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Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem.

Tuesday

25

February 2014

Let Them Eat (Someone Else’s) Cake

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Culture & Society, Free Markets, Liberty & Limited Government

At RedState Erick Erickson weighs in on the debate over whether or not bakers should be required to supply wedding cakes for gay couples if they don’t want to. He looks at the issue through the prism of Christianity (which is not unreasonable given that most of those refusing to do so are Christian). But I’m not particularly interested in the theological aspects or what a good Christian ought to do. I’m interested in policy.

Erickson states:

If a Christian owns a bakery or a florist shop or a photography shop or a diner, a Christian should no more be allowed to deny service to a gay person than to a black person. It is against the tenets of 2000 years of orthodox Christian faith, no matter how poorly some Christians have practiced their faith over two millennia.

And honestly, I don’t know that I know anyone who disagrees with any of this.

I don’t know Erickson, so his statement remains true, but I emphatically disagree that “a Christian should no more be allowed to deny service to a gay person than to a black person.” In fact, I’d take that in the exact opposite direction than he intended and say that both should be allowed.  In a free society, anyone should be free to choose not to engage in commerce with anyone else, for any reason.

Erickson chooses to approach the issue from the angle of religious freedom:

The disagreement comes on one issue only — should a Christian provide goods and services to a gay wedding. That’s it. We’re not talking about serving a meal at a restaurant. We’re not talking about baking a cake for a birthday party. We’re talking about a wedding, which millions of Christians view as a sacrament of the faith and other, mostly Protestant Christians, view as a relationship ordained by God to reflect a holy relationship.

I think he’s attempting to cut too fine a line. Moreover, I think the religious freedom argument is weaker than the property rights and freedom of association arguments. These rights are simple to digest: I own my labor and that which it produces, and I therefore own the right to choose with whom I shall trade my goods. The government has suppressed this right by asserting that stores are “public” if they allow people to enter freely, and by being “public” they must serve everyone. This is and always has been hogwash, and the requirement that a business serve everyone has no basis in any authority granted to government.

Similarly, the freedom to associate necessitates an implied freedom of disassociation. Without the right to refuse association, the right to associate with those whom we choose is meaningless. And if the right to disassociate with a person or entity does not encompass the ability to refuse an economic transaction with that person or entity, then it is a hollow right.

Matt K. Lewis similarly addressed the issue at the Daily Caller, in the context of a proposed Arizona law to allow Christian businesses to refuse work for same-sex weddings. I don’t care for the specific law, which is parochial and targeted in a way that suggests animus and bigotry as its intent rather than true preservation of rights. But that aside, Lewis doesn’t tackle the right question:

The truth is, this is a tough issue that pits things we value as a society against things we value as a society.

We have reached a point in the gay rights debate where all the low-hanging fruit has been picked. We are now entering into the zero-sum game phase of the debate, where gay rights and religious liberty must collide. (In other words, the cake is only so big. If you take a piece, you are guaranteeing the other guy has less cake.)

So who’s right? My guess is one could guarantee public opinion is on either side of the issue, depending on how you frame the question. If, for example, you were to ask someone whether or not “businesses should be allowed to deny services to same-sex couples,” the answer would, of course, be “no.”

On the other hand, ask Americans if “government should have the right to forcefully coerce Christians to violate their convictions,” and the answer would also be “no.”

He is probably right that people would answer the question of whether a business has the right to deny services to same-sex couple in the negative, but that’s in part because it’s the wrong question. We might find it utterly distasteful when someone refuses to serve another for bigoted reasons, but we also find it distasteful when others express bigoted opinions. The right to free speech is nevertheless widely acknowledged as protecting their rights to do so. Why are economic rights taken less seriously? So contra Lewis, what we should be asking is whether “business should be allowed to deny services to anyone,” or even whether “exchange should ever be compulsory, instead of voluntary.” These are the questions at the heart of the matter, and these are the questions which too long have been answered incorrectly by government, the courts and even voters.

Friday

14

February 2014

Notable Quotations

Written by , Posted in General/Misc.

