“Libertarians interested in winning a share of the policy pie need to get over their ambivalence with holding and exercising political power.” - Richarcd Boltuck comment on Brink Lindsey’s blog.

Like Lindsey gets over his ambivalence with “a moral commitment to the sanctity of individual rights”?

I’m not ambivalent about exercising political power.

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Whose pie is this anyway?

Speaking of collectivist libertarians, Brink Lindsey just blogged some excerpts from his current article in Liberty, defending his “pragmatic, reformist” libertarianism and rejecting “radical or utopian” libertarianism. I intend to review this in detail, but let’s start here:

“Reformists share with their radical confreres a moral commitment to the sanctity of individual rights….”

Sanctity.

One entry found for sanctity.

Main Entry: sanc�ti�ty
Pronunciation: ’sa[ng](k)-t&-tE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Etymology: Middle English saunctite, from Middle French sainctet�, from Latin sanctitat-, sanctitas, from sanctus sacred
Date: 14th century
1 : holiness of life and character : GODLINESS
2 a : the quality or state of being holy or sacred : INVIOLABILITY b plural : sacred objects, obligations, or rights

Lindsey of course spends the balance of the piece explaining why pragmatist reformers are willing to compromise what they hold sacred at every turn…

I don’t know if Richard Boltuck considers himself any sort of libertarian, but his latest response to my critique of his position is characteristic of the arguments offered by those I call collectivist libertarians, those in favor of greater individual liberty for the good of the collective.

Boltuck writes:

I�ve enjoyed this dialog. It�s always interesting, and in my experience reasonably rare, to be outflanked in decrying government excesses. That said, a few responses on the state of the discourse:

John gets to the crux of his concern: that his property rights preclude government from taxing (stealing, in his view) his wealth to fund public goods acquisition. In other words, externalities and efficient resource allocation (marginal cost equals marginal benefit) are beside the point.

My response is that unless property rights are created by God, they must be a human creation. If they were created by God, then various Gods seem to have assigned the same property differently, witness Palestine/Israel or Northern Ireland. If they were assigned strictly historically, then do the Falkland Islands �belong� to Argentina?

In my view, however, property rights are a remarkably powerful functional utilitarian innovation that harnesses the invisible hand to channel resources to their most productive applications in the overwhelming bulk of human activity. But in a small set of circumstances, private property rights fail to achieve this end for analytically comprehensible reasons. Public goods present one such circumstance. Property rights deserve extreme deference, but if they are a human innovation, what indicates that the extent of that deference, itself of human design, is without limit � and that any encroachment whatsoever, as through democratically set taxation � is thus immoral?

I acknowledge the practical problem of restraining government. Unquestionably, government has a strong tendency to expand into economic functions that markets would handle better � but it is too much to claim that no progress in restraining government is possible, or that it is in no one�s interest to work on restraint of government. When the President denies Escape Clause protection to an import-competing industry based on a national perspective, such restraint is exercised. When Californians adopt Proposition 13, such restraint is exercised. The military-base closure �package deal� was an exercise of such restraint.

Of course, continued improvements in restraining government�s expansionist tendencies are always needed, and government has already overexpanded greatly. But the places to cut are not those comparatively few situations where a rational connection exists between underinvestment in public goods by the market and offsetting increments to investment by government, especially with a track record of demonstrated productivity, such as in basic health research. (Boltuck then goes on to address the comments of other No Treason readers. - jtk)

Boltuck asserts that rights must be an invention of God or Man. I don’t happen to know if Boltuck is a theist, but I’m not. Morality, the basis of rights, is a consequence of Man’s nature and Man is not the author of his nature. Man doesn’t invent nature, he discovers it. The fact that men dispute rights is no more an argument for the subjectivity of morality and rights than the fact that men dispute evolution is an argument for the subjectivity of biology.

