Don’t Call Leftists “Liberal”; They’re Not!

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Liberty

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Lenin_Got_Rope_Capitalists

Nor are statists, collectivists and socialists, but I repeat myself. The simple plea above is made by Daniel Klein in an essay appearing in the Intercollegiate Review and in Modern Age. He asserts that libertarians (and conservatives) fall into a semantic trap when they use the term as a pejorative for leftists. I have touched on the mangled, modern usage of “liberalism” several times on Sacred Cow Chips, but Klein brings some interesting empiricism into consideration and makes several points worth emphasizing.

First, Klein traces the historical record of appearances of certain words related to liberalism in published literature using the “n-gram viewer” on Google. He shows that the political use of “liberal” began around 1770. For the next 110 years, liberalism referred to a philosophy and policies associated with small government and individual autonomy. In the U.S., however, the term began to be co-opted by the political left in the late 1800s. Around the turn of the twentieth century, references to “New Liberalism” and “Old Liberalism” became more frequent. So the term was subverted in that time frame, a decade or two before the term “left-wing” came into use.

“The literature of the so-called New Liberals declaimed openly against individual liberty and in favor of state collectivism and socialistic reform.“

Today, the association of “liberalism” with the left is confined mostly to the U.S. and Canada:

“…when we step outside North America, we see that, by and large, liberal still means liberal (in the UK, usage is in-between). …

Where liberal still means liberal, such as in Europe and Latin America, leftists have no reluctance in calling their imaginary bogeyman ‘neoliberalism.’“

By way of suggestion, Klein reviews a few alternative labels for the left. In doing so, he notes that in general, the left supports the “governmentalization of social affairs”. For that reason, one of my favorite labels is “statism”. Oddly, Klein never mentions this as a possibility. (Klein concedes that the left supports liberty on a few issues, which happen to be issues upon which most libertarians are in agreement.) He does refer to the old standby “collectivists” in passing.

Klein likes the label “Progressivism” for the left, despite the positive associations some might make with that term. He argues with some merit that progressivism implies activist, goal-directed policy, as opposed to non-intervention and the spontaneous social order favored by true liberals.

“That collectivists should join together for what they imagine to be progress is perfectly fitting. For them the term progressive is suitable. By contrast, conservatives and libertarians look to, not progress, but improvement. …

Another fitting term for leftism is social democracy, which is standard in Europe. Social democracy is a compromise between democratic socialism and a tepid liberalism. The socialistic penchant is foremost, but a vacillating liberalism gnaws at the social democrat’s conscience.”

I fully agree with Klein that we should never refer to leftists as liberals. They are completely undeserving of the description, and doing so concedes a glaringly false premise. Every leftist I know advocates the increasing governmentalization of social affairs and a naive acceptance of an impossible proposition: that government can ever possess the detailed knowledge necessary to successfully regulate individual actors from above. And leftists are foolishly willing to place faith in the benevolence and wisdom of political agents and central controllers. Klein mentions a recent editorial by Kevin Williamson in National Review:

“Williamson ends the piece by quoting two leftist authors writing in The Nation, one decrying ‘unbridled individualism,’ the other ‘unfettered capitalism.’ Williamson concludes: ‘A ‘liberalism’ that is chiefly concerned with the many clever uses of bridles and fetters does not deserve the name. It never has.’”

Would Heterosexuals Select For Gay Genes?

26 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in Biotechnology, Progressivism

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Economic and social planning by the state can mean many things, but a planned society is always held in some form as a progressive goal. This is at the very heart of  “statism”. As Hayek noted, the fascination with planning is rooted in a belief that conscious, central direction is necessary in order for society to advance. This stands in stark contrast to the abysmal failure and monstrous cruelty of social planning historically, and the unmatched success of markets and a free, spontaneous social order at improving human welfare.

The faith in central direction has always been conjoined with a belief in the ability of scientific methods to address social issues. This line of thinking is flawed in many respects, but 80 to 100 years ago, an extremely perverse manifestation of this statist philosophy was a fascination with eugenics, or the intentional selection and rejection of various traits in offspring at the state’s direction. Sterilization of the “unfit”, and selective breeding of the most fit, were weirdly popular notions among progressives in that era. In 2012, Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian called eugenics “the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left’s closet”.

“Most alarming, many of its leading advocates were found among the luminaries of the Fabian and socialist left, men and women revered to this day. Thus George Bernard Shaw could insist that ‘the only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man’, even suggesting, in a phrase that chills the blood, that defectives be dealt with by means of a ‘lethal chamber’. …

According to Dennis Sewell, whose book The Political Gene charts the impact of Darwinian ideas on politics, the eugenics movement’s definition of ‘unfit’ was not limited to the physically or mentally impaired. It held, he writes, ‘that most of the behavioural traits that led to poverty were inherited. In short, that the poor were genetically inferior to the educated middle class.’ It was not poverty that had to be reduced or even eliminated: it was the poor.

