elections

Assessing Elections in Poland and Argentina in the Context of Populism and Liberalism in Europe and South America II (liberalism in the classical sense of course).

Barry Stocker Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

The Argentine election was for the state president, who is head of government as well as head of state. An expected first round victory for the Peronist party (formally known as the Justicialist Party) candidate Daniel Scoli disappeared as he failed to clear 45%. He is clearly ahead of Mauricio Macri, Mayor of Buenos Aires, running on behalf of a three party centre-right alliance which contains the less statist, and populist elements of Argentine politics, but at least the hope exists of a second round triumph over the Peronists.

The third candidate is also a Peronist, showing the difficulty of overcoming that legacy and why even just turning the Presidential election into a competition between a Peronist and a non-Peronist is a victory of some kind. The sitting President Christine Kirchner pushed at the limits of the Argentine constitution, which prohibits more than two terms for any President, by alternating in power with her late husband Nestór Kirchner. If he had not died in 2010, we might now be looking forward to a fourth consecutive term in power for team Kirchner.

Peronists or the army have run Argentina almost constantly since the 1940s. The periods of army rule give a good indication of how successful Juan Perón and his widow Isabel (the third wife) were in stabilising Argentine society and political institutions. Nevertheless the Peronists have been the only party with a record of electoral success in Argentina and have improved from the chaos that Juan and Isabel instigated in more recent appearances in government.

As such a dominant party they have relatively centrist technocratic elements (most notably ex-president Carlos Menem) as well as the hard core statist populist nationalists. The Kirchner years have tended increasingly towards the more populist end, stoking nationalist sentiment over the islands in the south Atlantic known in Argentina as the Malvinas and in the UK, which has sovereignty over the islands, as the Falklands.

There has been economic growth under the Kirchners, but it has now very much slowed as policy has tended towards high inflation, currency controls, confrontation on debt owed to foreign creditors and increasing budget deficits. There has been social liberalism, most obviously, on attitudes to the LGBT communities, but in a context of nationalist sovereigntist politics. At least we can hope that if Scoli wins, he will feel obliged to shift towards genuine economic sustainability and a less populist politics.

In general, this adds to a feeling that South America has passed the peak of leftist populism which has influenced most countries outside Colombia in the last two decades. The more respectable end of that spectrum in Brazil’s Workers’ Party, which had been fairly successful economically, appears to be declining under the weight of corruption scandals, economic recession and incapacity in delivering on the more populist side. On the less respectable side, Venezuela has lost its status as model for the world’s radical left as corruption, economic decay, state brutality, election rigging and persecution of the opposition has become too extreme to ignore, particularly since the state socialist hegemony no longer has Hugo Chavez as a charismatic frontman.

Brazil and Venezuela were the models of the left, reformist and revolutionary respectively, and no longer have that status. If there is a model now it is the Evo Morales Presidency in Bolivia, which in some respects is radical left, but not consistently enough to get the kind of model status previously accorded to ‘Lula’ (now caught up in corruption scandals as his successor Dilma Rousseff) in Brazil and Chavez in Venezuela (whose successor Nicolás Maduro is a blatant and charmless neo-Stalinist thug-apparatchik). The Morales regime has received some cautious support from those inclined towards liberty on the grounds that he has pursued an overdue reduction of the power of traditional rent seeking elites in Bolivia and engaged in an economic pragmatism certainly distasteful to former Chavez admirers, and not even entirely comfortable for former admirers of Lula.

The leftist populist tide in south America has not entirely receded, but is now discussed with increasing nostalgia and an increasingly elegiac tone by left socialist observers, and as it has receded has tended to leave only embarrassments for the socialist left or reformist pragmatist examples of at least some interest to the liberty community. We are not looking at a strong shift towards liberty in all its forms in that region, but at least we see some shifts opening the possibilities of new movements towards liberty in markets, rule of law, individual rights, and social openness.

Assessing Elections in Poland and Argentina in the Context of Populism and Liberalism in Europe and South America I (liberalism in the classical sense of course).

Barry Stocker Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , ,

Election results I’ve seen today from weekend elections in Argentina and Poland and the more general thoughts they have inspired. Rather longer than I anticipated so posted in two parts, though not separated in time given that I am articulating immediate reactions.

