furst.) But I also readily put down a novel even if I have reach the halfway point if something annoying starts to dominate it.
The cynicism and misanthropy of the two installments of Suits that I have seen are for me very unpleasant. Still, on the advice of family and friends, I will give the show one or two more chances. Yet time is precious when one gets old and so I think I may be looking for some more reruns, like Barney Miller, perhaps?
Tibor R. Machan
Call me old fashioned, and in some matters I proudly am, but for me entertainment needs to contain a solid dose of enjoyment. So when I select my movies or TV fare, I usually check whether I will be enjoying what I am about to encounter. Of course, sometimes I want to experience tragedy, information, complexity, and other ingredients in what I chose for my entertainment but even then some upbeat stuff must be a feature of it.
I have only very few contemporary television programs I choose to watch -- mostly some science and wilderness shows (the latter usually with the sound muted so I don’t have to hear the lopsided pleadings of environmentalists while I get the benefits of learning about and witnessing the Russian or Alaskan wilderness). Then there are some news programs I watch almost regularly, although if they are too lopsided in their viewpoint, like Bill O'Reilly or Fareed Zakaria, I will quickly, after watching for just several minutes, delete them from my list of recorded shows.
As far as entertainment is concerned, there are again only a few offerings I find pleasurable. One is White Collar, another Burnt Notice (most of the time, especially when Michael’s mother, played by Sharon Gless, who’s a consummate guilt warrior, is absent). Mostly I stick to reruns of Perry Mason, Have Gun Will Travel, Rockford Files, or Maverick. I did enjoy Boston Legal, even though the political and public policy values guiding it, apart from the respectable bits of the rule of law, were often despicable -- corporation and profit bashing were running themes.
I usually check out new shows, once or twice, and that’s what I did with the recently begun Suits. So far it has proved to be a disappointment for me, mostly because the two initial shows contained orgies of humiliation among the characters as the primary means of entertainment, of the fun being offered up viewers. Yes, the repartee has been bright and fast but mostly at someone’s expense. Indeed, the most likable character, the one with the brains and with solid work habits and ethics, is constantly subjected to one-upmanship by other characters who are cads and usually play his administrative superiors. And those, then, are also subjected to humiliation by their superiors, and on and on and on. I suspect that somewhere down the line most of these arseholes will get their comeuppance but in the meantime viewers must endure this ongoing torture by the nitwits of their betters. It is like those violent programs, including movies, in which a great deal of brutality is depicted, relentlessly, before finally the perpetrators get what’s coming to them.
I am just not one who finds such cruelty, whether psychological or physical, enjoyable. Some of this may well have to do with me personally, since I have experienced a fairly hefty dosage of both early in my life. And, yes, entertainment is, to a significant extent, personal, maybe even subjective -- although that is a misleading characterization of playing to people’s idiosyncrasies. But in fact I am quite baffled when I find that someone I respect and like finds programs enjoyable in which such devices are routinely deployed. In Suits -- and the two installments I’ve seen may not be representative of what’s coming -- not only is humiliation a constant among the players but there is little of substance beyond it. Boston Legal, even when morally obtuse, had at least the steady dosage of fictional law to keep one’s interest. While most television fiction, as well as movies, dwell too much on relationship issues, at the expense of seeing anyone doing any kind of creative, productive work, the legal fictions tend to have some substance, too. But in the two episodes of Suits there was nothing much to demonstrate the competence of any of the characters. Mostly it was all about mutual and nasty manipulation, with very few admirable attributes on display.
By the way, I am an avid reader of novels, especially WW II spy stories by, among others, Philip Kerr, and also of legal thrillers (when they get to the attempt to solve crimes, resolve disputes in court, etc.), as well as a few plain old whodunits. (I am a fan of Henning Mankell, despite his naive politics. And I am a great fan of Daniel Silva and Alan Furst.) But I also readily put down a novel even if I have reach the halfway point if something annoying starts to dominate it.
The cynicism and misanthropy of the two installments of Suits that I have seen are for me very unpleasant. Still, on the advice of family and friends, I will give the show one or two more chances. Yet time is precious when one gets old and so I think I may be looking for some more reruns, like Barney Miller, perhaps?
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Morality, the Professions and Politicians
Tibor R. Machan
While I see strong merits to an ultraminimal government idea, whereby the state has no other function than to protect the rights of the citizens from criminals and foreign aggressors, I do not share the view that politicians are necessarily corrupt. Sure, a welfare state attracts the kind of politicians who see little wrong with taking from some people to make available for others, including themselves, when they feel it is important enough. This is no different from how vice squad work attracts moralizing or puritanical police officers rather than ones who believe that victimless crimes should not exist and police should stick to guarding the peace -- they used to be called “peace officers.”
Any corrupted profession is likely to be a Haven for people who yield to various temptations to do wrong because they can now do it with legal approval. The Nazi doctors who experimented on innocent victims were certainly that segment of the medical profession that had already gone bad. And going bad in this way is a subtle, psychologically complex process, beginning with the person convincing himself, first of all, that the policy being followed is acceptable, even necessary. So most of these people are quite sincere!
How does one encourage genuine ethics in the various professions? First, the profession must itself be morally upright -- Murder, Inc., certainly isn't going to be manned by saints. So if a profession already embodies some measure of evil, it's going to be tough to ask of its members to behave themselves. Politicians in a system which legalizes theft are not likely to resist the temptation to steal! Medical or legal professionals whose prestigious associations support monopolies will probably lean in the direction of some immoral practices, ones that reflect the organization's policies.
Yet apart from all this, much else is wrong with current thinking about professional ethics. For one, the prominent moral teachings of our time are confusing, indeed. Perhaps the best statement of this fact came from Adam Smith, who is known mostly as the founder of scientific economics but was in his own eyes and by his university appointments actually a moral philosopher. Here, in a someone lengthy passage, is the gist of our problem with contemporary thinking on morality: "...In the ancient philosophy, the perfection of virtue was represented as necessarily productive to the person who possessed it, of the most perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy, it was frequently represented as almost always inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life, and heaven was to be earned by penance and mortification, not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of a man. By far the most important of all the different branches of philosophy became in this manner by far the most corrupted" (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [New York: Random House, 1937], p. 726.)
Smith got it right: moral teaching for the last several centuries has been mostly of the self-sacrificial variety: those who care to live well aren't morally worthy, those who care to make others live well are, period. One reason for this is that much of theology and even some social science claims that people are innately selfish, so why bother teaching them how they need to care for themselves, how to be prudent, how to do well at living? Isn't that hard wired into everyone?
Actually, no it is not. But another thing that suggests that unselfishness is the height of ethics is that professionals do often take an oath to help others who seek them out. But they do this mainly because they find the profession rewarding to themselves. Indeed, nearly all parents urge their children, and teachers their students, to find a line of work that is self-fulfilling instead of a constant drudgery or chore.
But the ethics most widely championed tells us mainly that it's good only if it hurts. Not that simply self-indulgent conduct is ethical, no. If one lives by following his or her desires, nothing else, this can neither promote one's life or that of other people. It is senseless, helter-skelter. But it is the business of ethics to guide one to the true, actual, serious enhancement of oneself as a human being.
If one understands that the human being has a self that can flourish only by being alert to the world, including other people, a self-enhancing moral code will leave plenty of room for generosity, kindness, compassion, without being self-sacrificing, self-denying.
It is especially pointless to talk about business ethics, for example, if all one means is that people in business should give up trying to succeed in order to be ethical. That simply means business people will disregard ethics altogether. And disaster waits along such a route.
If, however, it is clear that business -- or education, art, science, medicine, etc. -- is a professional calling that requires success within certain limits, just as, indeed, all life does, ethical business can make clear sense. It will not include, for example, trying to profit from deeds that are unethical, since profit itself will have to be understood as meaning prosperity that is productive, not destructive.
Unless moral education changes toward teaching folks to be ethical because that is how happiness is achieved in life, many folks will indeed try to avoid doing the right thing. If you think that cheating, lying, stealing, and so forth are the road to happiness, while honesty, justice, prudence, generosity and the like make you a looser in life, it is not surprising that you will often choose to do the wrong thing.
It doesn't have to be that way, however. Ethics is a discipline that's supposed to help us live, to flourish. Even when we are generous or charitable toward other people, such policies are supposed to enrich our own lives in the process. The virtuous life is suppose to be something beneficial to those who live it.
Once morality is recognized as life enhancing, it is not going to be very difficult to champion it among our professionals, including politicians. A culture that makes morality constantly painful, however, cannot very well expect morality to be well received.
Tibor R. Machan
While I see strong merits to an ultraminimal government idea, whereby the state has no other function than to protect the rights of the citizens from criminals and foreign aggressors, I do not share the view that politicians are necessarily corrupt. Sure, a welfare state attracts the kind of politicians who see little wrong with taking from some people to make available for others, including themselves, when they feel it is important enough. This is no different from how vice squad work attracts moralizing or puritanical police officers rather than ones who believe that victimless crimes should not exist and police should stick to guarding the peace -- they used to be called “peace officers.”
