Friedrich Hayek: Champion of Liberty

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, Links, Politics , , , , ,

From Richard Epstein:

Thus Hayek’s 1940 contribution to the “Socialist Calculation” debate debunked the then-fashionable notion that master planners could achieve the economic nirvana of running a centralized economy in which they obtain whatever distribution of income they choose while simultaneously making sound allocations of both labor and capital, just like in Soviet Russia.

Hayek exposed this fool’s mission by stressing how no given individual or group could obtain and organize the needed information about supply and demand conditions throughout the economy. The virtue of the price system was its use of a common unit of measurement—money—to allow various actors to compete for a given resource without having to lay bare why they need any particular good or service. The seller need only accept the highest bid, without nosing around in other people’s business. The interaction between buyers and sellers allows for constant incremental adjustments of both price and quantity. Old information gets updated in a quick and reliable way, thereby eluding the administrative gauntlet of the socialist state.

This essay, which y’all should read, was sparked by the attacks on Rep. Paul Ryan’s supposed intellectual influences F.A. Hayek and Ayn Rand.

The Oppression of American Labor

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

Over at the Real-World Economics blog, economist Edward Fullbrook presents a graph of labor’s demise in the United States as well as an article from Al-Jazeera English titled America in Denial that promotes Fullbrook’s new book.

Fullbrook brings it to the attention of work-weary Americans that they work far too many hours per year compared to other rich societies in the West (there are, of course, no rich societies outside of the West, but that’s a different blog for a different day).

Behold! The cold, hard facts informing American workers of their own oppression! Continue reading →

Breakfast Spoiled by “Liberal” Paean

Warren Gibson Politics , , , , ,

This morning’s Wall Street Journal had an op ed piece (may be gated) by one Alan Colmes whose book “Thank the Liberals for Saving America” is just now coming out.  It’s a paean to the “liberal” policies of Lyndon Johnson and his successors, featuring a big photo of LBJ and Lady Bird under a “great society” banner.  I had to turn the page quickly as I was in the middle of breakfast, but have now reopened and read the whole thing.  Since the chances of the Journal publishing a rebuttal from me are essentially nil, I decided to inflict my response on my readership.  Both of you.

The piece brought back memories of the visceral disgust I used to feel at the sight of LBJ when he was in office even though I wasn’t much attuned to politics in those days.  I would be hard pressed to say who’s worse, Obama or Johnson.

To begin with, Johnson was a blatant criminal.  He and his wife got rich by manipulating radio and television licenses in Texas.  He stole the primary election in 1948 which got him into the Senate.  He may have been complicit in stealing Texas electoral votes in 1960.

But what of the article?  Most of it is a recitation of the accomplishments of “liberal” programs including food stamps, health care, bailouts, marriage equality, and women’s rights.  In essence, he tells us that the beneficiaries of “liberal” welfare programs benefited from them, and they’re not all lazy bums.

Well, duh.  This is the sort of shallow thinking that characterizes “liberal” discourse.  No recognition of short-term or long-term consequences.  No acknowledgement of public-choice insights into the perverse incentives of welfare administrators whose primary motive is to retain and expand their empires.

An overlooked consequence: the erosion of incentives to take responsibility for one’s own life; instead these programs have instilled a world-owes-me-a-living attitude which by now spans multiple generations of welfare recipients.

An overlooked consequence: the massive buildup of debt.

An overlooked consequence: the loss of personal freedom that must follow the loss of economic freedom as Hayek so eloquently showed in “The Road to Serfdom.”

An overlooked consequence: the insight of Mises that interventions invariably lead to outcomes contrary to the intentions of the intervenors, who then call for yet more interventions.  In our mixed economy, a blend of free markets and government force, markets take the blame for every problem.  And so the market takes the blame for everything.  As Jeff Hummel says, market failures are to be cured by more government; government failures are to be cured by more government.

Thanks to the “liberals” and the conservatives who have failed to mount a principled opposition in domestic affairs, and thanks to both parties who have launched disastrous foreign wars, we are hurtling toward an American brand of fascist dictatorship.

