Author: Brandon Christensen

The Corporate State and High Liberalism: A Love Story

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , ,

I have been following the symposium on “free markets and fairness” over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians with some interest. One of the things that has always bothered me about the Left’s despicable tactics concerning liberty is its demagoguery concerning markets. As a former Marxist who has hung out with the right people in the right places, I can assure you that the Left is not so much concerned with the plight of the poor as it is with the plight of the rich.

Once I began to grasp the basic insights of economists (thanks to Ron Paul’s 2008 Presidential campaign) it became increasingly apparent that less regulations and less restrictions are needed in this world in order to help the poor. What I have not understood about my friends on the Left is why they obstinately refuse to acknowledge the facts concerning how markets and the State work. As Deirdre McCloskey has recently pointed out, the narrative of high liberalism is factually mistaken, but this in itself is not enough to convince the True Believers that control over others needs to be abolished.

Two things stand out to me whenever I argue with Leftists: 1) the thin veneer of helping the poor is often used to cover up the base desire for control over others; the high liberal is an authoritarian through-and-through and 2) the Leftist is often unaware of this authoritarianism until you either scratch or cleave him.

Consider the following example. Continue reading →

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  1. Secessionist Movements in Europe. I have always thought that the EU would be great for more decentralization, but once the central bank became established and Brussels agitated for more political power I knew that the experiment in confederation would become the failure that it is today.
  2. Economist Bryan Caplan on Left-wing historical bias and Benito Mussolini. You’d be surprised what the history books keep out of Italy’s socialist movement…
  3. Has Africa Always Been the World’s Poorest Continent? Be sure to read through the ‘comments’ section too.
  4. Mini-DREAM and the Rule of Law: Executive Discretion. A number of libertarians have come out in support of Obama’s executive order prohibiting immigrants from being deported just for moving here as children, but I am not so sure that this is a good move. Politically, it’s great, especially when one considers the fact that the Obama administration has deported more immigrants in 4 years than GW Bush did in 8. I am more worried about the Rule of Law. It’s the legislative branch’s job to implement immigration policy, not the executive branch’s. As somebody who supports open borders, this is a tough call.

The Case for Peace with Iran

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Recently the American ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, publicly let the Israelis know that the United States was ready and able to go to war against Iran. He said that a military attack was the last thing that the US wanted, yet the fact that the statement was made publicly and haughtily suggests that Washington is eager to provoke Tehran into making a mistake or two in the nuclear showdown.

Now let me be frank: a nuclear Iran, as the state stands today, would be a big problem for peace not only in the Middle East but throughout the world. If Iran were to get the bomb it would suddenly have much more leverage in international affairs. Not only would a nuclear-armed Iran have the capabilities to deter Western powers, but it would also have the capability to be much more bellicose in its foreign policy. Instead of mere tentacles in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq, Tehran would have power (that loathsome word) to back up its interests in the region. Furthermore, a nuclear-armed Iran would start another military arms race in the Middle East, as Saudi Arabia and Israel would seek to bolster their own capabilities to deter an Iranian threat.

If you think a nuclear-armed Iran is bad, just image a nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia. Remember, Persians don’t use suicide bombing as a terrorist tactic. That’s something Arabs (and Sinhalese) do. Additionally, Iran is not really a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. Islamism has been stifled in Iran largely because it is already the state religion, which means that all Islamist activities have been co-opted into the official state apparatus. If you still have trouble following, just remember: state apparatuses are a handy tool used by dictatorships to water down the more radical elements of a philosophy or movement.  Continue reading →

Around the Web, Kinda

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No.  The master narrative of High Liberalism is mistaken factually.  Externalities do not imply that a government can do better.  Publicity does better than inspectors in restraining the alleged desire of businesspeople to poison their customers.  Efficiency is not the chief merit of a market economy: innovation is.  Rules arose in merchant courts and Quaker fixed prices long before governments started enforcing them.