Any corrupted profession is likely to be a Haven for people who yield to various temptations to do wrong because they can now do it with legal approval. The Nazi doctors who experimented on innocent victims were certainly that segment of the medical profession that had already gone bad. And going bad in this way is a subtle, psychologically complex process, beginning with the person convincing himself, first of all, that the policy being followed is acceptable, even necessary. So most of these people are quite sincere!
How does one encourage genuine ethics in the various professions? First, the profession must itself be morally upright -- Murder, Inc., certainly isn't going to be manned by saints. So if a profession already embodies some measure of evil, it's going to be tough to ask of its members to behave themselves. Politicians in a system which legalizes theft are not likely to resist the temptation to steal! Medical or legal professionals whose prestigious associations support monopolies will probably lean in the direction of some immoral practices, ones that reflect the organization's policies.
Yet apart from all this, much else is wrong with current thinking about professional ethics. For one, the prominent moral teachings of our time are confusing, indeed. Perhaps the best statement of this fact came from Adam Smith, who is known mostly as the founder of scientific economics but was in his own eyes and by his university appointments actually a moral philosopher. Here, in a someone lengthy passage, is the gist of our problem with contemporary thinking on morality: "...In the ancient philosophy, the perfection of virtue was represented as necessarily productive to the person who possessed it, of the most perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy, it was frequently represented as almost always inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life, and heaven was to be earned by penance and mortification, not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of a man. By far the most important of all the different branches of philosophy became in this manner by far the most corrupted" (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [New York: Random House, 1937], p. 726.)
Smith got it right: moral teaching for the last several centuries has been mostly of the self-sacrificial variety: those who care to live well aren't morally worthy, those who care to make others live well are, period. One reason for this is that much of theology and even some social science claims that people are innately selfish, so why bother teaching them how they need to care for themselves, how to be prudent, how to do well at living? Isn't that hard wired into everyone?
Actually, no it is not. But another thing that suggests that unselfishness is the height of ethics is that professionals do often take an oath to help others who seek them out. But they do this mainly because they find the profession rewarding to themselves. Indeed, nearly all parents urge their children, and teachers their students, to find a line of work that is self-fulfilling instead of a constant drudgery or chore.
But the ethics most widely championed tells us mainly that it's good only if it hurts. Not that simply self-indulgent conduct is ethical, no. If one lives by following his or her desires, nothing else, this can neither promote one's life or that of other people. It is senseless, helter-skelter. But it is the business of ethics to guide one to the true, actual, serious enhancement of oneself as a human being.
If one understands that the human being has a self that can flourish only by being alert to the world, including other people, a self-enhancing moral code will leave plenty of room for generosity, kindness, compassion, without being self-sacrificing, self-denying.
It is especially pointless to talk about business ethics, for example, if all one means is that people in business should give up trying to succeed in order to be ethical. That simply means business people will disregard ethics altogether. And disaster waits along such a route.
If, however, it is clear that business -- or education, art, science, medicine, etc. -- is a professional calling that requires success within certain limits, just as, indeed, all life does, ethical business can make clear sense. It will not include, for example, trying to profit from deeds that are unethical, since profit itself will have to be understood as meaning prosperity that is productive, not destructive.
Unless moral education changes toward teaching folks to be ethical because that is how happiness is achieved in life, many folks will indeed try to avoid doing the right thing. If you think that cheating, lying, stealing, and so forth are the road to happiness, while honesty, justice, prudence, generosity and the like make you a looser in life, it is not surprising that you will often choose to do the wrong thing.
It doesn't have to be that way, however. Ethics is a discipline that's supposed to help us live, to flourish. Even when we are generous or charitable toward other people, such policies are supposed to enrich our own lives in the process. The virtuous life is suppose to be something beneficial to those who live it.
Once morality is recognized as life enhancing, it is not going to be very difficult to champion it among our professionals, including politicians. A culture that makes morality constantly painful, however, cannot very well expect morality to be well received.
Monday, June 27, 2011
The Times’ kudos to European Petty Tyrants
Tibor R. Machan
In The New York Times of Monday, June 27th, an editorial heaps compliments upon the bureaucrats of many European cities who have imposed innumerable obstacles to their fellow citizens who want to use the automobile for transportation. This piece of cheer-leading in support of these would be tyrants is an embarrassment in a country that’s about to celebrate its becoming independent of precisely such meddling European governments.
First of all, "cities" are people. They aren’t some kind of supreme consciousness sitting atop the inert bodies made up of the rest, the serfs. So in fact the story should have begun as follows: “Some people in Europe want other people not to drive.”
OK, but then so what? Why are these people privileged with power to have their desires imposed on their fellows? (Why not have an editorial about that very important issue?) "Cities" aren't some holy persons who know best and who are all virtuous. Cities--meaning the people who rule them--can be tyrannical as all get out. And too many people in Europe's cities are guilty of just this one-size-fits-all rule about driving. I say break it up, let folks discover their own best form of transportation.
So, you may say, but the roads are public spheres and require making all conform to a set of one-size-fits-all rules, isn’t that the truth? No, it isn’t As with everything else, a principled approach to governing, including governing cities, requires finding out and implementing policies that do not do violence to the principles involved. One may need to get to the grocery store quickly but it is not an option to trespass on the properties of one’s neighbors. One may wish to have a constant companion but it is not an option to enslave some unwilling “partner.” One may wish to spend more on amenities but it isn’t an option to go into endless debt so one is able to do it, nor to rob one’s neighbors so as to build up one’s resources.
Of course, the people who rule cities in Europe and elsewhere, including sadly in the United States of American which is supposed to be the leader of the free world, are eager to forget all this and make the cities their own personal domain where they can impose policies that they prefer, never mind the rest of the citizenry. They have that typical governmental hubris of believing that their preferences trump those of everyone else.
It is perhaps time for prominent advocacy journalists such as the editors of The New York Times to affirm the principles of the American Declaration of Independence and promote liberty instead of all the bits and pieces of tyranny that pleases the meddling bureaucrats around the globe. How about teaching them a thing or two about why freedom matters, including the freedom to make use of whatever transportation one can afford? And if this doesn’t appear feasible at this point, why not investigate the option of, say, private roads (one that has been laid out by several scholars, such as Professor Walter Block of Loyola University of New Orleans) instead of following the discredited and immoral practice of subjugating everyone to the methods of transport-imperialists.
Of course, it is difficult to teach liberty when one refuses to practice it. And those at The New York Times have only one liberty they scream about all the time, namely, the liberty of the press. Which is, no doubt, a vital species of liberty but it ought not to function as a special privileges others may not enjoy because they want to be free not in writing and publishing but in using a great variety of transport. By making it appear that public roads are the only option, these champions of petty tyrannies give clear evidence of the famous insight William Pitt (the younger) who taught that “Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” (1783)
Tibor R. Machan
In The New York Times of Monday, June 27th, an editorial heaps compliments upon the bureaucrats of many European cities who have imposed innumerable obstacles to their fellow citizens who want to use the automobile for transportation. This piece of cheer-leading in support of these would be tyrants is an embarrassment in a country that’s about to celebrate its becoming independent of precisely such meddling European governments.
First of all, "cities" are people. They aren’t some kind of supreme consciousness sitting atop the inert bodies made up of the rest, the serfs. So in fact the story should have begun as follows: “Some people in Europe want other people not to drive.”
OK, but then so what? Why are these people privileged with power to have their desires imposed on their fellows? (Why not have an editorial about that very important issue?) "Cities" aren't some holy persons who know best and who are all virtuous. Cities--meaning the people who rule them--can be tyrannical as all get out. And too many people in Europe's cities are guilty of just this one-size-fits-all rule about driving. I say break it up, let folks discover their own best form of transportation.
So, you may say, but the roads are public spheres and require making all conform to a set of one-size-fits-all rules, isn’t that the truth? No, it isn’t As with everything else, a principled approach to governing, including governing cities, requires finding out and implementing policies that do not do violence to the principles involved. One may need to get to the grocery store quickly but it is not an option to trespass on the properties of one’s neighbors. One may wish to have a constant companion but it is not an option to enslave some unwilling “partner.” One may wish to spend more on amenities but it isn’t an option to go into endless debt so one is able to do it, nor to rob one’s neighbors so as to build up one’s resources.
Of course, the people who rule cities in Europe and elsewhere, including sadly in the United States of American which is supposed to be the leader of the free world, are eager to forget all this and make the cities their own personal domain where they can impose policies that they prefer, never mind the rest of the citizenry. They have that typical governmental hubris of believing that their preferences trump those of everyone else.
It is perhaps time for prominent advocacy journalists such as the editors of The New York Times to affirm the principles of the American Declaration of Independence and promote liberty instead of all the bits and pieces of tyranny that pleases the meddling bureaucrats around the globe. How about teaching them a thing or two about why freedom matters, including the freedom to make use of whatever transportation one can afford? And if this doesn’t appear feasible at this point, why not investigate the option of, say, private roads (one that has been laid out by several scholars, such as Professor Walter Block of Loyola University of New Orleans) instead of following the discredited and immoral practice of subjugating everyone to the methods of transport-imperialists.
