Libertariansk feminism

Jesper Ahlin Liberty ,

Jag hävdar att det finns två metoder för att tänka på samhället, det strukturella och det principiella, och att god samhällsförståelse uppnås genom den rätta blandningen av de två. Det jag i den här texten kallar för strukturanalys går ut på att hitta mönster, samband och orsaker bakom olika samhällsfenomen. En feminist som jag själv påstår exempelvis att människor ofta förhåller sig till sig själva och till varandra utefter vad de har mellan benen i stället för vad de har mellan öronen. Jag bygger mitt påstående på vad jag har uppfattat för mönster i min omvärld (och i mig själv). Genom den principiella analysen förstår man mänskligt agerande (”ekonomi”) och vilka våra politiska moraliska plikter är.

Svagheterna med en strukturanalys är att den aldrig kan säga att någonting med nödvändighet måste vara sant. Eftersom varje ny observation av världen kan omkullkasta all tidigare inhämtad kunskap kan en strukturanalys bara säga vad som är mer eller mindre sannolikt. Den kan inte heller säga någonting om människovärde annat än som en viss persons nytta för ett specifikt ändamåls skull: om Gunnel hjälpte till att bygga ett hus har hon ett värde medan Gunnar som bara tittade på är värdelös. Det innebär att strukturanalyser har sina begränsningar. De kan av skäl som förklaras nedan aldrig ligga till grund för lagstiftning.

Principanalysens styrka är att den kan leverera nödvändiga sanningar, men kan å andra sidan (i politiska sammanhang) aldrig säga vad som är önskvärt. Genom en principanalys kan man förklara moralisk motivation, att varje individ har rätt till sig själv och det är fel att använda människor som medel och inte som självändamål, alltså människovärde, samt ekonomi, men man kan inte mot bakgrund av en principanalys säga vilken handling som därmed är önskvärd. Mänskliga principer kan i politiska sammanhang bara i generella termer klargöra orsakssambanden mellan ekonomiska fenomen, och säga när och varför det är fel att med våld inskränka på människors frihet.

Politisk-filosofiskt sett baseras vänsterideologier på strukturanalyser. Vänstertänkare förstår samhället genom att titta på motsättningar mellan kapital och arbete eller maktförhållanden mellan olika samhällsklasser. De pekar på sådana mönster och formulerar politik därefter. I den här bemärkelsen är hela socialismen en strukturanalytisk förklaringsmodell. Socialistiska tänkare uppfattar mönster i världen som de i efterhand utvecklar teoretiska förklaringar till. Teoretiseringen ska sedan visa varför människan bättre förvaltar sina resurser gemensamt än individuellt, att det senare bör betraktas som en stöld från allmänheten, och att olika regler och lagar måste instiftas för att begränsa kapitalets makt.

Vänstertänkare gör det grundläggande antagandet att samhället kan och bör dirigeras till att nå ett bättre tillstånd än det rådande. På grund av detta antagande har socialismens politiska gren alltid ett lösningsförslag på problem som uppmärksammas: det är bara att flytta resurser från ett ställe till ett annat, förbjuda en viss handelsform, höja en skatt eller sänka ett företag. Strukturanalysen gör socialismen politiskt attraktiv eftersom den till skillnad från sina principstyrda motståndare säger vad som bör göras i stället för vad som inte bör göras.

Feminismen är (delvis) strukturanalytisk. Jag påstår att vi i socialt samspel manifesterar kön i stället för människa och att detta mönster föder sig själv: den som lärt in ett beteende ägnar ett helt liv åt att utöva det, bekräfta det, och föra det vidare. Genom strukturanalysen kan vi förstå mycket av varför våldtäkter i störst utsträckning begås av män, varför flickor och pojkar ofta utvecklar kvinnliga respektive manliga personlighetsdrag, eller varför ett av könen är överrepresenterat i bolagsstyrelser. Vi kan tack vare strukturanalysen begripa generella normer och värderingar, men på grund av dess metodologiska brister kan analysen aldrig visa att någonting alltid är sant, eller att alla människor är på ett visst sätt. Feminismen måste vara ödmjuk och erkänna undantag: ingen kan antas vara skyldig innan så är bevisat.

På grund av dess metodologiska likheter absorberas feminismen lätt av socialismen. Strukturanalyserna smälter samman. Folk uppmärksammar i sin vardag sexism och samtidigt finns det politiker som säger att de kan lösa problemen – bingo för socialismen. Men när feministisk strukturanalys omvandlas till politik följer problemen som principanalysen uppmärksammar. Politiken kan inte erbjuda fullständig moralisk motivation och saknar därmed legitimitet; den använder människor som medel i stället för som självändamål, och den är oförenlig med principen att människan har en principiell rätt till sig själv. När socialism sväljer feminism växer båda, men inte utan offer.

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Problemet för strukturanalysen är att den inte kan erkänna principanalysen utan att samtidigt rycka bort mattan under fötterna på sig själv. Om det är sant att människan har en principiell rätt till sig själv är ens egna grundantaganden felaktiga: man varken kan eller får koordinera om samhället ovanifrån. Alltså finns det inga skäl för en vänsterfeminist att acceptera principanalyser. Sådana är, eftersom de underminerar den egna positionen, definitionsmässigt felaktiga. Men vänsterfeminismen sträcker sig ännu längre än så och placerar principanalytisk metodologi under sin egen strukturanalys: idén att det skulle finnas evigt rådande principer är en manifestation av underliggande strukturer – det är patriarkatets sätt att befästa sin makt.

Undertecknad har privilegier i samhället. Jag är en vit, välutbildad, heterosexuell man. Generellt sett har jag tolkningsföreträde och njuter av ett större socialt utrymme än många andra. Det är en feministisk strukturanalys som med största sannolikhet stämmer. Men enligt en vänsterfeminist innebär det också att den här textens budskap är mindre viktigt än dess avsändare. Eftersom texten är avsedd att försvaga strukturanalytisk metod och slutsats måste avsändaren tas i beaktande, och det som strukturanalysen förklarar om avsändaren bekräftar att textens budskap är felaktigt: den här texten är självt en produkt av patriarkala strukturer och ska bekämpas, inte läsas. Vänsterfeminism är liksom socialismen ett slutet tankesystem. Allt som talar mot den egna positionen utgör bevis för den egna tesen. Det är oundvikligt. Om motsatsen – principanalytisk metod och slutsats – erkändes skulle ju i stället ens egen politik vara fel.

Detta speglar strukturanalytisk politiks första brott mot mänskliga principer, nämligen att den inte kan erbjuda individen moralisk motivation (politisk legitimitet). Strukturanalysen observerar mönster i verkligheten och fäller därefter slutsatser om vad som bör göras. Eftersom vänsterfeminism och socialism är politiska tankeverksamheter måste slutsatserna om vad som bör göras gälla alla. Skatten ska höjas också för dem som inte vill ha höjd skatt. Men eftersom strukturanalytisk metod bara kan peka på större eller mindre sannolikheter kan den inte ligga som grund till lagstiftning utan att samtidigt drabba alla människor och händelser som utgör undantag från det generella mönstret. En lag mot sexism gäller även för icke-sexister. Ett sådant förfarande erbjuder enbart moralisk motivation till dem som accepterar förfarandet. Det vill säga, strukturanalytisk politik är bara legitimt i strukturanalytikers ögon. Den som också värderar mänskliga principer kan omöjligtvis acceptera att en metod som inte kan säga vad som är sant ensamt erhåller status som sanningssägare: metoden är inte legitim om den utgör en tvingande kraft gentemot människor som saknar skäl att acceptera den.

