Capitalism – Rolling Doughnut

I have pessimistic thoughts on protests

Protesting is necessary. There are injustices in the world that won’t fix themselves. It takes commitment and bravery to fight because power, the cause of most injustice, loves compliance.

Protest is also dangerous. Some of that is because power¹ loves compliance. Protest needs to remain focused and controlled. I don’t want to say “non-threatening”, since I don’t mean a willingness to accept whatever sham of rights power is willing to concede. No, not that. But at best it will be unpleasant. People whose rights aren’t violated – or who are content to have their rights violated, especially – will let you know you should like having your rights violated. They are miserable people. It will be necessary to face and ignore that nastiness.

But the danger I’m thinking of is more the danger from unleashing energy into combatting injustice. It’s easy to lose the thread on the principle involved in the fight. It’s inviting for anyone with a message to attach themselves to a protest and hijack it for other purposes. It isn’t easy to control that, either, because it’s seductive to think, “More people are joining us, we’re winning!”. Maybe, but maybe not.

Obviously the last couple days are on my mind. The protests from both Friday and Saturday reflect my point. Friday it was the predictable violence². It isn’t inevitable with a protest with a focused message, but Friday’s protests weren’t focused. “Anti-Trump” is a choose-your-own-adventure opportunity for grievances. But that also means it’s foolish to judge opposition to Trump on this inevitable violence.

Yesterday’s protest resulted in no violence, as far as I’m aware. I think that has much to do with coherence on the message. The danger awaits, though, for what the marches hope to accomplish. I’ve seen many astute voices pointing out that yesterday was the beginning. That’s correct. The work begins now. But I don’t think that work is to keep the momentum. The work is to prevent the message from fracturing. I’m not optimistic.

The stated principle for yesterday’s protest, as I understand it, was that women are human beings deserving equal rights. Great, I’m on board. But it’s clear this movement has the potential for power. That focus on principle will disappear. Here, I’ll pick a random example I encountered. The list has the above principle. It then expands to the LGBTQ community. I’m still on board because I think this is the same principle at its core. Human beings deserve equal rights. Third is resisting racism. Yep, still there.

Then, with numbers four, five, and six, are climate change, income inequality, and universal health care. That’s a fracturing divergence. “… we must immediately address the damage we have done and continue…” I agree that climate change is real, and that humans are a reason. But there’s so much room to disagree on how to address the damage. Maybe we’ll agree on what to do, but there will be disagreement.

For income inequality, “Wages for working people must rise. Wages for working people must rise. A healthy and growing middle class is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It must be cultivated through sensible economic policy.” I agree that a healthy and growing middle class is not a natural phenomenon. The natural human condition is dirt-scratching poverty. But what is the sensible economic policy that raises wages for working people? Is it by decreeing the minimum wage is $X? That is economic policy, but it is not sensible. Work that can’t justify the minimum wage will be automated. The goal is an economy in which people can support themselves (with the understanding that no perfect economy can exist). I can’t support a push for an economic policy based in feelings that will not work. But attaching “income inequality” to the push for equal rights means fracturing the movement.

And universal health care. Opposition to what other countries do is not a wish for poor and sick people to die already. That every other industrialized nation does this does not mean they do it perfectly, or that they do not get free-rider benefits from the United States because we don’t do it their way. It also does not prove it can be replicated here.

It’s clear a push like this expects the result of yesterday’s march to be the further implementation of a progressive political platform. That just takes a message that “women’s rights are human rights” and makes it explicitly – and incorrectly – political. The coherence of the demand disappears.

Some of this I already know from experience with protesting and agitating for change. I’ve protested in sunshine and rain, in heat and cold. I’ve had people yell at me and I’ve had respectful conversations. It’s a messy process with rewards and perils throughout. Along with, “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” there’s disagreement and the “with us or against us” mentality within the group. I’ve seen people be right for unbelievably wrong reasons. It’s a fringe rather than universal, but the fringe gets the attention. Did you see more of the peaceful protests from Friday or the smashing windows? And when someone encounters a group protesting what they haven’t thought about or don’t agree with, do they remember the person trying to convince them or the lunatics? What’s more effective, “May I talk with you about genital mutilation” or “May I talk with you about genital mutilation and how vaccines cause autism and the one percent”? The former is principled in science and ethics. The latter is “I have a mishmash of agenda items and you need to accept them all.” Putting human equality into a mix of progressive (or conservative) political policies is no different.

Maybe I’m wrong on thinking this is putting human equality into a mix of progressive political policies. It’s possible, and if it’s true, do you want to convince me or condescend to me? Whether I’m right or wrong, that’s your choice.

For example:

I’ve seen so many men today screaming about rights for Islamic women and genital mutilation. I look forward to your march re: those issues!

Or do you guys only bring those issues up to try to de-legitimize someone else’s voice?