Of course, it is difficult to teach liberty when one refuses to practice it. And those at The New York Times have only one liberty they scream about all the time, namely, the liberty of the press. Which is, no doubt, a vital species of liberty but it ought not to function as a special privileges others may not enjoy because they want to be free not in writing and publishing but in using a great variety of transport. By making it appear that public roads are the only option, these champions of petty tyrannies give clear evidence of the famous insight William Pitt (the younger) who taught that “Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” (1783)
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Machan Archives: What to Promise Voters
Tibor R. Machan
Do voters actually believe it when candidates promise them health, happiness, vacations, clean air, and all those other goodies while also demanding that they stop being selfish, stop joining special interest groups and dedicate themselves only to the public good? I doubt it very much. This sort of pitch seems to me to put most reasonable voters on guard. Something is up, a ruse is afoot, for no one can deliver on these promises. (Or are voters like all those gamblers flocking to Las Vegas who think they will come away big winners?) So a great many people stay away from the voting booth and it's all left in the hands of dreamers.
I am not sure if candidates have actually given this a try but I would count on a different strategy. How about promising voters just one thing, namely, a competent defense against the violence of those of their fellows who are inclined to be violent, against those who wreak crime and war. And then urge them not to stop being selfish but to be intelligently self-interested. That would be thinking of some broad benefits that we all should be striving for, such as freedom, the security of our rights, peace, and justice. These are benefits all voters would gain from big time! So they are objectives that are quite reasonably considered self-interested, for everyone.
But such self-interested benefits need some education to be effectively appealing to voters. Too many people shun being thought of as selfish because they associate selfishness with trivial pursuits. Yet, genuine, serious, big time selfishness is about broad, lasting values such as justice and peace. Those are what is really good for us all!
In that very famous movie, Casablanca, Rick, the character of Humphrey Bogart, turns to Ilsa, the character of Ingrid Bergman, near the end of the film and delivers a little speech that goes like this: “Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you kid….”
Unfortunately a great many who’ve seen the film take Rick to be talking of self-sacrifice whereas, in fact, what he is talking about is devotion to great values, such as liberty and justice--values that Ilsa will in time realize outweigh those she would like to have now, namely, romantic bliss.
If those running for office were truly devoted to high ideals, they could explain to voters that these high ideals are of great importance to all. They are to everyone’s self-interest both short and long term.
That is what proper, uncorrupted politics is about: devotion to very high human community values, such as rights, liberty, justice, the rule of law, peace and all those conditions that are indispensable for people aiming to live flourishing lives in their communities. To think that devoting oneself to these amounts to unselfishness, self-sacrifice, is bizarre. These are everyone’s most important values, with everything else--including (and this comes from a died in the wool romantic) a great romance--paling in comparison.
Urging people to renounce their self-interest will simply never fly for very long. The idea that serving others is more important than serving oneself just sounds nice--yes, nice--but is by no means noble. Noble objectives are all elevating to those who pursue them. Saving one’s child from a blazing fire is noble but not because it is unselfish. (Is there anything that’s more genuinely selfish than saving one’s family from disaster? And one’s friends, and sometimes even strangers?)
No, candidates need to educate voters about how utterly selfish and proper it is for them to vote for those who will secure for them justice, the protection of their rights, peace and other social conditions that make a decent, good human life possible for us all. And if they cannot do this, then they are not good candidates for political office. Then they are merely vying to gain power so as to implement some kind of agenda they can never fulfill.
Bona fide politicians, serving us as honest political representatives, are very much to our self-interest. And the candidate who can deliver on that promise must also see it as something of grave importance to him or her! That is the way constituents and politicians can come together without cynicism, without suspicion.
Reply
Tibor R. Machan
Do voters actually believe it when candidates promise them health, happiness, vacations, clean air, and all those other goodies while also demanding that they stop being selfish, stop joining special interest groups and dedicate themselves only to the public good? I doubt it very much. This sort of pitch seems to me to put most reasonable voters on guard. Something is up, a ruse is afoot, for no one can deliver on these promises. (Or are voters like all those gamblers flocking to Las Vegas who think they will come away big winners?) So a great many people stay away from the voting booth and it's all left in the hands of dreamers.
I am not sure if candidates have actually given this a try but I would count on a different strategy. How about promising voters just one thing, namely, a competent defense against the violence of those of their fellows who are inclined to be violent, against those who wreak crime and war. And then urge them not to stop being selfish but to be intelligently self-interested. That would be thinking of some broad benefits that we all should be striving for, such as freedom, the security of our rights, peace, and justice. These are benefits all voters would gain from big time! So they are objectives that are quite reasonably considered self-interested, for everyone.
But such self-interested benefits need some education to be effectively appealing to voters. Too many people shun being thought of as selfish because they associate selfishness with trivial pursuits. Yet, genuine, serious, big time selfishness is about broad, lasting values such as justice and peace. Those are what is really good for us all!
In that very famous movie, Casablanca, Rick, the character of Humphrey Bogart, turns to Ilsa, the character of Ingrid Bergman, near the end of the film and delivers a little speech that goes like this: “Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you kid….”
Unfortunately a great many who’ve seen the film take Rick to be talking of self-sacrifice whereas, in fact, what he is talking about is devotion to great values, such as liberty and justice--values that Ilsa will in time realize outweigh those she would like to have now, namely, romantic bliss.
If those running for office were truly devoted to high ideals, they could explain to voters that these high ideals are of great importance to all. They are to everyone’s self-interest both short and long term.
That is what proper, uncorrupted politics is about: devotion to very high human community values, such as rights, liberty, justice, the rule of law, peace and all those conditions that are indispensable for people aiming to live flourishing lives in their communities. To think that devoting oneself to these amounts to unselfishness, self-sacrifice, is bizarre. These are everyone’s most important values, with everything else--including (and this comes from a died in the wool romantic) a great romance--paling in comparison.
Urging people to renounce their self-interest will simply never fly for very long. The idea that serving others is more important than serving oneself just sounds nice--yes, nice--but is by no means noble. Noble objectives are all elevating to those who pursue them. Saving one’s child from a blazing fire is noble but not because it is unselfish. (Is there anything that’s more genuinely selfish than saving one’s family from disaster? And one’s friends, and sometimes even strangers?)
No, candidates need to educate voters about how utterly selfish and proper it is for them to vote for those who will secure for them justice, the protection of their rights, peace and other social conditions that make a decent, good human life possible for us all. And if they cannot do this, then they are not good candidates for political office. Then they are merely vying to gain power so as to implement some kind of agenda they can never fulfill.
Bona fide politicians, serving us as honest political representatives, are very much to our self-interest. And the candidate who can deliver on that promise must also see it as something of grave importance to him or her! That is the way constituents and politicians can come together without cynicism, without suspicion.
Reply
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Fourth of July and the Public Interest
Tibor R. Machan
Throughout history political thinkers have been doing a lot of fretting about the public good (or public interest, common good, general welfare, etc.). Usually they came up with massive plans or enchanting visions. Plato’s teacher, Socrates, was the great grand daddy contributing to this tradition, what with his strictly imaginary totalitarian society, the Republic. (Arguably neither Socrates nor Plato envisioned it as a blueprint, only as a kind of model to help us remember what’s important.)
Not, however, until the American Founders wrote the Declaration of Independence did a truly credible official idea of the public good finally emerge. Others did, of course, educate the Founders, most notably the 17th century English philosopher John Locke. Curiously, even paradoxically, it took a bunch of individualists to finally come up with a sensible notion of the public good!
The reason is not altogether difficult to appreciate. Human beings, while alike in some important respects, are also very different in other important ones. That is what a sensible individualism teaches: we are all human individuals! Accordingly, the message of the Declaration is that the public good, quite unexpectedly for many people, is something rather modest. Instead of devising some kind of utopia in which all the problems people face is dealt with by government--the king, czar, pharaoh, Caesar, Sheik, democratically elected group or some other supreme ruler--the Founders realized that the public good is the competent, diligent, conscientious protection of everyone’s unalienable individual rights.
Yes, that’s the only bona fide, genuine public good. Certainly what all too many con artists are foisting upon us as cases of the public good do not qualify at all--a sports arena, a convention hall, a city pool or golf course, AIDS or obesity research, the city zoo, and so forth. None of these amount to true public goods. They are all pretenders, private or special projects masquerading as something that will benefit us all!
Yet the only thing that qualifies for being a public good is the protection of the rights everyone has by virtue of his or her human nature. And, as the Founders so aptly put it, governments are properly instituted so as to secure these rights, not for any other purpose.
This is why the American political tradition--though, sadly, not American political history--is associated with the notion of limited government, government restricted to some few essential tasks. The Bill of Rights suggested some of the details of this by laying out a few or limited powers of government, with everything else left for us all to do in the myriad of voluntary groupings we can organize. And it matters not at all that Founders and Framers thought all this up back around 1776--it is still as sound an idea as it was back then. (After all, those who disagree and want a massive government, intruding on us all in innumerable ways, are actually advocating something that is much older than the limited government idea--from the start most political thinkers promoted the idea of some kind of super state with an absolute or barely limited ruler on top! Yes, Virginia, it is statists who are reactionaries instead of radicals or progressives!)
