O que é socialismo?

10/11/201610/11/2016 Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Liberty, Philosophy, Politics Adam Smith, Karl Marx, labor, liberalism, socialism, surplus value

Alguns posts atrás fiz uma exposição sobre o que é capitalismo, e também procurei expor e desmistificar alguns equívocos a respeito dele. Nos próximos posts pretendo fazer algo semelhante com o socialismo: explicar o que é e desfazer alguns mitos e equívocos. Falando a respeito de capitalismo, expliquei que esta palavra é utilizada de forma bastante livre, e assim há muitas variedades de capitalismo. Optei por expor um tipo de capitalismo associado ao pensamento de Adam Smith e à tradição liberal, algo que pode ser chamado de liberdade econômica, liberdade de mercado ou liberdade de escolha. O socialismo também aparece em variadas formas. O que exponho aqui é a variedade associada a Karl Marx. Marx foi um historiador, filósofo e sociólogo, mas o que me interessa aqui é principalmente sua teoria econômica.

A teoria econômica de Marx começa com a teoria do valor trabalho. De acordo com esta pressuposição, o que dá valor a um produto é a quantidade de trabalho envolvida na produção. Em outras palavras, o trabalho (trabalho braçal, entenda-se) é a fonte de todo valor. Esta percepção de valor trabalho pressupõe uma ligação entre mais valia e acumulação de capital. Marx argumentou que toda a riqueza é fruto do esforço dos trabalhadores. No entanto, os trabalhadores não recebem um salário correspondente ao valor pelo qual sua produção é vendida. Na percepção liberal, a diferença entre custo de produção e valor de venda é chamada de lucro. Na percepção de Marx, isto é mais valia: os donos das fábricas (ou donos dos meios de produção) enriquecem a custa do esforço dos trabalhadores. Mas esta é uma relação insustentável: para lucrar os empresários precisam pagar aos trabalhadores o mínimo possível, somente o suficiente para garantir a sobrevivência e reprodução dos trabalhadores. Com o tempo, os lucros iriam cair, o capital (ou os recursos de produção) iriam se concentrar em poucas e imensas fábricas (fabricas menores seriam levadas à falência pela competição), haveria dificuldade de transferência de capital (os investimentos seriam cada vez menos rentáveis), o número de desempregados se elevaria, a capacidade de venda cairia, crises cada vez mais profundas e frequentas ocorreriam, todo o sistema iria inevitavelmente chegar ao fim. Uma sociedade socialista, onde os trabalhadores seriam donos dos meios de produção, surgiria.

No coração da teoria econômica de Marx está o conceito de mais valia: os trabalhadores não recebem o que merecem pelo seu trabalho. Ao invés disso, eles são explorados pelos patrões. Acredito que esta noção de exploração comove muitas pessoas, mas ela não faz o menor sentido. Marx não está dizendo que alguns patrões exploram os trabalhadores. Ele está dizendo que, por definição, todos os patrões exploram os trabalhadores, pois retém na mais valia uma riqueza que não lhes pertence.

A pedra fundamental da teoria econômica de Marx é a teoria do valor trabalho: o que confere valor a um produto é o trabalho que se tem para produzi-lo. Daí que necessariamente haja exploração. Mas a teoria do valor trabalho está certa? Ela corresponde à realidade? Acredito que está bem claro que não: posso ter muito trabalho para produzir uma escultura de palitos de fósforo no meu quintal, e nunca conseguir vende-la, pois ela não tem valor para mais ninguém. Todo o meu trabalho, todo o meu esforço, é inútil e sem valor se eu não estiver produzindo algo que seja do interesse de outra pessoa. Além disso, a revolução marginalista do final do século 19, e particularmente a Escola Austríaca, veio demonstrar que valor é algo subjetivo e sujeito a condições de tempo e espaço.

A questão clássica a respeito de valor é: “porque diamantes, que não alimentam, são tão caros, enquanto que água, que é essencial à vida é tão barata?”. A resposta do valor trabalho é que dá muito trabalho conseguir diamantes, enquanto que água literalmente cai do céu. Mas esta resposta é incompleta: em alguns lugares água não cai do céu. No deserto do Saara, morrendo de sede, uma pessoa pode trocar muitos diamantes por copo de água. Em outras palavras, se a teoria do valor trabalho está correta, então há um valor objetivo: é possível calcular com precisão o valor de alguma coisa considerando o trabalho empregado em sua produção. Mas é manifesto que isto não é verdade: produtos tem seu valor afetado por muitas circunstâncias, e o esforço empregado na produção pode não ter qualquer relevância no valor final.

A conclusão é simples: se a teoria do valor trabalho está errada, toda a teoria econômica de Marx está errada. Isto quer dizer que patrões nunca exploram seus empregados? Claro que não! Isto quer dizer apenas que esta exploração não ocorre segundo a explicação de Marx.

As previsões de Marx (salários menores, maior desemprego, crises econômicas recorrentes e profundas) foram desmentidas uma a uma: a Europa do final do século 19, progressivamente marcada pelo liberalismo econômico, experimentou uma prosperidade impar em sua história. Num quadro mais amplo, nações que optam pelo liberalismo econômico prosperam, e principalmente prosperam os trabalhadores. Basta comparar Coreia do Norte e Coreia do Sul, China e Hong Kong, Alemanha Ocidental e Alemanha Oriental, EUA e URSS e assim por diante. Entendo que muitas pessoas se encantam com o marxismo (e como o socialismo) por se apiedarem das condições muitas vezes precárias dos trabalhadores. Porém, não basta ter o coração no lugar certo. É fundamental ter uma compreensão correta da realidade. Caso a exploração dos trabalhadores seja uma preocupação para você, sugiro considerar o capitalismo e esquecer qualquer forma de socialismo.

The trade offs of Hillary vs Donald

10/11/2016 Lode Cossaer Current Events, Politics American culture, American politics, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, institutions, trade-offs

An interesting thing to talk about is whether one ought to support the Donald or the Hillary. And it’s my impression that those who are marginally in favor of Donald and vice versa do that with a completely different view on the risks associated with either of them.

People who favor Hillary have something like this in mind:

Hillary will continue with the status quo that started with George W. Bush (especially foreign policy) and continued under Obama (who added domestic trends such as Obamacare). Trump, on the other hand, is a complete wild card who will transform the (fragile) political institutions we have into something of an even more authoritarian system. And having an authoritarian figure with his fingers on the red button just seems like a very bad idea.

People who favor the Donald are seemingly thinking something like this:

Hillary will continue with the status quo that started with George W. Bush (especially foreign policy) and continued under Obama (who added domestic trends such as Obamacare). Trump, on the other hand, will be such a weak politician that he will get almost nothing done. Even in his own party, he is so unpopular that he won’t get executive discretion even if he asked for it. He won’t be able to achieve anything and he might even get impeached. But regardless, he will be an overall failure of a politician, and that’s a good thing relative to the trend that Hillary started.

I could be wrong, of course, but this seems like the trade off that people are making. We know, with a reasonably high certainty margin, what kind of policies Hillary will favor. Trump, however, is a complete wild card. Some people think the wild card will accomplish very little (and thereby show a high confidence in the current workings of the American governmental system), so therefore he is preferable to Hillary. Other people think he will accomplish a lot (and thereby showing very little confidence in the current workings of the American governmental system.)

I think this trade off is basically right: where you stand on Hillary versus Trump depends on your view in the likelihood they’ll achieve what you think their plans are. Which of these have the correct view, I do not know. But it’s an interesting question nonetheless.

Sexism, Trump, and American Media

10/05/2016 Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics American elections, double standards, Hillary Clinton, media studies, racism

Almost everything has been said about that rather boring first presidential debate on Monday. One observation missing: It’s amazing how the progressive-liberal narrative categories have invaded even Republican understanding and vocabulary. Two examples.

During the first presidential debate, the moderator unambiguously presented as racist the “birther” preoccupation, the belief that Mr Barack Hussein Obama was not born in the US. It makes absolutely no sense why this should be considered racist. If a presidential candidate of Polish ancestry with blue eyes etc… had presented himself for years through his literary agent as born in Cracow, there would be those who would doubt aloud his constitutional qualification to be president. Those so inclined would be considered racist? If the answer is “no,” are we facing a situation where any negativity toward a black person is by definition racist? If a black-looking person steals a parking spot from me and I call him an “asshole” that makes me a racist although that’s exactly what I have called several white persons who have done the same to me in the past? Are we drowning in absurdity? Have we collectively lost the ability to recognize simple sense? In the parking case example above, a better case could be made, given my intemperate verbal habits, that not calling the black driver an asshole would be racist.