Jämför med ett litet samhälle där alla invånare har observerat hur en tappad tändsticka orsakade en eldsvåda i ett visst hus. Alla var där och såg hur tändstickan tappades och antände byggnaden, så man stiftar en lag som förbjuder tändstickor. I stället för att producera tändstickor ska samhället börja subventionera företaget Tändare™. Men du råkar var den ende som också såg hur ägaren till Tändare™ dränkte huset i bensin innan elden bröt ut. Är samhällets agerande motiverat på ett sätt som alla invånare har skäl att acceptera? Nej. Det bygger på en strukturanalys och strukturanalyser kan bara peka på större eller mindre sannolikheter. I det här fallet var analysen felaktig (eftersom den saknade minst en observation) och genererade samhällsbeslut som strider mot mänskliga principer. Man kan aldrig veta om strukturanalysen saknar en observation och alltså kan den inte ligga till grund för legitim lagstiftning.

Vänsterdebattörer menar då att man måste kläcka ägg för att göra omelett, alltså att enskilda individer måste komma i kläm för helhetens skull. Det är ett påstående som av sin natur inte kan erkänna mänskliga principer: individer reduceras av strukturanalysen till enheter som mönster utspelar sig genom. I egenskap av enheter är människor väldigt enkla att flytta omkring. Det är bara att utdela order i form av lagar. Men när man gör det bryter man mot en av de mest fundamentala principerna för mänsklig samlevnad, den som säger att det är fel att behandla människor som medel och inte som ändamål i sig. Som strukturanalytiker fäller man omdömet att samhället med en viss sannolikhet ser ut på ett visst sätt, och att det vore bättre om det i stället skulle se ut på ett annat. Om man på vägen dit måste straffa oskyldiga eller på annat sätt utnyttja somliga individer är sådana handlingar lika önskvärda som ändamålet självt. Den enskilde människan saknar helt värde bortom sin funktion för samhällets skull.

Människans egenvärde måste alltid förbises av en strukturanalys. De går inte att förena. Man kan försöka att vara så försonlig som möjligt och i största möjliga mån undvika att kränka egenvärdet, men grundbulten kvarstår: om en strukturanalys anammas så har inte individen respekterats då hennes självbestämmanderätt förutsätter att hon själv ska få välja att omfattas av strukturanalytisk policy eller inte. När detta frånsteg redan har gjorts, till vad hänvisar den strukturanalytiker som påstår sig i största möjliga mån respektera den enskilda människan? Hon kan inte hänvisa till människans rätt till sig själv utan att underminera sin egen position. Påståendet är helt enkelt tomt. Strukturanalytikern har redan fattat beslutet att genomföra den politik som hon själv formulerat, och eftersom detta beslut är fattat kommer hon om politiken kräver det också att frångå sitt påstående att respektera den enskilda människan. Rent metodologiskt kan människor aldrig bli mer än kalkylerbara enheter i en strukturanalys.

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Ovanstående är filosofiska abstraktioner, men som sådana kan de också användas för att beskriva vad som sker i verkligheten. När feminism sväljs av socialism följer politiska lösningsförslag på sociala problem. Den aktuella debatten om kvotering är utmärkt för att gestalta de filosofiska abstraktionerna. En strukturanalys som (korrekt) har uppmärksammat att män är överrepresenterade i bolagsstyrelser över hela världen ligger till grund för kvoteringspolitik. En viss kvot mellan kvinnor och män ska uppnås med hjälp av lagstiftning. Syftet varierar – ibland är det för att företagen ska gå bättre, vilket påstås bära stöd i en annan strukturanalys, men oftast antas jämställdhet i bolagsstyrelser vara ett självändamål. Detta förfarande är oetiskt på många sätt, vilket vänsterfeminister ibland erkänner fast viftar bort, men om man gör en principanalys ur ett genusperspektiv ser man att det är också antifeministiskt. De tre problemen – moralisk motivation, att människor ses som medel och inte som ändamål, samt självägandeskapet – är med nödvändighet närvarande.

Människorna i (och utanför) styrelserna drabbas av vänsterfeministisk kvoteringspolitik då denne endast erbjuder moralisk motivation till dem som redan accepterar vänsterfeminismen. De som blir inkvoterade vet inte om de har sin styrelsepost på grund av sitt kön eller sin kompetens, och samma sak gäller de som blir utkvoterade. De kvinnor som redan hade en styrelsepost befinner sig dagligen i en miljö som präglas av ojämlikhet: de är undantag i ett sammanhang som i största del utgörs av män, och som sådana möter de redan i egenskap av kvinnor motstånd. Om kvoteringspolitiken implementeras måste de nu inte bara jobba dubbelt så hårt för att visa sin kompetens i en sexistisk miljö – de måste också svara för vänsterfeministisk politik. Att de faktiskt skulle göra sitt jobb bra på grund av vad de har mellan öronen och inte mellan benen ifrågasätts nu två gånger i stället för bara för en. Kvoteringspolitiken utgår från att kvinnor till skillnad från män behöver laga stöd för att nå styrelseposter. Det är en cementering av könsskillnader, inte en förändring: man har lyft kvinnor i håret tills de hänger i samma höjd som männen. Hur många i styrelserummen har skäl att respektera lagen när dess blotta existens antar att de i styrelserummen inte själva kan göra rätt sak? Kvotering är ur detta perspektiv ett antifeministiskt legitimitetsproblem.

För att genomföra en kvotering måste människorna reduceras till kalkylerbara enheter. De kan inte betraktas som människor och samtidigt lyftas i håret. Det vill säga, om vänsterfeminismen ens från början hade erkänt att kvinnor inte enbart är kvinnor, utan faktiskt människor, så har de nu definitivt gjutit i sten att kvinnor bara är medel som kan användas vid behov. Feminismens historia handlar om att kvinnor skulle frigöras från maktens våld och erkännas som fullständiga individer: de skulle erhålla äganderätt, arvsrätt och rösträtt, och på samma villkor som alla vuxna människor såväl stå till svars för sina handlingar som i domstol kunna kräva sin rätt gentemot andra. Denna individstatus som feminismen slagits för i århundraden vill strukturanalytiker ta från kvinnor. Vänsterfeminismen vrider klockan bakåt till den tid då kvinnor betraktades av stat och politik som egendom. Det talar för att vänsterfeminister själva har feministisk självrannsakan kvar att göra: de utgår från att de har rätt att betrakta kvinnor som saker i stället för som människor.

I grund och botten sammanfattas ändå dessa problem genom tesen om människans rätt till sig själv. Om det är sant att människan har rätt till sig själv, vilken rätt har då vänsterfeminister att lagstifta att kvinnor inte bemöts i egenskap av människor, utan kön? Det är en sak att uppmärksamma fenomenet socialt, vilket det är min mening att alla borde göra, men att stifta lagar som säger att kvinnor definitionsmässigt – som om det alltid var fallet – bemöts som någonting annat än människor är att kränka kvinnors rätt till sig själva. Ingen har rätt att i lag slå fast att den bild en kvinna har av sig själv inte stämmer, att hennes sätt att uttrycka sig är fel, att hon inte förtjänat sina framgångar eller – ännu värre – att hon inte klarar att skapa sina egna framgångar. Kvotering tar kvinnors rätt och möjlighet att uppleva stolthet över sina prestationer. Enligt lagen är de bara kvinnor – enheter i systemet och produkter av strukturer som definitionsmässigt inte är självständiga och fullvärdiga människor.

