- Normal Joe (Biden) and the 2020 election Jacques Delacroix, NOL
- More campaign finance fiction Ethan Blevins, NOL
- The Good Life vs reality Mary Lucia Darst, NOL
- Prediction: Trump-Sanders 2016 Rick Weber, NOL
- “Medicare For All” will never work: a Brazilian view Bruno Gonçalves Rosi, NOL
- Bernie fans should want Bernie to lose the primary Bill Rein, NOL
Year: 2020
Nightcap
- Bernie, Cuba, literary, and ill-gotten gains Irfan Khawaja, Policy of Truth
- The weird global coronavirus data Scott Sumner, EconLog
- Why the Fed shouldn’t “Do Nothing” George Selgin, Alt-M
- Corporatism (“anarchy”) on the Indian subcontinent Priya Satia, LARB
“Medicare For All” will never work: a Brazilian view
Even though I don’t follow the news, it’s somewhat impossible not to know that Bernie Sanders is making a lot of buzz as the possible Democrat candidate for the coming presidential elections. I know: he presents himself as a democratic socialist; he says that some European countries are good examples for the US. I believe that as a Brazilian I have something to say about that.
Bernie Sanders often compares the US with countries like Denmark or Sweeden. I believe there is a fundamental problem with that: the US is a gigantic country with a gigantic population. And a very diverse population at that! Nordic countries are tiny, with a tiny and homogenous population. How about comparing the US and Brazil? The two countries have about the same size and the population is not too different. Besides, Brazil is as culturally diverse as the US. Maybe more!
So here are some things about Brazil that I think people should know. Brazil is by definition a social democracy. That is not written anywhere, but one has only to read our constitution to be aware of that. Brazil’s constitution is very young: it was promulgated in 1988. As so, it reflects more recent political ideas. For example, it basically puts healthcare as a human right that the government has to provide for the population. So, Brazil has (in theory) a free universal healthcare system.
How is healthcare in Brazil in reality? Horrible. Inhumane. Media news are basically the same every week: long waiting lines for the most basic treatments. People dying without care. Few doctors. Overprice. Medication and equipment rooting without use. I don’t think that people in Brazil are different from people in the US. We have the same chromosomes. The difference is in how we deal with the issue. Brazil decided that healthcare is a right and that it should be provided by the government. The result is that we don’t have healthcare.
I believe I know why things are the way they are in Brazil: healthcare is a need. No doubt about that! But there is something really bad when a need is turned into a right. A right means that you have to get it, no matter what. But, really? No matter what? Second, there is something very deceiving when one talks about “free” healthcare. Really? Free?! Doctors have to get paid. Medicine costs money. One can’t possibly be serious when they say “free healthcare”. Finally, I suspect that the Austrian School of economics has something very important to say about the government running the healthcare system. More than anyone else, Friedrich Hayek pointed to how free prices are important for the economy. In a truly free economy, supply and demand interact with prices: high prices mean low supply; low prices mean high supply. This simple mechanism functions as a compass for everyone. However, when the government interferes, the result is inefficiency. Too much medicine is bought and just rots. Or too little, and people die.
I’m not sure how many Bernie supporters read Notes on Liberty. But I really wish some of them would check what happens in Brazil. We tried to have a free universal healthcare system. We tried to have free college. We tried all these things. It didn’t work. I believe that the Austrian School can explain why. I know, it’s a bummer. There is nothing nice about people dying for lack of treatment. However, if you agree with me that this is a problem, I believe I’m in the right position to say that socialism – democratic or not – is not the solution.
Nightcap
- Learning to love the Bern Matthew Yglesias, Vox
- Is there still a West? Jared Lucky, Commonweal
- Bernie doubles down on his Israel remarks Matthew Choi, Politico
- The politics of logic Alexander Klein, Aeon
Nightcap
- Giving the Devil his due (in praise of Trump) Irfan Khawaja, Policy of Truth
- Turkey (a NATO ally) launches Syrian offensive Amberin Zaman, Al-Monitor
- The case for Amy Klobuchar in 2020 David Leonhardt, New York Times
- The only gaijin in the village Kris Kosaka, Japan Times
Nightcap
- Three strands of anti-federalist thought Nathan Coleman, Law & Liberty
- Globalization and postcolonial states Gupta & Sharma, Current Anthropology
- On the question of urban utopianism Philip Ball, homunculus
- Auschwitz and the new anti-Semitism Simon Schama, Financial Times
Bernie fans should want Bernie to lose the primary
In politics, sometimes it’s best to play the long game.