Fact-Checking Politicians

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , ,

I know the last thing everybody wants to hear is another political rant, but I’m going to give it to you anyway.

Has anybody noticed the recent slew of “fact-checking” sheets and reports that have come out since Paul Ryan’s VP speech at the GOP convention*?

Does it really come as a shock to people to find out that politicians lie? I can’t wait to see the other side come out with the same kinds of reports after Joe Biden and the current demagogue-in-chief give their speeches.

Politicians lie? Really? Who would’ve thunk…

Here’s my two cents: Democrats lie more often than Republicans. Hands down. There are always exceptions to the rules, and being more honest than the Democratic Party is not exactly a milestone achievement.

Many people said this race might be the most interesting in a while (thanks to the protection of free speech that Citizens United upheld), but Continue reading →

The Blonde Queen of the Lower Andes: A Story

Jacques Delacroix History , , ,

Thinking all the time about this country’s situation puts me in a blue funk. Here is a story to cheer me and you up. It’s one of my best.

I reached that mid-size Bolivian city in the lower Andes, on a research trip, the day before Bastille Day. I was an old undergraduate at Stanford at the time and still a French citizen. I reported my presence to the French consul, as required by law, as technically a member of the French Navy reserve. The consul was a Bolivian doctor who had studied in France and subsequently married, and then, divorced, a French woman. Bolivia being a landlocked country (bitterly so), the consul was not overwhelmed with naval business. He was glad to see me nevertheless and very cordial. He pressed me to attend the party he would give the next day on the occasion of the French national day.

It was a pleasant but schizoid event, starting with good French Champagne and ending with chicha, the soupy, local artisan corn beer. (Bolivians say that the fermentation of really good chicha starts with the spit of virgins. Just to make sure, they ask tiny girls to spit in the brew.) There was the usual mix of French expatriates and of Francophiles, most of the latter, probably silly unconditional Francophiles, plus some smart freeloaders.

The French expatriates often land in a particular town of a particular country at a particular time for no particular reason. They may have been heading somewhere else and gotten stuck along the way. They always include wives and former wives of natives who may have divorced them, or died. Coming from different epochs (such as before and after WWII), they form historical strata, each remembering a different France, and they entertain disparate and often incompatible visions of the fatherland. They have developed new habits in the country where they live and, without knowing it, they have drifted far from their culture of origin. That culture of origin, meanwhile, is itself changing, but in a different direction. Many expatriates disseminate more or less innocently patently false notions about the country where they were raised. Their French self is forever a young person, or even a child. Their own children are simply natives of their land of residence with a smattering of the French language and no real curiosity, forever strangers to their parents. Continue reading →

Sex and Economics (And Karl Marx Too!)

Brandon Christensen Economics , , , , ,

The concept of economic reproduction is emphasized in the Marxian school of economic thought. In Marxist theory, the conditions for production are continuously re-created as a circular flow. The concept of the circular flow of both goods and of factor-inputs was first developed by the French economists of the 1700s, who called their theory of natural economic laws “Physiocracy.” The factors or categories of inputs are land, labor, and capital goods.

From co-editor Fred Foldvary. Do read the whole fascinating article. Many conservatives in the US (as well as libertarians) don’t give Karl Marx the time of day he deserves in order for thoughtful, polite discourse to take place. Many on the Right decry (and rightly so) the various strawmen that Leftists erect when attacking the proponents of private property, personal wealth and international trade, but are we any better when it comes to debunking Leftist arguments? Continue reading →

Class Warfare, Then and Now

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History, Politics , , , ,

These recent developments in labor relations show how changed market conditions offer welcome correctives to the New Deal approach. It is just these changes that are at risk under an Obama administration whose main agenda tracks Roosevelt’s early one: Vilify the rich as unproductive ciphers of society and work toward a progressive tax rate structure; be hostile toward the growth of international trade by denouncing firms that outsource jobs as the enemies of domestic labor; continue to work in favor of extensive agricultural subsidies for ethanol and other farm crops, no matter how great of a disruption these impose on domestic and foreign food markets; and insist upon a rich set of unsustainable healthcare benefits through Medicare and Medicaid.