Second example. At the very end of the debate, when he placed the accent on the fact that Mrs Bill Clinton is the first female candidate nominated by a major party, the moderator qualified as sexist the Trump statement that Mrs Clinton does not have the stamina to be president. Same problem of logic. If Mr Trump had said this of any male opponent it would have been considered legitimate. Making the statement about a female candidate makes the statement automatically sexist. But the statement is sexist only because it concerns a female. It posed the question of whether there exists any negative statement about a female politician that is not sexist? I think the answer is quickly becoming “No!”

The wing of the Democratic Party now on the ascendant is deeply totalitarian. It shows in the small things, as in the two examples above. It knows no dissent that is legitimate when it comes down to it. It’s important to stop them even if we have to take the considerable risks inherent in the Trump candidacy. One sure thing about Donald Trump: He is not coherent enough to become a Mussolini.

Some thoughts on Rio de Janeiro elections

10/04/2016 Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Culture, Current Events, Liberty, Politics Alexis de Tocqueville, Antonio Gramsci, Brazilian politics, elections, Lord of the Rings, PSOL, socialism

I’m a great fan of the Lord of the Rings, both the books and the Peter Jackson movies. Overall I believe the movies are pretty faithful to the books. There are, of course, some differences, but I generally accept the explanation that adapting a book to a movie is hard and some changes have to be made. There is, however, a whole chapter from the books absent from the movies that I believe shouldn’t be. If you haven’t seen the movies or read the books, be warned, spoiler alert. The said chapter is called “The Scouring of the Shire.” In the movies, when the hobbits return home from the War of the Ring, hardly anything has changed. It seems like the Shire has not been affected by the events in the world around it at all. In the books, however, Saruman the White, the evil wizard, escapes to the Shire after been defeated in the battle of Isengard. He ends up governing the Shire in secret under the name of Sharkey until the events of “The Scouring of the Shire,” when the hobbits return and lead a rebellion, defeating the intruders and exposing Saruman’s role. I believe this chapter is important because it shows that evil is not somewhere far from home. We may fight a war overseas, but evil may end up lurking really close to us.

This last Sunday Brazil had municipal elections. The Workers Party (PT), the political party of impeached president Dilma Rousseff and the almost convict ex-president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, was the great loser. Some cities will still have a second round of votes, but it is clear that in the process PT will lose a great number of prefectures, city halls, and with it many commissioned positions as well. In sum, the process of rejection that started with the impeachment goes on and well. Or almost. In Rio de Janeiro the elections will be decided in second round between Marcelo Crivella and Marcelo Freixo. Crivella is a licensed bishop of the controversial Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and Freixo is a member of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL). Crivella was Rousseff’s ally almost until the very end, when his party decided to vote for the impeachment. PSOL is a dissent from PT that left the former party in 2004, believing that Lula was too pro-market in his policies.

Saruman took refuge in the Shire and changed his name to Sharkey. The inhabitants of the Shire were too unaware of the events of the War of the Ring to understand what was going on. Saruman was the White Wizard. He was supposed to be good, but ended up being one of Sauron’s greatest allies. Freixo is Saruman: he may try to hide as much as he wants to, and even change his name, but he is an ally to the worst things in Brazilian politics. He poses as someone pure (or White), but just like Saruman he actually has a robe of many colors, depending on who he wants to impress. PT changed its name to PSOL and is now trying to hide in my Shire. I hope the cariocas will not let it happen.

PSOL is popular mostly among the young, artists, and rich people from rich neighborhoods, so I don’t actually believe Freixo will become mayor. But their plan is, following Antonio Gramsci, to create a cultural hegemony and thus to win elections on the long run. PT did exactly this, but it seems like Brazilians are beginning to understand that socialists care only for other people’s money and little else. PSOL even has liberty in its name, but of course they aren’t going to offer any liberty to the people. Slavery can be defined as forced labor to someone else’s benefit. And that is also the exact definition of socialism: you work, they take your money and they give it to someone else. As Alexis de Tocqueville said it, “socialism is a new form of slavery.” I hope people in Brazil, and especially in Rio, will realize it.

Another Race Riot

09/22/201609/22/2016 Jacques Delacroix Culture, Current Events, Politics American culture, Barack Obama, Charlotte, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, racism, War on Drugs

Note: This is written for my overseas readers mainly. If you live in the US, you will probably find that you already know most of what I am writing about.

A couple of days ago, a police officer shot to death a black man in full daylight in Charlotte, North Carolina, very much the Old South, former home of abject slavery.

This is happening in the last months of the second administration of the first black American president, after more than seven years of his being in charge. “Being in charge” is an exaggeration of sorts though. The President of the United States exercises no constitutional authority over local police forces (or state police forces). His federal Department of Justice only has jurisdiction when a violation of civil rights is at stake and only over that specific putative violation. Homicide is not in itself a civil rights violation. It’s true that Pres. Obama cannot pick up the phone and tell the Charlotte police what to do or how. Yet, Mr Obama is responsible to some extent although indirectly for the violence, an idea I will develop below.

Cop kills black man: familiar story, right?

I forgot to give you important information. The police officer who did the shooting is black and a woman. She answers to a black police chief. He is squarely in charge of training officers and making rules for their behavior, including their use of firearms. The Chief of Police is appointed and answers to the mayor of Charlotte. The mayor is a white woman and a prominent Democrat. She is assisted by a city council of eleven, four or whom are black. As far as I can tell, there are zero, or one, or two Republican city councilors. The rest are Democrats.

The police says the victim had a gun. His family says in was sitting in his car reading a book while waiting for his child to come out of school. Disturbingly different stories, for sure.

There have been three nights or protests in Charlotte, that quickly became riots, with demonstrators throwing heavy objects at police officers and much destruction of property. One demonstrator was shot, apparently not by a police officer. And, of course, there was much looting of stores. It’s nearly always like this: One young black man dies, fifteen young black men acquire brand new mountain bikes.

Watching the riots on TV, I notice something that television channels and printed press journalist don’t comment on: Some of the most aggressive rioters are young white men who seem to me to know what they are doing and who are not distracted by broken store windows. I should use the word cautiously but they seem to me almost professional in their approach to rioting. The white young rioters are not mentioned I think because they cannot be fitted in the prevailing liberal narrative: It’s a race riot, it’s a demonstration against racial injustice by black people who have just had enough. How about the young white guys? Irrelevant, they are just lovers of justice who happen to be there. Yet, I can’t claim that I recognize any of them on TV but there are young white men just like them in every race riot I have watched in the past two years. If they are absent the first day, they are plainly present the second day and the next few days.

The show on my TV looks a bit like a movie because it’s not well connected to reality, the reality that everyone knows: On the whole, young black men don’t die because cops shoot them, they die because other young black men kill them. They also kill the occasional child and lately, even a young mother pushing her baby carriage. The percentage of violent deaths of black men at police hands that are legally unjustified, must be minuscule. No one in Chicago demonstrates against this continuing mass killing by African-Americans. I think blacks and whites alike don’t because it would contradict the main, tired old liberal narrative: Injustice and racial oppression are the source of all evils in American society.

Young black men kill one another in gang wars for turf (for possession of a piece of ground.) The turf, the ground, is an important asset in the retail sale of illegal drugs. I would be curious of what would happen if Congress decriminalized all drug sales to adults and if a rational president signed the bill into law. I would bet that young black men’s death rate would plummet by 90% in a few weeks. I have no explanation as to why this is not done. It’s not as if the 40-year old so-called “War on Drugs” were working in reducing drug use!

After seven+ years of Obama, the economic gap between whites and blacks – however you measure it – has increased. African-Americans are worse off in relative terms than they were under Pres. Bush. This is no surprise to me. It’s a Democratic administration. The worst place for a black man to live in America is in Democratic-ruled big cities. It begins with Chicago, a Democratic city for 85 years. And then, there is Detroit, a war zone with no war. All this being said, we must not forget that most African-Americans lead lives that are both normal and peaceful, in crying contradiction to the narrative of continued racial oppression. There is a large minority of young black men however who have never had a job, who don’t look for one, who may have never known a person with a job except teachers and cops.