Pro-liberty people, and everyone else, will have two options in November. They will have Donald Trump, of farm subsidies, bump stock bans, and tariffs fame, who has overseen us first run a trillion-dollar federal deficit, and they will have Democratic Candidate-Chemical X, who is probably going to be mostly for free college, radically centralized health care, injected with nuclear levels of woke ideological steroids, and will have a “B” somewhere in their name.
Of Buttigieg, Beth, Biden and Bernie, only one has a grassroots, large-scale, young-and-old movement behind them, and far more meaningful for the long game of politics is going to be this movement, not the person with their name on the campaign. Leftists are fighting to capture the eternal soul of the States, and therefore the effective ones will use weapons that puncture more than flesh, build infrastructure that survives short-term failure, and mobilize voters past one election cycle.
The 2016 Bernie primary voters came back to Bernie at a remarkable rate. This animation is the sign of a movement, and it rings a bell for libertarians from 2008 and 2012. Now, the best case scenario for a Bernie voter is for Bernie to win the nomination. But the best case scenario for a Bernie revolutionary is for Bernie to lose the primary, far before the election.
If Bernie wins the nomination, he will certainly lose to Trump in the election. When he loses to Trump in the election, the Democrats will slide more toward centrism, having seen populist leftism crash and burn when it’s on the big stage. There’ll be a bifurcation of the socialists and moderates, with the socialists losing all their Sisyphean-gained infrastructure, and the establishment Democrats disavowing the radicals just like the conservatives disavowed the ethnonationalists last season (notice how right now, Bernie is the most untouchable candidate in the debates — the DNC is seeing how it goes). The momentum of the socialists’ movement will take a huge hit; it almost certainly won’t last four years later. This way, their ideas simply lose. They get close, then they give up.
However, if Bernie loses the nomination, another candidate will move forward and take the beating. And no one else pulls off Bernie’s brand and essentializes American socialism like he does. Bernie losing is American socialism losing, just like Labour and Corbyn’s defeat is British socialism losing; Warren or Buttigieg or Biden losing is respectively less and less symbolic. Inversely, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Biden taking the punch in November would seem to be a dramatic indictment of the moderate Democrats.
Sanders is very popular with a very young crowd. This group has the stamina for a grassroots movement that lasts. And that’s the long game. The American government-electing machine is a gigantic servo, absorbing constituent stress in armored heat baths, depressurizing with fluctuations between Democrat and GOP success, pulling in billions of minute feedback points and stabilizing itself against any revolutionary change. What happens if Sanders does get elected President this year? Four years max — there’s no way he runs at 82. And then another Republican, much, much more conservative than Trump, to undo the welfare additions. The movement dies either way if Bernie proceeds.
Bernie fans should want their candidate to lose the primary, so that the base feels cheated by their own, so that another candidate takes the fall against the Emperor, so that the young people voting in their first election get disillusioned with the polls — so that they decide there’s more to instituting reform than checking a box for one person every four years. The Presidency is not necessary to the movement. The influx of successful hard-leftists in lower and federal office came from Bernie’s defeat and the anger thereof — Ocasio-Cortez might never have made it to office without the group Justice Democrats, half of which the founders came directly from the 2016 Bernie Sanders for President campaign.
It’s obvious the analogy here. Ron Paul lost painfully twice in a row; if he had beat McCain or Romney, we probably would have had President Obama either way. But him losing to McCain — getting his voice to the millions, with coerced delegates exposing the party corruption, legions of supporters birthed out of thin air, committed to a vast litany of pro-liberty pursuits that exist to this day — was the real victory. President Paul lasts eight years maximum, and might have the prestige of Reagan today (how many Reagan-esque Presidents have we had since?). Failed candidate Paul, on the other hand, is a God.
I think some of Sanders’ staff, especially Briahna Joy Gray, know this on an intuitive level. They’re committed to the movement after the man, not the man. But we’ll see where it goes.
The most important thing this time, though, will be Bernie not making the mistake of endorsing the DNC candidate, as he did with Clinton.