Hence the enthusiasm of John Maynard Keynes, director of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944, for contraception, essential because the working class was too ‘drunken and ignorant’ to keep its numbers down.“

This post on the historical allure of eugenics to progressives is also informative. Of course, the National Socialists in Germany took the idea and ran with it, which ultimately led to a rejection of eugenics in the West. Yet the idea lives on today through various mechanisms, such as sex-selective abortion and screening for certain genetic disorders. Of course there is a widespread insistence on abortion as a “woman’s right” on the progressive left, but certain questions are seldom asked. For example, does that include women who wish not to bear children with disorders such as Down’s Syndrome? There is less unanimity on that issue.

Bruce Carroll, aka, The Gay Patriot, asks a different question: “What Happens When Science Allows Us to Abort A Baby If It Has the ‘Gay Gene’?” The mapping of the human genome has advanced to the point that it might be possible to identify the precise genetics determining certain social and personality characteristics. There is some research suggesting that regions on two different chromosomes might allow geneticists to home-in on the identification of specific “gay genes”.

The first question this raises is whether a woman (or a couple) has the right to know everything predicted about a child from its pre-natal genetic testing. I assume that all test results are private. Should the information about sexual-preference genes be off-limits to a parent? Information about gender is not off-limits, and you can be certain that even in the U.S., an occasional woman or couple decides to terminate a pregnancy for reasons of gender, whatever the motive. If the sexual preference genes are off-limits, then the inescapable conclusion is that sexual preference is “protected” in the womb by society, but gender and a whole range of disabilities are not protected. Really? Carroll takes a dim view of the LGBT politics on this matter:

“I wonder if gay activists realize that their slobbering devotion to pro-abortion political organizations, and the multi-million dollar abortion industry itself, may ultimately lead to the destruction of LGBT babies before they are born within my lifetime. It truly is Sophie’s Choice for the progressive gay activists; thus far, they wave off the question with derision.“

The question can be put in less drastic terms, if genetic selection can really ever be less drastic. Technologies to create “designer babies” through genetic selection are already here. That implies both positive selection and deselection of various traits. Obviously, this is not a simple subject from a either a scientific or ethical standpoint, but to zero in on our hypothetical question, I assume for now, for the sake of argument, that parents are legally empowered “to give their children the best start possible“. That would be the “best start” in the parents’ opinion, not the state’s! One wonders how the LGBT community, and the Left in general, would react to a service allowing couples, or a mother, to select for heterosexual genes in their “designer offspring”, consequently selecting against gay genes. Should such options be “off the table” as a matter of public policy? But again, if so, then what about gender? What about disabilities?

Involving the state in these decisions will lead to either bizarre contradictions or restrictions on autonomy that both Left and Right might find unacceptable.

Government Wants To Gut Your Gig

24 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in Big Government, Regulation

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Big government is an inherently conservative enterprise when it comes to protecting  the economic status quo. It frequently acts on behalf of entrenched interests by quashing innovation and competition. This is well illustrated by resistance to the “gig economy” (or “sharing economy”) and companies like Uber and Taskrabbit. The gig economy is growing rapidly because it is often more affordable than traditional channels and it offers tremendous convenience. Enabled by the internet, customized tasks or “gigs” can be performed anywhere for anyone demanding them. My son in New York City just found a talented carpenter through an on-line app, who stopped by his apartment in the evening and mounted a big-screen TV on the wall. The service he provided was not new, but the deal was facilitated and even enhanced by technology in a way that in some cases is reordering economic relationships. The competitive pressure this can create is drawing resistance with the aid of government power.

In St. Louis, there is an ongoing conflict between the Taxicab Commission and Uber, which has not yet gained entry to the market. Three of eight members of the commission own cab companies. They have succeeded in keeping Uber and Lyft out of the market for over a year. A resolution might be possible soon, but the commission is still haggling with Uber over insurance coverage levels, fingerprints and background checks.

On the national stage, the biggest issue surrounding the gig economy is the formal relationship between workers and any company they might represent. Should those workers be treated as independent contractors or employees? Companies like Uber insist that their drivers are independent, but the government would prefer that they be treated as employees. In some cases, that would oblige employers to offer certain benefits. Erik Sherman covers this issue in “How the U.S. Just Knee-Capped the ‘Gig Economy’“. According to Uber, most of its drivers are part-time and like it that way, so it’s not clear that the government can force Uber (under current rules) to pay for extra benefits, or how many of its drivers that would affect. Still, it is instructive that the government is applying pressure in this area, potentially undermining competitive forces and voluntary relationships formed between innovative businesses and their working partners.

Big government advocates are extremely uncomfortable with the gig economy, but there are a fair number of progressives who place a high value on their ability to transact with “gigsters”. Politicians such as Hillary Clinton, who “skewered” the gig economy last week, risk fracturing their own base by advocating steps that could threaten innovative enterprises like Uber. In another statist attack on Uber, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio recently proposed to “cap” the company’s growth while the city studied its impact on traffic. Fortunately, he has backed down.