And a sample response:

@JulieDiCaro I think we both know the answer to that question.

I’ve marched and written extensively on the rights involved. I get laughed at for it. I get screamed at. I’m told how disrespectful I am when I emphasize the principle³ involved. There’s no curiosity that I maybe know what I’m talking about from research and experience. I don’t hold the right view, so my opinion should be mocked.

The same condescension is in those tweets. Maybe one/some/all of these men know? Or maybe they’re all awful people merely trying to change the subject. It’s probably the latter. Probably.

I composed a reply on Twitter but deleted it because 140 characters wouldn’t convey the message. Ms. DiCaro is saying “Don’t hijack the moment.” I agree with that sentiment but not the delivery. For example, I don’t jump into discussions purely about female genital mutilation to say “what about men?” unless the discussion includes crackpot opinions presented as fact or shoddy wishing masquerading as a principled defense of why girls deserve protection and boys should be happy about circumcision. But if you really want equality, “my body, my choice” applies to boys, or it can mean “my child, my choice” applies to girls. If you don’t stand for principle, don’t be shocked if it leads where you don’t want to go.

Anyway, my point is that protests lose focus. They work against uniting a coalition on shared principle, preferring to enforce ideological rigidity. Yes
terday’s march and what follows can be principled. It won’t be. There were speakers yesterday advocating for equal rights who also support male genital mutilation. Some rights are more equal than others, somehow, which will probably become generalized into the platform, so do not be surprised when this movement collapses into an incoherent, powerless mess without the necessary vigilance to adhere to “women are human beings deserving equal rights”. Prove me wrong, please.

Post Script: Damnit, I realized I didn’t talk about nazis yet. I’ve rambled enough, so I’m not going to work this into the above. Fucking nazis are evil scum. Don’t sucker-punch evil fucking nazi scum. Because it’s dumb and counter-productive and escalates into more violence. Yes, Hitler. But a street corner in Washington, DC on January 20, 2017 is not Omaha Beach. Maybe it will be if we don’t challenge President Trump’s administration every second until 1/20/21, 1/20/25, or his impeachment. But we’re not there today. Not sucker-punching evil fucking nazis is not appeasement. Sucker-punching nazis is closer to the definition of conceding principles in favor of political expediency. That isn’t righteous. That’s a different form of authoritarianism. And if you want to require this fight continue until 1/20/25, sucker-punching nazis is a great way to create the lawlessness excuse Trump wants in order to make that a reality.

¹ Power expects compliance from everyone, not just women. This is why emphasis on “patriarchy” is so weird to me. I’ve yet to encounter an instance of someone saying “patriarchy” in which saying “power” wouldn’t be more precise. I’m open to explanations and/or scenarios for why that isn’t true.

² Destruction of property is violence. Someone has to clean it up. Someone has to pay for its repair or replacement. That requires work, so destroying someone’s property necessarily involves forcing someone to do something they wouldn’t otherwise need to do. It is force.

³ Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting individual is unethical. All human beings are equal, with the same rights. I’m a feminist, including on that principle. But some feminists don’t believe this right is equal. So sure, I’m a feminist, but the label isn’t enough for me to know that we agree on human rights.

Money Is a Tool, Not an Inverse Proof of Personal Value

A mindset exists around money and choices involved in acquiring it that I don’t understand. I comprehend that this exists, but I’m not sure why or how it develops and persists. Lauren McLaughlin writes about a New York Times article on Wall Street layoffs:

According to this New York Times article, young wannabe bankers are the first to go in the most recent round of financial sector lay-offs.

I know. Boo hoo, right?

I won’t ask anyone to shed a tear for these youngsters who still have plenty of time to rethink the trajectory of their professional lives. Besides, looked at one way, the recession is the best thing to happen to this generation of young, ambitious college grads. Without easy access to the lucrative field of magical fairy dust mortgage derivatives, they might actually do something meaningful with their lives.

Having two degrees in finance and multiple friends who entered the field in the mid-’90s, I’d take issue with the idea of “easy” access to the financial industry. But that quibble aside, I’d ask why Ms. McLaughlin should spend her time in the (potentially) lucrative field of magical fairy dust novel writing. If she couldn’t do that, she might actually do something meaningful with her life, to be determined by me for her.

I only offer that in jest. Novel writing is a respectable, useful profession, and I admire anyone who can a) do it and b) make a living at it. It doesn’t matter if the author writes books I would read or not. I’m not silly enough to demand that my tastes, preferences, and needs be the only criteria by which everyone must decide what is worthwhile in the world.

The same applies to the world of finance. I think the impulse to condemn finance in total rests on the same misguided notion that all bankers from 2008 were criminals who should be arrested for causing a financial crisis. It’s a simplistic approach to a complicated topic. The industry doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful.