Nick Gillespie, “Are Social Cons Saving Liberalism? Roger L. Simon Thinks So, Sees Libertarian Shift as Future of Conservatives, GOP:”

Any energy coming from Republicans these days is because of the large failure of Barack Obama and liberal Democrats’ political agenda and because of the libertarian wing of the GOP and its focus on civil liberties, foreign policy, and fiscal rectitude. It’s not because cultural warriors are getting the vapors over the gays or drugs or the need to triple defense spending.

Ilya Shapiro, “IRS Illegally Expands Obamacare:”

Cato and the Pacific Research Institute have now filed an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs on their appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. While it is manifestly the province of the judiciary to say “what the law is,” where the law’s text leaves no question as to its meaning—as is the case here with the phrase “established by the State”—it is neither right nor proper for a court to replace the laws passed by Congress with those of its own invention or the invention of civil servants. If Congress wants to extend the tax credit beyond the terms of the Affordable Care Act, it can do so by passing new legislation. The only reason for executive-branch officials not to go back to Congress for clarification, and instead legislate by fiat, is to bypass the democratic process, thereby undermining constitutional separation of powers.

Todd Zywicki, “Dionne v. Hayek:”

So why is central planning not only unwise, but dangerous to liberty? This is Hayek’s key insight that escapes Dionne… Hayek’s great insight was that moving economic decision-making from individual decision-making through the market to collective decision-making through the state does not eliminate the economic problem. The reality of economics is still present: scarce resources and unlimited wants. The only question is “Who decides?” Do you decide for yourself (through markets) or does someone else decide for you (through politics)?

Doug Bandow, “Free the Inside Traders:”

Objectively, the insider trading ban makes no sense.  It creates an arcane distinction between “non-public” and “public” information.  It presumes that investors should possess equal information and never know more than anyone else.

It punishes traders for seeking to gain information known to some people but not to everyone.  It inhibits people from acting on and markets from reacting to the latest information.

 

 

Tuesday

11

February 2014

Whose Washington Post Will It Be?

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society, Media Bias

It was a pleasant surprise when the Washington Post added Radley Balko as an opinion blogger, a surprise which was compounded when they soon after announced the Volokh Conspiracy would now publish under their banner. While both Balko and the many excellent law bloggers at Volokh bring a healthy dose of libertarianism to the Post, they have also injected some rare skepticism into the paper. Not only are they obviously skeptical of government, but they tend to approach all sources of authority with a healthy dose of skepticism. Why, they even direct it toward their own ideas, a novel concept at the Post.

This attitude contrasts with Washington Post relics like E.J. Dionne, whose hackneyed, partisan water-carrying tends to result in confused arguments and dishonest caricatures. To be sure, the Post has long counted George Will among its numbers, but the Dionne model has tended to dominate.

The two styles are perhaps the result of the environments in which they were crafted. Balko and the writers at Volokh honed their craft of commentary in an immensely crowded and competitive internet field, where name recognition meant squat. The quality of their individual work was paramount to their success, whereas the Washington Post and its assortment of writers have coasted on brand identification after its one significant achievement back during the Nixon Administration.

While the new additions are most welcome, I wonder whether or not they can ultimately co-exist with the close-mindedness of the old model. More importantly, I wonder which will ultimately win out, real investigative reporting or obsequious water-carrying for the powers that be? I hope it’s the former, as the New York Times has already called dibs on being the dead-tree version of MSNBC.

Ideological diversity is desirable, but it needn’t come at the expense of intellectual rigor. It is not necessary for the Washington Post to become a libertarian, anti-government mouthpiece. It just needs to dump the garbage. And while the acquisition of the paper by Jeff Bezos augurs well that the new additions might signal more than mere superficial reform, the J-school dominated news industry is still doggedly opposed to any challenge of elite media orthodoxy.

Wednesday

5

February 2014

Children Are Not Property of Society

Written by , Posted in Education

One of the more pernicious examples of collectivist ideology in practice is the insistence that children belong to the state. This might seem like an outrageous assertion. Who, after all, could possibly believe such a ridiculous thing?

Well, Hillary Clinton, for one. She has argued that “there is no such thing as other people’s children.” And her book, It Takes a Village, has as its entire premise the notion that children are ultimately the responsibility of the society as a whole, which in practice she holds as indistinguishable from government.

MSNBC host Harris-Perry made a similar argument when she said that we need to “break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents,” and replace it with the more enlightened view “that kids belong to whole communities.”