Progressives should love the value that the gig economy brings to segments of society whose members otherwise can’t afford or can’t access traditional services. For example, residents of low-income neighborhoods often find themselves living in “taxi deserts” when forced to rely on the entrenched cab companies. Megan McArdle makes this point in “Uber Serves the Poor by Going Where Taxis Don’t“. Aside from the technology angle, this is basic capitalism in action. When government steps in to restrict the conditions under which services may be offered, and raises the cost, it lends a degree of monopoly power to the entrenched providers and blocks the diffusion of services to all segments of the market. This should be seen as antithetical to the progressive agenda, but politicians and cronies don’t always see it that way.

The advantages of the gig economy have been made possible by technology, but another key element is that it has unleashed a flood of voluntary activity to fill gaps that were heretofore inadequately addressed. There have been some principled objections to the business practices of Uber and other gig sponsors, which often involve details regarding the splitting of revenue. Despite these concerns, there are benefits to workers who choose to participate, including a great deal of flexibility in choosing working hours and conditions. Second guessing their motives and the opportunity costs they face is a purely speculative and presumptuous exercise. Furthermore, on other fronts, government has been engaged in a seemingly intentional effort to make only part-time work available, as with recent changes in overtime rules and Obamacare regulations; at least the gig economy fits into that framework.

Traditional service providers, some of whom enjoyed government-enforced monopolies, have reacted to new competition by calling for protection. This rent-seeking behavior is typical in the history of regulation, which has often taken root under strong pressure for protection by entrenched interests. Progressives should reject this perverse form of economic conservatism.

Pricing Wizards Baffle Public Officials

22 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in infrastructure

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When government invests in physical infrastructure, voters are led to believe that the resources invested will enhance their well being and safety as well as the productivity of the nation’s economy. In any particular instance, however, there is a strong chance that confidence in such assurances is misplaced. Allocation of public monies is always subject to a high likelihood of mismanagement, not least because decision-making in this arena is highly politicized. Government efficiency is always compromised because its actions are not guided by a profit motive. And it is well known that politicians and bureaucrats often act on their own private motives, rather than as purely disinterested public servants.

Another primary shortcoming of government infrastructure investment is that it is mis-priced. Highways are a perfect example. They are often congested because they are free. A weak objection to the last statement is that “pricing” is accomplished through gas taxes, which should provide incentives for curtailing the use of automobiles, but that is true only in the most general sense. The marginal cost to a driver of using a specific route is zero all day long. This leads to greater congestion, higher maintenance costs and, invariably, calls for expanding highway infrastructure.

Robert Krol has an excellent essay on the e21 website in which he lays out the strong case for congestion pricing:

“Although current federal law prohibits charging tolls on existing interstates, states may apply for permission to charge tolls on new lanes. This has occurred on a limited basis in Southern California. Variable tolls have been used outside the United States to successfully reduce congested highways. Before we spend more on highways, we need to change how we price highways. …

… the revenues could be used for highway maintenance and construction. Most importantly, by pricing roads correctly, we may actually find that we don’t need to spend more on highways. …

Economists Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner have shown that building more highway capacity in U.S. cities results in residents driving more, greater commercial traffic, and population in-migration. Congestion remains, resulting in wasted time. A recent estimate from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute shows that these delays cost drivers $121 billion per year. Congestion also increases air pollution in neighborhoods near the congested highways.“

Public transit proposals are almost always boondoggles, including light rail. These systems usually generate fare revenue that falls short of operating costs (with zero contribution to capital costs). But at least fares are non-zero! The ability of mass transit systems to charge fares that pay for themselves is seriously undermined by the ongoing expansion of “free” urban highways.

Reihan Salam reinforces these points in a post about Hillary Clinton’s infrastructure proposals. Clinton pushes the general idea that more infrastructure spending is a must, going so far as to promote a public / private “infrastructure bank” for a wide range of projects that quite possibly are unnecessary, given more rational pricing. She doesn’t promote the latter and she probably doesn’t even think about it, or whether scarcity should be priced.

“If new infrastructure is to be financed with private capital, investors are going to expect spending discipline and, eventually, a meaningful return. Will this return be extracted from taxpayers or from users of the infrastructure service in question? The Obama administration, to its credit, supports allowing state government to collect tolls on their Interstate highway segments if they choose. Would Clinton favor giving states the freedom to make greater use of user fees? ….

I don’t think our main problem is that we’re not spending enough on highways, as Clinton seems to believe. If anything, I think our highway system is overbuilt. ​… The chief problem with our airports is not … that they’re not as sleek and modern as the vast white elephants you’ll find in East Asia. Rather, it is that they are congested, and the reason they are congested is that the federal government doesn’t provide for market-rate pricing for take-off and landing slots. This straightforward reform would greatly increase the productivity, not to mention the pleasantness, of our aviation system. Yet it doesn’t involve spending billions of dollars and cutting ribbons, so politicians are by and large not interested.“

Voters should not grant free points to politicians who merely utter the I-word: infrastructure. A more creative approach involves efficient, market pricing of highways and other public assets. The technology to price highways efficiently is now available. That may involve some loss of privacy, as it requires detecting the presence of individual vehicles on the roads, but privacy could be protected to some extent by using private firms to manage billing.