The Polish parliamentary election has been bad news for those who share the perspective of Notes on Liberty in that Law and Justice, a social-national-religious sort of conservative party with strongly statist and populist inclinations, has taken over from the more open market/open society inclined Civic Platform. However, a new party, Modern (strictly speaking ‘.Modern’, but I’ll ignore that in the future as too likely to be mistaken for a typo, it is at least worth noting as suggesting a technocratic commitment to a digital age, reminiscent of the development of the e-state in post-Communist Estonia) which leans towards liberty in economic and social spheres, in comparison with most of Civic Platform and even more in comparison with Law and Justice, has entered the National Assembly, compensating for some of the votes lost by Civic Platform to the populist right.

We might at least hope that the next election in Poland produces a coalition government between Modern and Civic Platform, and hope that Law and Justice does not do too much harm during the coming years in which it will control the government and the (non-executive) presidency on its own.

The Polish political party structure has been confusingly variable since the end of Communism, with names of politicians reappearing from now extinct parties in new parties gathering a different if overlapping spectrum, and with different international partners. Modern’s leader, Ryszard Petru, is at least connected with the early phase of post-Communist politics as a disciple of Leszek Balcerowicz, who played a leading role in the transition to market capitalism and the earlier phase of liberal-centrist politics. Both Petru and Balcerowicz are ‘Europeanist’ in the sense of taking a positive attitude to the European Union, which is also the outlook of Civic Platform. Balcerowicz is even director of the College of Europe, a postgraduate institution in Bruges, Belgium, which educates many of those working in European institutions and in their general atmosphere.

This illustrates a major claim I put forward here about European politics, that is of a drift of market liberals, classical liberals and libertarians towards advocacy of the European Union, and an increasing tendency of the ‘Eurosceptic‘ right, even those with some libertarian-conservative history, to be caught up with hardcore populists even if some of the Eurosceptic right has pro-liberty inclinations. That part of the European right has always been more libertarian-conservative than libertarian-cosmopolitan.

The leading ideologue of libertarian-conservative Eurosceptics in Britain, Conservative Party Member of the European Parliament, Dan Hannan is very touchy about suggestions of backward looking nationalism and chauvinism, emphasising a cosmopolitan family background. However, despite these protestations, Hannan is a great believer in the superiority of British (and Anglosphere) ways, and in addition has always been for ‘democratic controls on immigration’, i.e. populist limitations on the market in labour and individual rights to mobility. The second leading British ideologue in that spectrum, and previously a close associate of Hannan, Douglas Carswell has joined the the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which has unmistakably populist inclinations in economic and social policy beyond restrictions on immigration. Hannan prefers to praise UKIP as ‘patriots’ rather than confront this.

Hannan engineered the formation of a eurosceptic right group in the European Parliament after David Cameron was persuaded that leaving the main centre-right group (European People’s Party) was a necessary price for keeping Tory Eurosceptics acquiescent with his leadership. Hannan’s European Conservative and Reformists Group does not include Modern or Civic Platform, but it does include Law and Justice, which gives a good idea of what part of the European political spectrum it appeals to, i.e. not those inclined to social and cosmopolitan liberty. Most disturbingly associate members include the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, i.e. the AKP of Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan associated with corruption, police brutality, politicisation of the judiciary, social media blocks, attacks on the media and all free speech, along with the demonisation of anyone not part of the more conservative parts of majority Turkish culture.

The idea that liberty can be combined with Eurosceptic discourse is declining, though it has been influential in some libertarian circles, particularly in the UK and Slovakia to be the best of my knowledge. There has been a recovery of pro-EU views (if highly qualified by the wish for reform) amongst the Greek liberty community, even after the recent Euro currency disasters. The Slovak eurosceptic libertarians seem to have collapsed. The Czech hero of European right wingers of that tendency, Vacláv Klaus, has turned out to be a harsh social conservative and Putin fellow traveler of a type obnoxious to the anyone of genuinely pro-liberty tendencies, leading to his exclusion from polite libertarian circles as seen in the loss of his Cato fellowship. A warning there surely about the perils of regarding the sovereigntist eurosceptic right as natural allies of liberty. Personally I believe the same applies to the Republican right in the US. That is of course another story, but just look at Donald Trump’s ascendancy and think about that. The German Free Democrats are making a come back after a period it seemed they might lose the most economically free market part of the electorate to AfD.