This is from Richard Epstein. Okay, so Obama is a demagogue, a thief and a murderer. Is Mitt Romney really any better? Really?

I’m voting for Gary Johnson (if I vote at all).

Election Reform: a Modest Proposal

Warren Gibson Politics , , , , ,

Texas and other states have passed laws requiring voters to present valid ID at their polling place.  How could this be controversial?  These days we have to present ID to get on Amtrak, pick up mail at the post office, transact with a bank teller, etc., etc.  Is proper ID any less important for voting?  But a court recently struck down the Texas law saying it impacts minorities disproportionately.  Hummph.  If laws against aggravated assault affect minorities disproportionately should those be overturned also?

But why bother about this issue?  There surely is some voter fraud happening, but how much does it matter?  The real problem with democracy is simply the results.  The worst get on top, as Hayek put it, Exhibit A being, of course, the Sewer Rat in the White House.  As the electorate has broadened, starting with white male landowners at the Founding all the way down to today’s situation where anyone with a pulse who is at least 18 and claims to be a citizen can vote, and with direct election of senators in between, the quality of elected officials has gone steadily downhill.  Barack Obama!  Harry Reid!  Mike Huckabee!  Nancy Pelosi!  Compare this crew with George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson.  Are you sick at your stomach yet?

Herewith a modest reform proposal:

  1. Raise the voting age to 30
  2. Disqualify all government employees and all recipients of any government entitlement: social security, medicare, etc.
  3. Adopt a stiff qualification exam, to be re-taken every five years
  4. Mandate a poll tax sufficient to cover election expenses

Let’s now consider objections one by one:

Objection: people would feel disenfranchised. People who lost their vote would be bummed, no doubt, but they would still have the prospect of earning a vote to aspire to.  Voting would be seen as a privilege to be earned, and the quality of votes cast would skyrocket as would the quality of campaign rhetoric.

So as not to cause too much upset, the voting age could be raised gradually and the poll tax raised in steps.

Objection: corruption. It might be worthwhile for special interests to track down individual voters and offer them bribes or intimidation.  But if the voter roles were shrunk by a factor of a thousand, for the sake of argument, that would still leave a hundred thousand or so voters nationwide.  That leaves quite a bit of effort for lobbyists and other crooks to track them all down.

Besides, corruption is proportional to the amount of power that resides with government.  Regulation of lobbyists, campaign reform and all that will never mean anything as long as so much money and power are at the disposal of politicians.  My voter reform proposal will lead to a drastic shrinkage of government and thus drastically reduced rent-seeking opportunities and incentives.

Furthermore, as things stand with campaign promises.  How much worse would outright cash bribes be?

Objection: bias. Outcomes would be skewed toward the viewpoints of the eligible voters, which would not be representative of the general population.  Exactly!  The whole point is to restrict voting to an elite who can think and act rationally and not be swayed by the sort of demagogic appeals we hear from the aforementioned politicians and their ilk.

Is this idea likely to gain traction?  Not any time soon, but it’s fun to speculate.  An interesting alternative is Fred Foldvary’s “cellular democracy.”  Perhaps he’ll be moved to post that idea here.

Libertarian Internationalism and the Problem of World Government

Brandon Christensen Law , , , ,

Recently, I posted some musings on the writings of many libertarian intellectuals concerning world government. It is important to distinguish, really quickly and in blog form, that libertarians are internationalists, and internationalists are individualists. Indeed, the only logical conclusion of individualism is internationalism.

When libertarians speak of world government, though, we are not speaking of economic planning as has been undertaken by national governments (vigorously and largely unopposed) since the turn of the 20th century. Indeed, Hayek saw the problems we now see with supranational economic planning in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom: Continue reading →

More on China and Irrational Fears in Conservative Circles

Brandon Christensen Current Events , ,

Writes Minxin Pei:

The latest news from Beijing is indicative of Chinese weakness: a persistent slowdown of economic growth, a glut of unsold goods, rising bad bank loans, a bursting real estate bubble, and a vicious power struggle at the top, coupled with unending political scandals. Many factors that have powered China’s rise, such as the demographic dividend, disregard for the environment, supercheap labor, and virtually unlimited access to external markets, are either receding or disappearing.