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Libertariansk feminism anammar både en strukturanalys och en principanalys, men skiljer också mellan socialt och politiskt. Lagar kan endast stiftas mot bakgrund av människans rätt till sig själv, vilket innebär att lagen – på sin höjd! – ska garantera att människor inte kränker varandras frihet att själva utöva sin rätt till sig själva. Den här texten behöver ingen fullständig introduktion till libertarianism, men om en eventuell läsare äger en lagbok kan hon riva ut ungefär fyra tusen sidor ur den för att få en uppfattning om hur tjock en lagbok egentligen borde vara. Orsakerna är flera. Framför allt kan man, vilket har redogjorts för ovan, inte stifta lagar i annat än människans själväganderätt. Men all annan lagstiftning medför också sekundära effekter. Då strukturanalytisk politik reducerar människor till enheter gör politiken anspråk på att äga det moraliska ansvar som människorna annars förvaltar.

Politik som försöker att lösa problemet med sexism och ojämlikhet riktar sig till ytan, inte till problemets kärna. Det är könsfördelningen i styrelserummet som rättas till, inte de hjärnor som hellre anställer män än kvinnor: strukturanalytiska politiker är mer måna om att det som syns ska vara tillfredsställande än att strukturerna själva ska förändras. De underliggande strukturerna berörs inte av strukturanalytisk politik, utan av strukturanalytiskt socialt engagemang. I ett vänsterpolitiskt samhälle blir det politikens, inte människornas, uppgift att förändra det som är fel socialt. Det medför av naturliga skäl minskade tendenser till och incitament att arrangera om samhället underifrån. Om man uppmärksammar ett problem i ett samhälle där politiken har rollen som problemlösare – varför ska man då själv lösa problemet?

Det som från vänsterfeministiskt håll betraktas som principanalysens svaghet, att den inte kan säga vad som bör göras utan endast vad som inte bör göras, är nyckeln till den rätta blandningen mellan struktur- och principanalys. Strukturanalysen kan inte heller säga vad som bör göras, utan bara vad som med större eller mindre sannolikt är önskvärt enligt samma analys. Återigen: det slutna tankesystemet genererar sina egna slutsatser. Principanalysen förklarar varför samhällets tvingande institutioner, lagen och rättsväsendet, enbart ska utgöra spelregler som medlar mellan oförenliga viljor inuti samhället: det är fel att med våld tvinga någon att underkasta sig ett beslut vars underlag de inte accepterar. Det innebär att principanalytisk politik helt avstår från att fälla omdömen om i vilken riktning samhället bör röra sig. Sådana omdömen är nämligen inte politiska, utan sociala. Om färdriktningen lagstiftas om följer oundvikligen de problem som redogjorts för ovan, men därtill berövas de som lyder under lagstiftningen sitt ansvarsutrymme om den sociala sfären politiseras. Precis som att den privata industrin inte tillverkar bilar om staten bedriver bilproduktion överlåter enskilda individer sitt moraliska ansvar för omvärlden till staten om den bedriver färdriktningspolitik.

Att socialismen har absorberat feminismen innebär att ett gigantiskt problemområde lyfts från den sociala sfären till den politiska. Det är som att göra politik av sitt rökberoende i stället för att sluta röka. Signalerna som politiken sänder, att de bär ansvar för privatlivet, ger förstås också effekt: om människan inte förväntas ta ansvar gör hon inte heller det. Eftersom politiken inte kan lösa problemet, utan snarare tvärtom eftersom de rör till det på ytan, är vänsterfeminismen ett hot mot feminismen. Den sliter hela frågan itu och gömmer den faktiska ojämlikheten och sexismen under pseudodebatter om hur, inte varför, politiken ska lösa problemen. Sjukdomen försvinner inte för att vänsterfeminismen medicinerar symptomen – den fortsätter att förpesta tillvaron för miljoner människor samtidigt som politiker av väljartaktiska skäl diskuterar vilken slags medicin som bör ordineras.

Libertariansk feminism sluter sig till feminismens historia: alla vuxna människor ska stå som fria jämlikar inför lagen oavsett kön, sexuell identitet och preferens, och så vidare. Kampen om juridisk jämlikhet är fruktansvärt viktig, och den är helt och hållet politisk trots att den härleds ur principen om människans rätt till sig själv. Men därtill är den libertarianska feministen också engagerad privat, så som förväntas av alla politisk-libertarianska sympatisörer. Det finns sociala problem som sexism och rasism och som politisk libertarian måste man både erkänna och motarbeta sådana fenomen. Då är strukturanalysen ovärderlig. Den används inte till att bygga politik, utan till att bygga samhällelig gemenskap.

Pope Francis on Economics

Fred Foldvary Current Events, Economics, Liberty, Religion , , , , , ,

by Fred E. Foldvary

Any statements which deplore “trickle down” economics reveal that the author has not quite yet grasped the heart of economics.

On November 26, 2013, The Vatican press published the apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel.” The text was written in Spanish, and its full title in the English translation (converted here from upper case to initial capitals) is “Evangelii Gaudium of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops, Clergy, Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World.” Besides its religious calls, Pope Francis makes statements about today’s economic problems, and calls for greater economic justice.

One of the aims of this proclamation is to point out “new paths for the Church’s journey in years to come.” One of the questions the Pope seeks to discuss is “the inclusion of the poor in society.” Chapter Two is entitled, “Amid the Crisis of Communal Commitment.” In paragraph 52, Francis writes that “today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills… Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.”

The Pope is wise and correct in seeing the harm done by inequality, but I urge him to see past the appearances to study the underlying reality. What provides the powerful with their might? The state has the ultimate power of force, and by its power to tax, to restrict, to mandate, and to subsidize, the state endows the powerful with the means to feed on the powerless. Market competition as such cannot impose force, and it does not create poverty. In a free society, each person has the power to be employed and pursue happiness. In a truly free market, all are fit to survive, because workers have access to natural opportunities. It is government intervention that stops this access.

Paragraph 54 is the key, widely cited, economic passage. We need to be sure that the English version is true to the original Spanish. In Spanish, Francis wrote, “algunos todavía defienden las teorías del « derrame », que suponen que todo crecimiento económico, favorecido por la libertad de mercado, logra provocar por sí mismo mayor equidad e inclusión social en el mundo.”

The Vatican’s English translation says, “some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.”

The English-edition term “trickle-down theories” is translated from the Spanish, “teoria del derrame.” “Derrame” means a slow leak, hence a trickle, and so the English translation is accurate. The translated term “free market” is more literally “the liberty of the market” in the original Spanish, but the meaning is the same.

As noted by Harvard professor Greg Mankiw in his blog, critics of markets often use the term “trickle down” as a pejorative for the effects of a market economy. There is indeed a trickle down effect, for example, when a tourist resort is built in a location with many poor people, where a few get hired to work to clean rooms and wash dishes. A bit of the wealth of the resort trickles to the local population. But this situation does not confront the issue of why the poverty exists in the first place.