Small indications in some cases, but it all adds up to an overall and increasingly dominant picture (though course with exceptions) in which consistently pro-liberty forces support the European Union, which is very much the case in Turkey, even if desiring considerable reform. The strengthening of the populist right (Northern League in Italy, National Front in France, Swedish Democrats, Golden Dawn in Greece, Freedom Party in the Netherlands etc as well as those already mentioned) together with a populist-socialist surge has pushed those engaged with a consistent politics of individual rights and cosmopolitan openness towards a pro-EU centre.

The left populist surge has already receded in Greece where Syriza is in transition to standard social democracy while still using a more radical rhetoric, but has some energy elsewhere in Europe: Podemos in Spain, two left of social democracy parties in Portugal, Sinn Fein in Ireland, Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in Britain. The left populist surge is less strong than its right wing equivalent and despite what the socialist intelligentsia in the UK believe the socialist surge within the Labour Party does not reflect a broader shift in British public opinion. Anyway, we are in a period where pro-liberty forces are coalescing with centrist forces in defence of a continuing EU of some kind, with some limitations on national sovereignty, not completely closed to refugees, not in thrall to an enclosed defensive traditionalist, legacy Christian identity politics.

“Rand Paul’s Libertarian Lecture in New Hampshire”

Brandon Christensen Law, Politics , , , , ,

That’s the title of this short piece of reporting by the Weekly Standard‘s Michael Warren (the Weekly Standard is a neoconservative outlet). I recommend the whole thing, but cannot resist sharing an excerpt:

Without mentioning his name, Paul took on fellow Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who may be running for president and who spoke to the conference just a few minutes after Paul. Paul and Graham were on opposing sides during a 2011 Senate debate on indefinite detention of American citizens accused of terrorism. Graham’s argument was that these Americans ought to be classified as unlawful enemy combatants, and that the rules of war apply so long as Congress has authorized military action. Enemy combatants can be detained for as long as hostilities continue or when Congress otherwise says so, goes the thinking. “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer. You’re an enemy combatant,'” Graham had said during the floor debate.

But Paul didn’t see it that way.

“One of them said, ‘When they ask for a lawyer, you just tell them to shut up.’ Really? That’s the kind of discourse we’re going to have in our country? Tell them to shut up?” Paul said. “You would send an American citizen to Guantanamo Bay without a lawyer, without a trial? He said, ‘Yeah, if they’re dangerous.’”

Paul cracked a smile as he launched into full libertarian lecture mode.

“It sort of begs the question, doesn’t it? Who gets to decide who’s dangerous and who’s not dangerous?” he said, pacing back and forth across the stage in blue jeans and without a jacket. “Has there been a time in our history when we decided who was dangerous based on the color of your skin? Has there been a time in our history when we decided someone was dangerous because of different beliefs, didn’t look like us, or had a different religion? Are we going to give up on our right to trial so easily?”

Say what you will about Paul, but you won’t see anybody else in the primaries discussing the issues he discusses. The rest of the article has a lot more great stuff, and not only about the battle for the soul of the GOP, but bigger issues – thanks in part to Paul’s initiatives in the Senate, but also to the work of libertarian theorists and activists for the good part of four decades – such as asset forfeiture. Also, more subtly, you can find a penetrating insight into democracy itself (and if you find it, brag about it in the ‘comments’ threads, as I’d like to discuss it further). (h/t James Parsons)

Fifty Years of Voting

Warren Gibson Politics , , , , , , , ,

I cast my first vote in 1964, shortly after turning 21, the legal voting age in those days. I voted for Barry Goldwater who, although he described himself as a conservative, didn’t fit that category by today’s standards. He was for free markets but he was not particularly religious and he held a laissez-faire attitude toward alternate lifestyles. He was, unfortunately, a war hawk, so he wouldn’t fit very well into today’s libertarian category, either.

Four years later I voted for Richard Nixon, sad to say. I somehow thought he was for free markets, being a Republican. I was cured of that delusion by a wakeup call at 8:15 AM on Monday, August 16, 1971. That was the moment I saw the headline in the L.A. Times announcing Nixon’s dastardly Sunday evening perfidy: price controls, closing the gold window, and an import tariff surcharge. All of these statist actions very quickly played out disastrously. Their personal import was to cure me of any notion that Republicans were necessarily friends of liberty. I became a libertarian that Monday morning and never looked back.