So, the American Founders did propose a solid idea of the public interest, of everyone’s genuine interest in society, namely, protecting everyone’s basic rights. That’s a serious task, in need of focus and discipline, and when it’s abandoned in favor of the multitasking government we actually suffer a great loss. (Arguably 9/11 would not have happened had the government kept to its limited job and done it well!) Their idea also answers an age old question: What really is the public good, what really promotes the general welfare? It is to make sure everyone is free of coercion, that’s what.
Some think this isn’t a grand enough vision of government and they are dead right--it is a grand vision of the potentials and capacities of the citizens of a country, not of its government! Instead of championing the all mighty state, which is still so often irrationally worshiped around the globe, the American idea was--it is now nearly forgotten--that government is to be scaled down to a manageable scope and size and citizens, individual human beings and their voluntary associations, are to be entrusted with the really significant tasks in society.
So on the 4th of July we need to celebrate this magnificent, revolutionary idea, the confidence in the human individual, not in some version of bloated government.
Tibor R. Machan
Throughout history political thinkers have been doing a lot of fretting about the public good (or public interest, common good, general welfare, etc.). Usually they came up with massive plans or enchanting visions. Plato’s teacher, Socrates, was the great grand daddy contributing to this tradition, what with his strictly imaginary totalitarian society, the Republic. (Arguably neither Socrates nor Plato envisioned it as a blueprint, only as a kind of model to help us remember what’s important.)
Not, however, until the American Founders wrote the Declaration of Independence did a truly credible official idea of the public good finally emerge. Others did, of course, educate the Founders, most notably the 17th century English philosopher John Locke. Curiously, even paradoxically, it took a bunch of individualists to finally come up with a sensible notion of the public good!
The reason is not altogether difficult to appreciate. Human beings, while alike in some important respects, are also very different in other important ones. That is what a sensible individualism teaches: we are all human individuals! Accordingly, the message of the Declaration is that the public good, quite unexpectedly for many people, is something rather modest. Instead of devising some kind of utopia in which all the problems people face is dealt with by government--the king, czar, pharaoh, Caesar, Sheik, democratically elected group or some other supreme ruler--the Founders realized that the public good is the competent, diligent, conscientious protection of everyone’s unalienable individual rights.
Yes, that’s the only bona fide, genuine public good. Certainly what all too many con artists are foisting upon us as cases of the public good do not qualify at all--a sports arena, a convention hall, a city pool or golf course, AIDS or obesity research, the city zoo, and so forth. None of these amount to true public goods. They are all pretenders, private or special projects masquerading as something that will benefit us all!
Yet the only thing that qualifies for being a public good is the protection of the rights everyone has by virtue of his or her human nature. And, as the Founders so aptly put it, governments are properly instituted so as to secure these rights, not for any other purpose.
This is why the American political tradition--though, sadly, not American political history--is associated with the notion of limited government, government restricted to some few essential tasks. The Bill of Rights suggested some of the details of this by laying out a few or limited powers of government, with everything else left for us all to do in the myriad of voluntary groupings we can organize. And it matters not at all that Founders and Framers thought all this up back around 1776--it is still as sound an idea as it was back then. (After all, those who disagree and want a massive government, intruding on us all in innumerable ways, are actually advocating something that is much older than the limited government idea--from the start most political thinkers promoted the idea of some kind of super state with an absolute or barely limited ruler on top! Yes, Virginia, it is statists who are reactionaries instead of radicals or progressives!)
So, the American Founders did propose a solid idea of the public interest, of everyone’s genuine interest in society, namely, protecting everyone’s basic rights. That’s a serious task, in need of focus and discipline, and when it’s abandoned in favor of the multitasking government we actually suffer a great loss. (Arguably 9/11 would not have happened had the government kept to its limited job and done it well!) Their idea also answers an age old question: What really is the public good, what really promotes the general welfare? It is to make sure everyone is free of coercion, that’s what.
Some think this isn’t a grand enough vision of government and they are dead right--it is a grand vision of the potentials and capacities of the citizens of a country, not of its government! Instead of championing the all mighty state, which is still so often irrationally worshiped around the globe, the American idea was--it is now nearly forgotten--that government is to be scaled down to a manageable scope and size and citizens, individual human beings and their voluntary associations, are to be entrusted with the really significant tasks in society.
So on the 4th of July we need to celebrate this magnificent, revolutionary idea, the confidence in the human individual, not in some version of bloated government.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
The Hubris of George Soros
Tibor R. Machan
Quite a few well known rich people aren’t satisfied with being rich and being able to do all the things they believe are important. They want to advertise this and to take up the role of teachers to the rest of us. The Hungarian born billionaire financier George Soros is no exception.
In a frankly narcissistic essay for The New York Review of Books (June 23, 2011) titled “My Philanthropy,” Soros reaches out to the readers of that very snooty, elitist publication evidently so as to make sure everyone who reads the piece will know how “virtuous” he is. That is to say, virtuous by the standards of a morality that requires us all to serve humanity first, before we take care of ourselves. Soros writes:
“I have made it a principle to pursue my self-interest in my business, subject to legal and ethical limitations, and to be guided by the public interest as a public intellectual and philanthropist. If the two are in conflict, the public interest ought to prevail. I do not hesitate to advocate policies that are in conflict with my business interests. I firmly believe that our democracy would function better if more people adopted this principle. And if they care about a well-functioning democracy, they ought to abide by this principle even if others do not. Just a small number of public spirited figures could make a difference.”
Sounds noble, if you believe it is meaningful. But “noble” is a matter of what values human beings should champion and promote. That’s why Soros’ declaration is dubious. It, first of all, makes it possible for him to look good in general without having to do much good in particular. You see, serving the public interest is one of those objectives that everyone likes to be associated with but has no idea what it actually requires of someone. Is the engineer who makes a locomotive run smoothly serving the public interest? Is the artist who paints a stunning landscape, a composer who creates a wonderful symphony, a doctor who cures someone’s disease, a shoe repairer who fixes people’s footware, a poet who moves us to tears--are these folks serving the public interest? Surely all those who welcome what they do are members of the public, so they are in fact serving the public interest.
Or would they only qualify as such if they made huge sacrifices, gave up all the benefits that came to them from doing all these things? Why? Why are only other people members of the public? If I serve my own interest, I am serving the interest of a member of the public too. So what on earth is serving the public interest? Who is it who studies that issue and answer this question reliably, dependably, competently?
Well, as the classical liberal political economists have established a long time ago, serving the public interest is in fact best done by serving one’s own. That’s because there is no general public interest apart from following certain very abstract principles that contain few if any specifics.
The American Founders gave a good clue when they proposed that the purpose of government is to secure the rights of all the citizens of the country. These are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How would securing these rights be in the public interest? Because being secure in those rights is to everyone’s best interest. You, I, our neighbors, the shoe repairer, the physician, the artist, the scientist--all these and millions of others can embark upon serving their interest if no one is authorized to impose upon them burdens they have not freely assumed.
In the case of George Soros this would imply that he serves the public interest precisely by doing whatever actually, really, truly serves his own interest without doing violence to others. As Adam Smith pointed out, he might not even know that he is doing such a public service but in fact that is all there is to doing one’s public service--making sure of what is in one’s proper interest and making sure that that freedom to pursue it is secured for everyone. That means that the pursuit of one’s self-interest, provided it really is one’s self-interest, ultimately amounts also to serving the public interest. No conflict there at all, contrary to the picture George Soros imagines, whereby the two can be in conflict. No they cannot, not if properly understood.
What can be inflict, of course, is what some people want or desire and their real interest, including then the public interest. When I work hard to educate my students or to explain the principles of human liberty to readers of my books and articles, I serve my own interest as well as the public interest. And when I fail in serving my genuine self-interest, I am also undermining the public interest, the interest of the public to which I belong.
So Mr. Soros should stop his hubris about serving some vague public interest first, before his self-interest. He should stick to figuring out what is truly in his interest and go for it. Then the public interest will take care of itself.
Tibor R. Machan
Quite a few well known rich people aren’t satisfied with being rich and being able to do all the things they believe are important. They want to advertise this and to take up the role of teachers to the rest of us. The Hungarian born billionaire financier George Soros is no exception.
In a frankly narcissistic essay for The New York Review of Books (June 23, 2011) titled “My Philanthropy,” Soros reaches out to the readers of that very snooty, elitist publication evidently so as to make sure everyone who reads the piece will know how “virtuous” he is. That is to say, virtuous by the standards of a morality that requires us all to serve humanity first, before we take care of ourselves. Soros writes:
“I have made it a principle to pursue my self-interest in my business, subject to legal and ethical limitations, and to be guided by the public interest as a public intellectual and philanthropist. If the two are in conflict, the public interest ought to prevail. I do not hesitate to advocate policies that are in conflict with my business interests. I firmly believe that our democracy would function better if more people adopted this principle. And if they care about a well-functioning democracy, they ought to abide by this principle even if others do not. Just a small number of public spirited figures could make a difference.”