This is not to say I admire the banker lifestyle described in the article or in Ms. McLaughlin’s post. I don’t, but again, that’s because it doesn’t appeal to me, not because it’s inherently flawed or bad. And there are real people suffering in that story. Should we only have empathy for someone until they make a certain income?

Which brings me to a great post by Jason Kuznicki:

The economist Justin Wolfers tweeted an interesting poll result yesterday, from Kaiser (though I’m having trouble finding it at the moment):

As far as you are concerned, do we have too many rich people in this country (31%), too few (21%), or about the right amount? (42%)

As far as I am concerned, 73% of the country appears to have lost its mind. I’d like everyone to be rich, which means, obviously, that we have too few rich people.

He’s right. If we’re going to focus on artificial, ever-shifting definitions of class in America, we should be working to help everyone move up, not knock the “right” people down for being “wrong” in some way.

All Government Is Force. Even Regulation.

Back to the Occupy movement…

I have some sympathy for Occupy Wall Street and its offspring around the country. There is enough broken in the way our economy works that only a fool would advise inaction. Where I quickly part ways is with the obvious implication that our government can fix crony capitalism (i.e. corporatism). Our government is complicit in this problem. It serves the needs of politicians. Where power exists to grab, it will be grabbed. If this involves buying access to or the use of that power, it will happen. The solution is to limit power, not to pretend that human nature can be changed.

This interesting post from writer Lauren McLaughlin addresses an approach for going forward. She’s right that the movement needs to stop protesting and Do Something. I don’t think she’s right on what should be done.

For example, she suggests:

Early complaints about the movement’s lack of specific demands is also falling away as an increasingly focused platform centering on economic justice comes into focus. Poll the former residents of Zuccotti Park or any of the other occupation sites and you’ll hear a variety of ideas, but the most common seem to be the following:

– Regulate banks in a way that disincentivizes the reckless gambling that puts all of us at risk.

– Tax investment returns at the same rate as income.

– Reform campaign finance laws so that we’re no longer being governed by Goldman Sachs.

On the first item, banks were regulated before the financial crisis hit. That we still had a financial crisis may indicate that crimes took place, although I’m doubtful the evidence is strong. But it also demonstrates how difficult it is to get the correct regulation. Unintended consequences will occur. If we radically alter and/or increase regulation, what happens?

It’s also worth noting that capitalists, rather than corporatists, advocate letting banks fail. The fear of failing, including bankruptcy, is a motivator. It’s unlikely to be the exclusive answer, but we haven’t tried it in conjunction with anything yet.

I’d flip the second to suggest taxing income at the same rate as investment returns. Power is the problem, not inadequate revenue. The point of reducing the government is not mere animosity to government (or worse insinuations). As long as power exists, it will be abused.

On the third, I’m not clear enough on the implication of the item to comment extensively. If it’s a response to Citizens United, then I disagree. Corporations are not people in the literal sense, but in the legal sense they are, and for good reason. Corporations (and other forms of organization) are made up of people. Those people do not lose rights because they’ve chosen to work together. If they do, it’s not a large leap to discredit democracy. But, again, reduce the scope and amount of power available within government and the incentive to buy it will reduce.

Ms. McLaughlin’s next paragraph is revealing from my perspective:

Of course, there are other ideas, like making banks finance their own future bailouts through a financial transaction tax, but I think it’s fairly easy to see the big idea at the heart of the movement: American capitalism and democracy are broken. The big difference between Occupy Wall Street and The Tea Party is that the latter sees the government as the big evil, whereas the former fingers a reckless and under-regulated banking industry that has captured our government and bent it to its will.

I’m not a Tea Party guy, so I’m not so concerned about the difference. But the two have similarities and should recognize that the root causes are very similar. Why does the Tea Party see the government as evil? I think there’s some truth to the assertion, but I don’t know the answer. I also know many Tea Party members have taken the initial, singular focus on government spending and turned to other causes in which they want more government, not less. I’m not sure the analysis that it thinks government is evil is accurate.

Either way, if that’s true, the only way “a reckless and under-regulated” – both subjective terms, with the latter being much less defensible – banking industry could capture our government and bend it to its will is with the full participation of our government. Corporatism is a sinister cooperative effort, not a sinister takeover. Trusting the same government that’s been captured so readily and thoroughly to provide a solution is bizarre. As long as there is power to abuse, this will continue, even if it takes a different form. Any action that is to be a solution rather than a perpetuation of chasing new problems must account for this. I haven’t seen evidence that the Occupy movement understands this. It may yet win, but I fear the outcome if it does.

In related news, the government that will somehow help is the same government that sees no problem with pepper-spraying peaceful, if disruptive, protesters with a callous disregard for the necessity or safety of the force. This is the state in action. This is what Occupy requests when it calls for more government regulation. All government is force. Why is it wrong to use against you, but okay to use against me?