Yet China’s declining fortunes have not registered with U.S. elites, let alone the American public.

Do read the rest of the article. I’ve said as much on this blog before, and there is certainly no reason to fear a rising Beijing. Nor is there a good reason to spend more money on East Asian “defense” projects or stifle growth at home by throwing up isolationist tariffs. (h/t Daniel Larison)

Revamped and Reenergized

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , ,

I’m going to begin some pretty intensive research and writing projects over the next month and a half, so you probably won’t hear from me much (keep the hooting and hollering to yourselves, please!).

A couple of quick items of blogging business:

One of our loyal readers, Hank Moore, has generously volunteered to become the administrator of our revamped Facebook page. You can check out what he has been doing here. Thank you so much Hank! Honorable men are hard to come by these days.

I’ve been listening to this one song over and over again for the past three weeks. Sometimes I’ll even listen to the rest of the album, too.

If you haven’t heard yet, the ‘Recommendations‘ section has been in a steady process of renovation since the blog launched, and now I like what I’m beginning to see. let us know what you think. I think it does a good job of flexing the intellectual firepower of the libertarian movement (broadly construed).

Have a great weekend everybody!

One Sure Thing About Globalization – The American Motion Pictures Industry World Hegemony Part 5

Jacques Delacroix Economics , , , , ,

[Editor’s note: this lecture was delivered to the Leavey Institute of Santa Clara University in 2003. You can find it reproduced in whole here]

The Virtuous Global Effects of American Motion Pictures Hegemony

If one concedes the possibility that screen products generate or encourage violence, one must also accepts the possibility that they may affect behavior in socially desirable ways. (One can’t have it both ways: Television and, by extension, the cinema are either impotent or they may exercise a virtuous influence, as well as a pernicious one.) Thus, Curtin (1999) argues that satellite television circulates globally beneficently subversive (i.e. non-traditional), images of femininity, and therefore, alternative ways of being a woman. A moving testimony comes from the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadaré (1999): During the long night of Albanian communism (Albania was the most isolated country on Earth for forty years. Its paranoiac regime ended up cutting off relations with all countries except North Korea), Kadaré comments at length on how frequent exposure to garden–variety Western television courtroom drama ultimately induced among Albanians a distaste for personal blood feuds as old- fashioned or un-modern.

So, I pose the question: What virtuous influence may the ubiquitous American movies have on the rest of the world and, in particular, on the poor and on the downtrodden everywhere?

Even if one subscribes to the idea that movies don’t do much directly to alter either the values or the behavior of viewers, they inadvertently carry factual information, in their settings, as well as in the mundane aspects of their plots. I don’t see how some of that information cannot cumulatively have a liberating effect on those who live under less fortunate circumstances. American movies are shot mostly in the US (sometimes in Canada).They are directed mostly by American directors (or by Americanized Brits). Although Hollywood is one of the world centers of political correctness and of left-wing piousness, Hollywood films cannot help but convey to global audiences important realities of American life (and generic features of life in Western, secular, democratic, capitalist societies, in general). Among these: Continue reading →

Quick Question

Brandon Christensen Books, History , ,

I was hoping somebody out there could answer for me. Why is Ludwig von Mises such a bad ass? From the foreign policy section of Liberalism:

The right of self-determination works to the advantage only of those who comprise the majority. In order to protect minorities as well, domestic measures are required, of which we shall first consider those involving the national policy in regard to education.

In most countries today school attendance, or at least private instruction, is compulsory. Parents are obliged to send their children to school for a certain number of years or, in lieu of this public instruction at school, to have them given equivalent instruction at home. It is pointless to go into the reasons that were advanced for and against compulsory education when the matter was still a live issue. They do not have the slightest relevance to the problem as it exists today. There is only one argument that has any bearing at all on this question, viz., that continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace.