The theory of the free market is not one of “trickle down.” A truly free market is a fountain that gushes up wealth for all. Moreover, economic growth in market economies has indeed raised millions of persons up from poverty. However, the theory of market-driven growth does not claim that growth brings justice. The causation is the opposite: economic justice promotes growth. Moreover, justice and liberty are two faces of the same coin, so if a market has liberty, it must also provide justice.

The Pope continues: “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

But the proposition that free markets provide growth that benefits all is not a mere opinion. The proposition is a theory of growth that was first analyzed by the French economists of the 1700s, who concluded that the unhampered market, with free trade, would provide the greatest prosperity for all.

The prescription of the French economists was to abolish taxes on labor and trade, and instead use the surplus of the economy, which is land rent, for public revenue. Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations brought this theory into classical economics. The American economist Henry George a century later explained in detail how land rent captures the gains from economic progress, and how growth generates inequality and poverty if that rent is not equally shared.

Markets have had various degrees of freedom, but there is no truly free market in the world today. Those who advocate a pure free market do not defend the “prevailing economic system,” but rather, they seek to stop the state’s subsidy of economic powers. The greatest subsidy and economic power is the land rent generated by the public goods provided by government.

The Pope is correct in decrying “the denial of the primacy of the human person” (paragraph 55) and that “Behind this attitude lurks a rejection of ethics” (57). Ethics and the primacy of the human person requires the equal right of each person to pursue happiness without harming others and to keep the earnings of his labor, as recognized by the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” Ethics must also respect the equal sharing of the benefits of nature and community, as stated in Ecclesiastes 5:9, “the profit of the earth is for all.”

The heart of economics is the understanding of the root cause of poverty: the forced redistribution of wealth from the working poor to the landed rich. This is caused not by markets but from state policy. It is good that Pope Francis seeks to remedy poverty. His “new path” should be to go more deeply into the economics and politics of maldistribution.

Uruguayan government: “monopoly” on pot

Audrey Redford Current Events, Economics , , , , , ,

Last week, Uruguay’s government passed legislation to legalize marijuana. While the government will not be growing any cannabis plants (they are leaving that to private cultivators and farmers), the state will be playing a major role in the market… by fixing the price for marijuana at $1 per gram.

The rationale behind this production legalization and price fixing is to limit the amount of marijuana being trafficked into the country (mainly from Paraguay). As many of you may know, the narcotics trafficking business in Latin America is wrought with intense violence and organized crime. By fixing the price at $1 a gram, government officials believe this initiative will drive these traffickers out of business (at least in Uruguay). However, as all government interventions go, we need to ask ourselves, what are the possible unintended consequences lurking around the corner?

The issue I have is not with the legalization of marijuana, but with the price-fixing component of the legislation. Interventions into the market distort information (price) signals, forcing entrepreneurs to work off of incorrect information for their profit and loss calculations. Given that the drug market is already entrenched in these distortions, is this price-fixing component of the legislation a step in the right direction, or does it just complicate matters further?

The incentive structure, given the fixed price, is not the same as it would be in a free market. Any incentive that could have pushed these traffickers to move away from violence if it resulted in greater profits has been removed. Perhaps these violent traffickers will leave the marijuana business in Uruguay, but will they relocate efforts to other countries, or perhaps begin focusing on different illegal narcotics to traffic into Uruguay? If these new freedoms being granted to Uruguayans are coming at the cost of increased violence in other countries as a result of this price-fixing component, should we consider this a success?

A Conspiracy of Debacles: the Advent of Single Payer?

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , , ,

I don’t believe much in conspiracies. For one thing, they require secrecy and belief in the other guy not to spill the beans. Often, information connected with conspiracies has value, economic value or simply psychic value (“I already knew it yesterday!”) Hence, the frequent betrayal. Moreover, people in general mess up, the conspiratorial group tends to amplify the mess. For all these reasons, mention the conspiracy against Julius Caesar and I will tell you it’s not obvious it happened. I am skeptical about conspiracies in general but I can make exceptions.

Today, in December 2013, my skepticism is vacillating. I am skeptical about my usual skepticism, you might say. The reason is that I have never seen a governmental debacle of the magnitude of the current roll out of the Affordable Care Act (It’s “Obamacare.” Don’t even try to correct me on this. I heard the president with my own ears claim the nickname.) The present demonstration of incompetence is so out of proportion with everything I have experienced in my life that a part of my brain is whispering to the other that it can’t just be simple incompetence. To begin with, it seems to me that an average nerdy company would have done a better job of the electronic exchanges: WSJ says 12/12/13 that in all of Oregon 44 people have enrolled. (My friend Scott from Silicon Valley will correct me if my assessment of the ease of setting up the exchanges is wrong.) Furthermore, in an operation of this complexity and of this magnitude at best, some degree of failure was to be expected. Any normally prudent person would have set up a fail safe mechanism, a second chance device, or, at least, readied a large lifeboat. None of the above exists it seems. I have trouble believing in a simple oversight.

Beyond the electronic failure -which is guaranteed to induce sneering hostility in the young who use EBay and Amazon with their eyes closed – the same people desperately needed to join, there is the deleterious substance of the reform: Many people find themselves saddled with larger premiums, higher deductible and often both. I don’t know how many. I don’t think anyone knows how many. It does not matter but those reporting that they are so affected are not, cannot all be Tea Party fanatics.

Even the main redeeming virtue of this disaster has been largely withdrawn. I heard that the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that 30 million people would still be off the health insurance roles after the whole Obamacare law is implemented. It’s as if a malignant hand had deliberately withdrawn the last consolation from the disaster: It will make you poorer; it might leave you with a doctor you don’t like (“might”); it leaves you exposed without health insurance although you used to have a plan with which you were satisfied; and it won’t even help that much those it was supposed to help.

Digression on Tech. source note: The first numbers come from an editorial in the 12/12/13 Wall Street Journal. The notion that millions of non-insured will remain uninsured even under the best hypothesis is all over the media. I am not able to cite a precise source. Make a note that I will not consider any lazy and irresponsible denial of this assertion. If you think that’s not true, that I misheard or heard well something false, just say so here, explain why you are sure it’s wrong, and sign your name. I will publish any denial in bold letters. Girlish snickering is not welcome.

By the way, I don’t want you to think that I am implicitly legitimizing the Democratic claims about the number of real uninsured. I never bought the “millions of uninsured” argument. Two reasons. First, it confused “no insurance” with no “health care.” It also confounded and confounds “inefficient way to deliver care” with “the poor dying on the hospital lawn for lack of care.” More importantly, I became convinced that the poor, powerless abandoned souls imagery the Democratic Party uses to characterize the uninsured is largely an invention. Many of the formerly uninsured are people already legible for existing programs who were not enrolled, many children of the irresponsible and incompetent, for example, probably some isolated older people. Other non-insured are clearly rich enough to afford health insurance and simply don’t take he trouble to buy it. Others, mostly young people who are not rich, make the rational calculation that they are quite unlikely to become seriously sick. They engage in low-stake gamble about their proximate health. Once you added the three subgroups of the uninsured, the pathetic-sounding category “ uninsured” melted to little, to next to nothing.

I can ignore my disbelief about this for the time being. I just assume that millions of Americans thought the reform was necessary for reasons of compassion toward the more vulnerable among us. Absent or diminished this justification and this rationalization many of the same Americans will feel disappointed or even cheated. (I am charitably ignoring the claim that the scheme would make health insurance cheaper.)