Corporatism ≠ Capitalism

I’m always fascinated by critiques of capitalism that rely on untrue assumptions. From a Boing Boing review of John Lanchester’s Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay earlier this week:

Lanchester explains the econopocalypse thus: a climate (the fall of the Soviet Union and the triumphal do-no-wrong belief in unfettered capitalism that ensued), a problem (using derivatives to expand risk, rather than limit it, which led to reckless lending in the housing market), a mistake (bankers assuming that they had laid off the risk using complex derivatives) and a failure (regulators refusing to look the financial gift-horse in the mouth). This provides an excellent framework for explaining the ways in which history, greed, and hubris conspired to create the worst financial crisis in memory.

There may be a “triumphal do-no-wrong belief in unfettered capitalism,” but the presence of regulators proves that what we have is neither unfettered nor capitalism. Since, according to the review of his book, Mr. Lanchester concludes that the economy will remain sluggish due to regulatory capture, the current climate is corporatism.

I’m not sure if the mistaken word choice originates with Mr. Lanchester or the book’s reviewer, Cory Doctorow. Regardless, those of us who support capitalism (as a synonym for a free market) do not support corporatism.

“Doesn’t everyone believe that it is evil to be selfish?”

Spoiler Alert: This entry includes a discussion of plot points from “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged.”

In the New York Times Adam Kirsch reviewed Anne Heller’s new Ayn Rand biography, “Ayn Rand and the World She Made.” I have nothing to say regarding Heller’s book specifically because I haven’t read it yet. Here I wish to focus on Kirsch’s grasp on Ayn Rand’s two major novels. There is nothing to definitively suggest he hasn’t read them, although I suspect he hasn’t. There is plenty to prove that he hasn’t understood them if he has read them.

He reveals his ignorance in the first seven words of his review:

A specter is haunting the Republican Party — …

The implications of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are as relevant against the Republican Party as they are against the Democratic Party. Neither cares about anything beyond handing out favors to its preferred group of insiders in exchange for continued power. The individual is a tool to be manipulated for the party’s needs. Kirsch’s references to Whitaker Chambers and Wendell Willkie should’ve been enough for him to at least explore the validity of his thesis. Instead he cited the rantings of outrage-huckster straw man Glenn Beck, who is not a libertarian.

(Note: The term libertarian is the easiest way to represent liberty here. But Rand was an Objectivist, which is similar but not synonymous. See here, for example.)

Next, Kirsch attempts to summarize Rand (emphasis added):

And while it’s not hard to understand Rand’s revenge-fantasy appeal to those on the right, would-be Galts ought to hear the story Anne C. Heller has to tell in her dramatic and very timely biography, “Ayn Rand and the World She Made.”

“Going Galt” is likely a revenge fantasy to those claiming they will now “Go Galt” as a result of some offense by the Obama administration, but that doesn’t guarantee it reflects the meaning of what they’ve co-opted. First, Rand would’ve been no less an opponent of George W. Bush’s administration than she would’ve been of Obama’s. Or likely any other presidential administration since the publication of Atlas Shrugged because of the ever-growing control of the modern presidency (and legislature) over the choices of individuals.

More importantly, “Going Galt” is about withdrawing from a society that seeks only to act as a leech. Some of the words Rand gave to Galt:

There is a difference between our strike and all those you’ve practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion, according to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face reality-the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without mind.

We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it. We have no demands to present to you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.

Galt’s speech is “goodbye,” not “let’s negotiate a compromise.” But it’s only a goodbye to the world of moochers and looters, not from producing or living as he wishes. Galt’s Gulch was a society where men and women produced. This year’s “Going Galt” meme was about going idle. It is a reaction to the ongoing problem identified by Rand, but it is not her solution.

For one thing, it is far more interesting than anything in Rand’s novels. … The characters Rand created, on the other hand — like Galt or Howard Roark, the architect hero of “The Fountainhead” — are abstract principles set to moving and talking.

This is at once the failure and the making of Rand’s fiction. The plotting and characterization in her books may be vulgar and unbelievable, just as one would expect from the middling Hollywood screenwriter she once was; but her message, while not necessarily more sophisticated, is magnified by the power of its absolute sincerity. …

Rand was a Romantic, which is why her characters “are abstract principles set to moving and talking.” I’ve heard it said (I forget by whom) that Rand was a 19th century writer in the 20th century. That’s an accurate description, but as a criticism from Kirsch, it’s purely subjective. The proper approach to criticism is to judge whether or not the literature works at what the writer attempted rather than whether or not the reviewer approves of the writer’s intent and/or method. Her ideas, which are what Kirsch attacks¹ in his essay, are not false simply because he perceives her characters as abstract principles.

Personally, I enjoyed Rand’s approach to both novels as literature. I found her characters and situations compelling and effective in achieving what she sought to present. However, she could not write sex scenes. The sexual relationships in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged suggest that she had a bizarre concept of sexual intimacy. Whatever she believed in her life, Roark’s rape of Dominique in The Fountainhead is an inexcusable error in her presentation of Howard Roark as an idealized man. She was not a perfect novelist never to be questioned.