The inhabitants of London, Paris, and Berlin will no doubt find such a statement completely incredible. What in the world does compulsory education have to do with war and peace? One must not, however, judge this question, as one does so many others, exclusively from the point of view of the peoples of Western Europe. In London, Paris, and Berlin, the problem of compulsory education is, to be sure, easily solved. In these cities no doubt can arise as to which language is to be used in giving instruction. The population that lives in these cities and sends its children to school may be considered, by and large, of homogeneous nationality. But even the non-English-speaking people who live in London find it in the obvious interest of their children that instruction is given in English and in no other language, and things are not different in Paris and Berlin.

However, the problem of compulsory education has an entirely different significance in those extensive areas in which peoples speaking different languages live together side by side and intermingled in polyglot confusion. Here the question of which language is to be made the basis of instruction assumes crucial importance. A decision one way or the other can, over the years, determine the nationality of a whole area. The school can alienate children from the nationality to which their parents belong and can be used as a means of oppressing whole nationalities. Whoever controls the schools has the power to injure other nationalities and to benefit his own.

I’m going to keep reading (you should too) and hopefully write up a little sum-sum about what I’ve learned soon.

Dr D. on Sex, Homosexuality, Language Usage

Jacques Delacroix Comments, Current Events, History , , , , , , , ,

A reader, MM, sent a comment criticizing an off-hand, snide remark I had made in my micro-essay, “Sex Advice.” I welcome the opportunity MM gives me to take him into the alley and beat him to a pulp. His full comment:

Though usually considered much of a stick-in-the-mud regarding language, and especially neologisms, I must offer a cordial disagreement regarding the word “gender” when used instead of “sex.”

Ordinarily I despise changing the language (you should see, for example, my battles with the ignorami who say “healthy” when they mean “healthful”), but when a change improves and clarifies, then I can not only accept but embrace it.

You are right that “gender” was originally intended for language references — more important in French and other furrin tongues — but since “sex” has become such an important, or at least such an ever-present, part of everyday life, having a separate word, such as “gender,” keeps the meaning clear.

I mean, I have compromised my formerly inviolate principles so that now I even use the word “gay” rather than “homosexual,” after swearing I would never degrade the language in that fashion.

But, after all, “gay” is the polite term, the one preferred by the people to whom it applies.

So, if I can change, linguistically, so can you.

MM’s justification for the widespread substitution of “gender” for “sex”makes sense. I agree that it clarifies. However, it ignores the fact that such a change rarely occurs as a result of a technical-rational process. Such changes, this one in particular, are loaded with sociological and, with political importance. To ignore them is to assent. Winning the substitution of one word for another is like winning an election forever, an election in which the winning party never even ran and the opposition never campaigned. What I am going to say about “gender” applies even better to “gay.” Continue reading →

Libertarians and World Government

Brandon Christensen Law , , , , , ,

I’ve been doing a little bit of side reading on capitalism and charity and I came across some of Ludwig von Mises’s writings on foreign policy. I’ll have a longer post on his foreign policy arguments in the future (promise!) but for now lemme just say it falls roughly in line with many other classical liberals.

One interesting tidbit about classical liberals like Mises, Hayek, and Adam Smith is that they were actually very much in favor of some kind of world governing body that would be able to standardize laws and further erode the arbitrary borders drawn up by statesmen over the course of centuries. However, they were much more realistic about the practicality of such an endeavor, as well as suspicious of other kinds of international government being espoused by various thinkers (in Smith’s time, this was done by despots and Popes [same thing!], and in Hayek’s and Mises’s time this was done by despots and socialists [again, same thing!]).

This realism should not be confused, though, with opposition to an international governing body charged with codifying a standard, minimum set of global laws concerning trade, private property, individual rights, and, of course, peace.

Again, I’ll have a longer post explaining the foreign policy arguments of classical liberals in the near future, but for now this juicy little tidbit is all I can offer y’all. You can find Mises’s musings on foreign policy in his book Liberalism (available to read for free at mises.org).