Sounds noble, if you believe it is meaningful. But “noble” is a matter of what values human beings should champion and promote. That’s why Soros’ declaration is dubious. It, first of all, makes it possible for him to look good in general without having to do much good in particular. You see, serving the public interest is one of those objectives that everyone likes to be associated with but has no idea what it actually requires of someone. Is the engineer who makes a locomotive run smoothly serving the public interest? Is the artist who paints a stunning landscape, a composer who creates a wonderful symphony, a doctor who cures someone’s disease, a shoe repairer who fixes people’s footware, a poet who moves us to tears--are these folks serving the public interest? Surely all those who welcome what they do are members of the public, so they are in fact serving the public interest.
Or would they only qualify as such if they made huge sacrifices, gave up all the benefits that came to them from doing all these things? Why? Why are only other people members of the public? If I serve my own interest, I am serving the interest of a member of the public too. So what on earth is serving the public interest? Who is it who studies that issue and answer this question reliably, dependably, competently?
Well, as the classical liberal political economists have established a long time ago, serving the public interest is in fact best done by serving one’s own. That’s because there is no general public interest apart from following certain very abstract principles that contain few if any specifics.
The American Founders gave a good clue when they proposed that the purpose of government is to secure the rights of all the citizens of the country. These are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How would securing these rights be in the public interest? Because being secure in those rights is to everyone’s best interest. You, I, our neighbors, the shoe repairer, the physician, the artist, the scientist--all these and millions of others can embark upon serving their interest if no one is authorized to impose upon them burdens they have not freely assumed.
In the case of George Soros this would imply that he serves the public interest precisely by doing whatever actually, really, truly serves his own interest without doing violence to others. As Adam Smith pointed out, he might not even know that he is doing such a public service but in fact that is all there is to doing one’s public service--making sure of what is in one’s proper interest and making sure that that freedom to pursue it is secured for everyone. That means that the pursuit of one’s self-interest, provided it really is one’s self-interest, ultimately amounts also to serving the public interest. No conflict there at all, contrary to the picture George Soros imagines, whereby the two can be in conflict. No they cannot, not if properly understood.
What can be inflict, of course, is what some people want or desire and their real interest, including then the public interest. When I work hard to educate my students or to explain the principles of human liberty to readers of my books and articles, I serve my own interest as well as the public interest. And when I fail in serving my genuine self-interest, I am also undermining the public interest, the interest of the public to which I belong.
So Mr. Soros should stop his hubris about serving some vague public interest first, before his self-interest. He should stick to figuring out what is truly in his interest and go for it. Then the public interest will take care of itself.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Self-defense vs. Isolation
Tibor R. Machan
Where the idea comes from is not really relevant--it could be neo-conservatism, imperialism, compassion, whatnot. But it is right that it should be debated, especially by Republicans who aren’t beholden to the legacy of Woodrow Wilson in matter of foreign relations. Republicans, especially those with conservative leanings who are committed to preserving America’s ideal of using force against other countries only when those countries embark upon an aggressive foreign policy toward American citizens or allies, need to take a renewed close look at their country’s basic principles, including those pertaining to dealing with foreigners.
It was, after all, George Washington himself who, in his farewell message, warned the country against getting entangled in foreign wars. Yes, that was many years ago but the principle still holds, just as it holds in the criminal law: using force on others is only justified in self-defense. (Principles, if sound, don't change much over the centuries--not in physics, biology, or public policy!)
Admittedly the country’s domestic public affairs have long abandoned this idea. The US government now routinely coerces its citizens for all kinds of purposes. Except for a few steps in the right direction, such as the abolition of the military draft, most public policies are based on the practice of imposing burdens on citizens that they have not assumed freely. Even if one buys the notion that some taxation is justified, which is actually not true, the massive confiscation of private property by means of taxation is way out of line with the principles of the American political system. Just consider that one’s rights to one’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are supposedly unalienable. That is part of the Declaration of Independence and has made it into, at least indirectly, the laws of the land (e.g., the Fifth Amendment).
Yet courts over the decades have given the go ahead to politicians and bureaucrats to proceed as they wish with the task of raising funds for government’s innumerable expenses--most of them unconstitutional by the tenets of a sensible reading of that document and only legal by virtue of corrupt rulings by the US Supreme and other courts--by extorting them from the citizenry. And then there are prohibitions galore, such as the war and drugs, thousands of regulations that in fact amount to prior restraint (imposing burdens the regulated haven’t been shown to deserve via due process), etc., all the way down to local blue laws!
All of these have pretty much made it an insidious but widespread policy to treat US citizens by coercing for various alleged public purposes cooked up by special interests. In light of this, it is no surprise that so many people hold that embarking on coercive foreign policies is just fine--if what the government of Libya or any other country is doing is wrong, it is the business of the American government to intervene.
But is this right? Is this how human beings, including those in governments, ought to conduct themselves? If one tests this by applying the standards of ordinary morality and even much of the criminal law, the answer is in the negative. No one is authorized to invade a next door neighbor for misconduct, not unless that misconduct consist of attacks on oneself or one’s family. As a private citizen one may have reason to subdue a violent neighbor but even that is only justified if the authorities to whom this job is delegated are unavailable--e.g., as in a citizen’s arrest.
None of the wars the US is conducting now can reasonably be considered defensive. One need not hold to any kind of isolationism to appreciate this fact. Indeed, there ought to be a category of foreign affairs policy that’s called “defensivist.” It could justify some military action but all of it would have to be in defense of the citizens of the country. In fact, some of the hurdles still on the books, although mostly ignored or evaded by the government, basically imply that this outlook on when America may engage in a war is still the ruling framework or paradigm. But only in spirit, unfortunately.
Now that some of those in the limelight are raising questions about whether America’s aggressive stance toward some other countries is justified, it may be possible to arrive at a rational philosophy of foreign involvement. If some argue that it is isolationist to stick to self-defense--national defense properly understood--it needs to be replied that it is no isolation to be ready to fight when attacked or when some more subtle ways of initiated violence is directed at one’s country. Isolationism is irrational since others may drag one into a fight that should not be tolerated without proper resistance. But a defensive stance is perfectly rational, indeed the only one morally acceptable and conducive to promoting peaceful solutions.
The case for interventionism may rest on widespread precedence in our society of the uses of coercive public policies but that doesn’t justify it. It used to be the norm for most countries to attack their neighbors in the name of territorial expansion, need for resources, etc. It didn’t make it right. Nor is it for the US to play the role of global police.
Tibor R. Machan
Where the idea comes from is not really relevant--it could be neo-conservatism, imperialism, compassion, whatnot. But it is right that it should be debated, especially by Republicans who aren’t beholden to the legacy of Woodrow Wilson in matter of foreign relations. Republicans, especially those with conservative leanings who are committed to preserving America’s ideal of using force against other countries only when those countries embark upon an aggressive foreign policy toward American citizens or allies, need to take a renewed close look at their country’s basic principles, including those pertaining to dealing with foreigners.
It was, after all, George Washington himself who, in his farewell message, warned the country against getting entangled in foreign wars. Yes, that was many years ago but the principle still holds, just as it holds in the criminal law: using force on others is only justified in self-defense. (Principles, if sound, don't change much over the centuries--not in physics, biology, or public policy!)
Admittedly the country’s domestic public affairs have long abandoned this idea. The US government now routinely coerces its citizens for all kinds of purposes. Except for a few steps in the right direction, such as the abolition of the military draft, most public policies are based on the practice of imposing burdens on citizens that they have not assumed freely. Even if one buys the notion that some taxation is justified, which is actually not true, the massive confiscation of private property by means of taxation is way out of line with the principles of the American political system. Just consider that one’s rights to one’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are supposedly unalienable. That is part of the Declaration of Independence and has made it into, at least indirectly, the laws of the land (e.g., the Fifth Amendment).
Yet courts over the decades have given the go ahead to politicians and bureaucrats to proceed as they wish with the task of raising funds for government’s innumerable expenses--most of them unconstitutional by the tenets of a sensible reading of that document and only legal by virtue of corrupt rulings by the US Supreme and other courts--by extorting them from the citizenry. And then there are prohibitions galore, such as the war and drugs, thousands of regulations that in fact amount to prior restraint (imposing burdens the regulated haven’t been shown to deserve via due process), etc., all the way down to local blue laws!
All of these have pretty much made it an insidious but widespread policy to treat US citizens by coercing for various alleged public purposes cooked up by special interests. In light of this, it is no surprise that so many people hold that embarking on coercive foreign policies is just fine--if what the government of Libya or any other country is doing is wrong, it is the business of the American government to intervene.
But is this right? Is this how human beings, including those in governments, ought to conduct themselves? If one tests this by applying the standards of ordinary morality and even much of the criminal law, the answer is in the negative. No one is authorized to invade a next door neighbor for misconduct, not unless that misconduct consist of attacks on oneself or one’s family. As a private citizen one may have reason to subdue a violent neighbor but even that is only justified if the authorities to whom this job is delegated are unavailable--e.g., as in a citizen’s arrest.
None of the wars the US is conducting now can reasonably be considered defensive. One need not hold to any kind of isolationism to appreciate this fact. Indeed, there ought to be a category of foreign affairs policy that’s called “defensivist.” It could justify some military action but all of it would have to be in defense of the citizens of the country. In fact, some of the hurdles still on the books, although mostly ignored or evaded by the government, basically imply that this outlook on when America may engage in a war is still the ruling framework or paradigm. But only in spirit, unfortunately.