Kirsch reveals his misunderstanding (or ignorance) of Rand’s novels in this paragraph:

Rand’s particular intellectual contribution, the thing that makes her so popular and so American, is the way she managed to mass market elitism — to convince so many people, especially young people, that they could be geniuses without being in any concrete way distinguished. Or, rather, that they could distinguish themselves by the ardor of their commitment to Rand’s teaching. The very form of her novels makes the same point: they are as cartoonish and sexed-up as any best seller, yet they are constantly suggesting that the reader who appreciates them is one of the elect.

In Atlas Shrugged there is a difference between John Galt and James Taggart, but there is also a difference between John Galt and Eddie Willers. Rand presented the idea that talent is real and identifiable, but also that, while everyone isn’t moral, anyone can be. Eddie Willers wasn’t invited to “Go Galt” because he wasn’t a creator, but he wasn’t despised because the heroes of Atlas Shrugged knew him to be moral who recognized the difference between producing and looting. Patronizing to the untalented moral man? Probably. Evidence that Rand believed everyone could be an elite? No.

Kirsch next engages in the type of cartoonish characterization he attributes to Rand’s novels. When discussing Rand’s process for writing and publishing Galt’s speech, he states (emphasis added):

… Rand labored for more than two years on Galt’s radio address near the end of “Atlas Shrugged” — a long paean to capitalism, individualism and selfishness that makes Gordon Gekko’s “Greed is good” sound like the Sermon on the Mount. … [Random House’s Bennett] Cerf offered Rand an alternative: if she gave up 7 cents per copy in royalties,
she could have the extra paper needed to print Galt’s oration. That she agreed is a sign of the great contradiction that haunts her writing and especially her life. Politically, Rand was committed to the idea that capitalism is the best form of social organization invented or conceivable. This was, perhaps, an understandable reaction against her childhood experience of Communism. …

Yet while Rand took to wearing a dollar-sign pin to advertise her love of capitalism, Heller makes clear that the author had no real affection for dollars themselves. Giving up her royalties to preserve her vision is something that no genuine capitalist, and few popular novelists, would have done. It is the act of an intellectual, of someone who believes that ideas matter more than lucre. In fact, as Heller shows, Rand had no more reverence for the actual businessmen she met than most intellectuals do. The problem was that, according to her own theories, the executives were supposed to be as creative and admirable as any artist or thinker. They were part of the fraternity of the gifted, whose strike, in “Atlas Shrugged,” brings the world to its knees.

Wall Street is a fine film, but it’s full of hogwash as an attempted refutation of capitalism. The movie is Oliver Stone’s half-understanding of “greed”, which is similar to the very common misunderstanding of Ayn Rand’s vision of “selfishness.” Advocates of capitalism don’t push it as the best form of social organization in order to create an enclave of Gordon Gekkos. It is the best form of social organization because it is based on voluntary exchange. Decentralized decision-making is better at discovering and meeting individual needs and desires. It is based on the realization that elites can’t possibly know what’s best for everyone or anyone.

A key facet of economics is that all tastes and preferences are subjective. Rand’s willingness to concede 7 cents per copy to keep Galt’s speech unaltered indicates only that she valued the presentation of her unedited work more than 7 cents per copy. It was a voluntary exchange, mutually beneficial to her and Random House. Suggesting that this is a contradiction of her philosophy, that no “genuine capitalist” would ever give up money, is a pejorative little different than suggesting that “no genuine Jew” would choose principle over pennies. Kirsch’s statement is a smear of lesser magnitude because his stereotype is more acceptable politically, but it is still a smear.

Rand presented her view of money in Atlas Shrugged, as spoken by Francisco d’Anconia in his speech on money. An excerpt relevant to Kirsch’s cartoonish mischaracterization of capitalists:

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

The notion that Rand’s only action consistent with her philosophy would be to hoard “lucre” reveals Kirsch’s ignorance of Rand. His disagreement with her does not disqualify him from critiquing her. Not understanding her novels or her philosophy does.

11/1 Update: The more I think about Adam Kirsch’s book review of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Anne Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made, the more I realize it was worse than I depicted. Rand explained what she thought of Kirsch’s idea of the “genuine capitalist” in The Fountainhead. His name was Gail Wynand, the news tycoon who published ideas he believed to be false in order to collect “lucre” from customers. Nothing was beyond Wynand’s preference for pennies over principle, as evidenced by his publishing Ellsworth Toohey’s words. In the novel’s conclusion, Wynand did not get what he wanted because he did not deserve it. He’d sacrificed himself for something smaller.

¹ Remember, though, that his essay is ostensibly a book review of a Rand biography.