Now, let’s project ourselves only four to six weeks, to the 2014 State of the Union Address. By that time, by law, most everyone is supposed to be covered. The insurance companies have continued withdrawing plans that are non-compliant, or that they fear may be judged non-compliant with the new law. The number of people between insurance plans has grown from an estimate of 4 million (the WSJ 12/12/13) to ten million. There are reasons to believe that the numbers of those left out will yet grow. The forty or fifty millions original uninsured remain mostly uninsured. The young that the new law unaccountably counted on to finance the new project stay away in droves. The fine they incur, after all, is not much higher than the beer bill for three average parties. Discouraged by the mess, the shamble, the unpredictability, small businesses nearly all shed their health coverage.

In this scenario, in a matter of weeks, the number of Americans without legally required health insurance rockets up to some large proportion of the population, perhaps to one American in four, even one in three. At that point, according to the implicit liberal narrative, we have a national life-and-death disaster, an event that makes Katrina look like a Cajun picnic. According to the same implicit narrative which the Democratic hierarchy cannot suddenly denounce, people are going soon to begin dying in the streets. What was but recently a controversial reform has become a national emergency.

What’s a normally compassionate, responsible president to do under the circumstances? I mean any president?

The answer is blindingly clear: In this emergency, the president will announce that all Americans not otherwise covered are now under the existing, reasonably functional Medicare program. And, he will leave the accounting for later. And this accounting will not seem like much of a new problem because it’s just an enlargement of an old problem. (“The devil we know….”) The president could decree on such a radical measure without fear of much criticisms from the opposition. What Republican official will have the fortitude to insist that proper constitutional form must take precedence over the imminent distress, and possible death from neglect of millions? Which elected Republican will have what it takes to face the first media story – true or false – a single story of a youngish person dying for lack of care?

Many ordinary Americans will opt for the simple solution: Instead of digging around for an elusive insurance plan that suits them and that is also compliant, they will ask to join Medicare. Once nearly half of Americans are covered by Medicare, the private insurance companies will quietly surrender. Some will begin to specialize in luxury coverage for the very rich. Others will just re-focus on areas other than health care. Many will simply go bankrupt and then vanish (as happened in other countries under similar circumstances). Soon, the US too will have a single payer government run health insurance system. The Obama administration will have reached the Graal of all liberals since F.D. Roosevelt.

This would be an easy conspiracy to carry out because it does not require that explicit instructions be given to the co-conspirators. Hence, there is no possible leak, no chance of getting caught red-handed. It’s also a conspiracy that does not require extraordinary skills but only the subtle encouragement of government’s normal low standards of performance. Much of the deliberate sabotage of a real implementation of the new law would only have to take the form of inaction, for example, of the administrator in charge of the reform. This does not require talent but good nerves, or indifference. Ms Sebelius, the person in charge of implementing Obamacare has been reported by conservative media to have had no (zero) meetings with the president. If they are wrong, the real number must still be very low, lower than you would expect given the centrality of the scheme to the Obama presidency. That is if the president really wanted the implementation of the 2,000+ pages of the Affordable Care Act to go smoothly. If!

The most successful socialist revolution socializing more than 15% – and growing- of the largest economy in the world will have been achieved quickly and without much real opposition. Hurrah!

Now, this is all speculation. I am just connecting the dots. I hope I am completely wrong, that we are all facing an ordinary debacle, one due entirely to gross but innocent incompetence.

Personal note: I have seen the French single-payer system at work under trying circumstances. My subjective evaluation is that it works quite well. On the objective side, there is the fact that French men live two years longer on average than American men. (Yes, I too would like to believe it’s the red wine but I know to keep my inner child in line.) My objection to a government health sector is of a moral and political nature: We just don’t need more government; we need much less government in order to be free. Besides, one should not take for granted that we can do well whatever the French do well. Take ratatouille, for example, take pâté de campagne, etc.

Cell Phones on Airliners?

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty, Philosophy , ,

The FAA recently decided, tentatively, that cell phone use would be OK on commercial airplanes. But forthwith, moans went up from near and far and the FAA backed off. Lots of travelers understandably dread the prospect of captivity to loud conversations by boors seated inches away from them. It’s unclear at this time what the final decision will be.

Why does it never occur to anyone to let the owners of the airplanes decide this issue? They could experiment with various policies ranging from outright bans to unlimited use with all sorts of possibilities in between. Following Amtrak and some commuter railroads that have quiet cars, they could establish a no-talk section of the airplane like the non-smoking sections of yore. Or they could try pleading with talkers. Soon enough they will discover what their customers want and competitive pressures would force all airlines to fall into line.

That sort competitive experimentation works quite well in many market segments, as a moment’s reflection will confirm. So why do we hear nothing about this simple solution for the cell phone problem? Part of the answer, I fear, is that so many people are resigned to letting bureaucrats set the rules for practically all of life. An extreme example of this attitude is the kind of message that appears in my spam folder with a subject like “Obama lowers re-fi rates.” Of course this is nonsense but it suggests that a good many people think Obama has the power to set re-fi rates and worse: that it’s perfectly OK for him to wield such dictatorial powers.

Back to cell phones on airplanes: the whole issue came about as a result of determinations by the FAA technical staff that cell phone signals don’t really interfere with airplane communications as had been feared. That suggests a more difficult question: suppose there were credible evidence that cell phone use really was a threat to airplane communications. Should the FAA be empowered to ban cell phone use? I suggest that it does not. The airlines have an enormous incentive to avoid interference problems. If they were free to make their own decisions about this (again, assuming there was credible evidence of a real problem), their lawyers would be all over them about instituting their own prohibitions. The owners of the control towers (I’m envisioning a privatized FAA) would have strong incentives as well. Many passengers would be aware of the issue and would press for bans.

We have here another example of what a tough job we face, those of us who advocate free markets. The general public, Mencken’s “booboisie” if you will, hasn’t the mental horsepower to envision even modest deviations from the command and control paradigm that is smothering our society.

Somebody wake Dr Delacroix from his midday, wine-induced nap

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , ,

For the first time in 112 years, snow has fallen in Cairo, Egypt. I haven’t been to that side of the Mediterranean yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to, but I can’t believe it’s snowing there. It seems like it’s been cold everywhere over the past couple of weeks.

Dr Delacroix, if he weren’t off somewhere sulking, would be ecstatic. (h/t Aliens in the Family)

Русские и Евромайдан

Evgenii Grigorev Current Events , , , ,

Думаю, что все в курсе последних событий на Украине. Постоянные митинги в поддержку Евроинтеграции, подозрительное молчание со стороны правительства, силовой разгон мирных акций демонстрантов, захват правительственных кварталов… На фоне этих событий отношения между Россией и Украиной изменились не только на “высшем” уровне, но и на уровне общения отдельных граждан. Для тех, кто не сильно разбирается в вопросе, поясню, что руководство Украины решило временно заморозить проект о интеграции с Европой, мотивируя это тем, что Украина испытывает на себе давление со стороны России. Вроде как и в Европу хочется – и “старший брат” (то есть Россия) не пускает. С нашей стороны, точнее, со стороны правительства России идет что-то типа шантажа или давления, я пока никак не могу понять. Казалось бы, события мирового уровня не должны были отразиться на взаимодействии простых людей братских народов, однако это далеко не так. Сейчас очень много украинцев считают русских виновными в том, что правительство Украины приостановило Евроинтеграцию. Как будто каждый отдельно взятый гражданин России виновен перед народом Украины. Отсюда следует определенное ухудшение отношений между гражданами двух стран. По крайней мере по общению в интернете, многие злы на русских. При этом, как мне кажется, президент Украины просто пытается усидеть на двух стульях: и в Европу попасть, и с нами отношения не испортить, но такого в принципе не может быть. Украина находится в таком положении, что необходимо принять какое-то одно твердое решение. Как по мне – так лучше бы президент Украины подписал соглашение о Евроинтеграции, по крайней мере отношения между людьми бы нормализовались. По большому счету, это является главным.