Now that some of those in the limelight are raising questions about whether America’s aggressive stance toward some other countries is justified, it may be possible to arrive at a rational philosophy of foreign involvement. If some argue that it is isolationist to stick to self-defense--national defense properly understood--it needs to be replied that it is no isolation to be ready to fight when attacked or when some more subtle ways of initiated violence is directed at one’s country. Isolationism is irrational since others may drag one into a fight that should not be tolerated without proper resistance. But a defensive stance is perfectly rational, indeed the only one morally acceptable and conducive to promoting peaceful solutions.
The case for interventionism may rest on widespread precedence in our society of the uses of coercive public policies but that doesn’t justify it. It used to be the norm for most countries to attack their neighbors in the name of territorial expansion, need for resources, etc. It didn’t make it right. Nor is it for the US to play the role of global police.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Hail Sandel!
Tibor R. Machan
Thomas Friedman, prominent New York Times columnist, recently penned a kudos to Harvard University professor of government Michael J. Sandel because Sandel received some fine notices recently in China Newsweek (not part of the American publication). Friedman could hardly contain his glee since Sandel’s ideas are the opposite of those of the American political (Lockean) tradition.
In a column of mine a while back I wrote this: “One famous scholar who finds this [that we have rights but no innate obligations] very annoying is Professor Michael J. Sandel, so much so that his recently published, Justice, What is the Right Thing to do? [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009] based on his very popular PBS TV and Harvard University lectures by that same term, begins with a frontal attack on libertarianism [a la the late Robert Nozick]. Sandel’s central complaint is that libertarianism doesn’t acknowledge that everyone has unchosen obligations to society. The famous American and classical liberal idea that government must be consented to by the governed is tossed aside for this reactionary idea that when you are born you are already legally ensnared in innumerable duties to others which, of course, government is authorized to extract from you. The idea, most forcefully defended by the French father of sociology, Auguste Comte, is a ruse and used mostly to make people into serfs, subject them to involuntary servitude, however noble sounding the sentiments behind it.”
It is simple enough to see why a government-sanctioned Chinese publication--kind of like the Soviet Union’s Pravda or Izvestia--approves of Sandel’s ideas. They certainly serve to rationalize state power over the citizens of a country. If you and I are born with positive duties to others--God, the world, the majority, that government, whoever--and government is the enforcer of obligations (as when it enforces those created by contracts), then citizens are clearly servants. Involuntary servitude is then every citizen’s proper role. And government gets to make sure that this service that’s due is efficiently and promptly extracted from us.
Professor Sandel champions these ideas not from a society with a strong statist tradition in its politics and law but from the United States of America which is associated with the classical liberal/libertarian political tradition. So now Chinese communists need not invoke Marx, Lenin, or Mao, whose reputation has plummeted in recent decades, so as to buttress their public policy of coercion against the citizenry. They can point to a famous Harvard University American political philosopher instead. Here is a star academic from the leader of the free world, as the US used to be called, endorsing what is normal practice in statist countries, ones where natural individual rights are denied and rights have become government granted privileges. (Another famous American academic who see things this way is, of course, President Obama’s friend and former University of Chicago Law School colleagues, Cass Sunstein!)
In the American tradition government’s just powers are supposedly derived from the consent of those whom government governs. As the Declaration put it, “to secure these rights [i.e., those negative one’s the Declaration lists], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....” Which clearly implies that (a) our rights don’t come from government but must be secured by it, and (b) the government’s authority is based on the citizenry’s consent not on some kind of innate obligation government must collect on by subjugating the citizenry.
Now this bona fide American idea cannot possibly sit well with the Chinese authorities. It is far more likely that those authorities will endorse Professor Sandel’s notion where the citizenry’s consent is not necessary to impose various obligations on them to come up with labor and resources for the government to use as it sees fit. (Which, of course, means for other people, a select few, to do this!)
And the folks at The New York Times, including regular and very prominent columnist Thomas Friedman (constantly feature on PBS’s News Hour and by Fareed Zakaria on his GPS CNN program), cannot but be pleased with Sandel, just as the Chinese communists are, since they also hold that government is supreme and the people are born with numerous unchosen obligations it must enforce.
Tibor R. Machan
Thomas Friedman, prominent New York Times columnist, recently penned a kudos to Harvard University professor of government Michael J. Sandel because Sandel received some fine notices recently in China Newsweek (not part of the American publication). Friedman could hardly contain his glee since Sandel’s ideas are the opposite of those of the American political (Lockean) tradition.
In a column of mine a while back I wrote this: “One famous scholar who finds this [that we have rights but no innate obligations] very annoying is Professor Michael J. Sandel, so much so that his recently published, Justice, What is the Right Thing to do? [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009] based on his very popular PBS TV and Harvard University lectures by that same term, begins with a frontal attack on libertarianism [a la the late Robert Nozick]. Sandel’s central complaint is that libertarianism doesn’t acknowledge that everyone has unchosen obligations to society. The famous American and classical liberal idea that government must be consented to by the governed is tossed aside for this reactionary idea that when you are born you are already legally ensnared in innumerable duties to others which, of course, government is authorized to extract from you. The idea, most forcefully defended by the French father of sociology, Auguste Comte, is a ruse and used mostly to make people into serfs, subject them to involuntary servitude, however noble sounding the sentiments behind it.”
It is simple enough to see why a government-sanctioned Chinese publication--kind of like the Soviet Union’s Pravda or Izvestia--approves of Sandel’s ideas. They certainly serve to rationalize state power over the citizens of a country. If you and I are born with positive duties to others--God, the world, the majority, that government, whoever--and government is the enforcer of obligations (as when it enforces those created by contracts), then citizens are clearly servants. Involuntary servitude is then every citizen’s proper role. And government gets to make sure that this service that’s due is efficiently and promptly extracted from us.
Professor Sandel champions these ideas not from a society with a strong statist tradition in its politics and law but from the United States of America which is associated with the classical liberal/libertarian political tradition. So now Chinese communists need not invoke Marx, Lenin, or Mao, whose reputation has plummeted in recent decades, so as to buttress their public policy of coercion against the citizenry. They can point to a famous Harvard University American political philosopher instead. Here is a star academic from the leader of the free world, as the US used to be called, endorsing what is normal practice in statist countries, ones where natural individual rights are denied and rights have become government granted privileges. (Another famous American academic who see things this way is, of course, President Obama’s friend and former University of Chicago Law School colleagues, Cass Sunstein!)
In the American tradition government’s just powers are supposedly derived from the consent of those whom government governs. As the Declaration put it, “to secure these rights [i.e., those negative one’s the Declaration lists], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....” Which clearly implies that (a) our rights don’t come from government but must be secured by it, and (b) the government’s authority is based on the citizenry’s consent not on some kind of innate obligation government must collect on by subjugating the citizenry.
Now this bona fide American idea cannot possibly sit well with the Chinese authorities. It is far more likely that those authorities will endorse Professor Sandel’s notion where the citizenry’s consent is not necessary to impose various obligations on them to come up with labor and resources for the government to use as it sees fit. (Which, of course, means for other people, a select few, to do this!)
And the folks at The New York Times, including regular and very prominent columnist Thomas Friedman (constantly feature on PBS’s News Hour and by Fareed Zakaria on his GPS CNN program), cannot but be pleased with Sandel, just as the Chinese communists are, since they also hold that government is supreme and the people are born with numerous unchosen obligations it must enforce.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Deciphering Paul Krugman
Tibor R. Machan
It is hardly ever explicit in Paul Krugman’s columns except that he has made it clear that he is a pragmatist and finds all ideologues off base. But what is an ideologue to Krugman? Someone who invokes principles as he or she thinks and copes with the real world. That’s, however, infantilism for any serious or radical pragmatist.
Both President Obama and Professor Krugman have made it abundantly clear that they consider ideological thinking misguided. Serious, radical pragmatists regard such thinking as unfounded—a species of foundationalism, something to be avoided since it involves imposing on the messy world an order it doesn’t have.
The foremost architect of this radical pragmatism was Harvard philosopher C. I. Lewis. In his massive work, Mind and The World Order (Dover 1941), he lays out the case for the view that even logic is something we invent and do not learn from studying reality. (Another famous proponent of this line of thinking was Columbia University philosopher Ernest Nagel—he made out this position in his famous paper, “Logic Without Ontology,” reprinted in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, edited by Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars. [New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1949]. More recently the late Richard Rorty, a very famous academic philosopher from Princeton University and several other prominent places, defended radically unprincipled thinking. I don’t know if Krugman and Rorty had been philosophical pals but it would not come as a surprise to learn that they had.)
One thing all this implies is that when one reads Paul Krugman one cannot criticize him tellingly by pointing out that he is inconsistent—e.g., that his serious scholarly work doesn’t jive with what he writes in his columns, or that last week’s column contradicts this week’s or last year’s this morning’s.
That Krugman does not announce this to the readers of his columns in The New York Times and articles in other publications, such as The New York Review of Books, is perfectly understandable. Most readers tend to have respect for logic—it is one way people tend to judge others, trip up prevaricators in law courts and criticize the scientific and scholarly work of those who write and speak out on vital topics. On innumerable occasions many will find a political candidate, president, or international figure criticized for being inconsistent. But that assumes, for Krugman, an ideology of consistency which radical pragmatists see as entirely artificial.