Leftists Propose New Ministry of Speech Approval

18 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by in Liberty, Marketplace of Ideas

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FactCheckers

I witness so many calls for censorship on a day-to-day basis that I find it astonishing. This in a free society, and from people who fancy themselves liberal. They prefer a form of censorship that carries criminal penalties for speech that does not meet with approval by media “fact checkers”. Which fact checkers shall we choose? Will they be fact-checking juries of our peers, or a new cadre of officials donning armbands?

Does anyone truly believe that the branch of the media engaged in “fact-checking” is objective? Andrew Gripp covers this topic, demonstrating that the assessment of “facts” often doesn’t stand the test of time. Fact checkers will call a statement false, only to rule otherwise years later, or vice versa. That’s just how it went down with President Obama’s pronouncement that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan”. True in 2008, false in 2013. Would Obama receive an exemption under this approach?

But that is just one way in which the fact checkers go wrong. More basic is the fact that the assessments they make are essentially opinions! Gripp puts his finger on the primary weakness of the fact-checking industry:

“… it is important to remember that old Enlightenment figure Giambattista Vico’s verum factum principle: the truth is made — made by people with their own biases, limitations, and subjective standards.“

As part of the same censorious narrative, I sometimes hear that Canada “bans” Fox News. This is patently false, as Snopes asserts. Another trope is that Fox News lies 50% of the time, or 82% of the time, or some such claim that should immediately set off the BS alarm of any discerning observer. I get aggravated with certain things I hear on Fox too, but as an empiricist, this just smells like BS. Kevin Williamson shreds these reports as exercises in bias in a piece entitled “How Stupid Happens“:

“The most obvious problem — though certainly not the only problem, not even close — is selection bias: PolitiFact is a readership-driven online publication, and thus it exercises a great deal of discretion about which statements it chooses to evaluate and why. The most obvious factor is that it evaluates only statements that are disputed. Specifically, it evaluates only statements that are disputed and that its editors believe will be of some interest or benefit to its readers. …

But the fact is that unsupportable, boneheaded claims … will live forever, because people are mostly interested in having their biases confirmed and their values affirmed rather than learning new things about the world and how it works. True, much as I like yelling at people on television, it is pretty hard to feel too bad for Fox News and MSNBC over an exercise in confirmation bias, but this sort of sloppy thinking and malicious manipulation does have the effect of leaving the polity a little dumber than it absolutely has to be. And that is an unforgivable sin.“

In many respects, it feels like this topic is hardly worth a blog post, because the wannabe censors exist in an impenetrable ideological bubble. But on the other hand, they are little tyrants, not merely content to seek a monopoly over the market place of ideas, which is bad enough. They also seek to criminalize statements with which they happen to disagree. There is no doubt that they would burn books. Their ideas are dangerous and should not be treated with respect in a free society.

 

 

Nice Splice: New & Old GMO Varieties Blossom

16 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in Biotechnology

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Good for Bill Nye the Science Guy! And separately, good for Slate! First, the pop “scientist” Nye has turned the corner and now understands that genetic engineering (GE) and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) represent wonderful technology, holding great promise for humanity. Here is what he describes as the key:

“This is what changed my mind, is being able to do [sequence genes] 10 million times faster than they used to be able to do it … and being able to eliminate the ones not suitable for farming and susceptible to diseases and so on. We’re farmers, and we want them to come out the way we want them.“

Lydia Ramsey, whose post at Business Insider is linked above, distills Nye’s position this way:

“We are a society of farmers, and for thousands of years, farmers have been doing everything in their power to get the most product from their labor. Genetically modified crops are a way to do that.“

Apparently Nye is also impressed with the lengthy selection process and careful testing  that takes place before GMOs are ever brought to market. That contrasts with the nonexistent testing that is typical of conventional cross-breeding and irradiation, which can result in millions of gene mutations.

Nye, a mechanical engineer by training, probably knows enough science to recognize that there is a massive volume of literature that testifies to the safety of GMO crops (see here and here).

In Slate, William Saletan has written an excellent report entitled “Unhealthy Fixation“, and subtitled “The war against genetically modified organisms is full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud. Labeling them will not make you safer.”  Saletan emphasizes that GE is not any one single “thing”, but instead is a process. He discusses the histories of four distinct GMO issues:

  1. Overcoming the devastation of the papaya ringspot virus;
  2. Crops with a single Bt gene inserted versus Bt insecticides used on organics;
  3. Malnutrition, childhood blindness, and Golden Rice;
  4. Herbicide tolerance, farm productivity and herbicide overuse;