I know such replies will be met with indignation.  But think it possible you may be mistaken, and that merely because an historical or economic premise is embedded in front page stories in the New York Times does not make them sound as social science.  It seems to me that a political philosophy based on fairy tales about what happened in history or what humans are like is going to be less than useless.  It is going to be mischievous.

How do I know that my narrative is better than yours?  The experiments of the 20th century told me so.

This is from Deirdre McCloskey’s blog post over at a new symposium being put on by Bleeding Heart Libertarians. It is probably the best thing I’ve read on the web in a couple of years. You can find the rest of the posts from the symposium here. I highly recommend all of them.

Co-editor Fred Foldvary recently participated in the last symposium that BHL held on Libertarianism and Land. You can find both of his entries here (be sure to read through his responses in the ‘comments’ section, too) and here.

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Be back to blogging soon. Hope these tide you over.

Speaking of tides, co-editor Fred Foldvary on regulations and swimming pools.

NAFTA has reduced income inequality in Mexico. Just think of what could be created if we continued to liberalize our relations with our neighbors (especially our labor markets).

Hypocrisy in the Democratic Party. See if you can spot it!

The myth of socialist Sweden. Libertarians have been saying this for years, and yet…

May Day: The Conspiracy of Silence Around the Romance of Evil. A nice debunking of the persistent lure of Communism.

The Future of ObamaCare: Massachusetts Edition

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I apologize for the lack of activity on this blog lately. School is either just out or finishing up, so I’m sure blogging will pick up in a few days or so.

Anyway, I found this article via Twitter the other day. It’s about the debate going on in Massachusetts about RomneyCare and how to control the costs that are spiraling out of control. Unfortunately, the article is a bit skinny on details and I am sure the debate is focused on keeping the status quo or giving the government an even greater role in health care markets, but I found this line from a state representative (and Democrat) to be most informing:

“The market is most certainly not working. The market is absolutely broken. Health care costs have been rising at 6.7-8% annually over the past decade.”

Yikes. I have a question: if you break a man’s legs and then tell him to run a five-minute mile, will he succeed? The rising costs, of course, are the real problem here, and one that won’t be fixed by introducing more incentives to keep prices both ambiguous and in some cases arbitrary.

RomneyCare, for those of you who don’t know (on this blog? yeah right!) has served as the blueprint for ObamaCare and it involves a nasty combination of forcing people to buy to buy insurance and subsidizing those who do not (or cannot due to the predictable price increase of insurance after the mandate went into effect).

There is no doubt in my mind that actual market-based solutions were proposed in the debates. Here are a couple via economist Tyler Cowen: Continue reading →

“Stocks Slammed as Dow Erases 2012 Gains”

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That’s the title to a headline piece over at CNN.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) plunged 275 points, or 2.2%, the biggest one-day drop since November. The blue-chip index gave up all its gains for the year, and is now 99 points below where it finished 2011. The S&P 500 (SPX) lost 32 points, or 2.5%, and the Nasdaq (COMP) dropped 80 points, or 2.8%.

Ouch. The cause of the plunge?

“The U.S. employment report was simply terrible,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.

The May jobs report showed only 69,000 jobs were added to payrolls, less than half the 150,000 jobs forecast by economists surveyed by CNNMoney. The unemployment rate ticked higher for the first time in a year, rising to 8.2%.

I take three things away from this: Continue reading →

Immigration and the Welfare State: Incompatible (With A Comment on the Middle East Too)

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A Facebook friend of mine (who I met at a FEE seminar a couple of years back) posted the following link in Forbes about British plans to begin targeting certain citizens of states within the EU in regards to immigration. Individuals from states in the troubled Latin region of the EU would no longer be welcome to reside in Britain. The cause of this:

However, immigration is a sensitive issue for Britain which runs one of the most generous health and welfare protection schemes in Europe.

Can’t be much clearer than that. Along with the fiscal problems that welfare programs create for societies, there are also political and social consequences to be had. For one thing, the very notion of a welfare state creates a type of “ours, not theirs” mentality within a populace, which no doubt contributes the shocking nationalism and racism to be found everywhere in Europe.