Democratic politicians have been promising salvation in the form of “social programs” paid for by those who do work. They have done so for fifty years. They have not implemented them, or the programs have done little good, or even worse. It’s time for a revolutionary new idea, one that’s very old, in fact. When there is rapid economic growth, employers compete for labor, even for the labor of the inexperienced, even for the labor of those usually seen as unemployable. Black Americans in ghettos need the same thing that all Americans need: vigorous and fast economic growth. This may be hard to believe but the United States has few problems that could not be solved by ten years of 3.5% annual GDP growth.

There is no sign of a search for economic development in the Democratic presidential candidate’s program. Donald Trump, by contrast, promises to reduce taxes and to rid business of many regulations. Historically, it’s usually enough to produce growth. Black Americans need less abstract “justice” and more of a fair chance. The left wing of the Democratic Party hates the very idea.

A short note on minorities and the Left

09/17/201609/17/2016 Brandon Christensen Culture, Politics demography, elections, Europe, identity politics, immigration, nationalism, socialism

Lately I have been thinking about how minorities affect the Democratic Party here in the US. Basically, all minorities vote for the Democrats in national elections, but minorities tend to be conservative culturally. This has the effect of pulling the Leftist party waaaaay to the center (a fact that makes it hard for me to complain about Democrats’ pandering tactics).

Sure, the GOP will always be the party of old white people, but if the Democrats’ left-wing is essentially neutered due to minority voting blocs within the Party, who cares?

The fact that the Democrats pine for minorities explains why the US has never had a very powerful socialist movement. Socialists will often blame “neoliberals,” “capitalists,” “reactionaries,” and other assorted boogeymen, but doesn’t the minority insight make much more sense?

This minority insight has also got me thinking about demographic changes in Europe over the past 30 years. Basically, Europe has had a huge influx of immigrants since the fall of socialism. In the old days, Sweden was for Swedes, France was for the French, Germany was for Germans, etc. etc. This mindset helps to explain why European states had such overbearing welfare states and why economic growth was so limited up until the late 1980s.

As immigrants moved into these welfare states, the Left-wing parties began to pander to them. This had the same effect as it did in the United States: culturally conservative voting blocs diluted the Leftism of traditionally Left-wing parties. As a result, these welfare states became less robust and economic growth became attainable again.

A big underlying point about my musings on this subject is that socialism relies on nationalism in the area of popular politics and policymaking. Without Sweden for the Swedes-type sloganeering, socialism becomes ridiculous to the masses. This underlying point, along with the straightforward fact that immigrants dilute socialist power (economic, political, and cultural), suggests to me that libertarians who pay close attention to popular politics should relax when it comes to the fact that minorities don’t find libertarian ideals all that appealing.

Alguns mitos, equívocos e objeções comuns ao capitalismo

09/13/2016 Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Politics, Religion Adam Smith, Brazil, capitalism, Culture, ethics, socialism

No meu último post ofereci uma definição de capitalismo baseada nos conceitos de escolha pessoal, trocas voluntárias, liberdade de competição e direitos de propriedade privada. Em resumo, um capitalismo liberal ou uma sociedade de livre mercado. Neste post eu gostaria de começar a desfazer alguns mitos, equívocos e objeções comuns ao capitalismo (se entendido nos termos que defini anteriormente). A lista não é exaustiva, mas acredito que cobre bastante terreno da discussão. Aí vai:

Ser pró-capitalismo é ser pró-grandes corporações.

Adam Smith observou que empresários dificilmente se encontram para eventos sociais, mas que quando se encontram não conseguem evitar combinar meios de evitar a mútua concorrência. Empresários (especialmente donos de grandes corporações) tendem a não gostar de concorrência. É compreensível. A maioria de nós também preferira não ter colegas de trabalho com quem competir, assim como vários corredores hoje gostariam que Usain Bolt não existisse. O capitalismo liberal, no entanto, é um sistema de perdas e ganhos. Numa economia verdadeiramente livre de intervenção do estado é improvável que corporações se tornem desproporcionalmente grandes. A tendência é ao nivelamento.

O capitalismo gera uma distribuição de renda injusta

Uma das grandes objeções ao livre mercado é a desigualdade de renda. No entanto, nenhum sistema econômico na história foi tão eficiente em retirar pessoas da pobreza quanto o capitalismo. Numa economia verdadeiramente livre a desigualdade existe e é basicamente inevitável, mas não é nada quando comparada a sociedades que optam pelo controle estatal da economia. China, URSS e Cuba são os países mais desiguais da Terra.

O capitalismo é responsável por crises econômicas, incluindo a mais recente

A crise de 2008 foi causada por intervenção do governo norte-americano nos setores bancário e imobiliário. Sem intervenção do governo, instituições financeiras teriam um comportamento mais cuidadoso e a crise seria evitada. A mesma observação vale para basicamente qualquer crise econômica dos últimos 200 anos.

Capitalismo explora os pobres

A livre concorrência, por definição, não é um sistema de exploração. Quando eu pago cem reais por um par de sapatos, isso significa que eu valorizo mais o par de sapatos do que os cem reais. O sapateiro, por sua vez, valoriza mais os cem reais do que o par de sapatos. Isso não quer dizer que não existam vendedores inescrupulosos, ou que não existam compradores injustos. Mas numa sistema de livre concorrência as possibilidades de fraude são mitigadas justamente pela concorrência: se o produto ou serviço não agrada ao consumidor, há sempre a possibilidade de procurar a concorrência. Em resumo, no capitalismo o consumidor é rei. Para concluir este ponto, apenas uma observação: o salário é nada mais do que o preço que se paga pelo trabalho de uma pessoa. E as mesmas observações se aplicam.

Capitalismo é injusto

Algumas pessoas nascem com deficiências. Algumas pessoas nascem em famílias pobres ou desestruturadas. Isso é injusto? Por quê? Uma definição clássica de justiça é “dar a cada um o que lhe é devido”. O que nós é devido? O que nós merecemos? Eu merecia ter nascido com boa saúde? O que eu fiz para merecer isso? Estas perguntas facilmente nos levam a grandes indagações filosóficas e teológicas, e logo demonstram o quanto a acusação de injustiça numa economia livre é superficial. Ainda assim, nenhum sistema político ou econômico permite a ajuda aos desfavorecidos como o capitalismo. Se você considera injusto que existam pessoas sem dinheiro, sem saúde ou sem famílias estruturadas, sugiro que seja coerente e use mais do seu tempo e dinheiro para ajudar estas pessoas.

Capitalismo não traz felicidade

Pensando num sentido aristotélico, felicidade possui significados diferentes para cada um. Para um cristão significa ter um relacionamento pessoal com Deus através de Jesus Cristo. Provavelmente um não cristão não irá concordar com este conceito de felicidade. Dito isto, a liberdade econômica não tem como objetivo trazer felicidade para qualquer pessoa, e assim é injusto culpá-la por algo que não propõe fazer. Porém, dentro de um sistema de liberdade econômica a tendência é que a liberdade para a busca da felicidade também esteja presente. Além disso, com liberdade econômica é mais provável que consigamos buscar nossa felicidade através da criação de uma família, do envolvimento com instituições religiosas, ou mesmo ficando ricos simplesmente.

Capitalismo não é estético e é poluidor

Os países mais poluidores do século 20 foram URSS e China. Proporcionalmente ao tamanho da sua população, EUA está longe do topo desta lista. Quanto ao fator estético, sugiro pesquisar por imagens da Alemanha Ocidental e da Alemanha Oriental, ou da Coreia do Sul e da Coreia do Norte. Dizem que a beleza está nos olhos de quem vê, mas me parece bastante óbvio que esta acusação estética é simplesmente falsa.

Corporações são cheias de escândalos e extorsão

Com certeza elas são. Mas possuem o mesmo nível de corrupção de governos? A matemática é bastante simples: quanto mais governo, mais corrupção. Além disso, com uma corporação é possível simplesmente levar o dinheiro embora dali. Governos não são tão permissivos com evasão de impostos. A proposta de criação de mais sistemas de vigilância governamental apenas aumenta o tamanho do governo e as possibilidades de corrupção. A ideia de transparência e de consulta popular também é simplesmente falsa: a não ser que possamos passar 24 horas de nossos dias vigiando os governantes, estes sistemas simplesmente não terão possibilidade de funcionar. A solução mais simples continua sendo menos governo.