The fourth issue is an unfortunate aspect of our experience with GMOs, even to this day: much of it has related to strains of GE crops that are resistant to herbicides, glyphosate being the most prominent (until the patent expired in 2000, Monsanto’s Roundup was the only brand). In the public imagination, GMOs are almost synonymous with “Roundup-ready” crops. Glyphosate is only one type of herbicide, however, and there are significant benefits to herbicide-resistant crops, some of which are created without the help of GE. But herbicide-resistant crops are only one type of GMO. There are many other GMO varieties, and Saletan provides a long list of varieties in the pipeline:

“… drought-tolerant corn, virus-resistant plums, non-browning apples, potatoes with fewer natural toxins [and fewer carcinogens when fried], and soybeans that produce less saturated fat. … virus-resistant beans, heat-tolerant sugarcane, salt-tolerant wheat, disease-resistant cassava, high-iron rice, and cotton that requires less nitrogen fertilizer. … high-calcium carrots, antioxidant tomatoes, nonallergenic nuts, bacteria-resistant oranges, water-conserving wheat, corn and cassava loaded with extra nutrients, and a flaxlike plant that produces the healthy oil formerly available only in fish.“

Saletan bemoans the dominance of the herbicide industry in commercial applications of GMOs. He wants the food industry and regulators to move forward with the many other promising GE applications like those listed in the quote above. He also rightly blames anti-GMO activists for holding up promising varieties:

“First, it’s true that the issue is complicated. But the deeper you dig, the more fraud you find in the case against GMOs. It’s full of errors, fallacies, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and lies. The people who tell you that Monsanto is hiding the truth are themselves hiding evidence that their own allegations about GMOs are false. They’re counting on you to feel overwhelmed by the science and to accept, as a gut presumption, their message of distrust.“

There is a lot about GE technology for farmers and consumers to love. Many detractors seem unaware that life-saving products like insulin are made with GMOs, or that GMOs are in widespread use in the production of products like cheese, beer, and wine. The anti-GMO drumbeat goes on, however, promoting myths like the five discussed here by Dan Charles at NPR. This includes the fallacy that farmers saved their own seeds for planting until Monsanto came along. A particularly egregious piece of recent propaganda was a video promoted by the huckster David Wolfe. It involved a family who ate only organic food for two weeks and saw the trace levels of pesticides in their urine vanish. Of course, the researchers did not test for organic pesticides, such as Bt, but that escapes the notice of Wolfe’s uncritical acolytes.

You’ll find eight earlier posts related to GMOs on Sacred Cow Chips at this link.

A Cooked-Up Climate Consensus

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Global Warming

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Settled-Science

Consensus: the world is flat; the science is settled. Consensus: the earth is at the center of the universe; the science is settled. Consensus: bloodletting can cure diseases; the science is settled. Did these ideas truly represent scientific consensus? They probably thought so at the time, but it’s more likely that they derived from long- and widely-held assumptions that had never been tested adequately via scientific methods. It might have been difficult, if not impossible, to test those propositions using the methods available at the time. There are certainly other examples of  “settled science” that were later revised, such as certain aspects of Newtonian physics.

The so-called “consensus” on climate change is similar to the first few “scientistic” assertions above, except that it’s a much less honest mistake. The most prominent claim about it is that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans have contributed to global warming. That is incorrect in several ways. Its genesis is a 2013 paper by John Cook of the University of Queensland. Richard Tol of the University of Sussex examines the facts surrounding the Cook paper in “Global warming consensus claim does not stand up“. The claim itself is a misrepresentation of Cook’s findings, according to Tol:

“The 97% refers to the number of papers, rather than the number of scientists. The alleged consensus is about any human role in climate change, rather than a dominant role….“

It is well known that the peer review process in the climate research community was fundamentally corrupt during the period covered by Cook’s examination of the literature. Papers submitted to academic journals by climate “dissenters” were often shut out, which would have biased Cook’s findings even if his review had been conducted honestly. Tol goes on to note the distortions introduced by Cook’s research, including a non-representative sample of papers:

“The sample was padded with irrelevant papers. An article about TV coverage on global warming was taken as evidence for global warming. In fact, about three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsements had nothing to say about the subject matter.“

It gets even worse:

“Cook enlisted a small group of environmental activists to rate the claims made by the selected papers. Cook claims that the ratings were done independently, but the raters freely discussed their work. There are systematic differences between the raters. Reading the same abstracts, the raters reached remarkably different conclusions – and some raters all too often erred in the same direction. Cook’s hand-picked raters disagreed what a paper was about 33% of the time. In 63% of cases, they disagreed about the message of a paper with the authors of that paper.“

On top of all that, Cook was uncooperative when asked to make his data available to other researchers. Apparently a hacker obtained the data, which revealed a highly questionable data collection process (and that Cook had lied regarding the existence of time stamps on the surveys):

“After collecting data for 8 weeks, there were 4 weeks of data analysis, followed by 3 more weeks of data collection. The same people collected and analysed the data. After more analysis, the paper classification scheme was changed and yet more data collected.“

In short, the Cook research upon which the 97% claim is based is trash. There are a number of points upon which climate researchers can largely agree in principle, including the fact that greenhouse gases would warm the planet, but only if ceteris paribus is invoked. There are many feedback effects and confounding influences that change the relationship, and the actual time span of data that can be brought to bear on the issue is strikingly short to justify bold conclusions. Unfortunately, the research environment is so politicized that even the data itself is subject to manipulation. Astonishingly, many assertions about the actual climate are, in fact, based on model output, not actual data!