To this list we can now add Common Core advocate and former Massachusetts education secretary Paul Reville:

At an event on Friday sponsored by a leftist think tank, former Massachusetts education secretary Paul Reville called Common Core critics a “tiny minority” and asserted that “the children belong to all of us.”

Reville also claimed that opponents of Common Core are against any academic standards, reports CNSNews.com.

“To be sure, there’s always a small voice — and I think these voices get amplified in the midst of these arguments — of people who were never in favor of standards in the first place and never wanted to have any kind of testing or accountability, and those voices get amplified,” Reville declared.

…“Again, the argument about where it came from I think privileges certain sort of fringe voices about federalism and states’ rights, and things of that nature,” he told CNSNews.

“Why should some towns and cities and states have no standards or low standards and others have extremely high standards when the children belong to all of us?”

The errors here are manifold. Children do not belong to “whole communities,” “all of us,” or even their parents. Children are not slaves; they belong to no one. They have fundamental rights like any other person, some of which their parents have the responsibility to exercise on their behalf until such time as they can do so on their own.

But more specific to the issue of education, Reville’s argument is a befuddled mess. Many of those who oppose Common Core for “federalism” or “states’ rights” reasons would prefer tougher standards, so to say that they “never wanted to have any kind of testing or accountability” is simply untrue. The operative policy question is how best to ensure that the standards used are the most productive. As it turns out, centralization is a very poor method.

The benefit of having a multitude of standards, or allowing “some towns and cities and states have no standards or low standards and others have extremely high standards,” is that what a central planner like Paul Reville might think is a low or errant standard could well produce the greatest educational outcomes. After all, if we perfectly understood how best to education students the debate would be moot. Rather than fighting over a one-size-fits-all standard from central planners, we should let educators try different standards and see what produces the best results.

At the same time, if we realistically want to see real, effective standards develop then we need to reform the system to encourage innovation and experimentation. The way to do this is by embracing school choice and a true market in education.

Wednesday

29

January 2014

Notable Quotations

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Culture & Society, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

I gave my reasons why I don’t care about the State of the Union Address. But Kevin Williamson did it better:

Kevin D. Williamson, “Great Caesar’s Ghost:”

The national self-debasement begins well before the speech is under way. Members of Congress — supposedly free men and women serving as the elected representatives of the citizens of a self-governing republic — arrive hours early, camping out like spotty-faced adolescents waiting for Justin Bieber tickets, in the hope of staking out some prime center-aisle real estate that they might be seen on television, if only for a second or two, being greeted by the national pontifex maximus as he makes his stately procession into the chamber.

…But they will listen, rapt, and the media mandarins afterward will evaluate each promise with great sobriety, ignoring entirely that the central promise made during the same charlatan’s first State of the Union address was subsequently labeled “Lie of the Year” by the great man’s own frustrated admirers. That an entire class of people should be so enthusiastic about being lied to, serially, is perplexing.

Gene Healy, “Most Americans shrug at State of the Union spectacle:”

In its modern form, the SOTU is a meaningless ritual that rarely even does the president — let alone the public — any good.

That’s bad news for a chief executive whose chief talent is speechifying. “I have a gift, Harry,” then-Sen. Obama unhumblebragged to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., some years ago, in the afterglow of a well-received speech. But according to the polling data and the political science research, it’s a gift that won’t keep on giving.

Matt K. Lewis, “How ‘overcriminalization’ makes it easier to target political enemies:”

Regardless of whether the Obama administration is targeting conservatives, or whether its political enemies just happen to be particularly corrupt and incompetent, we should be equally concerned about a growing trend that would aid any vengeful political regime: The rise of onerous laws and arbitrary regulations that criminalize the routine function of politics and business.

After all, overt political paybacks are far easier to spot (and punish) than a pervasive system whereby one must break the law in order to get ahead — and where punishment of the guilty can then be selectively enforced.

Russ Roberts, “Real prosperity:”

I don’t really like the word “market.” Too much shorthand for a rich concept of exchange that allows for the possibility of specialization that allows for more investment in capital (human or physical) that leads to higher productivity that leads to prosperity and growth. Adam Smith understood this a long time ago and his insights have somehow been lost to much of the economics profession. At the heart of Smith’s insights into exchange and specialization and the division of labor is that we get wealthy by figuring out ways to create products and services that have value to other people.  That is what is missing in the parts of Africa that Sachs was trying to help. If you don’t have ways to help other people though exchange, you can’t have prosperity or even take steps toward prosperity.