Интересно, какие мнения по этому вопросу у моих заграничных коллег, и как в Америке относятся к событиям в Киеве? Я читал, что Барак Обама крайне негативно отозвался о действиях властей Украины и в частности о применении силы против мирных демонстраций. Но меня больше интересует не мнение правящей элиты, а комментарии обычных жителей. Жду развития дискуссии в комментариях!

Middle Eastern Musings: Why I Blog

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , , , , , ,

The news from Syria seems to have dwindled to nothing in the last couple of months. The hawks have focused their continued, never ending ire on the peace process between Tehran and Washington that the Obama administration has courageously initiated. The lack of news is too bad, of course, since the (quite unintended) consequences of Western meddling in the region are now beginning to be felt by everyday Syrians. PRI (“you’re listening to The World”) reports on the misery Syrians are now forced to endure:

It’s been a trying week for Syria. The United States and Britain suspended providing even non-lethal aid to the country. A prominent Syrian opposition leader has gone missing. And now winter has brought snow and cold weather.

The cause of suspended aid? Why, the fact that the anti-Assad national socialists have lost out to the Islamists militarily, politically and economically, of course. Instead of letting the anti-Assad national socialists fight it out with the pro-Assad national socialists and the Islamists – which would have produced a quick winner and thus reduced the suffering of Syrians – the West remained content to heavily arm the least prominent faction involved in the fighting (the anti-Assad national socialists). The result, of course, has been the continued bleeding of Syrian society as a war that could have ended years ago continues to drag on.

In Iran, a mild brouhaha has emerged over the censorship of most of the World Cup draw in Brazil (Iran’s national soccer team made the World Cup, and the draw – a huge deal in most of the sporting world – was held in Brazil, which is hosting the event next year). According to PRI, the state-run media in Iran had to censor most of the draw’s coverage due to the lack of coverage on Brazilian supermodel Fernanda Lima’s big, beautiful breasts.

While the effects of the state-run media are fairly straightforward, I find the cultural implications of this episode to be most fascinating. PRI reports:

The Islamic Republic doesn’t allow women deemed to be dressed immodestly on television, so every time the camera focused on Lima, the picture was dropped on Iranian TV.

This made for terrible viewing for Iranian soccer fans waiting to find out who Iran was going to be playing at the World Cup.

So, who do Iranians blame for this debacle? Lima or FIFA? The many abusive messages left on Lima’s Facebook page seem to suggest they are blaming her.

Comments ranged from insults to suggestions she should have worn a hijab, so everybody around the globe could watch the draw.

The abuse got so bad Lima had to take down her Facebook page. But then, a lot of Iranians started to apologize for the abuse, saying Iranians are not really like this. This, in turn, triggered posts by Brazilians saying, not to worry, Iranians are still welcome in Brazil.

Nationalism is prevalent in Iranian society, but so is a yearning to open up to the world. In my anecdotal experiences, I have found this nationalism to be very common among all young men in the non-Arab Muslim world. I suspect this nationalism is also prevalent in places like the Balkans and Arab Mediterranean world as well. I have no reason for suspecting this, except for the fact that in each of these parts of the world, relatively young states exist but nations are still being defined.

In Western Europe and, to a lesser extent Japan and South Korea, states and nations have long ago melded together through wars, policy battles, trade and sophisticated diplomacy. Along the peripheries of these areas the narrative of nation and state has not occurred, and may never occur (this type of nationalism is altogether absent from the New World republics for a number of fascinating-but-digressing reasons). I think the factions that encourage this narrative, national socialists all of them, are just as bad for their respective societies as are the conservatives (Islamists in the Muslim world, monarchists in other parts, Confucianists-cum-communists in China, etc., etc.). Only liberalism can bring about peace and prosperity to these societies.

The people apologizing for the actions of their fellow Iranians are a natural fit for liberalism’s humble creed. Unfortunately, I think the national socialists and the conservatives know this, and therefore advocate for policies that will keep their societies insular (and apart from the world of ideas that only liberalism has produced).

This brings me to a final thought for the day: What can I do about this, if anything? The regimes that hawks wish to destroy are bad guys, to be sure, but I have yet to see a regime that has been destroyed by an outside power give way to a regime that is benevolent and just. In fact, often these new regimes are worse than those they have replaced. The battle for ideas can only be won with the pen, and wars will only ever be won by ideas.

This realization, I think, is why I continue to write and to blog. Thanks for reading and, more importantly, for adding your thoughts to my own in the ‘comments’ section.

Great (new?) resource for historical economic data

Brandon Christensen Economics, History, Links , , ,

UC Davis’s Global Price and Income History Group has a new website up (at least I think it’s new) and it’s got a lot of really, really good data. (h/t again goes to contributing editor Claudio Shikida)

The Canons of Economics

Fred Foldvary Economics, Liberty , , , , , , , , , , ,

by Fred E. Foldvary

A “canon” is a set of items which are regarded by the chiefs of a field to be the accepted elements of the domain. Every religion, for example, has a canon of accepted ideas and documents such as the established books of the Bible. Every scientific field has a canon of propositions and facts accepted as genuine by the experts and by those in authority such as editors of the major journals and most members of the departments of the prominent universities.

The canon of economics consists of the propositions, methods, and historical facts accepted as true and applicable by most scholarly economists. This canon appears in textbooks and in the articles of the prominent journals. The ideas and methods outside the canon are referred to as heterodox economics, in contrast to the mainstream or orthodox canon. There have been articles and organizations about the mainstream and alternative canons, but they have not laid out what the canons consist of. Here is my attempt.

The canon of orthodox neoclassical economics consists of 1) supply and demand; 2) graphical curves of equal utility, inputs, and output; 3) marginal analysis (additional amounts of utility, inputs, outputs); 4) the factors or input variables of capital goods and labor; 5) the price level; 6) equations of production and utility; 7) the government-influenced money supply and the market-based velocity of the circulation of money; 8) economic and accounting profit; 9) market failure and government corrections; 10) equilibrium; 11) maximizing and minimizing within constraints; 12) the premises of subjective values, self-interest, scarcity, unlimited desires, and the uncertainty of the future; 13) the “time preference” for present day good relative to future goods; 14) the trade-off between goods and leisure; 15) the trade-off between equity and efficiency; 16) diminishing marginal utility; 17) diminishing marginal products; 18) theory from mathematical models; 19) econometric testing of hypotheses; 20) the producer and consumer surplus.