There is strong disagreement at the highest levels of the scientific community regarding the balance of the evidence on climate change and whether it justifies radical policy change. Matt Ridley examines this issue in “The Climate Wars’ Damage To Science“:

“Today’s climate science, as Ian Plimer points out in his chapter in The Facts, is based on a ‘pre-ordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored and analytical procedures are treated as evidence’. Funds are not available to investigate alternative theories. Those who express even the mildest doubts about dangerous climate change are ostracised, accused of being in the pay of fossil-fuel interests or starved of funds; those who take money from green pressure groups and make wildly exaggerated statements are showered with rewards and treated by the media as neutral.“

Ridley goes on to recount the litany of scandals that have erupted within the climate establishment over the past few years. It is well worth reading, but ultimately these developments can’t help but damage science, its reputation with the public, and its usefulness to mankind.

Public Monopolists Say “Don’t Be Choosy”

12 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in Markets, School Choice

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choice better schools

Imagine a food distribution system that mirrored the organization of K-12 education in the U.S. How do you think it would work out? That thought exercise was conducted four years ago by Don Boudreaux in his Wall Street Journal op-ed: “If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools”(gated). Boudreaux has helpfully reblogged this op-ed at Cafe Hayek as part of his post “Separate School From State“. Read the whole thing! Because this is a topic in economics and I am so very pedantic, I prefer not to use the term “market” at all in this context. After all, a public “supermarket”, as discussed by Boudreaux, is no more a market than a public school is a market. I will use the term “public grocery store” instead, except when quoting Boudreaux.

The comparison of grocery stores to schools involves outputs that are both considered essential. In fact, there should be no argument that food is the more essential of the two. Yet the essential nature of educating children in a modern society is thought to be an important rationale for the existence of a public school system. Would supporters of public education care to apply the argument that “market forces can’t supply quality education” to another essential product, like food?

Boudreaux invokes several features of K-12 education in “designing” his hypothetical food distribution system:

  • “Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties.“
  • “Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—’for free’—from its neighborhood public supermarket.“
  • “No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district.“
  • “... families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes.“

Economic theory predicts that the monopoly status held by public grocery stores over the provision of “free food” within their districts would cause the quality and variety offered at those stores to suffer. This is just a form of restraining trade, which is what monopolists do. The classic monopolist charges a higher price and produces less output. Exactly the same is predicted in Boudreaux’s experiment.

One difference in comparing food stores to schools is that families, presumably, could purchase some of their groceries from private stores and meet the rest of their food needs from their district grocery store at no marginal cost, whereas the school selection is all public or all private. However, this does not invalidate Boudreaux’s assertion that the quality offered by the monopoly provider will suffer.

Like public schools, there would be massive variations in quality across public grocery stores due to variation in the tax base from one district to another. This would tend to reinforce differences in the value of property across districts, because it is so desirable to live in a district with a good public grocery.

Here’s an extended excerpt from Boudreaux:

“Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. ….

Responding to these failures, thoughtful souls would call for ‘supermarket choice’ fueled by vouchers or tax credits. Those calls would be vigorously opposed by public-supermarket administrators and workers.

Opponents of supermarket choice would accuse its proponents of demonizing supermarket workers (who, after all, have no control over their customers’ poor eating habits at home). Advocates of choice would also be accused of trying to deny ordinary families the food needed for survival. Such choice, it would be alleged, would drain precious resources from public supermarkets whose poor performance testifies to their overwhelming need for more public funds.

As for the handful of radicals who call for total separation of supermarket and state—well, they would be criticized by almost everyone as antisocial devils indifferent to the starvation that would haunt the land if the provision of groceries were governed exclusively by private market forces.

In the face of calls for supermarket choice, supermarket-workers unions would use their significant resources for lobbying—in favor of public-supermarkets’ monopoly power and against any suggestion that market forces are appropriate for delivering something as essential as groceries.“

That sounds all too familiar. Even with massive state redistribution of public grocery store funding from wealthy to poor districts, the result would be much the same, as it is with public schools. Increased grocery store funding cannot correct the larger problems plaguing the community, many of which are created by the welfare state itself. And increased funding does not correct fundamental dislocations created by a monopoly, especially a public monopoly. The entrenched, politicized interests that infest public institutions always resist changes that might improve quality. They are typified by bloated administrative machinery and a general lack of responsiveness to the community. Only competition and choice can eliminate these tendencies and drive improvement.