I Do Matthew Yglesias’ Homework

Last week, in a post lamenting the not-odd fact that the words and actions of politicians do not match, Matthew Yglesias wrote this:

My personal feeling, the longer I spend in DC and working in the political domain, is that I get better and better at understanding other people’s ideologies. I also feel that people writing about politics often caricature opponents’ views as part of a rhetorical strategy. But I’ve been back-and-forth on the main issues long enough that I’m pretty sure I could switch this blog’s point of view and do a credible job of offering critiques-from-the-right of the progressive liberal health reform movement and the progressive liberal approach to domestic policy generally. One happy consequence of this is that I find the stubborn persistence of principled disagreement less mystifying than I once did, and have a greater appreciation for what I now think of as a certain irreducibly Kierkegaardian element to ideological commitment that, in turn, helps explain why so many “normal” people have such fuzzy political views.

The words I placed in bold are important to remember while reading an entry Mr. Yglesias posted¹ yesterday (archived version:

There’s lots of great stuff in this Ed Pilkington story about the dark side of free market health care (via Tomasky) but my favorite bit was this part:

Eventually his lack of motor control interfered with his work to the degree that he was forced to give up his practice. He fell instantly into a catch 22 that he had earlier seen entrap many of his own patients: no work, no health insurance, no treatment.

He remained uninsured and largely untreated for his progressively severe condition for the following 11 years. Blood tests that could have diagnosed him correctly were not done because he couldn’t afford the $200. Having lost his practice, he lost his mansion on the hill and now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in the suburbs. His Porsches have made way for bangers. Many times this erstwhile pillar of the medical establishment had to go without food in order to pay for basic medicines.

This is the kind of thing that makes it so hard for me to take seriously the idea that we can’t have the government give people health care because it might subject them to “rationing.” Depending on the details, it may or may not be correct to believe that any particular government program is being too stingy. But how does giving people nothing at all resolve that problem?

There are two issues here, closely related to Mr. Yglesias’ entry from last week linked above. The initial problem is glaring but only if you follow the link to the Ed Pilkington story. You wouldn’t know this from his excerpt, but the paragraph continues (emphasis mine):

He remained uninsured and largely untreated for his progressively severe condition for the following 11 years. Blood tests that could have diagnosed him correctly were not done because he couldn’t afford the $200. Having lost his practice, he lost his mansion on the hill and now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in the suburbs. His Porsches have made way for bangers. Many times this erstwhile pillar of the medical establishment had to go without food in order to pay for basic medicines. In 2000 Manley finally found the help he needed, at a clinic in Kansas City that acts as a rare safety net for uninsured people. He was swiftly diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, a degenerative genetic illness, and now receives regular medical attention through the clinic.

Mr. Yglesias’ excerpt is an incomplete representation of the complex facts, presumably to make the point – a caricature, if you will – that the free market has failed. But has it really failed?

Mr. Manley probably should’ve saved his money for potential later-life crises rather than buying a new Porsche every year, as the article states he did when his practice was strong. That is a relevant point, but it’s little more than a distraction to the real issue underlying Mr. Yglesias’ belief that everyone has an obligation to pay for everyone’s care, especially where the free market (allegedly) fails. Regardless, we have the system we have, not the one either side wishes. It shouldn’t have taken so long for Mr. Manley to receive the care he needed. Stating this needn’t be considered a concession or profound.

What Mr. Pilkington, and subsequently Mr. Yglesias, failed to explore is the care that Mr. Manley eventually received.

[Dr. Sharon] Lee’s clinic, Family Health Care, is a refuge of last resort. It picks up the pieces of lives left shattered by a health system that has failed them, and tries to glue them back together. It exists largely outside the parameters of formal health provision, raising funds through donations and paying all its 50 staff – Lee included – a flat rate of just $12 an hour.

Unlike Mr. Yglesias, I researched Family Health Care. It took approximately 10 minutes. Mr. Manley is getting care thanks to the “dark side of the free market.” Consider the clinic’s financial profile for 2005-2007:

The clinic receives 0% of its funding from government, meaning that the remaining 100% of its budget comes from the bank accounts of individuals, corporations, and non-profit organizations. Where is the free market failure to provide health care to those in need?

The structure of the American health care and insurance system is idiotic and needs reform. We should talk about that. The article even includes anecdotal stories to suggest problems that need to be addressed within the views of each side’s extremes. But presumably that wouldn’t have made the point for Mr. Pilkington or Mr. Yglesias that government needs to step in to protect the poor from the free market’s alleged failures, which are, we are told, ignored by the mean-spirited right-wing capitalist liars opposed to President Obama’s proposal. A neat, tidy box, indeed. That reaches closer to ideological commitment – ~~propaganda, if you will~~ – than journalism.

Update: I’ve struck the reference to propaganda. This isn’t that. Rather, Mr. Yglesias’ ideological commitment is more likely laziness embracing the appearance of victory.