Monday

27

January 2014

Why I Don’t Care About the State of the Union Address

Written by , Posted in General/Misc.

Does anyone remember when President Obama  met with Republicans in 2013 to press for bipartisan reform and simplification of the tax code? What about when the minimum wage was raised to $9 an hour? Or how about when he cut red tape on new oil and gas development? I hope no one does, because none of these things happened despite each being featured in President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address.

When George Washington delivered the first State of the Union in 1790, it took just 833 words. Last year’s SOTU took President Obama a whopping 6,800 words, just short of one hour’s worth of oration. Among modern Presidents, he’s the most verbose besides Bill Clinton. Thomas Jefferson didn’t even bother showing up (there’s no requirement in the Constitution that a President “give to Congress information of the State of the Union” in person) in 1801, and the nation survived just fine for more than a century before Woodrow Wilson finally revived the practice.

When President Obama delivers his speech for 2014, it will no doubt be filled with grand calls for reform and sweeping changes to the nation that he has administered for the last 5 years. Yet little if any of what he prescribes is likely to happen in the coming year.

The dirty secret of the presidency is that presidents have far less say over what happens then they or the media let on, and truly ought to have even less. Other than serving as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, the president is really just an administrator, or glorified bureaucrat. Congress makes the law and holds the ultimate power over the direction of the nation; the president in turn carries it out. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Presidents have political power, to be sure, and can influence the actions of Congress through various means. But most presidents have enough political capital to push just one or two major initiatives per term. The rest of the time is spent in a largely reactionary capacity, responding to unexpected events as they happen.

Pundits and politicos love the State of the Union, as it’s a chance to ply their craft with greater public attention than usual. If you’re into that sort of thing, I’d highly recommend following the live blog from the Cato Institute with analysis from their numerous experts. But if you are just curious as to what to expect for the coming year, I wouldn’t bother. The 2014 State of the Union address will be largely the same as that of 2013, 2012, 2011..etc. – full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing of import about what will really happen in the year that follows.

Saturday

25

January 2014

If Government Healthcare is So Wonderful, Why Are Many Seeking Private Alternatives?

Written by , Posted in Free Markets, Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

I’ve written before about Canadians having to turn to the private sector in order to receive timely and quality healthcare, despite supposedly having “universal” coverage. Similarly, most Medicare recipients in the U.S. have supplemental plans, despite the almost $600 billion spent on the program in 2013.

Now it turns out that Sweden, much celebrated for its generous welfare, is seeing growth in private plans due to the long lines – including year-long waits for cancer patients – and inadequate care provided by government:

Sweden, a country famous for a welfare state that has actually been trimmed back substantially in recent years, is experiencing a phenomenon unlikely to bring cheer to those Americans who think the answer to Obamacare’s problems is more government involvement in medicine. Tired of long waits and inadequate care, Swedes increasingly purchase private health insurance policies to gain access to the care the state can’t provide.

Proponents of government-run healthcare routinely point to other nations as proof that central planning can work. But merely pointing to a system that has not yet collapsed is not the same as proving that it can sustain itself. What we are increasingly seeing is that so-called universal healthcare is self-defeating, but its inherent faults sometimes take time to fully metastasize.

Tuesday

21

January 2014

Notable Quotations

Written by , Posted in Education, Energy and the Environment, Free Markets, Government Meddling

Anthony J. Sadar, “A libertarian’s guide to climate change hype:”

After giving some much-needed perspective on scientists, Delingpole tackles “science,” observing that political activists discovered that science could be used “as a handy excuse to advance their agenda under the guise of studied objectivity. ‘Hey, it’s not because we’re a bunch of crypto-Marxist control freaks that we’re demanding higher taxes, more regulation, and the replacement of Western industrial civilization with a Soviet-style global command economy run by leftist technocrats. It’s because the science tells us that that’s what we need to do’.”

Ira Stoll, “Tech Innovation Outstrips Government Obstructionism:”

One recurring theme in successful startups is the ability to get around the regulations created by politicians like Obama. Companies are using technology to create a free market.