Of course that decision meant never again voting for a winner.  I voted for John Hospers in 1972, and he actually got one electoral vote from a renegade Republican elector, Roger MacBride, who was the LP candidate in 1976. Ed Clark’s 1980 campaign on the Libertarian ticket, generously funded by the Koch brothers, gave me brief hope for the new party, which we all know has come to naught. I’ve “wasted” my vote on Libertarian candidates ever since. Thanks to Proposition 14 in California, I can only vote for Libertarians in the primary elections; minor parties are shut out of the general election. In many races the general election is a contest between two Democrats. I resist any urge to vote for the lesser evil of the two so now I just leave most of my ballot blank and vote against all tax measures.

If we must have voting, I offer a couple of common-sense reforms:

  • Raise the voting age to 30. People under that age are clueless.
  • Require voters to pass a stiff qualification exam, something far more rigorous than the simple literacy tests of yore.
  • Institute a stiff poll tax, at least enough to cover election costs. Why force non-voters to pay?

I’m tempted to throw in land ownership as another criterion, but the foregoing should suffice. Of course this reform would leave many people feeling disenfranchised, but so what? Most people are far too ignorant to judge issues and candidates rationally and should be kept away from voting booths at all costs. Anyway, the system would leave a path open for people to earn enfranchisement by working hard to satisfy the above criteria.

Would I apply for enfranchisement under my proposed system?  No way; I have better things to do.  Will I vote this year?  I suppose so. I have no idea what will be on the ballot, but there will doubtless be some lame-brain propositions to vote against.

Brazilian Elections 2014: Results and Problems

Lucas G. Freire Politics , ,

I’ve recently posted on the Brazilian Presidential Elections of 2014. Brazilians also voted for State Senate, National Senate and Congress and State Governor.

The top most voted candidates in the Presidential Elections make the cut to the second round (unless the top candidate dominates by a considerably wide margin).

Labour Party incumbent Dilma Rousseff was the most voted candidate with 41% of the votes. Social-Democrat Aécio Neves will challenge her in the second round – he got 34% of the votes, whereas Marina Silva of the Socialist Party was the choice of 21% of the voters.

This comes as a big surprise, since Neves and Silva were technically tied after the final poll before the elections. Because of the power that polls have to potentially influence the vote, rumours are that Aécio had been faring much better, but that the polling methodology had been compromised.

A technical issue with the electronic vote machines has been denounced by several voters in different parts of the country. Some people complained they couldn’t choose Neves as their candidate, because the machines wouldn’t allow it. A police report was issued in at least one incident related to faulty machines, which allegedly shifted votes in favour of the incumbent candidate. A simple internet search reveals stories of people who tried to set the machines on fire, among other isolated episodes.

Former footballer and US 1994 World Cup champion Romário is also making the headlines. Romário has been a Congressman for some time. He has adopted a pragmatic anti-corruption approach during his term. This time, he ran for the Senate. With more than 5 million votes, Romário is the most voted Senator in the history of the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Neves and Rousseff will have only a few weeks to carry on their campaigns and debates before the final decision.

Brazilian Elections 2014: Preview

Lucas G. Freire Current Events, Politics , ,

Tomorrow, when Brazilians vote for President, the most likely outcome is that we’ll know the names of two candidates that made the cut for the second round of elections. And the incumbent Dilma Rousseff is likely to be one of them.

The candidates

Labour Party candidate and current President Rousseff is leading the polls, but in everyday conversation she’s arguably the least popular candidate. There’s nothing fresh in her platform, and it’s safe to assume a second Rousseff term would look pretty much the same as the first term: unimpressive.

Environmentalist Marina Silva, of the Socialist Party, has surprisingly defended a centrist and pragmatic economic agenda, a slight shift to the right, if compared to Rousseff’s platform. Amongst other things, Silva would push for the autonomy of Brazil’s Central Bank, along the lines of the Fed in the US.

Aécio Neves, a Social-Democrat, has a similar centrist agenda, but clothed in small-government rhetoric – again, out of pragmatism and in pursuit of more efficiency, and not necessarily out of principle. Pundits have analysed Neves’ debate performance and he seems to come across as the most well-prepared candidate in the field.

Compulsory Democracy

We’re to expect a large turnout, due to a peculiar arrangement in Brazilian law: voting is compulsory to all citizens, residents and non-residents alike, over the age of 18, with few exceptions.