Há mais alguns tópicos que podem ser acrescentados e que deixarei para um futuro post. Por enquanto basta dizer que capitalismo (definido como livre mercado) pode ser bastante diferente daquilo que popularmente se entende.

Para saber mais:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGPa5Ob-5Ps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgiLF48w7uQ

Immigrants’ Complaints

09/12/201609/12/2016 Jacques Delacroix Culture, Current Events, Politics happiness, immigration, media studies, United States

I can’t watch or listen to the liberal media without hearing reports of immigrants complaining about how badly they are treated by the wider American society. (Yes, I listen to National Public Radio nearly every afternoon. It’s my intellectual duty and also my secret vice.) Something does not add up in the oppressed immigrant narrative though. First, before I explain, forgive me in advance because I am about to transgress on good manners in two different ways.

First transgression first. I spent much of five years of my youth in graduate school learning not much more than the following: My own experience, basically a collection of anecdotes, proves nothing. Point well taken. But the anecdotes within my reach can sometimes pile up to the point that they make some questions unavoidable. Below is one such question.

I know many immigrants, and different kinds of immigrants. First, like everyone else who lives in California, I know many Mexican immigrants. I understand Spanish perfectly. (I mean, as well as English; you be the judge.) I speak it well because, like French, my native language, it’s just a dialect of Latin. I hang around the abundant Spanish language media often. If Mexican immigrants complained, it would have come to my attention. I only remember one such case, a young woman who had come to this country as a child. She confided that she thought my colleagues, her professors, favored “Caucasians” in grading. She was actually failing because her English was poor. I made her do an assignment in Spanish and I understood why she was frustrated. My colleagues were not unfair to her. Her English language self’s IQ was stuck at room temperature (in F degrees) while her Spanish self must have been jumping around the 120 mark. No one had bothered to tell her the obvious: “You need to learn English better.” Not American society’s fault, except for having tolerated her without adequate language training, and for the university that had admitted her, ditto. (Incidentally that school’s affirmative action program was a success overall, I thought.)

The foreign-born Hispanics I know and meet are all in a wonderful mood in public. Of course earning in one hour what would take you a day in Mexico and two days in El Salvador would put anyone in a good mood. There are three or four bastards of them, Hispanics, who force me to wake at 6 every morning because they walk under my window guffawing and laughing loudly. As I have written elsewhere, on this blog, the evidence for Hispanics’ satisfaction is easy to find.

I also know Asian and European immigrants, who are mostly middle-class, and a handful of Middle Easterners. The latter, mostly Muslims, feel under siege, of course; it would be a miracle if they did not. It’s not really American society’s fault that nearly all the mass murderers of civilians in recent years insisted on shouting “Allahu Akbar.” Yet, even those immigrants sure as hell are not packing their bags, or, if they do, it’s in minute numbers. I would bet there is no exodus out of the country.

The Asian and Europeans I know tend to exult in their American residence; they often act smugly about it although all of them miss something from their country of origin, at least their relatives. (For me, it’s not so much relatives as blanquette de veau; look it up.) Nevertheless, many of those middle-class immigrants find a political home on the left of the American spectrum because they have never been exposed to the ideal of small government. Even the smart ones usually don’t realize that government is a predator. More anecdotic transgression: If I ask myself who seems to be happier, on the average of those I meet more or less daily, immigrants or native born Americans, the answer comes loud and clear: the immigrants.

So, I am seriously beginning to consider if the reporting of widespread complaints by immigrants is not fabricated, with the help of a handful of fairly sophisticated minority members of the media. I mean, for example, the blond, lying CNN Mexican-born anchor who can’t open his mouth without proffering a vicious untruth.

Here is my second violation of convention. I am only doing it because being an immigrant gives me special privileges (and being old also does). If there are really, really many immigrants with serious grievances I don’t worry much because they are all citizens, citizens of some other country, that is. It seems to me, most of them could pack up and leave and go home to where they are citizens. That’s except for the refugees from war. The latter don’t have much of a leg to stand on however. Whatever shortcomings American society has, at least, here, we don’t kill you on purpose unless we know you personally.

That’s a real advantage.

I wish we had a national program to pay for one-way tickets for disgruntled immigrants. It might not even require taxpayer money. There must be tens of thousands like me. I give money voluntarily to save tigers in the wild. Sending back bad immigrants into the wilderness is a good cause too. So, it could be done by free public subscription. Or this country could institute a small tax on in-coming immigrants to constitute a fund that finances one-way tickets on demand. It would be fair, like an assigned risk insurance pool is fair. My guess is that it would be one of the few government programs that does not overspend its budget. It would have, at least ,the merit of putting an end to the BS* in the liberal media.

Ah, but the Democratic Party won’t allow it! It would never permit such practical innovativeness because malcontents are its bread and butter.

Incidentally, the ambitious guy inside me wonders if we couldn’t have a second one-way ticket program, one for native-born Americans who hate America. Of course, I am thinking only about a voluntary program. It would have the merit of ranking all the dissatisfied who don’t avail themselves of the offer of a one-way ticket as at least moderately satisfied. It would stop some of the implicit blackmail of America. It’s not a cruel proposal, I think the Canadians would take them.

* Note for my overseas readers: B.S. are the discreet initials for “bullshit” a colloquial term for an argument without merit. It’s unfair to bulls that mostly mind their business and don’t argue much.

Liberals and Conservatives should stop talking about guns

09/12/2016 Rick Weber Liberty, Politics civil liberty, democracy, gun control, gun rights, property rights

I’ve come across some great journalism on guns and gun control recently. Here’s the key points:

Most gun deaths are suicides. Many of these suicides would have happened were a gun not available, but many of them wouldn’t have.
Most gun homicides mostly affect young black men.
More guns does not equal less crime.
Gun accidents affect very few people.
Cost-benefit analysis would likely suggest improving safety other places would save more lives, given limited budgets. (e.g. changing attitudes on vaccinations)

A basic theme seems to be that government can do little on the margin to reduce gun deaths. Crime rates are uncorrelated with number of guns, or regulations in place. Upright citizens do not turn into Rambo when they see dastardly criminals mug little old ladies. Guns are actually sort of boring in practice.

It’s possible that the government could affect gun deaths with a comprehensive gun control policy backed by public opinion (the Australian option). But it would likely cost so much that you’d lose the budget and/or political capital to enact other reforms that would be less controversial and save more lives.

We don’t torture people in America, Todd. That’s called one of the amendments.

What about the second amendment? The real argument for the second amendment is that having armed Americans around is pretty practical in general, but also important to prevent tyranny. In practice, guns aren’t half as practical, in terms of personal or national defense as back then. The capability of America’s military is so extraordinary that American’s don’t stand a chance of fighting a corrupt American government.

Let’s acknowledge that the Bill of Rights, though surely important, is ultimately a piece of paper that is neither sacrosanct nor a practical guarantee of anything in particular. The founders were brilliant, but fallible. The constitution is frequently ignored by governments, and citizens often do little to discipline such governments. Second amendment advocacy is mostly a symbolic gesture that probably comes at the expense of using political capital to protect the fourth amendment (the one that should protect you when the government decides to take your guns, cold dead fingers or no).

Conclusion

There are weak arguments to made in favor of gun control and weak arguments to be made in favor of protecting the second amendment. But mostly this whole debate seems like a distraction from more important issues. Symbolically valuable? Sure, but at what cost? The cost is the political will to make a bigger difference somewhere else. There are more valuable freedoms to protect, better interventions to pursue, and more lives to be saved.

Most Arguments Against Open Borders Lead to Extremely Un-Libertarian Positions

08/28/201608/29/2016 Zachary Woodman Economics, Liberty, Politics Bryan Caplan, immigration, Jason Brennan, open borders, political philosophy

One thing that strikes me about libertarians who oppose open borders is that they approach the issue of immigration completely different from how libertarians approach nearly every other issue. Arguments against immigration typically go as follows:

Bad effect x will happen if we allow open borders.
Therefore, the government is justified in restricting immigration.

For example, many libertarians claim that because immigrants will increase deficits by using the welfare state, the government is justified in restricting immigration. Of course, this isn’t actually true, but even if it were true this in no way justifies immigration restrictions.