Neoclassical economics is divided into several sub-schools for macroeconomic theory. The major schools and their canons are:
1) Keynesian or demand-side economics, with the canons of the consumption function, spending multiplier, and the determination of output from autonomous spending and the multiplier.
2) The Monetarist school, its canon being the equation of exchange: Money times velocity equals the price level times real output, hence monetary inflation generally causes price inflation.
3) The New Classical school with its canon of rational expectations, which makes inflationary policy ineffective.
4) The New Keynesian school with its canon of wages, prices, and interest rates stuck above equilibrium; it accepts New-Classical rational expectations but claims that contracts and other rigid conditions make expansionary policy effective in increasing output.

The heterodox Austrian economic school of thought accepts these elements of neoclassical economics:1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20. Austrians reject the excessive emphasis on 6, 9, 10, 11, 18, 19. The canons of the Austrian school that have not been absorbed into the mainstream are: 1) the time and interest-based structure of capital goods; 2) market dynamics rather than equilibrium; 3) dispersed knowledge; 4) discrete marginal utility based on diminishing importance; 4) axiomatic-deductive theory (praxeology); 5) entrepreneurship as both discovery and creative reconstruction; 6) free-market money and banking; 7) roundabout production; 8) the market as spontaneous order; 9) the failure of government intervention; 10) the evenly rotating economy that illustrates the role of entrepreneurship in the real world of uncertainty and change.

The Marxist school canon includes 1) class struggle, 2) the labor theory of value; 3) the surplus from labor taken by the capitalists who dominate labor; 4) benefits from socializing wealth.

The Georgist or geo-classical school has these canons: 1) land and its rent as major elements of the economy; 2) the margin of production as the least productive land in use; 3) land speculation and the movement of the margin raising rent and reducing wages; 4) the creation of land rentals from public goods; 5) depressions resulting from land-value bubbles; 6) economic effects of replacing market-hampering market-hampering taxes and subsidies with land-value taxation; 7) the surplus as land rent; 8) the ethics of labor and land; 9) harmony between equity and efficiency, and 10) the social behavioral effects of economic justice.

There is also a school of thought called “public choice,” which has been accepted by neoclassical economics as well as by other schools, as a side branch. Its canon includes: 1) self-interest in politics; 2) the rational ignorance of voters; 3) transfer-seeking and getting due to concentrated interests and spread-out costs; 4) vote trading by representatives; 5) bureaucrats maximizing their power and comfort; 6) the primacy of the median voter; 7) constitutional versus operational choice; 8) clubs that provide collective goods to their members.

The classical economics canon, before it turned neoclassical, included these elements: 1) Say’s law, that production pays factors that enable effective demand; 2) the division of labor; 3) economic growth from unhampered production and free trade; 4) the margin of production as the least productive land in use; 5) population growth pushing the margin to less productive land; 6) the three factors of production as land, labor, and capital goods.

A problem in economics today is that each canon excludes the useful elements of other schools. Economics needs a universalist canon that integrates the best elements from all schools of thought. However, economists disagree on what the canon should be. In my judgment, the most glaring omission in the mainstream canon is the neglect of the Austrian-school time-structure of capital goods, its neglect of the creation of land rent by public goods, and its neglect of the benefits of a prosperity tax shift, the replacement of market-hampering taxes with market-enhancing payments of land rent and pollution charges.

Note: This article first appeared in the Progress Report.

Black Immigration: Taking Myself Behind the Barn*

Jacques Delacroix History , , , , ,

On December 5th 2013, I posted a blog entitled “Equality and Fairness” in which I stated off-handedly:

“(By the way, about half the people with African blood in the US have zero American slave ancestry. Yes, like the president. They are descendants of immigrants like me, people who volunteered to come tot his allegedly racist country.)”

Two people came down on me like white on rice demanding a source for this assertion. The first was Professor Terry because he hates good news. He was so foaming at the mouth that he even forgot for a while Harry Belafonte and other immigrants from the Caribbean obviously with African ancestry. Then he demonstrated his racial expertise on how various degrees of blood admixtures define or don’t define the category “black.” Brandon Christensen, the editor of Notes on Liberty, also challenged me for a source mostly because he pillages me every chance he gets.

I have to report that my fast and superficial search did not help me recover the relevant source. I am ninety per cent sure I read it in the Wall Street Journal sometimes since 2010. It could have been in the Oped pages. Trust me, my failure leaves me deeply ashamed.

At any rate, I cited this number to make a substantive point: Liberals who insist that the US is just about as racist as it was in the good old days of Bull O’Connor (when Martin Luther King was marching) have to deal with the disturbing fact of black immigration to the US. I mean by “black” people who come from Africa and people who would tell you they have some African ancestry. Such people come to this country legally and illegally and they come in large numbers.

I am guessing they come here for the same reason that there is no great exodus of people with African ancestry leaving this country. They come because this is very good country with an open heart and loosely enforced laws (Why, what do you know? The Supreme Court ruled recently that it’s illegal for states to enforce some federal laws.)

Let me cite a specialized website that does not address my still-unsourced assertion but something germane to it:

Black immigrants are a significant group in the United States—more than 3 million people comprising 8 percent of the U.S. foreign-born population. **

More than half come from the Caribbean, with the rest mostly coming from Northern and sub-Saharan Africa. A small number also come from Europe and Canada. Black immigrants account for more than one-quarter of the black population in New York, Boston, and Miami.

Now, the foreign born comprise about 13% of the general US population and African-Americans, in the broadest definition, are also about 13%. Yes, we are far from my original assertion. We don’t know how far exactly because we don’t know how many US-born children and grand-children foreign-born blacks have. But they would have to have on average something like 13 or 14 descendants per couple for their total to approximate half of people living in America who have African ancestry. Even if all black immigrants came from rural backgrounds, that might be too high a figure.

This is bad for for my credibility.

Still, I don’t know that the (unreferenced) estimate regarding immigrants and all their descendants for all times of half is too high, or much too high. This does not matter much from a substantive standpoint anyway. People with African ancestry, the very kind of people most likely to be victims of racism according to an obsolete, jaundiced view of this country come here in large numbers.

I know five personally, four Africans and a West Indian who is an executive chef. He hardly ever flies “home.” One African has a college degree and earns a lot of money right here. Another has an advanced degree and performs stellar scientific research of a nature he could only do in a handful of other countries, none in Africa or in the Caribbean. The third is an extraordinary musician, excellently trained in his country of origin, and whose creativity demonstrates that he has obviously overcome his training. The fourth is another musician, a very young man who may be leading a disreputable life as I write. All four are Africa-born, aliens; all four remain in this country at considerable cost and or risk to themselves. None of the Africans ever complains of American racism except sometimes in the presence of African-Americans, of black people born in the US of American parents (Go figure!)

Of course, they would not complain in my presence because they suspect I keep my robes in the back of my pickup truck. No, that couldn’t be, I am a Republican; the KKK was entirely Democrat!

PS : I used to enjoy occasionally at the gym listening to a mean, swarthy complexioned man on MSNBC. Alas Martin Bashir is gone! I wonder how long it will take MSNBC to find another dark-skinned man with an affected English accent and a potty mouth.

* Dear overseas readers: Feel free to ask questions about vocabulary and idioms. (The “idioms,” the idiot is someone else though.)

** The source for this number will remain a secret for the time being. The source for the other numbers is the US Census 2010.