Nightcap
- Why is the public so obsessed with Nazis? Roundtable, History Today
- The forgotten fascist surge in postwar Britain Jerry White, Literary Review
- Failed states and failed civilizations Nick Nielsen, The View from Oregon
- The use and abuse of ethnic minorities Salvatore Babones, spiked!
Broken Incentives in Medical Innovation
I recently listened to Mark Zuckerberg interviewing Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison concerning their thesis that the process of using scientific research to advance major development goals (e.g. extending the average human lifespan) has stagnated. It is a fascinating discussion that fundamentally questions the practice of scientific research as it is currently completed.
Their conversation also made me consider more deeply the incentives in my industry, medical R&D, that have shaped the practices that Cowen and Collison find so problematic. While there are many reasons for the difficulties in maintaining a breakneck pace of technological progress (“all the easy ideas are already done,” “the American education system fails badly on STEM,” etc), I think that there are structural causes that are major contributors to the great slowdown in medical progress. See my full discussion here!
That day when the communists tried to seize power in Brazil
On March 31, 1964, the military seized power in Brazil. Between 1964 and 1985, five generals assumed the presidency of the country. The period is generally called the Military Dictatorship. Although it ended more than 30 years ago, this period is still influential in Brazil’s political environment. A part of the Brazilian right still praises the military regime as a golden period in Brazilian history. A part of the left still condemns the regime as the darkest period in our history. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, the current president of the republic, is an admirer of the military regime and considers that not only was this necessary but also beneficial for the country. Dilma Rousseff, the former president impeached in 2016, was an urban guerrilla during the military regime and as far as I know, she has never publicly regretted this episode of her biography. Hardly a week goes by without the mainstream media and left-wing observers warning that Bolsonaro intends to strike a blow and reinstitute the dictatorship. Although the military regime was undoubtedly striking in the Brazilian reality, I would like to remind you today that Brazilian history did not begin in 1964.
1935. Brazil is governed by President Getúlio Vargas. Vargas came to power in 1930 through a coup. Defeated candidate for the presidency that year, he did not accept the result of the elections and with the support of the army, he took the power. Vargas was provisional president until 1934 when he was indirectly elected by Congress to remain in office. Vargas is pressured on the one hand by Integralistas, a group with fascist characteristics, and on the other by the Communist Party of Brazil. Faced with this scenario, with support from the USSR, the communists led by Luiz Carlos Prestes decided to take power by force.
The attempted coup took place between November 23 and 27, 1935. Low-ranking leftist militaries revolted in barracks in several cities in the country, including the capital Rio de Janeiro. The military who participated in the coup attempt believed that the working class would support them. The Communist International, in particular, saw Brazil as a “semi-colonial” society, in which a revolt against the government would be enough to lead the population to a spontaneous upheaval. That’s not what happened. The coup d’état had no expressive support from the population and the revolutionaries were soon defeated by legalistic forces.
The consequences of the coup attempt were dire. Luiz Carlos Prestes could not accept that his movement had simply been poorly organized and that the population did not support communism. There had to be a culprit. Prestes decided that it was the fault of Elza Fernandes, code-named Elvira Cupello Colonio, then about 16 years old. Elvira joined the group of communists of the 1930s under the influence of her boyfriend, Antonio Maciel Bonfim, code-named Miranda, general secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party. Prestes suspected that she was a police informant and decided that she should be killed. Elvira was murdered by strangulation on March 2, 1936.
In response to the coup attempt, Vargas hardened his regime, effectively becoming a dictator in 1937. The entire period from 1930 to 1964 would be deeply influenced by him.
After 1935, the Brazilian army became progressively more anti-communist, culminating in the 1964 coup.
There is no doubt that the leaders of the movement were paid (and very well paid) by the Comintern. There is no doubt that they were aided by foreign spies, mostly Europeans.
I don’t want to fall into the Tu quoque fallacy here, but my experience is that Brazilian leftists hardly remember the country’s history before 1964. Many criticize the anti-democratic character of the regime that was established in the country that year. Many denounce that the 1964 coup was carried out with US support. But I don’t remember many leftists making similar criticisms to the 1935 coup attempt.
I don’t want to be unfair. I have friends who identify themselves as leftists and who value democracy. But I must say: socialism can start democratic, but it inevitably leads to dictatorship. This is the only way to have their plans realized. People don’t seem to have learned that in Brazil. Or in other parts of the world.