In order to vote, it’s necessary to show a voter’s ‘permit.’ If a citizen fails to turn up to vote, that permit number will have a negative record. Citizens who can’t make it in time will have a deadline to turn up in electoral court to justify why they didn’t vote. If there’s a good reason, they get a stamp and a document clearing their voters ‘record’. If the absence isn’t ‘justified,’ then a fine is due.

Votes are cast electronically. Each voter will use a cabin with a machine where a candidate number must be entered. In case the number is incorrect, it’s possible to correct the vote. In case the number hasn’t been assigned to any candidate, the vote is ‘nullified’. Citizens also have the right to a blank vote. The transparency of this system has ben questioned on several occasions, not least because of the risk of tampering with the machines.

Final Sprint

Marina Silva’s campaign was a great surprise, since her party’s nominee died in a plane crash. She quickly rose in popularity and took the second place in the polls. Critics pointed out that Silva was one of the founders of the Labour Party – President Rousseff’s party, and then defected to the Green Party and later joined the Socialist Party, where she currently is. A key objection to her campaign was the similarity between her ideological background and that of the President’s.

Speaking of background, Aécio Neves’ family story was another factor emerging in this campaign. Neves was an unlikely nominee initially, because most of his party’s base and its inner circle are concentrated in São Paulo, whereas Neves made his political career in the neighbouring state of Minas Gerais. Neves’ grandfather was the first President elected after the end of military rule in Brazil (1985), but he died tragically before being sworn in. Since then, the name Neves has been associated to the many political ironies of Brazilian history.

For a few weeks, Silva sat comfortably in the second position. However, after a series of TV debates, it became clear that President Rousseff was struggling to get her points across, and that Neves was well-prepared and well-advised. The incumbent lost some points in the polls while Neves came to a surprising rise in the final sprint, overtaking Silva in the second place.

The common outcome of Brazilian presidential elections is a smaller question mark – from a pool of five or more candidates, the top most voted are generally selected for a second round, to take place a few weeks later. This is likely to happen again, but it’s hard to predict who will get the ticket to challenge Rousseff.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
  1. Political scientist Jason Sorens on the elections in Europe (best summary I’ve read; it’s short, sweet, and to the point)
  2. Examining Piketty’s data sources for US wealth inequality (Part 4 of 4)
  3. Greece the Establishment Clause: Clarence Thomas’s Church-State Originalism
  4. Strong Words and Large Letters
  5. The African Muslim Fist-Bump
  6. Why US Intervention in Nigeria is a Bad Idea

Brandon Vindicated (and Relieved!)

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

I read a lot of blogs in my spare time, and one of my favorites is the Monkey Cage, a blogging consortium made up of technocratic, internationalist-minded Left-wing political science professors. They rarely disappoint. I know what you’re thinking, but if I could choose which faction of the left I would want opposing libertarian policies it would be the technocratic Left. It a movement that has individual liberty in mind and is, as I mentioned, internationally-minded.

Notice also how I take into account the fact that an opposition to my own views are a necessary component of my utopia. Too many advocates of liberty don’t realize this when they argue about politics. Which factions would play the role of opposition in an anarcho-capitalist paradise, for example? It seems to me that the quality of one’s perfect opposition is actually quite a good gauge for measuring the quality of one’s political ideal (if I do say so myself!).

Anyway, Patrick Egan, of NYU, has a new post up explaining that the economy was indeed the central issue of the election, and then busts out the data to back up his argument (and help me save face!). I think this is an important point because I’ve already made the rounds around the blogosphere and many otherwise smart, competent people seem to want to chalk up Obama’s victory to something other than the economy.

From Egan’s post: Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Links , , , , , , , , , ,
  1. How Government Sort Of Created the Internet. Fascinating read from the Freeman.
  2. What Happened? Will Wilkinson asks the tough question in the aftermath of a debate which I missed, but heard that Romney roundly is perceived to have won.
  3. The Next Industrial Revolution (it’s going to be in goods and services). Arnold Kling has written about this before. (h/t Tyler Cowen)
  4. Beirut: Security, Surveillance, and Navigation. As I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into anthropology, I’ve found that many anthropologists never get past the glorified journalism aspect of the discipline associated with introductory courses. This is a good example of that, but still worth a gander.

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.

Italy and National Debt and Everyone Else

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

I have been inactive. Some catching up to do. I will go straight to the Italian situation because I don’t see it addressed in the media with anything resembling insight based on good information. I am it by default.