To be clear: immigration restrictions are a form of government intrusion into an individual’s freedom of movement. It is the government using its monopoly on force to restrict someone from doing something they’d otherwise be able to do, that is move across an arbitrary line we call a “border.” As Jason Brennan says:

At first glance, immigration restrictions look like rights violations. When we impose immigration restrictions, we do not simply fail to help would-be immigrants, but rather use violence and threats of violence to prevent them from making life-saving or life-changing trades with willing trading partners. We also harm our own citizens, who would benefit from interacting with those immigrants. We impose ourselves and cut off relationships that otherwise would have formed. We use violence and threats of violence to interfere with people who, if left alone, would work or live or trade together.

So libertarians who make this argument are substantially saying that if it can be shown to reduce deficits, using government force to restrict someone’s freedoms is justified.

If anti-open borders libertarians treated any other issue like they do immigration, it would lead to some pretty absurd, anti-libertarian policy positions. For an example, as long as we have government-provided Medicare programs, allowing people to eat unhealthy foods or smoke will increase the cost of those welfare programs; following the logic of the argument above, the government would be justified in implementing paternalist policies that restrict people’s right to consume what they want to reduce the burden of the welfare state. People with lower incomes are more likely to use welfare programs as well, so the government is justified in reducing their population size by restricting their right to reproduce through forced sterilization.

Obviously, both these positions are absurd from a libertarian perspective. Someone’s freedom from government force in areas of reproduction and what food they consume is more important than the fiscal costs. What makes the freedom of movement any different? Replace “people with lower incomes” with “immigrants” and “sterilization programs” with “immigration restrictions” in the sentence above, and the argument is the same. If the government cannot restrict freedoms in other areas in the name of deficit reduction, what makes freedom of movement in immigration restrictions any different?

Or take another example, many libertarians justify restricting immigration because immigrants are likely to vote for statist policies that will restrict liberty. Of course, this once again isn’t true, but even if it were it by itself is no reason for libertarians to support immigration restrictions. The operating principle here is that government is justified in restricting individual liberty if it increases the likelihood that pro-liberty politicians will be elected.

Again, that principle is not applied to any other issue by libertarians. Let’s say a particular demographic of citizens is more likely to vote for statist policies; by this argument, the government would be justified in reducing their population through sterilization programs in order to increase the likelihood that libertarians would win elections. Citizens who vocally advocate for statist policies through their speech also increase the likelihood that people will vote for those statist policies, so the government would be justified in restricting their freedom of speech. Obviously, both conclusions are absurd.

Further, as Bryan Caplan argues, it must be shown that there are policies that can reduce these ill-effects while violating fewer liberties than an all-out closed border policy. For example, we can eliminate the welfare cost of immigration by allowing for an open borders policy but make it illegal for any immigrant to receive welfare benefits. This allows for freedom of movement but eliminates the alleged ill-effect of open borders. Additionally, there are undisputable benefits from immigration, both in terms of increased liberty of movement and economic growth, and it must be shown that the negative effects outweigh the positive effects. Therefore, premise 2 is also incomplete as stated above.

So, in reality, these types of arguments against immigration are as follows:

1a. The government is justified in restricting someone’s liberties if it can be shown to stop bad effect x.

2a. X will happen if we allow for freedom of movement through immigration and there is no other way to stop x without restricting freedom of movement.

3a. Therefore, the government is justified in restricting immigration.

In reality, very few libertarians accept 1a, particularly if they believe in deontological natural rights. For consequentialists, it would depend on how bad x is. But for most arguments against open borders, they would not say that x is bad enough to allow for restrictions on nearly any other liberty. Further, as pointed out earlier, premise 2a is usually false because the empirical evidence suggests that x will not be a result of open borders, there is some other way to stop x while allowing for free migration, or both.

Another argument is that there is something distinctive about immigrants that justifies the state violating their rights but not citizens. If this is the case then we can replace 1a above with the following argument:

1b. The government is justified in restricting the rights of non-citizens if it can be shown to stop bad effect x, but would not be justified in violating the rights of citizens even if it would stop x.

This isn’t really a premise, but a conclusion; libertarians must justify some argument for why it can restrict the rights of non-citizens but not citizens. On its face, it seems like this principle is pretty absurd. For example, suppose that Greek citizens who use welfare eat unhealthily, and this is harming Germany fiscally because Germany helped bail out the Greek welfare state. The German government, therefore, passes a law restricting what Greek citizens can eat and tried to enforce it on Greek soil. Clearly, nobody, libertarian or otherwise, would call that justified. It is the burden of proof for open borders opponents, then, to prove why citizenship is in any way morally relevant to restricting liberties.

Perhaps there is an argument for why someone’s rights are all of a sudden less valuable because they were born on the wrong side of an arbitrary line that only exists because of state force. However, I doubt that there is such an argument that is in any way consistent with libertarian philosophy.

Massachusetts to let cabs tax Uber: The seen, the unseen, and the minor nuisance

08/21/201608/21/2016 Rick Weber Current Events, Economics, Liberty, Politics cabs, competition, interventionism, Lyft, massachusetts, regulation, ride-sharing, tax, taxes, taxis, Uber

**There’s a simple alternative to regulation: liability. We don’t need to tell companies how to be safe if we make them legally responsible for negligence.**

It’s as though Mass’s government decided that back-to-school season calls for creating real-life rent seeking examples for my class. They’re going to start taxing ride-sharing customers $0.20 per ride with five cents of that going to the taxi industry.

“The law says the money will help taxi businesses to adopt ‘new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities’ and to support workforce development.”

New technologies like an app that gets more use out of otherwise idle cars? Or an app that makes it easy to hail a ride with little wait? Or an app that brings supply into harmony with demand when demand surges? Oh wait! We’ve already got that and it’s the thing that’s being taxed!

There are a few important economic lessons that Massachusetts’ electorate is evidently in need of. Let’s start with taxes.

Taxes don’t stick

“Riders and drivers will not see the fee because the law bars companies from charging them.” They won’t see the fee, but that doesn’t mean they won’t pay it. A business only exists by collecting money from customers and paying some portion of that to suppliers. The government cannot tax a business without taxing that business’s customers and suppliers.

Granted, part of the cost will be reflected in lower profits (although profits aren’t as big as people think) which means Uber’s shareholders will face part of the tax. But what does that mean? It means 1) a little less money in pensions, and 2) potential investment capital is moved from the people who gave us the best version of taxi travel to the people who gave us the worst version of it.

Money is fungible and I don’t know how to run a cab company

Safety, new technology, and workforce development all sound good, but taxi companies (at least those that deserve to stay in business) will already be doing these things. Safety is important because accidents are costly (especially if your fleet size is limited by regulation). New technology is being adopted by every other (competitive) industry without government support. Other companies invest in their employees.*

Supporting workforce development is part of a larger trend of people supporting specific fringe benefits without appreciating the tradeoff between monetary and non-monetary compensation. And all these ideas reflect a faulty logic: just because something is good, doesn’t mean we need to force people to do it.

Voters simply aren’t in the right position to know if some good thing is good enough relative to other options. If you go into the backrooms of any industry you aren’t already familiar with you will surely learn about techniques and tools you had no idea existed before. So why should we expect that cab companies need regulators to tell them what to do? Let them learn from their trade magazines.

But there’s good news. If we mandated that cab companies use this new revenue stream to pay for new tires, they wouldn’t simply waste the money by buying superfluous tires. They’d stop buying tires out of their own revenues and start buying them from Uber’s. Telling someone to pay from their left pocket simply leaves more money in their right pocket for everything else.**

Extra money in cab company coffers could allow them to invest in better service, happier employees, “and help so taxi owners could buy ‘flagship’ vehicles like a 1940s Checker or a Porsche.” But cab companies are already free to reinvest their profits if they think doing so would create value (i.e. greater future profits). The more likely outcome is that they will simply have more money than before.

Competition is not the problem, it’s protectionism

When we see problems in the world we need to look for their root causes if we want to actually make things better. More often we act like a doctor diagnosing cancer is the cause of the cancer. Don’t want cancer? Outlaw doctors!

Cab companies aren’t as successful as they previously expected and the apparent culprit is Uber. But they only exist because an inefficiency in the market created a profit opportunity. Cab companies are doing poorly because they don’t provide as much value per dollar. And that’s largely because of regulation that prevents competition. Much of it was put in place specifically to protect incumbents from competition.

A lot of these regulations sound nice enough, but they still created the market niche that Lyft and Uber filled. And they protected cab companies from competition right up until ride-sharing became feasible.