Although welfare programs in the US, Australia and Canada have to deal with these social consequence, in the Old World the welfare state also taps into a sort of tribal conscience that the Anglo world cannot really fathom. I hypothesize that the “tribal identity” is actually the main factor behind the stubborn refusal of the welfare to state to go away not only in Europe but throughout the entire Old World. Continue reading →

Some Mistakes Have Been Made

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I just finished up the readings for a class on the history of the modern Middle East. The main book issued is one conveniently written by the professor of the course (James Gelvin) and is aptly titled The Modern Middle East: A History. Below is an excerpt that I think sums up the problems facing the Middle East today:

American policy towards the Middle East [after World War 2] was instrumental in promoting both development and the civic order development was to sustain […] To promote development, the United States adopted a multifaceted approach derived, in good measure, from its own Depression-era wartime experiences.

Ooops.

Here is Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression. Now, I know libertarians are infamous for condescending suggestions to “go read a book”, but I don’t think we can really help it sometimes. Hoover’s interventionist policies and Roosevelt’s New Deal were disastrous for the American economy. Most, if not all, of the Middle East’s problems today can be traced to the institutions currently in place, and these institutions in their turn were created and codified based upon models that had entirely failed the West.

For the record, the developmentalist approach led directly to, you guessed it, economic nationalism and political despotism. You can find a convenient ranking of the world’s states based off of GDP (PPP) per capita here. According to the IMF, the US ($48,387) is ranked 6th in the world (the US also repealed or rebuked many of the Depression-era policies of the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations; the few that remain are among the most pressing problems American society faces today). The world average is $11,489. Egypt is ranked 104th, Iraq is 128th, Iran is 69th (coming in slightly above the world average at $13,053), and Syria is 118th.

The Future of NATO

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The recent NATO summit in Chicago that produced absolutely nothing has opponents of the alliance smelling blood. Indeed, the only thing that the Chicago summit may have produced is a healthy recognition by many factions that the future of NATO itself is increasingly in doubt. This should come as no surprise to any of us here at the Notewriter’s consortium, but in some ways this development is surprising.

Even mainstream pundits, ensconced as they are in Beltway ideology, have begun to notice that the alliance is on its way out. From CNN’s Security Clearance blog (“security clearance”? Really?):

Europe’s collective fatigue with NATO’s globetrotting has often left the United States shouldering most of the burden, which is considered one of NATO’s greatest shortcomings. The United States now covers 75% of NATO defense budgets, while the majority of allies don’t even allocate NATO’s benchmark 2% of gross domestic product to defense.

Sharp reductions in European defense budgets have only increased dependence on the United States.

While realists have been bemoaning the alliance for decades, it has become apparent that the reality of the situation has finally smacked some sense into the Beltway consensus. This must be kind of like how libertarians felt after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980’s.

Like the collapse of the Soviet Union, though, there are many things to be worried aboutwith the impending collapse of NATO. The major issue that the US should be worried about is deteriorating relations with Europe. While the American taxpayer got stuck subsidizing the defense of Europe for well over half a century, the relationships brought about by working together have proved fruitful, and in order to keep these relations on good terms, Washington should undertake policies that will further integrate American and European societies: freer trade.

There is no reason why there shouldn’t be a free trade zone between the whole of the US and Europe on the scale of the US itself or the EU (the same goes for the US and its nearest neighbors: Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean).

One thing that American policymakers should not fear is the rise of a competitor in the form of a European superstate. This fear (or hope, if you are an American socialist) is off-base. Just think of Europe’s sclerotic answers to the worst economic crisis in its history, and then imagine a European Union trying to implement a common, cohesive foreign policy on a global scale like that of the US.

It isn’t possible. Not even states with highly centralized power structures like China can compete with the US in this regard, and the thought of Brussels actively trying to compete with the US in international relations is ludicrous.