If rights are invented by men, and therefore subjective, they can be invented to be anything at all. Utilitarianism proper seeks the greatest good for the greatest number, but what can this mean if men invent the good? Boltuck seems to prefer an economy which produces material goods efficiently, but what argument can he make against those who say that the proper standard of the good is material equality rather than material plenty? What argument can he offer against individuals who know they can materially benefit themselves by wielding government against others? Why should government officials prefer the the greatest good for the greatest number over the greatest good for themselves? In a world where men invent morality and rights, where they invent the good, there is really no basis to prefer one standard of good over another, nothing to ground Boltuck’s utilitarianism.

Boltuck says “it is too much to claim that no progress in restraining government is possible, or that it is in no one�s interest to work on restraint of government”. I have not claimed that people do not restrain government at all, or that they have no interest at all in doing so. Nor can Boltuck claim that markets produce no basic research, that producing basic research is impossible in a free market, or that basic research is in no one’s interest in a free market. Boltuck is attempting to dismiss one public goods problem with an argument that he clearly does not accept in the case of a public goods problem that he wants to wield government to address.

I’ve pointed out that restraint of government is a a public goods problem and thus by Boltuck’s own reasoning individuals will “under-invest” in that good. In my discussions with collectivist libertarians I note a distinct reluctance to acknowledge out loud that restraint of government is a public goods problem. I assume that’s because once you admit that restraint of government is a public goods problem it becomes very difficult to argue that you should “solve” one public goods problem at the cost of exacerbating a more intractable public goods problem. And restraint of government is the most intractable public goods problem, it’s the one public goods problem that government in principle cannot address. This is the end of the line, the buck can’t be passed any further, the public goods problem of restraint of government can in principle only be addressed through voluntary donations of individual effort. But if Boltuck holds that such voluntary donations of individual effort are sufficient to address this most intractable public goods problem, then why aren’t they sufficient to address all the other public goods problems? And if such efforts are not sufficient, then wielding government to “solve” public goods problems is a trap.

If public goods problems can be be solved by voluntary efforts then government is in principle unneeded and unnecessary; if they cannot be solved by voluntary efforts then government is in principle unsafe and unsound.

“Some who have denied the necessity of the power of taxation [to the
Federal government] have grounded a very fierce attack against the
Constitution, on the language on which it is defined. It has been
urged and echoed that the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties,
imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common
defense and general welfare of the United States” amounts to an
unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to
be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger
proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor
for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.” - Federalist 41

In retrospect it’s crystal clear that the anti-federalists were precisely right about what the result of the Constitution would be, and Madison was dead wrong.

Limited government is a contradiction in terms, the decision to govern “amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power”.

“We�ve got a world in which we figured out supply. We haven�t figured out demand.” - Gephardt on [url=]Meet The Press[/url].

You keep figuring Dick, until you get good at it.

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One good thing about war with Iraq is that it will end. But why should the War On Terror ever end?

Found at Welcome to Homeland Security!

No Treason is pleased to be able to make available a collection of twenty-three articles written by Billy Beck between 1997 and 2001. These articles were written for Laissez Faire City Times and Union Square Journal. A couple of them have been available on Beck’s web site and a couple have been available here, but all the rest have been unavailable for some time.

Billy Beck has been one of No Treason’s most valued contributors. I didn’t want these articles to disappear. Enjoy.

Forget McVeigh
That’s Right Folks: It’s A Glamorous Profession
Faith Bases Under Siege
Dale Earnhardt: The Whole Hook-Up
Why Should Sleeping Dogs Lie?
Power On Demand, For Money
Yo, Magic: Don’t Do It
Endarkenment. For Real
My Guitar Life
Heisenberg in a Hawaiian Shirt
Storming the Barricades of Ruin
I, Criminal
Piling Up Smash
The Bums’ Rush: an Election Meditation
Hog Heaven at Sturgis
Tale of a Taildragger
Stealing Midnight With Style
Reflections On a Blue-Gel Tab
Course of Conduct
Animals in the Disney-Tinted Village
Vietnam War on the 21st Amendment: The War On Drugs
Energy & Passion
Commentary on the Media

STFU, let it go.