An objection that might be raised to Boudreaux’s comparison is that public schools must accommodate a student population with wide variations in learning ability. It may be claimed that this variation strains the resources of public relative to private schools. However, that burden is due in large part to the structure of the education system. A benefit of competition and choice is the extent to which it can accommodate diverse needs, and there is no reason why education should prove to be an exception. In fact, diverse needs are already met very well by private education, but they serve only “private school families.” Empowering all families to choose the schools that best accommodate their needs would bring higher quality to our K-12 education system.

Balancing Gay Rights and Religious Rights

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Liberty

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Gay marriage rights are considered a big win among libertarians, but there are thorny issues on the horizon as LGBT activists contest certain liberties of other groups. Last month’s landmark Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges established that same-sex marriage is protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Unfortunately, the established rights of different groups are sometimes in conflict; recognition of one individual right under the Constitution does not invalidate the established rights of others. Rather, these rights exist pari-passu unless some intractable conflict exists. Any challenge to a right of one party by another must be resolved based upon whether the courts find a compelling reason, under the circumstances of the case, to favor one right over another. Depending on the details, the result may establish a narrow or a broad precedent.

Last week, Reason carried a good discussion of several areas of possible conflict between the positions of certain LGBT activists and the libertarian view: “Is This Where Libertarians and the Gay Community Part Ways?“, by Scott Shackford, covered each of the general issues listed below, which I’ll attempt to summarize. The libertarian resolution to most of these issues is dependent upon whether the challenge is against a government entity or a private party. This dichotomy follows from a constitutional philosophy under which the powers of government are strictly enumerated and the presumed rights of private individuals are broad and unenumerated. Many libertarians, Shackford included, believe that conflicts are often easily resolved when all alternatives for both parties are considered. For that reason, simply allowing private social arrangements to evolve is superior to intrusion by government aimed at righting perceived wrongs.

Employment Nondiscrimination: Shackford is skeptical that congressional passage of the long-debated federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would accomplish much because there has already been such a significant shift in the cultural acceptance of homosexuality. Nevertheless, he is supportive of laws prohibiting anti-gay discrimination by government employers.

The ENDA would grant gay and transgender individuals the same status as other protected classes under federal law. With certain exceptions, it would require private employers to offer employment and benefits to LGBTs and same-sex married couples on the same basis as heterosexuals. This is meaningless unless gay individuals self-identify on job applications. It would also require that employers collect data on sexual preference and transgender status, which is costly, likely to be somewhat unreliable and disturbingly intrusive. But the most vexing aspect of federal law prohibiting discrimination by private employers against LGBTs is the potential conflict with the employer’s religious convictions.

The ENDA exempts religious organizations. The real challenge is balancing the rights of homosexuals with those of private employers having deeply-held religious beliefs opposing homosexuality. Should the rights of gays take precedence over the religious rights of private employers? There should certainly be no presumption that gays are dependent upon religious private employers for work. And there should be no presumption of “hate” on the part of a religious employer who does not wish to offer  any pecuniary support to homosexuals. Thus, it is difficult to argue that the employment rights of gays trump the religious rights of private employers, and because alternatives exist for gays, many libertarians see this as a simple issue of live and let live.

Religious Freedom Exemptions: This is about the asserted freedom to decide not to do  business with LGBTs based on religious convictions. Examples are the Muslim baker and the Christian photographer who do not wish to take business related to same-sex weddings. As I noted in “Suit Me or Face a Lawsuit: Adventures in Litigation Land“, compulsion to practice an art or to engage in any act of expression against one’s religious convictions is not acceptable from a libertarian perspective. That does not justify discrimination in a business’s public accommodations, however, where the doors of the business are open for purchases by the general public. The public at large, protected groups and otherwise, should have the freedom to transact there.

Shackford makes some good points in this section, including a rebuttal of the argument that to be engaged in “doing business” somehow disqualifies an individual from refusing an order based on religion:

“This argument flips the idea of civil liberties completely on its head and attributes the source of our rights to the government, a contradiction of the spirit of our own Constitution.“

Transgender Recognition: Most libertarians believe that individuals should have the right to identify publicly as the gender with which they identify privately:

“Fundamental to liberty is the right to personal identity and expression. This includes gender. Transgender citizens have the same right as everybody else to live their lives as they please without unnecessary government interference.“

Shackford again draws the crucial distinction between government and private sector accommodation for the needs of transgender individuals:

“In the private sector, it’s all a matter of cultural negotiation and voluntary agreements. The law should not be used to mandate private recognition of transgender needs, whether it’s requiring insurance companies cover gender reassignment surgeries or requiring private businesses to accommodate their bathroom choices. The reverse is also true: It would be inappropriate for the government to forbid insurance coverage or to require private businesses to police their own bathrooms to keep transgender folks out.“

Adoption: Shackford notes that gay couples can now adopt children in any state, including a partner’s child. But conflicts arise involving religious adoption agencies that are unwilling to work with homosexuals wishing to adopt. Activists would like to stop the flow of public funds to these institutions, but that position is indefensible on several grounds: adoption is foremost about helping children, and it is counter-productive to undermine an agency with a track record of positive performance. There are secular alternatives for adoption as well. Second, placing children in homes undoubtedly provides benefits to taxpayers that exceed the funds supporting these agencies. Finally, the activist position is indefensible as an attack on religious liberty.