The demise of NATO is ultimately a good thing. There is no need for a collective security alliance to combat a menacing Russia any longer. Moscow’s empire of Soviets is long gone, and its focus in the near future will be domestic and along its borders. NATO’s demise will also save the US a lot of money, and will spare the European people from the negative effects (like terrorist attacks) associated with supporting a worldwide hegemon. We can only hope that NATO’s demise comes sooner rather than later, and that each party involved will recognize that continued relations with each other, especially in regards to trading policy, are still vital to peace and prosperity.

What Would You Do?

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I picked up a five things to-do list from Grover Cleveland over at Pileus Blog if he were supreme ruler of the land. He in turn got his 5 from a prompt by Angus over at Kids Prefer Cheese. If readers have any more Top 5 lists they’ve come across let me know and I’ll link them accordingly.

Anyway, here are Angus’s Top 5: Continue reading →

Farewell Lecture (Congratulations!)

Brandon Christensen Economics, Liberty, Links , ,

Hey everybody,

Co-editor Fred Foldvary is retiring from Santa Clara University and will be giving a farewell lecture on June 6th. The details:

Dear CSI personae,

Fred Foldvary, CSI Director, will retire from SCU on June 2012.

 

His farewell CSI public lecture will be held

on June 6, 7-8:30 PM, Lucas Hall 126 the Forbes Family Conference Center.

 

Foldvary’s lecture will be on the question:

“What gives you the right to exist?”

If you had to prove it on the penalty of death,

how would you answer?

 

See you there,

Fred Foldvary

ffoldvary@scu.edu

We hope everybody who is in the Silicon Valley at the allotted time can attend. Here is CSI’s website. Here is a partial list of Dr. Foldvary’s academic publications over the years (hopefully they are ungated). Here are his writings in the Freeman. Here are his writings in the Progess Report.

Congratulations Dr. Foldvary, you finished the rat race in one piece!

Jacques Delacroix, 9/11, and Ron Paul the Truther

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Hey all,

I am in the midst of midterms, but I thought I’d direct you to our blogger’s most recent charges against Congressman Ron Paul: he is a “truther”!

I don’t have much to say on the topic, because Delacroix has been known to exaggerate when it comes to Ron Paul, but I thought I’d give his views a shake.  If any of our readers are “truthers”, by the way, you should probably get your head checked.  If you think have a good case for an inside job, though, be sure to lay it out here on this humble blog.  We like controversy and discussion!

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Co-editor Fred Foldvary on the Buffet Misrule.

Mona Eltahaway, an Egyptian-American columnist who was detained and sexually assaulted by Egyptian security forces during the uprisings, writes about Why They Hate Us.

In the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf explains how student debt forgiveness is just another subsidy to the rich.

Will Wilkinson, writing in the Economist, on how Fair is Fair.

Guess who else got their hands on Libyan weapons?

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Co-editor Fred Foldvary is participating in a symposium over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians.  Check him out.

Michael Mungowitz bags on Greece and the Euro Zone.

Zach Gochenour has a complimentary follow-up piece on Dr. Foldvary’s essay: Progress or Poverty: The Economics of Land and Discovery.

All Hail Azawad.  A blogger obsessed with maps from the New York Times writes about the new state’s prospects .  I have written about Azawad here, here, here, and here (oh God I hope I don’t sound like Walter Block!).

Jacques Delacroix provides even more insights into the French elections and its implications for the Euro Zone.

The collapse of the Euro Zone is kind of a big deal.  Personally, I hope the collapse only destroys the currency of the zone, and not the ability of its members to trade and work freely anywhere throughout the zone.  I also want a pony and never-ending supply of really good weed.

The European policymakers and technocrats should not have been so brash as to believe that they could unify Europe politically.  Not only is that bad for democracy, but it has also given the underlying principle behind the EU – free trade – a very bad name.  Repeat after me: large polities that are economically united and politically divided are good for everybody, but large polities that are economically and politically united are bad for everybody.

It’s even worse when you throw in concepts like Old World identities such as ethnicity into the mix and try to get everybody to play nice through the democratic process.