¹ Normally I refuse to reprint an entire entry because links are survival. In this case, I can think of no other way to make my points.

Training To Do As We’re Told

I haven’t blogged nearly enough recently, or in the last year. Blah, blah, blah. The only reason I’m raising that point is because today’s the 6th anniversary of Rolling Doughnut. I’ll only remark in jest that I should wipe one of those years off, given the breaks I’ve taken recently. But that’s not fair to myself since I’ve still managed nearly 200 entries in the last year. I just need to be more consistent.

That’s a meta way to advance to today’s story, which is strangely related to my post marking last year’s anniversary. Last August 16th, you’ll remember, I had an adventure with TSA and an experimental, voluntary search that I refused because I could. They didn’t like that, not that it surprised me. But it made the point that we’re becoming a more complacent society, that we’ve agreed to stop valuing liberty when it comes to being searched. The appearance of safety is enough for most.

Today, I purchased Madden 10 at Best Buy. This should be a simple process. Instead, it involved asking for it at the register, the cashier charging me for it, me paying, the cashier giving the game to the security person at the door, and me showing my receipt to the security person. This is two¹ steps too many.

I stated my displeasure to the security person. I’ve done this before, so I knew I’d get the same explanation. Best Buy (or any store) can explain that it’s to guarantee the customer gets what he paid for, which is nonsense. Even if that’s true, my perception is that the store doesn’t trust its customers. At best it suggests they don’t trust their cashiers. If that’s the case, they should spend the time they’re wasting with me on training or different oversight.

When I told the security person all of this, he tried to deflect by saying that many stores are doing this. True, and I don’t have to shop at them or Best Buy. To this he responded: “It’s just like you have to stand in line for security at the airport.”

Buying Madden for the Xbox 360 is not like boarding an airplane. Entertaining the notion that it is demonstrates the extent to which we’ve accepted every intrusion, no matter how stupid, inefficient, and unproductive. When a business says “Line up,” we can so “no” by requesting a refund. I didn’t today, but I have in the past. I’m sure I will in the future. But that’s a low cost process. I can always go to Game Stop or Target to buy Madden. If we won’t challenge those without guns, we should expect no better treatment from those with guns.

So, yeah, I’m still here.

¹ Three, really, but I’ll skip the idiocy of the first step.

The Market Does(n’t) Produce Non-Smoking Bars

Pulling again from the month-old-but-still-interesting Internet archives, Megan McArdle w;rote about smoking bans and the apparent market failure to produce the desired outcome commonly professed

Henry Farrell’s interesting post on smoking bans reminds me of an ongoing question that I have never heard a libertarian answer satisfactorily. Smoking in bars and so forth is dangerous to bystanders who have pulmonary disease (the dangers of secondhand smoke to those who are not already breathing-impaired seem to be largely mythical). It’s noxious to some other number of people who do not smoke. The libertarian rejoinder to the smoking bans is that bars could choose not to smoke if people wanted it. But in practice, despite the fact that smokers are a minority, and most people hate it, almost no establishment went non-smoking without government fiat.

I don’t see the flaw. People profess to want a lot of things. They don’t always back those claims with corresponding actions.

Here, the libertarian rejoinder should be that those who have pulmonary disease are not entitled to a smoke-free bar environment provided by another person. The same applies to healthy people (like me) who find cigarette smoke abhorrent. When bars were filled with smoke and I didn’t want to inhale smoke, I didn’t give smoke-filled bars my business. Since they survived, I assume enough people didn’t mind the smoke as they said or valued the overall bar experience more.

Lest I give you the impression that I’m trying to educate Ms. McArdle, she mostly gets to the same place in her next paragraph.

This seems like a market failure. You can explain it through preference asymmetry and the profitability of various customer classes: heavy drinkers are more likely to also be heavy smokers, and they are the most profitable customers. Bar owners don’t want big groups of people who are going to take up three tables for an hour and a half while nursing one white wine spritzer apiece. They want people who are there to drink. In a competitive equilibrium, they couldn’t afford to go non-smoking because they’d lose their most profitable customers to all the other bars.

Like I said, I don’t see the flaw. This is the free market responding. Want a smoke-free bar but none exist? Open a smoke-free bar. If there’s a market for it, it will survive without the force of a ban.

Again, Ms. McArdle understands this. But her last paragraph adds an incorrect assumption that allows her to get the idea that there is a flaw in libertarian thinking (emphasis added):

You can explain it, but this doesn’t seem like a good market outcome by any measure. Let me be clear, I’m still against the smoking ban, even though I personally vastly prefer smoke-free environments; I think interfering with property rights like this has even heavier costs. But I also recognize that I’m in a minority. And I think that politically, if not intellectually, the success of smoking bans is a heavy blow to libertarian credibility.