Be Our Guest: “What’s the Voter’s Value?”
John Lancaster has a new guest post up. Here’s an excerpt:
Even if one cannot verbally clarify the reasoning behind an action, evidence from said action can be gathered and formulated into a coherent reason. Whatever an individual chooses to do, it provides discernible information about the person behind the action.
This phenomenon of voluntary choice extends to abstention.
Read the rest, and if you’ve got something to say, be our guest and say it!
Nightcap
- How millennial socialists make the case for a kinder politics George Scialabba, New Republic
- Affirmative Action: the uniquely American experiment Orlando Patterson, New York Times
- Imagining Africa (clash of civilizations?) Clive Gabay, Disorder of Things
- Anáhuac and Rome: indigeneity and religion in Mexico Arturo Chang, Age of Revolutions
Nightcap
- In the 1940s, one-third of Baghdad was Jewish Farah Abdessamad, Asian Review of Books
- Theory of non-territorial internal exit Trent MacDonald, SSRN
- Native American reservations as socialist archipelagos Andrei Znamenski, Mises Daily
- East meets West at Ueno Kōen Nick Nielsen, The View from Oregon
Departments of Higher Education should have mystery shoppers
As you know, I teach at a SUNY campus. As you can imagine, the views I express here are only my own and certainly not those of any authority figure in the bureaucracy I live in or the higher ed industry more broadly. My union would be mortified.
In my opinion–coming from a limited perspective within the sausage factory–the problem we’re facing is that universities are good at education and bad at credentialing (at least when there’s a significant demand for the signal value of a degree). This has lead to a host of problems–Baumol disease, growing administrative expense, all sorts of cultural unsavoriness, declining standards, grade inflation, etc.
Education just happens. You can’t plan for it. You don’t do x amount of philosophy and then you’re enlightened. But a navel-gazing, consequence free environment with a culture of inquiry is a fine place for education to happen.
Credentialing on the other hand is a common pool with the usual problems. It doesn’t have to interrupt the educational component of the university, but when actors in this setting follow the basic economic logic of their situation enrollments (and budgets) expand and the nature of the good produced by schools shifts from unquantifiable to commodity.
In such a setting there is a strong case to be made for regulation. At the very least to manage the common pool resource of the signal value of a bachelor’s degree, but more ideally to ensure students aren’t simply learning to minimize cost while navigate a bureaucracy.
Of course, NOL readers know that regulation is never easy and comes with many problems of its own. In fact, many of the problems I see in the industry are the natural bureaucratic outcome of such regulation (particularly as I sit here avoiding the work I’ve got to do making my tenure packet more closely resemble a checklist version of the guidelines my campus gave me. God I hate this!). For a taste of how this mess is currently killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, check out BadAssessment.
How do we improve the regulatory quality? Mystery Shoppers!
My industry is disciplined through:
* direct state regulations,
* marginal nudges through strings-attached financing,
* “self”-regulation through quasi-public regional accreditation and much-less-public discipline-specific accreditation,
* direct consumer experience,
* U.S. News (and similar) rankings, and
* Peter Theil and other critics complaining about how the education system is broken.
My proposal could be done at any of these levels, but to my knowledge is only actually done at the statistically invalid level of direct consumer experience.
Governments could invent many students and their traits and send copies of these students to a sample of online programs. Teams would manage sets of students and gather data. With several of these students taking different paths through each school the agency could learn something useful about the school as a whole–is it a degree mill? How does the actual student experience compare to other schools? Are there pitfalls that might put vulnerable groups at a disadvantage?
Peter Theil could do it more aggressively and generate an upper-bound estimate on the bullshit in the industry.
The College Board or U.S. News would probably turn it into a new costly margin of competition between schools, but that’s probably an improvement over what we’ve got now.
To my knowledge, nobody is doing this. In my opinion, given the stakes and the size of the industry, it’s worth approaching this from many directions. Mystery shoppers would certainly be a more direct evaluation than the hundreds of pages of sacrificial paperwork we’re currently using.
Nightcap
- My mother’s last words Lee Rourke, New Statesman
- The conscience of a human being Michael Huemer, Cato Unbound
- In praise of Barcelona’s crosswalks Irfan Khawaja, Policy of Truth
- Islam and the French Revolution Ian Coller, Age of Revolutions
Notes On Liberty 