Around the Web: Globalization, Racism and Surfing

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , ,
  1. Check out this fascinating reddit thread on ‘blackness’ in the US and the UK. As somebody who has spent a fair amount of time outside of the US, and who is interested in ethnicity from a scholarly perspective, the answers were nothing new to me, but it’s always nice when the streets confirm your suspicions.
  2. A beautiful photo essay on surfing in Liberia. I wish there were a traditional essay to go along with the photos, but it still suffices.

I think there are too many people in the world who don’t think hard enough about the benefits of globalization (i.e. world trade). As populism continues to gain traction here in the US (and elsewhere I presume), I fear that the everyday beauty a more globalized world gives to us will be thrown under the bus in the name of The People.

A (very) Quick Primer on Natural-Rights.

Adam Magoon Philosophy, Religion , , , , , , , , , ,

by Adam Magoon

The first step in understanding natural rights theory is to ask a simple but profound question.  Do you own yourself?

Well, let’s start with the definition of ownership.  Dictionary.com gives us “the act, state, or right of possessing something.” Digging deeper we find the definition of possession as “the state of having, owning, or controlling something.” The last part of that definition is key; controlling.  There is a modicum of truth in the old adage possession is 9/10ths of the law.  Nine times out of ten to own something is to control it.

Now getting back to our original question: Do you own yourself?  Well do you control your own body and mind?  We do not need to delve into psychology to answer this question.  I alone can move my arms up and down, I can choose to stand, walk, eat, think, write, create, or to do nothing at all.  I alone am in control over my body.    This is an indisputable fact.  The very act of questioning this fact proves it true; for if you do not have control over your thoughts and actions how could you possibly disagree?

Self-ownership is the cornerstone of libertarian natural rights philosophy and what the libertarian means when he uses the term “natural rights”.

To quote Murray Rothbard: “The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that each person must be a self-owner, and that no one has the right to interfere with such self-ownership”

Under this philosophy of self-ownership there are two important subcategories that I will just touch on for further elaboration at another time.

The Non-aggression Principle: is an ethical stance which asserts that “aggression” is inherently illegitimate. “Aggression” is defined as the “initiation” of physical force against persons or property, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property.

This is why the threat of violence cannot be used to negate the concept of self-ownership.  Holding a gun to my head and telling me to raise my arm does not mean you own the right to raise my arm any more than a thief owns the jewelry he stole.  Ownership cannot be transferred through violent means.

And the concept of homesteading which is best explained by John Locke:

“[E]very man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to. . . .

He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then when did they begin to be his? . . . And ‘tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common. That added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done: and so they become his private right. And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? . . . If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that ‘tis the taking part of what is common, and removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in, whichbegins the property; without which the common is of no use”

Very quickly I will also mention a couple of the more common arguments that arise when natural rights are discussed.

First, natural rights do not extend from god or any other supernatural or theological forces.  They are based on rational and philosophical thought.  They are what is known as an “a priori”  argument.  To put it simply, natural rights are a logical deduction based on a number of easily recognized facts, primarily the concept of self-ownership.

Second, governments do not, and indeed cannot, grant any rights that natural rights have not already granted.  Let’s look at a current event that everyone always seems to think about backwards; the legalization of drugs for personal consumption.  Because of the right to self-ownership each and every individual already has the right to do whatever they choose with their own body as long as they do so with their own property and do not violently harm others in the process.   Even if the U.S. government “legalized” the use of drugs tomorrow, they are not granting anyone the right to do drugs, they are merely removing their own restrictions on something that is already a right.   The idea that law comes from the state is known as ‘legal positivism’  and proponents are hard pressed to defend actions such as slavery and extermination that were made legal by many nations throughout the course of human history.

 

Recommended Reading:

http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

Is the European Union “socialist”?

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , ,

The short answer is ‘no’, but first, Justin Raimondo writes:

The EU is a failed socialist experiment that exists to fund a huge (and hugely arrogant) bureaucracy and impose a bloodless ideological abstraction over and above the authentic nationalisms it seems to subsume. It is deeply authoritarian in that it provides no mechanism for member states to withdraw, and its super-centralist model is a prescription for tyranny if ever there was one. When a referendum is held on EU membership, and the results aren’t to the pro-EU side’s liking, the election is simply ignored and the Eurocrats mount yet another campaign until the “right” result is achieved.

I thought I’d highlight this paragraph for a couple of reasons:

1. It explains the tensions inherent in the EU from a nationalist viewpoint (as opposed to the internationalist view most often espoused on this blog), and the tensions between defining the place of centralized and decentralized power in a society. Although Raimondo’s hyperbole might cause some of us to blush, I think it actually adds to the depth of the nationalist argument as it better captures the sentiments of these factions. That is to say, I think the nationalists in this debate are a bit more boorish than the internationalists and as such Raimondo exemplifies their arguments despite being an American.

2. It shows why facts are important and in the long run much more valuable. Socialism, by definition, is the state ownership of the means of production. Is there anything about the EU that suggests it wants to “nationalize” industry? Anything at all? Of course not, which is why you often find populists – even of the “libertarian” kind – to be hyperbolic, arbitrary and vague in their arguments (for a better treatment of populism, see this old piece here at NOL). In the long run getting these definitions right is important. Slandering a faction or an organization you don’t like as ‘socialist’ (or ‘bourgeois’) may earn you a couple of brownie points from the peanut gallery, but you are very likely to steadily lose influence in the arena of ideas by peddling such drivel.

The EU is a confederation of states (much like the pre-Civil War US) and entry and exit are entirely voluntary. The EU, more than any other institution save for perhaps the US military, is responsible for the unencumbered peace throughout Western Europe since the end of World War 2. To suggest that the EU is somehow ‘socialist’ not only confuses younger, more susceptible readers but it also weakens one’s own arguments. If, for example, Raimondo is going to label the EU as ‘socialist’ when it clearly is not, what should I think about his arguments when he labels Israel as ‘fascist’ or Russia as a ‘defender of national sovereignty’?

Foreign policy is an important component of libertarianism, and if we continually allow our arguments to be defined by populist organizations like Raimondo’s antiwar.com then I fear libertarians will continue to be (rightly) ignored in the more traditional venues of foreign policy discussion.

Free Trade in Asia

Brandon Christensen History, Links , , , , , , ,

When you get the chance, check out this working paper on market integration and Asia during the 19th and early 20th centuries by David Chilosi and Giovanni Federico. The abstract:

This paper contributes to the debate on globalization and the great divergence with a comprehensive analysis of trends, causes and effects of the integration of Asia in the world market from 1800 to the eve of World War Two, based on a newly compiled data-set. The analysis finds that: most price convergence occurred before 1870, with only little disintegration in the inter-war years; market integration was determined to a large extent by the fall of Western trading monopolies; it implied significant static welfare gains and emerges as a major cause of substantial improvements in the terms of trade.

Again. the whole paper is worth reading. I think I might be more interested in it because of my own work on Dutch colonialism in southeast Asia and the collapse of the Dutch East Indies Company (a state-sponsored monopoly). With that being said, the paper is one of those “big picture” reads that folks of all disciplines ought to be interested in.

One of the most interesting aspects I found in the paper had to do with foreign trade. It has become popular nowadays to focus on institutions within a society for explanations on why some nations are rich and others are poor. This paper suggests that while institutions may be important, it is just not institutions that are careful to include domestic factions that are important for prosperity. The institutions that are created to deal with foreign affairs (mostly trade and diplomacy) also play an important role in the health and wealth of societies. (h/t goes to co-blogger Claudio Shikida)