Bullying in Schools: Cultural acceptance of gays or any other difference might not extend readily to the schoolyard. Bullying should always be dealt with firmly, but new legal protections for gays should not give way to policies that may be excessively harsh:

“… whatever is done to try to curtail bullying needs to be managed with the understanding that we are dealing with children on both sides of the issue…. 

The libertarian concern here is, just as with the other issues, using the state or the law to punish people—in this case, children—when there are better social tools for this battle… before considering new policies or laws with the intention of fighting bullying, activists need to remind themselves that public schools now have … oppressive disciplinary policies that they use to discard students at the first sign of trouble. The last thing we need is more ‘zero tolerance’ policies. As it stands, we have children and teenagers being arrested by police for common school misconduct and their families forced to deal with costly and time-wasting court systems. It is an absurd outcome that actually threatens children’s futures.“

Shackford closes with a few thoughts about the usefulness of school choice for helping parents find the most hospitable school environment for their children.

Libertarians have been consistent supporters of gay marriage rights, nondiscrimination by public institutions and in the public accommodations of private businesses. However, libertarians are unlikely to support LGBT activists in attempts to curtail religious liberties. This includes the liberty to run a business in a manner consistent with one’s religious beliefs, whether or not that conflicts with the ideals of the LGBT community. Conflicting rights must be balanced in a way that is most neutral and least harmful. Libertarians generally believe that there is no remedy for a violation of religious rights. When the religious rights of private business owners are protected with respect to their non-public accommodations, any imposition this might inflict on other parties is usually mitigated by the existence of willing competitors. Alas, there is no right to a life free of insults, unintended or otherwise.

Corporatists of the World Unite!

01 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Big Government

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Corporatism Santa

As a classical liberal, I’m fascinated by the ongoing confusion of the Progressive Left over the meaning of the word liberalism. To be “liberal” is to support individual autonomy, self-determination, and freedom from coercion by the state. True liberalism necessarily implies a minimal state apparatus because the state can only derive authority from its power to coerce. Confusion over the meaning of liberalism was covered in “Labels For the Authoritarian Left” on Sacred Cow Chips last year.

A similar confusion surrounds use of the word corporatism and its relationship to progressivism on the one hand, and liberalism on the other. I came across this excellent essay by Max Borders in The Freeman that begins with a discussion of the term neoliberalism. Lately this has been invoked as an derogatory reference to classical liberalism, except that the users don’t really understand the latter. In fact, as Borders points out, one prominent author describes free market advocacy as something more akin to cronyism, complete with state support and bailouts, which is contradictory on its face. But it is consistent with the doctrine of corporatism. Borders offers this quote from Thayer Watkins:

“In the last half of the 19th century people of the working class in Europe were beginning to show interest in the ideas of socialism and syndicalism. Some members of the intelligentsia, particularly the Catholic intelligentsia, decided to formulate an alternative to socialism which would emphasize social justice without the radical solution of the abolition of private property.

The result was called Corporatism. The name had nothing to do with the notion of a business corporation except that both words are derived from the Latin word for body, corpus.“

Sounds like innocent beginnings, but enforcing “social justice” within this framework demands a substantial role for the state and an intricate set of relationships between the state and private parties. That provides opportunities for accumulating economic power and wealth by manipulating any arm of government that legislates, adjudicates, purchases, licenses, regulates or levies taxes. That is, any arm of government! Such rent-seeking activity gives rise to a symbiosis between the state and powerful private economic actors, and that is the essence of modern corporatism as practiced by Mussolini, George W. Bush and Obama and their governments. Borders quotes economics Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps:

“The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system . . . is . . . an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism.“

Borders closes with a discussion of Jason Brennan’s admonition: “Dear Left: Corporatism is Your Fault”, which dishes the bald truth.

“When you create complicated tax codes, complicated regulatory regimes, and complicated licensing rules, these regulations naturally select for larger and larger corporations. We told you that would happen. Of course, these increasingly large corporations then capture these rules, codes, and regulations to disadvantage their competitors and exploit the rest of us.“

Corporatism has nothing to do with the corporate form of business organization per se. Granted, limited liability is an artificial construct created by the state, and it is a hallmark of that form, so it’s fair to cite it as an example of corporatism. But corporatism in its systemic sense represents the larger web of non-market dependencies between the state and powerful economic actors, corporate in form or not. Both sides benefit from these relationships and, in many direct and indirect ways, compromise the integrity of the voluntary market mechanism and harm smaller actors who rely on it.

This is not a state of affairs that meets with the approval of classical liberals, free marketeers and fans of real capitalism, the so-called “neoliberals” of Leftist fiction. The Left purports to hate corporatism too, but they don’t understand its genesis and are fully oblivious to the real reasons for its progression. Instead, in their ignorance, they pass the blame onto “neoliberals”.