It’s human nature I suppose to want simple solutions to complex problems and easy solutions to hard problems. Italy is out of the swamp and therefore, the Euro is saved and therefore, the sterco is not going to hit the fan on this side of the Atlantic. Reason: Old bad boy Silvio Berlusconi resigned. Not much analysis, not much going below the surface by the American press. I have to do their elementary work for them.

First, I suspect there is a monstrous confusion in the minds of many in the media between the accounts of Italy, the state, the Italian republic on the one hand, and the figures pertaining to the Italian economy, on the other hand. The Italian economy comprises a few highly visible major corporations such as Fiat and myriads of small businesses.

The Italian Republic is in debt. The Italian economy is doing well. It’s on the healthy side of economies of developed countries. It’s a lot better than Japan’s for instance. It’s also true that, as elsewhere in Europe, the budget of the state is large relative to the national economy. My bet is that it is smaller than say, in France, or in Sweden, or even in Germany, because the black economy in Italy is so large. The Italian government is just not able to get its grubby little hands on much of what’s generated within Italy. Nevertheless, it’s true that the government budget and the private sector economy influence each other in Italy, as they do elsewhere. That’s not excuse to confuse the one with the other. My wife and I influence each other. It does no mean that we are one and the same. (For one thing, she is both attractive and intelligent.)

Berlusconi did not accumulate the large sovereign debt of the Italian Republic. The debt goes back a long way, some say to the aftermath of WWII. Successive governments just left it alone or they contributed to it. Continue reading →

Around the Web

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

Co-editor Fred Foldvary on the Buffet Misrule.

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

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

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

Guess who else got their hands on Libyan weapons?

From the Comments: A Note on the Upcoming French Elections

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, Economics , , , , , ,

Jacques Delacroix has belatedly responded (he’s retired!) to an inquiry about the upcoming French elections. Happening History posed the following question to Dr. Delacroix:

I found your post very interesting. One thing I found particularly interesting was your remarks on the French left. Since the presidential election is coming up soon, what do you think would happen to how the financial mess in Europe is being handled if the Socialist candidate were elected considering the major role France plays? How likely do you think it is that Hollande could win?

Dr J’s response deserves to be read by all: Continue reading →

Republican Presidential Primaries

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , ,

I don’t have any witty comments or analysis because I have not been watching any of the debates or following them with any vigor. I heard Romney won both Michigan and Arizona last night, which means he’ll probably get the nomination.

What are the chances that he will have a smooth ride through the GOP convention? I think Santorum and Gingrich will fall in line and support him, but Ron Paul is quietly sweeping up delegates and I think he is going to make a major stink at the convention. He will not get too radical because of his son’s future in the Party, but he’s going to force Romney to make some concessions.

I think Paul will press him on a number of issues, but Romney will only capitulate to the Federal Reserve argument Paul so often speaks about. Gold Commission 2013?

None of this matters, of course. Obama will be re-elected. From a pragmatic point of view: he has killed bin Laden, waged a successful air war against a now-dead dictator in the Middle East, and not managed to get us into any more quagmires (yet). Continue reading →

Iraq, War, and the Litmus Test of Rationality: Ron Paul Edition

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics, Religion , , , , , , ,

The Republican Presidential debates have been on TV for the past, what?, five or six months now, and I am proud to admit that I haven’t watched a single one of them.  By definition I am a left-leaning libertarian who thinks that free markets, limited government, and a humble foreign policy are the best tools to achieve social harmony, prosperity, and world peace.

So I had basically made up my mind on who I was going to vote for prior to the whole campaign season: Gary Johnson.  Now, co-editor Fred Foldvary has some very pertinent critiques of Governor Johnson’s tax policy proposals, but on the whole, I still think he is by far the best man to get my vote.

Because Gary Johnson does not have any baggage, a solid record while in office, and a personality that does not attract the worst of the worst to his message, he was essentially dead on arrival when he announced his Presidential campaign.  The media and its horse race would have none of it.  So he bolted the Republican Party and is now fighting for the Libertarian Party’s nomination.

I think this is a big mistake.  I think he should have stayed in the Republican Party and planned ahead for 2016.  Now, he is going to be the next Ron Paul, who also bolted the Republican Party to run as a Libertarian in 1988.  That move has cost him politically, and it is a shame that Johnson was too hot-headed with the national Party apparatus’ dismissal of his campaign. Continue reading →