Regulation is not the answer

Let’s give cabbies the benefit of the doubt for a minute. Let’s assume that they aren’t really in it for the cash-grab and that they just want to help people get around safely and conveniently. Let’s even assume that NYC’s medallion system is about congestion rather than competition.

If that’s the case, then there are better ways to address the root causes of the problems cabbies tell us to worry about. We don’t need to address each of these problems individually if we can find a few key causes at the root of each of them.

never-half-ass-two-things-whole-ass-one-thing

Cabs have medallions but civilians don’t, so congestion will still be a problem in cities until congestion fees are implemented that balance the demand for road access with its limited supply. Safety is important, but mandating extra inspections for only some types of cars is a half-assed way of dealing with it.

There’s a simple alternative to regulation: liability. We don’t need to tell companies how to be safe if we make them legally responsible for negligence. This is an important lesson for how we think about regulation in all industries. The basic logic is also why economists vastly prefer pollution taxes to specific regulations; it’s usually better to name the outcome we want and create a cost for failure to meet it rather than mandate specific behaviors.

Perhaps this means we should modify the laws that require all drivers to be insured so that some drivers have higher minimum liability coverage. That would be far less invasive and do far more to alleviate the concerns Uber’s critics raise than mandating specific behaviors.

Concentrated benefits dispersed costs

Okay, so maybe this is too small an issue to be concerned with. If that’s not by intentional design, then it at least reflects an evolutionary logic. This policy is likely to survive because the people it taxes will face a cost so small it isn’t worth doing anything about. Yes, Uber and Lyft have incentive to lobby against it, but it’s so close to invisible that they’ll probably be able to pass it almost entirely on to drivers and passengers.

This is going to cost millions… with a tiny little m. At first I read it as a 5% tax and quickly realized that Uber rides are so cheap that I won’t even notice it. And 20 cents a ride is even less than 5%.

So why worry? Precedent. The problem with death by a thousand cuts isn’t any one cut.

*Of course we can argue about whether they do enough of that. There may be a tragedy of the commons if there’s asymmetric information between people looking to make human capital investments and businesses looking to gain access to specific human capital. Such a situation might create an opportunity for government to do some good by investing in public goods or subsidizing on-the-job training. But if that’s the case, it calls for very different programs (education reform, etc.) than taxing successful companies to subsidize their competition.

**Why is this good news? Because if cab companies did change their behavior it would imply they’re doing something where cost exceeds benefit. It would destroy value. Remember those stories of WWII rationing? Imagine that situation but with cab companies buying twice as many tires and just storing extras in the garage. It would clearly be a bad thing. Scarcity isn’t so urgent nowadays, but the basic logic remains the same.

A Note on Trump, Immigration, and Healthcare Reform

08/10/201608/11/2016 Zachary Woodman Current Events, Economics, Liberty, Politics Donald Trump, Election 2016, Entitlements, health care reform, health insurance, illegal immigration, immigration, ObamaCare, public policy, Welfare

Hopefully, the US election will start getting out of the he-said-she-said of assassination attempts and badmouthing parents of military personnel and start being about actual policy issues. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen at all, but in a minuscule and futile attempt to help get us there, I’m going to blog about some policy issues for a minute.

Trump’s campaign released a brief memo about his healthcare positions recently. For the most part the positions—though not quite detailed enough to really call a “plan”—are fairly decent. They contain most of the reforms free-market analysts have been proposing for decades such as opening insurance competition across states, allowing for Health Savings Accounts, and streamlining Medicaid funding. Notably missing was abolishing the employer mandate to reduce price fragmentation, as Milton Friedman proposed, although Trump proposes taking steps in that direction by introducing a tax deduction for individual insurance plans.

But what stuck out to me was that Trump, surprise, surprise, made xenophobia an element of his health care proposal by furthering the myth that immigrants are a further drain on our healthcare and welfare programs:

Providing healthcare to illegal immigrants costs us some $11 billion annually. If we were to simply enforce the current immigration laws and restrict the unbridled granting of visas to this country, we could relieve healthcare cost pressures on state and local governments.

Meanwhile in reality, undocumented immigrants actually contribute more to Medicare than they withdraw. It is unclear where Trump is getting his $11 billion figure, but he is ignoring the increased payroll taxes undocumented immigrants pay into these programs. A 2015 study found that, in fact, between 2000 and 2011 immigrants paid up to $3.8 billion more into Medicare than they took out. From the results of the study:

From 2000 to 2011, unauthorized immigrants contributed $2.2 to $3.8 billion more than they withdrew annually (a total surplus of $35.1 billion). Had unauthorized immigrants neither contributed to nor withdrawn from the Trust Fund during those 11 years, it would become insolvent in 2029—1 year earlier than currently predicted. If 10 % of unauthorized immigrants became authorized annually for the subsequent 7 years, Trust Fund surpluses contributed by unauthorized immigrants would total $45.7 billion.

Poor immigrant children, both legal and illegal, are also less likely to be enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP than citizens.

Thus Trump’s campaign is being factually dishonest by claiming that restricting immigration will help fund government healthcare systems, it will actually make Medicare go insolvent sooner. Which is especially concerning given that, until this memo, Trump has shown no interest in any meaningful entitlement reform.

This refrain—that immigrants are a fiscal drag on America’s welfare programs—has been among the most common refrains from Trump, and has even been popular among libertarians who are otherwise sympathetic towards immigration. But, as I’ve argued extensively in the past, it is completely false. Almost every major study shows that immigrants, at worst, pay as much into welfare programs as they get out of them.

Voting For Potty-Mouth Trump

08/08/2016 Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Liberty, Politics American culture, American elections, American politics, Donald Trump, voting

I think Donald Trump has the attention span of a two year-old and the potty mouth of a six year-old reared by an indulgent grandmother who is also hard of hearing. I also think he is deeply ignorant on a very important issue (international trade) and I disagree forcefully with him on another (illegal immigration from the south). Finally, I believe there is little chance that a President Trump’s foreign policy would reverse the Obama precipitous decline of the US on the world stage, which I think is dangerous for Americans.

Not a pretty picture overall. So, it takes serious concerns for a dedicated, generally well-informed rationalist like me to vote for him. Here are the reasons why I will.

First, Trump has already told us whom he would appoint for the Supreme Court which sets the life conditions of American society for a generation or more. All his potential appointees are fine by me. It’s not difficult to guess that no Clinton appointee would be acceptable, not one, zero. Any of them would facilitate the creeping abrogation of the US Constitution we witnessed under Obama.

Second, I am certain – because it’s difficult to imagine otherwise – that a President Trump would try to stop and reverse most the climate change cult nonsense and relegate it to the level of a private religion where it belongs. His administration would allow an energy revolution sufficient in itself to rekindle economic growth. I see no prospect of normal economic growth under a Hillary Clinton presidency. (I mean 3% per year and over.) She has said herself that she would continue Pres. Obama’s paralytic policies.

Third, through the example of his sheer verbal brutality, Trump would lift some the yoke of political correctness. This is not a superficial or a light reform. I believe that political correctness actually paralyzes Americans’ criticality on nearly all issues. (Examples on request.)

My last reason is Democratic candidate Clinton of course, even if I leave aside every single one of the leftist policies she is likely to try to implement. Mrs Bill Clinton is still bought and paid for. The fact that I don’t know exactly by whom or by what only makes it worse. (Someone who would not braggingly share her $250,000 a shot speeches with the public is unthinkable to me.) On that account alone, if I had to choose between H. Clinton and Al Capone for president, it would be a toss-up. We know what interests Al was serving, after all.

There is worse: Her lies about her lies, her lies that have zero chance of being believed have become a proof that she is delusional, at least part of the time. By contrast, Trump ‘s untruths are like those of a little boy who can’t help himself from opening his mouth before he talks.

Presidential elections are not only about the presidency, of course. They give the winner’s party a confirmation of the validity of the principles it proclaims and of the policies it embodies. This is obviously true for well defined policies such as Obamacare. It’s true, more subtly, about cultural policies both explicit and implicit. Seven and half years of Obama administration have established firmly – with Big Media complicity – the language of envy and the spirit of beggardliness in American political discourse. Public speech is now built around platitudes, clichés, half-truths, and big lies repeated so frequently that they have become truth, Goebbels-style. The new liberal language is disgusting but completely predictable and thus boring. It’s also a form of child abuse. (Individuals who were 10 during Pres. Obama’s first campaign are now 19. They have never known public sanity.) As for Demo principles, there aren’t any. I count my blessings!