From very early on in the history of human thought it was accepted that logic is the first device to be used in aiming for understanding and in offering criticism—all of Plato’s Socratic dialogues adhere to this. Students at colleges and universities are constantly chided for being inconsistent. Everyone is, in fact. Except by serious pragmatists, at least the radical variety of them. And the reason isn’t very complicated to grasp.
Pragmatism grew out of a disenchantment many philosophers had with principled thinking. Indeed, throughout most of the history of philosophy the effort to come up with a solid, principled viewpoint hasn’t always met with welcome reception. Reasons for this vary but the result is that at least for the better part of the late 19th and early 20th centuries many philosophers not only gave up the idea that logic is a good guide to thinking about the world but they went on to develop what they called alternative logics. This was a big debate back then and many pragmatists took the side of those who rejected classical logic except as a kind of human invention, like the rules of chess or baseball.
When one understand this—and the story is, of course, more complicated in its details—one can also understand Professor Paul Krugman’s way of thinking about public affairs: The ideologues are clueless, thinking that their well thought out theories will help with that task. They will not, or so Krugman & Co., including our president, believe. And at the level of punditry they will not bother to explain this, try to defend it, but merely dish it out in whatever forum will feature them.
Yes, of course, pragmatism is not all that prominent, especially in the West, since most of Western thinking is influenced by Socrates, Plato and, especially, Aristotle, all firm proponents of the importance of a solidly grounded science of logic. Many others throughout human history have followed suite, one or another way, except for a few such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Sartre. But even these at least had respect for logical thinking, as they understood it.
Not so with the serious pragmatist Paul Krugman. And readers of him need to keep this in mind.
Tibor R. Machan
It is hardly ever explicit in Paul Krugman’s columns except that he has made it clear that he is a pragmatist and finds all ideologues off base. But what is an ideologue to Krugman? Someone who invokes principles as he or she thinks and copes with the real world. That’s, however, infantilism for any serious or radical pragmatist.
Both President Obama and Professor Krugman have made it abundantly clear that they consider ideological thinking misguided. Serious, radical pragmatists regard such thinking as unfounded—a species of foundationalism, something to be avoided since it involves imposing on the messy world an order it doesn’t have.
The foremost architect of this radical pragmatism was Harvard philosopher C. I. Lewis. In his massive work, Mind and The World Order (Dover 1941), he lays out the case for the view that even logic is something we invent and do not learn from studying reality. (Another famous proponent of this line of thinking was Columbia University philosopher Ernest Nagel—he made out this position in his famous paper, “Logic Without Ontology,” reprinted in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, edited by Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars. [New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1949]. More recently the late Richard Rorty, a very famous academic philosopher from Princeton University and several other prominent places, defended radically unprincipled thinking. I don’t know if Krugman and Rorty had been philosophical pals but it would not come as a surprise to learn that they had.)
One thing all this implies is that when one reads Paul Krugman one cannot criticize him tellingly by pointing out that he is inconsistent—e.g., that his serious scholarly work doesn’t jive with what he writes in his columns, or that last week’s column contradicts this week’s or last year’s this morning’s.
That Krugman does not announce this to the readers of his columns in The New York Times and articles in other publications, such as The New York Review of Books, is perfectly understandable. Most readers tend to have respect for logic—it is one way people tend to judge others, trip up prevaricators in law courts and criticize the scientific and scholarly work of those who write and speak out on vital topics. On innumerable occasions many will find a political candidate, president, or international figure criticized for being inconsistent. But that assumes, for Krugman, an ideology of consistency which radical pragmatists see as entirely artificial.
From very early on in the history of human thought it was accepted that logic is the first device to be used in aiming for understanding and in offering criticism—all of Plato’s Socratic dialogues adhere to this. Students at colleges and universities are constantly chided for being inconsistent. Everyone is, in fact. Except by serious pragmatists, at least the radical variety of them. And the reason isn’t very complicated to grasp.
Pragmatism grew out of a disenchantment many philosophers had with principled thinking. Indeed, throughout most of the history of philosophy the effort to come up with a solid, principled viewpoint hasn’t always met with welcome reception. Reasons for this vary but the result is that at least for the better part of the late 19th and early 20th centuries many philosophers not only gave up the idea that logic is a good guide to thinking about the world but they went on to develop what they called alternative logics. This was a big debate back then and many pragmatists took the side of those who rejected classical logic except as a kind of human invention, like the rules of chess or baseball.
When one understand this—and the story is, of course, more complicated in its details—one can also understand Professor Paul Krugman’s way of thinking about public affairs: The ideologues are clueless, thinking that their well thought out theories will help with that task. They will not, or so Krugman & Co., including our president, believe. And at the level of punditry they will not bother to explain this, try to defend it, but merely dish it out in whatever forum will feature them.
Yes, of course, pragmatism is not all that prominent, especially in the West, since most of Western thinking is influenced by Socrates, Plato and, especially, Aristotle, all firm proponents of the importance of a solidly grounded science of logic. Many others throughout human history have followed suite, one or another way, except for a few such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Sartre. But even these at least had respect for logical thinking, as they understood it.
Not so with the serious pragmatist Paul Krugman. And readers of him need to keep this in mind.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
The Weiner Paradox
Tibor R. Machan
What is most puzzling about the scandal with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-New York) isn’t how stupid the man has been and apparently managed to be to the last moment before he came clean (enough). What is really puzzling is why in the face of repeated scandals and corruption across the world and this country, there are well educated folks who continue to be confident that if only one hands a problem over to politicians and their appointees, all will be fine.
I have never believed in the innate stupidity of human beings. Free will disproves that idea. Some are, sure enough, very stupid and nearly constantly so; others are stupid periodically; while yet others have managed to keep their sanity and focus without fail. But judging by history and current affairs, it comes down to my favorite graph, the bell shaped curve. At one extreme are the truly mindless; in the middle are most of us with our vacillating mental acuity, while at the other extreme are those utterly rare cases of people who never let up, are always aware and in focus.
If my bell shaped curve accurately reflects the distribution of willful mindlessness versus mindfulness in the human species, the likelihood of having a fully sane political order is minimal. At best now and then throughout human history moments or perhaps brief eras of upright political affairs can be expected. And why? Because the kind of nonsense exhibited by Weiner, Schwartzenegger, et al., just will never be purged from our midst.
So does that mean that politics must always be a failed undertaking? It would seem so, at least as politics is understood today. What people tend to expect from politics is something that had been explicitly promises by those who defended the ancient regime, monarchies, empires and such, namely, that problems in society need top-down solutions because only those at the top are smart and good enough to be trusted.
While few today advocate this view up front in the West, many still believe it. It amounts to what Jonathan R. T. Hughes called “the governmental habit.” That is to say, despite the fact that the theory is no longer convincing and history has completely disproved it, many people are still supporters of one or another type of statism, not so much from understanding but from a habit that has been cultivated--indeed woven into the fabric of society, including language--for centuries on end. (Just check how enthusiastic people still are about royal weddings and inagurations!)
What can politics offer but continued failure? A suggestion emerged from the works of classical liberals and today’s libertarians. It is that politics must be about no more than defending the rights of citizens. Akin to what referees and umpires are expected to do at games, politicians and their staff must confine their involvement with society to identifying and fending off those who would introduce coercive force into human relations. Politics, in short, must be purely defensive, never pro-active. So confined, it can serve the citizenry reasonably--though not perfectly--well.
The nickname his colleagues in Congress have given Dr. Ron Paul, namely, “Dr. No,” captures this job quite accurately. Just as referees at games must focus on what players must not do, not on what they need to do, so with politicians. This will not tax them too hard, they will not need to be angels or saints, just as no one expects that from referees. Sure, they will still need to have integrity, just as the cop on the beat does. But they will not be asked to produce any projects--that is what the players of the game do, what citizens do.
If this kind of politics were to develop--and it will take time to wean most people of the governmental habit--then the field will no longer seem so attractive to all those power-seekers, all those easily corrupted people who enter it all the time and get caught either with their hands in the till or their pants down.
None of this is the familiar Utopian thinking we find in so much of political philosophy and theory. That’s because this kind of highly constrained politics offers something minimal, not the solution to all of our problems in medicine, farming, business, the arts, the sciences and the rest of the fields of great importance to people which they need to address in peace, without the benefit of politics which specializes in the use of force. Only one problem will be laid at the feet of politicians, namely, keeping social life peaceful.
Tibor R. Machan
What is most puzzling about the scandal with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-New York) isn’t how stupid the man has been and apparently managed to be to the last moment before he came clean (enough). What is really puzzling is why in the face of repeated scandals and corruption across the world and this country, there are well educated folks who continue to be confident that if only one hands a problem over to politicians and their appointees, all will be fine.
I have never believed in the innate stupidity of human beings. Free will disproves that idea. Some are, sure enough, very stupid and nearly constantly so; others are stupid periodically; while yet others have managed to keep their sanity and focus without fail. But judging by history and current affairs, it comes down to my favorite graph, the bell shaped curve. At one extreme are the truly mindless; in the middle are most of us with our vacillating mental acuity, while at the other extreme are those utterly rare cases of people who never let up, are always aware and in focus.