There are only market outcomes here. Good is a subjective evaluation, a declaration that what one expects to occur should occur. But why should it? People who like to smoke and drink in bars probably wouldn’t deem voluntary smoking bans a good outcome. Why don’t their opinions factor into good? I conclude that, while smokers are a minority, people who will tolerate smoking while having (or serving) a beer are not.

Fear for Sale

This entry by Patri Friedman is old in Internet terms (i.e. one whole month), but it’s timeless and interesting. I can’t do it justice without posting it all, I think, so here it is:

Among my many contrarian beliefs, I don’t believe in pandemics. Not that they haven’t happened, or that they can’t happen, but that incipient pandemics reported by the CDC, WHO, and the media are fearmongering and blown way out of proportion. SARS, bird flu, and swine flu are the most recent examples.

Here is the problem. The CDC and WHO exist to fight global health issues. Having them report on the dangers of pandemics is like asking the American Association of Sleep Doctors whether people are getting enough sleep. They have a huge incentive to find danger. Combined with media sensationalism, the result is a lot of bullshit.

In typical govt agency fashion, the approach is sneakily win-win. If the pandemic materializes, it is blamed on nature and inadequate funding – the agencies did the best they could. Surely you can’t short them in the budget now! If it doesn’t materialize, it was due to their noble efforts, and they deserve at least cost of living raises. Either way, more supposed threats gives more opportunities for wins.

Its too bad that prediction markets don’t seem to work in practice (only a narrow set of topics produces the trader interest required for liquidity and good estimates), because conditional policy markets (“how many people will die of the flu if the CDC budget is $XXM next year?”) are a theoretically great answer. Funding these agencies like traditional nonprofits, accountable to their donors, rather than via politicians spending other people’s money, would be a step in the right direction.

Every word is relevant to the way WHO, CDC, and the media treat circumcision and HIV. If we don’t circumcise every male from birth, 25 trillion people will become infected with HIV next year. Because it’s the foreskin, not unsafe sex, that leads to HIV transmission. No matter what, though, know that the data will tell the story the organizations want to tell.

I find the prediction market idea fascinating, too. In this context, I’d take a large short position that HIV rates will decrease as predicted among the newly circumcised men and children in Africa.

Gordon Gekko is a caricature.

I don’t want to rehash liber-al-terianism again because I think the recent discussions in the blogosphere reached a reasonable conclusion that liber-al-terianism is designed more to clean the libertarian house and convert liberals to a more effective approach to our (perceived-to-be) common goals. I firmly endorse that. But after reading this entry from Matt Yglesias, I’m reminded of one reason why I think the latter goal is forever doomed to failure.

… the more it looks like a huge swathe of the big money game was just an elaborate fraud, the more an undercurrent of respect for the very boldness and criminality of Madoff’s fraud comes through. He plead guilty in a court of law, while the architects of Citibank’s bankruptcy remain wildly wealthier than the average American—people who no doubt would be completely competent to destroy a major business as well as anyone else—slinking around somewhere and various finance types skulk around the streets of New York feeling sorry for themselves because congress might screw around with their bonuses.

If one of the more prominent liberal voices in America believes that Madoff’s fraud is comparable to the financial sector’s problems, there is no common ground to share. There is no liberal receptivity to libertarian ideas. Liberals think libertarians hold up failed corporate executives who run to the government for welfare as Randian heroes, so witnessing them be wrong on multiple issues shouldn’t surprise.

Nor does this give me hope if we could find such ground (emphasis added):

… On the one hand you have people basically inclined toward Hiltzik’s that a lot of the people making the big bucks for the past 10 years are basically scammers who lucked into the ability to siphon tons of money out of the economy without really doing anything useful or valuable, and between people who think that they’re genuinely smart hard-working people who just happen to deserve to pay somewhat more in income taxes than they currently do.

Under our current tax system, there are people who should pay more. They are the people who receive more in services than they pay in taxes. That is unfairness and inequality in our system. We should remove such welfare for those who don’t truly need it.

But that’s not what he means. The highest earners – who already pay most of the income taxes in America – deserve to pay “somewhat” more. He never states why someone who already pays a higher percentage of her income than most deserves to pay more, so I’ll infer. As he states in another post:

If you think of a talented and ambitious businessman, after all, you have to remember that you’re talking about a guy who, unlike normal people, mainly focuses his life on earning as much money as possible. That’s a weird state of mind in many ways. …

Teachers, janitors, steel workers, cab drivers, engineers, waitresses, and journalists, those are the noble people who are interested in how they serve, not how much they make? They’re so noble they’d turn down a higher wage?

Until liberals understand that subjective economic factors and outcomes are relevant only to the parties involved, I’ll see liberals as little more than central planner wannabes. They’re roadblocks. The current political power structure in America offers no incentive for cooperation. Liberals won’t bother, so libertarians shouldn’t waste the effort.