Donald Trump on his part, is his own buffoon. He is only an epiphenomenon. His objectionable traits are not part of a cultural movement. He is not contagious. There is zero chance the Republican Party, or the conservative movement are going to adopt his crudeness. Neither could if they tried.

I am angry about this cultural deterioration because I believe that in the long run what people do, what they accomplish collectively, is strongly constrained by culture. The contemporary American left-liberal culture shackles the imagination, and by doing so destroys many possible futures. Again, the Obama/Clinton conceptual swamp is vastly more of a lasting threat to America than the childish vulgarity and the ignorance Trump displays so frequently.

Being on the side of Trump often puts me in embarrassing company, I admit. But being on Clinton’s side would place me knowingly in vicious company. It would also range me squarely on the side of an intellectual class that has spent decades consolidating its collective blindness and its collective deafness about the reality of the world. It’s a class I know well because much of it lives in universities. There is no doubt that Trump as president is a big gamble. But Clinton is no gamble at all; her evilness is predictable.

Sometimes, to be a man of conscience, you have to gamble. That’s what I plan to do, on my behalf and on your behalf.*

* Public persons often contribute unwittingly to me finding my bearings: If Harry Reid, the corrupt real estate and proud deliberate liar loudly condemns Trump, there has to be something right about supporting Trump.

The Coup in Turkey

07/28/201608/02/2016 Barry Stocker Current Events, History, Politics Islamism, nation-building, republicanism, state-building, Turkey

I am based in Turkey and have been at the edge of some dramatic events. Before I was in Turkey, I was in the Turkish sector of Cyprus (officially designating itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, but only recognised as such by Turkey), where I followed the Postmodern or Indirect Coup of 28th February 1997 when military representatives on the National Security Council were able to force the collapse of a coalition government under an Islamist Prime Minister. Later that year I relocated to Istanbul where I experienced sporadic terrorism from Kurdish separatists and Jihadists. In June of this year I landed at the Atatürk airport just after an ISIS suicide attack. In a more gradual way I saw the disappearance of a Turkish political system under the guardianship of Jacobin laicist army generals, known as Kemalists after the first President of the Republic of Turkey, Kemal Atatürk.

The changes in Turkey came about through a de facto alliance between a party with Islamist roots, the AKP (JDP, Justice and Development Party) and the followers of Fetullah Gülen. Gülen was himself a product of Nurcu Islam, which developed in the early years of the Republic before World War Two as a reaction against the state-led secularisation of Turkey. Gülen was a not very well educated preacher who operated in the context of a fragment of the Nurcu movement, which is not as a whole connected with him. Given the enormous tension between laic Kemalists and the religiously observant population, there was room for a movement devoted to developing conservative Muslim power in civil society and the state.

The Gülenists were preceded in this by the Nakşibendi community, which targeted the state bureaucracy and had followers in politics, notably Türgüt Özal, Prime Minister and then President in the 1980s. Secretive and manipulative politics has been a feature of Turkish and Ottoman politics for a long time. The power of the Janissary elite military and bureacratic corps during the Ottoman period was tied to a religious community, the Bektaşis, creating a parallel system to the legal power of the Sultan until they were violently crushed in the late eighteenth century.

The Committee of Union and Progress, which came to power with military support in the last phase of Ottoman history, developed into a conspiratorial organisation rather than a parliamentary political parry, and a secret arm of it was at the centre of the destruction of Anatolian Armenians in 1915. Secretive groups of Unionists provided a power base for Kemal Atatürk when he revolted against the restored power of the Sultanate and its subservience to the partition/occupation of what is now Turkey after World War One.

The idea of a secret part of the state was maybe not so strong during the early years of the Republic when a one-party system (though in principle the republic was under popular sovereignty) under the dominance of Kemal Atatürk and then İsmet İnönü maybe made it less necessary. Nevertheless, the conditions were established for a revived politics of manipulation behind the scenes. Unfortunately, İnönü’s decision to join the west after World War Two played a part in this. The reorientation resulted in free elections in 1950, with a change in government, and Turkish membership of NATO in 1952.

As in some other countries, the Gladio units played a role in dark political activities. These were the units established to engage in resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion. They had a secretive army within an army aspect and were inevitably a magnet for the most fiercely anti-communist officers, including Alparslan Türkeş, who played an important role in the 1960 Coup. Türkeş was expelled from the coup government, which found him too radical, but he founded the extreme right party in Turkey, Nationalist Action, which is comparatively moderate now, but was heavily involved in political destabilisation and terrorism along with the most anti-communist parts of the state.

What came later was infiltration of the state by Nakşibendis and then Gülenists. Their activity was rather overshadowed by the darker activities of the army and its extreme right allies, often also connected with the Mafia. This network is often known in Turkey as the Deep State. It tended to favour a secular democratic system in terms of formalities, but with concessions to religious conservatism along with an anything goes attitude to covert war against communists and then more importantly Marxist Kurdish autonomists, as well as very limited tolerance for the Left. The hard right element of the army with a base in Gladio was not the whole story. There were far left army officers, particularly up to 1971 and a general staff that tended to be in the middle, though the middle tended to move further right from 1960 to 1980, and then became unwilling to launch anymore violent coups after the 1980 military council stepped down in 198. The general staff itself became increasingly concerned about infiltration by Islamists, including Gülenists.

As it turns out the army’s fear was more than justified. The country liberalised, from a very illiberal base, in the late 1990s, and while the army to some degree went along with that, it launched a peaceful ‘post-modern’ coup in 1997 against the Islamists and was left with the image of the pillar of anti-democracy and anti-liberalism in Turkey. This is an important part of the background to the AKP ‘moderate’ Islamist/conservative democrat electoral victory of 2002 along with the economic crisis of 2001, which along with the 1997 coup left the secular parties very fragmented. The AKP gained a lot of liberal and libertarian support (a very small proportion of Turkey though) and more general reformist support from those who believed it would be a vehicle for reducing the military role in politics and for generally less nationalist-statist politics.

The AKP had very few supporters in place in the military, in the state bureaucracy, or in senior positions in education. The Fetullah Gülen campaign to turn his supporters into the dominant force in Turkey meant they had people in these positions, partly through infiltration of state institutions and partly through founding private educational institutions. This was just one part of the Gülen empire, which include major media groups, banks, and industrial companies in Turkey, and in many countries outside Turkey including the USA. Gülen himself moved to the USA to avoid prosecution by the Kemalist old guard before AKP came to power, claiming to have no links with the economic and educational empire of his supporters which is clearly less than honest of him.

The Gülenists expected a large role in the AKP government and served them most spectacularly in purging the armed forces after an attempted website coup in 2007. In that year the armed forces, unwilling to launch an outright coup, hoped to influence public opinion and the political process by placing a message on its website proclaiming the army’s guardian role in relation to secularism. This turned into the final political defeat of the army’s Kemalist guardian-tutelary role. The AKP won a general election and a referendum to change the method of electing the President. This triumph of civil electoral politics was, however, undermined by the trials of supposed armed coup plotters in the armed forces. Such trials gave the impression of completing the civilian dominance over the army, but were themselves rigged using weak and outright faked evidence. The judges and prosecutors were from the Gülen movement and were creating space for their own people to take the high offices in the armed forces.

The AKP began a campaign against the Gülenists after making its own illiberal core attitude very clear in 2013 in its highly intolerant and authoritarian reaction to the Gezi protest movement. It was increasingly clear to the (even then) most enthusiastic of liberal fellow travellers with the AKP that it was Islamo-nationalist and statist at its core, reducing democracy to the unlimited will of the party elected to government. The Gülenists and the AKP now found the state was not big enough for both of them and the Gülenists decided to use conspiratorial methods against the AKP. Audio files and video tapes of AKP figures and associates, which had evidently been kept in reserve and which suggested widespread corruption were released. Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan (then Prime Minister and now President) and the AKP government succeeded in sacking, retiring and transferring enough Gülenist police officers, prosecutors and judges to stop this evidence coming to court. They then declared the Gülenists to be a parallel state and a terrorist group, entering into a process of purging the state of Gülenists and seizing their assets in the media, educational and other sectors. The coup conspiracy convictions against army officers, and others, were overturned and it became widely accepted that Gülenists had rigged the trials.