The foremost example of this is Uber, with its UberX service that turns ordinary drivers in their own cars into taxi drivers. Sidecar and Lyft operate on a similar model. A Boston lawyer who represented existing taxi services challenging the new entrants, Sam Perkins, told the Boston Globe, “SideCar and UberX have targeted Boston to make the guy next door and his Prius into an unlicensed taxi driver with an uninspected taxis and no safety equipment…Their goal is to eliminate the existing taxi system and its consumer protections.”

The government-imposed licenses, medallions, inspections, minimum wages, regulated fares, and “consumer protections” turn out to be replaceable, more or less, by an Amazon-style star-rating system and the incentives of independent drivers and ride-provider networks that want repeat business.

A. Barton Hinkle, “School Choice Foes Are Wrong:”

During [Michael Bloomberg’s] term, the number of charter schools in the Big Apple soared from seven to 123.

De Blasio, a left-wing ideologue, does not approve. His “idealism,” as The New York Times explains, was shaped by his time in Nicaragua, then controlled by the Sandinista revolutionaries of whom he became an “ardent” supporter. “They gave a new definition to democracy,” de Blasio once said. That they did: Their version of it included censorship, suspending civil rights, breaking up demonstrations and imprisoning suspected political opponents without trial.

No surprise, then, that de Blasio is taking out after charter schools—an innovation that has helped poor and underprivileged students by bringing a (very) small degree of personal choice to a system controlled by the state.

Tuesday

14

January 2014

To Cry or Not to Cry

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Culture & Society, Economics & the Economy

The Huffington Post has a story about a chef at a high-end restaurant who apparently ran into a bit of social media controversy when she questioned whether or not crying babies should be tolerated at the restaurant.

At the end of the story, a poll asks, “Should upscale restaurants like Alinea ban babies?” None of the available answers were satisfactory to me.

The great thing about a free market system is that it accommodates all answers! It shouldn’t ultimately matter to the folks at Alinea what people who don’t or never will patron Alinea prefer. They should serve their customers or people they want to be their customers by catering to their preferences. And the types of people that do patronize Alinea, moreover, might have a different preference than people that prefer other restaurants.

Because we live in a somewhat free society that still has at least a somewhat free economy, people who want to eat without crying babies and people who want to take their children to nice restaurants can all get their wish without needing to fight about it. This is not the case for other questions where one-size-fits-all answers are imposed on everyone, such as how to best educate children or provide healthcare, which is why those decisions tend to be much more contentious and the cause of social acrimony.

Monday

13

January 2014

Notable Quotations

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Economics & the Economy, Free Markets, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

Simon Lester, “The Good Old Days of Global Poverty:”

Protectionism takes a lot of money from everyone, in order to give concentrated benefits to a small group of politically connected interest groups. This is the kind of policy that is usually condemned by both the left and right. In the case of the trade debate, however, some well-respected opinion leaders seem OK with such policies. Why is that? My best guess is that it taps into an emotional “us versus them” worldview. It isn’t really about economics at all. It’s about patriotism and nationalism. “They” are bad. “We” are good. So let’s punish them, even if in doing so we are really punishing us.

Jacob Sullum, “Do You Drink Too Much? Don’t Ask the CDC:”

Why does the CDC say “at least 38 million” Americans drink too much? Because it maintains that “drinking too much” includes not just so-called binge drinking but several other categories as well. If you are a man who consumes 15 or more drinks in a week or a woman who consumes eight or more, you drink too much. …If you are a woman, the CDC does not want to hear about how you limit yourself to one drink every day except Saturday, when you have two, thereby exceeding the government’s arbitrary limit. …And don’t even try to point out the lack of evidence that light to moderate drinking during pregnancy harms fetuses. The CDC has decreed that all these patterns of drinking are excessive, and its only challenge now is convincing the rest of us.

Colin Grabow, “If You Think Communism Is Bad For People, Check Out What It Did To The Environment:”

In addition to being an advocate for an ideology directly responsible for tens of millions of non-war deaths and untold human misery, Myerson has revealed himself as something of an ignoramus concerning communism’s shocking record on environmental issues. Not only a blight on the human condition, communism’s impact on the planet’s ecology has proven consistently ghastly.

 

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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