If my bell shaped curve accurately reflects the distribution of willful mindlessness versus mindfulness in the human species, the likelihood of having a fully sane political order is minimal. At best now and then throughout human history moments or perhaps brief eras of upright political affairs can be expected. And why? Because the kind of nonsense exhibited by Weiner, Schwartzenegger, et al., just will never be purged from our midst.
So does that mean that politics must always be a failed undertaking? It would seem so, at least as politics is understood today. What people tend to expect from politics is something that had been explicitly promises by those who defended the ancient regime, monarchies, empires and such, namely, that problems in society need top-down solutions because only those at the top are smart and good enough to be trusted.
While few today advocate this view up front in the West, many still believe it. It amounts to what Jonathan R. T. Hughes called “the governmental habit.” That is to say, despite the fact that the theory is no longer convincing and history has completely disproved it, many people are still supporters of one or another type of statism, not so much from understanding but from a habit that has been cultivated--indeed woven into the fabric of society, including language--for centuries on end. (Just check how enthusiastic people still are about royal weddings and inagurations!)
What can politics offer but continued failure? A suggestion emerged from the works of classical liberals and today’s libertarians. It is that politics must be about no more than defending the rights of citizens. Akin to what referees and umpires are expected to do at games, politicians and their staff must confine their involvement with society to identifying and fending off those who would introduce coercive force into human relations. Politics, in short, must be purely defensive, never pro-active. So confined, it can serve the citizenry reasonably--though not perfectly--well.
The nickname his colleagues in Congress have given Dr. Ron Paul, namely, “Dr. No,” captures this job quite accurately. Just as referees at games must focus on what players must not do, not on what they need to do, so with politicians. This will not tax them too hard, they will not need to be angels or saints, just as no one expects that from referees. Sure, they will still need to have integrity, just as the cop on the beat does. But they will not be asked to produce any projects--that is what the players of the game do, what citizens do.
If this kind of politics were to develop--and it will take time to wean most people of the governmental habit--then the field will no longer seem so attractive to all those power-seekers, all those easily corrupted people who enter it all the time and get caught either with their hands in the till or their pants down.
None of this is the familiar Utopian thinking we find in so much of political philosophy and theory. That’s because this kind of highly constrained politics offers something minimal, not the solution to all of our problems in medicine, farming, business, the arts, the sciences and the rest of the fields of great importance to people which they need to address in peace, without the benefit of politics which specializes in the use of force. Only one problem will be laid at the feet of politicians, namely, keeping social life peaceful.
Sunday, June 05, 2011
Elements of Discrimination
Tibor R. Machan
Most folks now consider discriminating against people because of their race, color, culture, age, sex etc. wrongful, unjust or unethical. At one time, though, being discriminate was deemed a good thing but that was when the idea was used to mean something like tasteful, discerning, even aware. But then it became something objectionable when people discriminated between others based on certain features that were irrelevant for purposes of deciding someone’s merits or worth as a professional or citizen.
Yet even now most folks have no problem with one’s having a favorite color, flower, ice cream, brand of car, hairdo, or apparel, etc. That means, of course, that in practice one will be drawn to these favorites while avoiding what one doesn’t find attractive or appealing--much of shopping pertains to picking favorites and avoiding what’s not favored. There is hardly anyone to whom this doesn’t apply and there is nothing wrong with it at all. This is so even when it is acknowledged that such tastes and preferences are quite arbitrary or subjective, not based on any sort of objective standards.
In contrast, it is also well and widely understood that when it comes to professional choices, it is indeed mostly wrong or unethical to let one’s tastes or preferences make a big difference. My dentist’s hair cut might not appeal to me but what matters is how good he is at dentistry. A teacher whose wardrobe is unappealing doesn’t lose points as a teacher for that. Nor is a student to be graded down for the color of his or her shoes. And the same thing holds across the board. (Of course, it is possible that someone’s tastes will clash with one’s own so drastically that one just cannot bear it!)
Now the same might also hold for race. There may be nothing amiss with preferring the skin color black to white or the other way around, so in personal matters this will be influential while in professional matters it should not be. One isn’t a racist for liking some skin colors more than others unless one lets this be a factor in judging people’s performance, worth, or qualification for citizenship. But otherwise acting on one’s preferences is no different from selecting favorite flowers or sofas and the like.
Yes, there are many areas in human relations when it is inappropriate to invoke mere preferences as one decides for or against someone. When one judges a competition in, say, technology or sports, all that may count is what is relevant while what isn’t needs to be left out of consideration. That is what justice demands. But life isn’t all about justice. It isn’t unjust for me to prefer tulips to roses, cabbage to broccoli, stake to fish or tall women to short ones.
All of this is pretty much common sense and widely acknowledge in practice even if careless rhetoric tends to go against some of it. (I am not considering here being judgmental based on religious or political convictions. Those can be well founded and need show no prejudice at all.) In dating, nearly everyone but a fanatic egalitarian will base selection on one’s preferences, tastes, etc., at least to start with. And few will feel any qualms about it--guilt for liking tall rather than short dates--although here and there one learns of some who do feel guilty for not preferring dates who are, say, overweight or speak with a heavy foreign accent.
The reason there is much concern about making selections based on race, color or sex is that such selections often concern hiring, promoting, including or excluding people who should be judged based on skill, competence, and other objective factors. In those matters reliance of tastes and preferences can be blatantly unjust, while in choosing a date it would not be.
A problem with getting all this wrong is that condemning those who act on their preferences often leads to people feeling guilty, seeing themselves as acting unjustly, as even harming people, whereas that’s not so at all. It is just that it is clearly wrong in certain cases to invoke one’s tastes and preferences, namely where what ought to count is the qualification one has for specific tasks or roles. But basing one’s preferences for other people on one’s tastes or preferences is entirely acceptable when kept within proper bounds.
Tibor R. Machan
Most folks now consider discriminating against people because of their race, color, culture, age, sex etc. wrongful, unjust or unethical. At one time, though, being discriminate was deemed a good thing but that was when the idea was used to mean something like tasteful, discerning, even aware. But then it became something objectionable when people discriminated between others based on certain features that were irrelevant for purposes of deciding someone’s merits or worth as a professional or citizen.
Yet even now most folks have no problem with one’s having a favorite color, flower, ice cream, brand of car, hairdo, or apparel, etc. That means, of course, that in practice one will be drawn to these favorites while avoiding what one doesn’t find attractive or appealing--much of shopping pertains to picking favorites and avoiding what’s not favored. There is hardly anyone to whom this doesn’t apply and there is nothing wrong with it at all. This is so even when it is acknowledged that such tastes and preferences are quite arbitrary or subjective, not based on any sort of objective standards.
In contrast, it is also well and widely understood that when it comes to professional choices, it is indeed mostly wrong or unethical to let one’s tastes or preferences make a big difference. My dentist’s hair cut might not appeal to me but what matters is how good he is at dentistry. A teacher whose wardrobe is unappealing doesn’t lose points as a teacher for that. Nor is a student to be graded down for the color of his or her shoes. And the same thing holds across the board. (Of course, it is possible that someone’s tastes will clash with one’s own so drastically that one just cannot bear it!)
Now the same might also hold for race. There may be nothing amiss with preferring the skin color black to white or the other way around, so in personal matters this will be influential while in professional matters it should not be. One isn’t a racist for liking some skin colors more than others unless one lets this be a factor in judging people’s performance, worth, or qualification for citizenship. But otherwise acting on one’s preferences is no different from selecting favorite flowers or sofas and the like.
Yes, there are many areas in human relations when it is inappropriate to invoke mere preferences as one decides for or against someone. When one judges a competition in, say, technology or sports, all that may count is what is relevant while what isn’t needs to be left out of consideration. That is what justice demands. But life isn’t all about justice. It isn’t unjust for me to prefer tulips to roses, cabbage to broccoli, stake to fish or tall women to short ones.
All of this is pretty much common sense and widely acknowledge in practice even if careless rhetoric tends to go against some of it. (I am not considering here being judgmental based on religious or political convictions. Those can be well founded and need show no prejudice at all.) In dating, nearly everyone but a fanatic egalitarian will base selection on one’s preferences, tastes, etc., at least to start with. And few will feel any qualms about it--guilt for liking tall rather than short dates--although here and there one learns of some who do feel guilty for not preferring dates who are, say, overweight or speak with a heavy foreign accent.
The reason there is much concern about making selections based on race, color or sex is that such selections often concern hiring, promoting, including or excluding people who should be judged based on skill, competence, and other objective factors. In those matters reliance of tastes and preferences can be blatantly unjust, while in choosing a date it would not be.
A problem with getting all this wrong is that condemning those who act on their preferences often leads to people feeling guilty, seeing themselves as acting unjustly, as even harming people, whereas that’s not so at all. It is just that it is clearly wrong in certain cases to invoke one’s tastes and preferences, namely where what ought to count is the qualification one has for specific tasks or roles. But basing one’s preferences for other people on one’s tastes or preferences is entirely acceptable when kept within proper bounds.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)