On 15th July this year, I was at a small party on a terrace in the Üsküdar district of Istanbul, overlooking one of the Bosphorus bridges, though by quite a large distance. We could see traffic interrupted on the bridge and news began filtering through of a confrontation between police and army units in what was described as an anti-terrorist operation gone wrong, but was beginning to sound like the beginning of a coup. It turned out that a coup had started and for a brief part of the night it appeared that the old Kemalist-Guardian army had come back to dispose of a government that was elected but increasingly authoritarian. Any welcome in the party where I was, of secular anti-AKP Turks and foreigners was strongly outweighed by a fear that a coup regime would be authoritarian, would create new problems, and the AKP or something like it, if not worse, would be in power for ten or twenty years by way of reaction. This turned out to be the mood of anti-AKP and anti-Erdoğan Turkey. It also became increasingly reported and accepted across the political spectrum that though the putschists had adopted Kemalist language, they were for the most part Gülenists rising up before a purge of the army in a last grasp at domination of the Turkish state.

Since then a purge has unfolded against the Gülenists in state and society, covering the universities (the sector where I work), which has already led to the sacking and arrests of about 60 ooo, including constitutional court judges, army generals and university rectors. The number will certainly at least double before the purge and the current state of emergency is over. Such sweeping action is understandable up to a point given the violent actions of 15th July, and the accumulating evidence over the years of Gülenist infiltration to create a Gülenist-controlled state and society, but clearly the potential exists for massive and systematic individual injustice with abuses of state power affecting over enemies of the state, real and imagined. Some of the language President Erdoğan has used since the coup has been highly polarising and vengeful, demanding submission to state power; some of his rhetoric has been more conciliatory, recognising that all political parties opposed the coup and that deputies across the spectrum sheltered together in the basement of the National Assembly fearing for their lives. I cannot say I am hopeful that the post-coup atmosphere will be beneficial to liberty, but we should hope for and work for the best in Turkey, while being vigilant in working against further declines of liberty.

One thing is for sure: republican politics will not come from the army now and Turkish republicanism must renew itself through engagement and re-engagement with the whole history of republican thought, which is at the origin of classical liberal and libertarian thought. In theoretical and philosophical terms, which is where I work, the discussions of republicanism and liberty going back to Hannah Arendt in the last century, along with the revived study of Machiavellian–Renaissance–Early Modern Republicanism and the way the classical liberals were dealing with the republican legacy of ancient Greece, ancient Rome and medieval city-states are particularly apposite given that Turkish politics, avowedly Kemalist or not, deals so much in a republican language of shared sovereignty and popular mastery.

Why Brexit is bad for Liberty

07/19/201607/19/2016 Barry Stocker Current Events, Liberty, Politics Brexit, Europe, European Union, libertarianism, liberty, public policy, United Kingdom

I have been debating classical liberalism and the European Union with Edwin van de Haar. For the moment at least, I think the debate should end or we will risk repetition of previously made points. I would like to thank Edwin for a constructive debate and to invited readers to read through it themselves. Now is the time to move onto a more concrete discussions of the UK referendum vote to leave the European Union.

The UK referendum vote to leave the European Union is not producing the consequences its most eloquent supporters and ideologues had predicted. It is of course very early to have a complete view of the consequences of Brexit, but a large part of Brexit journalistic, campaigning and intellectual elite have argued for leaving the EU on the grounds it would enable a mıore free market UK, one less burdened by regulations ‘imposed’ from Brussels.

A disproportionate part of this elite claims to be libertarian or conservative libertarian, operating in party politics via the Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party and operating in libertarian to conservative campaigning groups. Employees of the most important classical liberal and libertarian policy institutions, the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute were divided on this issue. However, some part of the Brexit elites were High Tory, that is traditionalist conservative.

The insistence on sovereignty and national institutions outweighs a commitment to free markets and individual rights. Immigration in particular comes off badly here. The High Tory narrative dominates the Brexit narrative in practice. Some Brexit enthusiasts welcome the supposed opportunity to boost defence spending (though this has nothing do with the European Union which places no limits whatsoever on national defence spending) and believe Brexit will allow restoring the UK’s Great Power status. This is already very high by general European standards and given the inherent limits of the UK’s resources compared with the USA, Russia and China, it’s hard to see how great power status could be attained and why the UK should try. It is clearly not compatible with retrenchment of the state.

David Cameron announced his resignation as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister straight after the referendum result. His replacement Theresa May began her term of office with a speech suggesting greater state involvement in the economy and society. As Home Secretary she has a particularly illiberal record in civil liberties, immigration and drugs. She has announced support for changes in company law to force firms to accept employee representatives onto boards and restriction on takeover laws.

These measures have led the ‘Red Tory’, Philip Blond, to announce compatibility with his views and enthusiasm for her leadership. Blond runs the policy institute, ResPublica (http://www.respublica.org.uk). He was a colleague of mine in graduate programs at the University of Warwick in the late eighties, though I have not been in touch with him since. He moved from a period of research and university teaching in theology (he was studying European philosophy since the early nineteenth century when I knew him) into the policy world.

The contemporary theologian who influenced him most is John Milbank, an adherent of a version of the Christian tradition which tends to advocate community above individual, or at least would seem to do so if its social philosophy is turned into state enforced actions. There is a strong element of Medieval nostalgia for an organic society in Blond’s social and political thought. He is arguing for less not more free markets and individualism. Now there is no reason to think that Blond’s ideas will have a major influence on May, but if he feels so comfortable with her then that is reason to think there will be strong streak of communalist conservatism in the post-referendum government and even a hint of Christian socialism.

May’s approach has also been compared to that of Joseph Chamberlain, a nineteenth century advocate of interventionist local government and then of a protectionist, state-welfare orientated British Empire; he was as well considered by some to be the strongest advocate of Empire ideology in his time.

Even the Brexit supporters who have the strongest free market small government history have come out in favour of interventionist and corporatist polices. Allister Heath, a senior member of the Daily Telegraph staff, who has a reputation as a free market advocate published advice to Theresa May which is anything but free market, full of corporatism and buying off people who might be relative losers in the post-Brexit UK.

Previous free market advocates, who found it easy to be advocates when the EU served as a scapegoat for any and every overextension of state activity in the UK (whether or not in reality it originated with the EU), have become less clear in their commitment given that some EU support for open markets, such as bans on subsidies to keep bankrupt companies afloat, are no longer available. With some institutional supports for free markets removed, the Brexit liberty advocates find themselves in a world of paying off voters who voted for ‘leave’ because they don’t like ‘neoliberalism’ and blame any difficult consequences of technological invention and market innovation on Brussels Bureaucrats along with immigration from EU countries.

One key theme of the more ostensibly libertarian parts of the ‘leave’ campaign was to argue that they did not want to reduce immigration, but globalise it by replacing automatic rights of EU citizens to live in the UK with an Australian points system, which allows people to enter from anywhere in the world who has sufficient points with regard to educational level, scarce skills, money to invest and so on. However, it is clear that many ‘leave’ voters just want a reduction in immigration and May has distanced herself from a ‘points’ system in favour of absolute reduction.

The ‘leave’ vote won based on the anti-immigration, anti-globalist and anti-‘neoliberal’ instincts of a significant section of the ‘leave’ vote. It is not the whole of the ‘leave’ vote, but ‘leave’ could not have won without it. The evidence so far is that whatever the intentions of the libertarian to conservative element of ‘leave’ thinking that the government is now driven by the wish to follow that aspect of public opinion. The UK is headed towards communalist corporatism, or even protectionist/mercantilist, security-state Great Power nationalist versions of conservatism. Clearly there is much work for liberty advocates to do in the UK counteracting this disaster.

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

Politics

O que é socialismo?

The trade offs of Hillary vs Donald

Sexism, Trump, and American Media

Some thoughts on Rio de Janeiro elections

Another Race Riot

A short note on minorities and the Left

Alguns mitos, equívocos e objeções comuns ao capitalismo

Immigrants’ Complaints

Liberals and Conservatives should stop talking about guns

Most Arguments Against Open Borders Lead to Extremely Un-Libertarian Positions

A Note on Trump, Immigration, and Healthcare Reform

Voting For Potty-Mouth Trump

The Coup in Turkey

Why Brexit is bad for Liberty

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There’s a simple alternative to regulation: liability. We don’t need to tell companies how to be safe if we make them legally responsible for negligence.

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**There’s a simple alternative to regulation: liability. We don’t need to tell companies how to be safe if we make them legally responsible for negligence.**