Karen De Coster, the self-styled Queen of Political Incorrectness, took exception to my critique of her blog praising a Ted Rall column recently featured on LewRockwell.com.

De Coster continues to insist that “Rall sure is right on the college thing”. Hopefully she doesn’t endorse Rall’s call for the nationalization of higher education, but at a minimum she must be standing by the passage she quoted:

“You may be thinking: tough bananas. This is America. If you’re stupid enough to borrow more dough than the average Joe pays for a house to listen to men with bad beards expound on Proust, it’s your own overeducated fault that you’re stuck with the bills.

But that’s horse manure.

As more and more employers require college degrees, more and more people will seek them. During the age of advancing globalization, national leaders say, Americans need more education to compete. Moreover, student loans are big business. Citibank’s Student Loan Marketing Association, which holds outstanding student loans totaling $21 billion, recently announced that it turned a profit of $176 million last year, a 30 percent increase over 2001.”

Frankly it is your fault if you purchase an education that isn’t at least in prospect worth what you pay for it. Rall is a typical socialist who is offended that people actually make money selling and financing education, and he believes that businesses can simply dictate terms to prospective employees. But of course if a college education costs more than it’s worth then it makes no sense to buy one, since meeting the requirement is a losing proposition. If the education required costs more than it’s worth then you’re better off without the job that requires it. In a market employers cannot hope to fill their positions with people willing to work at a net loss, though I’m sure socialists like Rall think otherwise.

In my original critique I said:

De Coster takes the collectivist bait here, hook, line, and sinker, agreeing that individuals have “no choice” because of “hiring demands”.

De Coster objects that I misquoted her there and therefore misinterpreted her. It’s true that the exact words “no choice” do not occur in her text, and thus I have not quoted her accurately. But here is what she said, verbatim:

“They do it because modern workforce hiring demands don’t give them a choice.”

My characterization of her remarks was perfectly fair, in spite of a trivial misquote. Individuals do have choices and of course many people in fact choose not to go to college regardless of what businesses would prefer. All this talk of no choice in the market is commie nonsense.

De Coster says:

“Rall is exactly right. Higher education has become a scam for the government, universities, banks, and big business. It’s getting so that corporate America won’t even take on a 170-something IQ individual if they haven’t got themself some cheesy, worthless “General Business” or MBA degree from somewhere.”

How does turning down qualified individuals work as a scam? In most scams the scammer is looking to get the better of the deal, but in this case corporate America is leaving value on the table, geniuses no less, for any competitor to snap up. And the reward? They might get to hire the same geniuses years later, older but no better educated. That’s some scam.

De Coster doesn’t care to take the time to explain why Rall is exactly right, but she indicates that Silas Barta is on the right track in his comments on the ASC forum. Barta argues that college costs are driven up by:

1. Minimum wage.

2. Public schools.

3. Education subsidies.

4. High taxes.

That’s fine, but wait a minute, there’s something fishy here….

1. Rall is for the minimum wage.

2. Rall is for public schools.

3. Rall is for education subsidies.

4. Rall is against tax cuts.

I fail to see how Barta’s arguments can support De Coster’s claim that Rall is exactly right when Rall rejects every principle that Barta argues from. Barta tries to defend De Coster by saying:

“…Rall is correct to recognize that being deep in debt for an education is not normal, and corporations encourage it. (He fails to recognize, of course, the latter is due to the government.) “

This is like saying Hillary Clinton is correct to recognize that health care costs more than it otherwise might, though she fails to recognize that government is the problem rather than the solution.

Well hey, I’m willing to agree that Rall is right on education in the same sense that Clinton is right on health care.

In fact, that was my point.

NoTreason’s new look

You can pity other fools here.

(From this hilarious review of Brit-wanker graverobbing Beatles-clone rock band Oasis)

A: Wow. Well, as I said before, originality isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for artistic achievement. Many great artists have been deeply influenced by their forebears.

A: Um… well, that’s an extreme example.

What’s the story now, morning glory?