Tag Archives: Privilege

Feel the Nutzenfreude: Joy In Success of Others

06 Sunday Feb 2022

Posted by in Free markets, Human Welfare

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Michael Munger is a professor of economics at Duke University who has coined a term for the distaste we observe, in some quarters, for the success of others. He calls it Nutzenschmerz, a conjunction of the German words “nutzen” (benefit) and “schmerz” (pain).

According to Munger, nutzenschmertz is an impulse of “indignant outrage over someone getting” … “an undeserved benefit”. Of course, “undeserved” is a key word here. I suspect those inflicted with nutzenschmerz apply definitions as flexible and arbitrary as the envy from which they suffer. Nutzenschmerz is a special kind of envy, however, because it doesn’t necessarily imply a personal want of the benefit. It’s simply a condemnation of another’s good fortune. Munger applies an additional twist to the definition, which I discuss below. As a mnemonic device, it might be helpful to think of nutzenschmerz as a hatred for anyone who “gets their nut”!

People of good spirit believe success in others is something to admire, at least if it doesn’t come at someone else’s expense. Perhaps success is more admirable as the fruit of hard work and talent, as opposed to dumb luck. But good luck is nothing to be ashamed of, and it’s often said we make our own luck. Well, maybe only lucky people say that! “Luck” doesn’t necessarily come at the expense of others, however, and no one “loses” things they have no right to expect.

Furthermore, one’s success, lucky or otherwise, often inures to the benefit of others in the form of better products, new jobs, and higher income. For example, if I were to find a deposit of some rare earth mineral on my property while digging a well, I’d consider myself quite lucky. I would then hire people to mine it. The new supplies of the mineral would be used in industry, bringing more plentiful supplies of certain products to consumers. New jobs! Cheaper products!

Economists have a particular framework for discussing “successes” of this kind. If a change occurs from which everyone benefits and no one loses, economists say the change is a Pareto improvement. If only only a few benefit and no one is made worse off, it is a weak Pareto improvement. When all such opportunities have been exhausted, we have reached a state of Pareto optimality. Free markets generally move society toward that state, externalities aside. This is an aspect of what’s meant when we say markets promote economic efficiency. And when technology, tastes, or resource availability change, as they do constantly, new opportunities arise for Pareto improvements.

The Left is selectively intolerant of success and even Pareto improvements from luck or effort. The attitude is usually couched in terms of undeserved “privilege” or some form of “exploitation”. They exempt their own gains, of course, especially when they find themselves in a position to pick winners (and that enterprise almost always involves picking losers as well). In fact, they are probably inclined to celebrate success that owes to subsidies for politically favored activities, which clearly come at the expense of others and are not Paretian in any sense. Social justice warriors demand a free pass on coveting what belongs to others, and they are often just as contemptible of successful effort as they are of dumb luck. Whatever it is you have, or have achieved, don’t expect them to respect it … or your right to have it.

The word Nutzenschmerz amuses me partly because the original German form of my name begins with the letters “Nütz“. Also, like Munger, I’ve always been charmed by the German linguistic practice of stringing words together, like the more familiar Schadenfreude, which means to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others. Or Freundschaftsbeziehungen (friendship demonstrations). Mark Twain said some German words are so long they have perspective! David Sedalis once commented that he heard lots of long words in Germany, but one of the few that stuck was Lebensabschnittspartner:

“This doesn’t translate to ‘lover’ or ‘life partner’ but, rather, to ‘the person I am with today,’ the implication being that things change, and you are keeping yourself open.”

Then, of course, take Gleichschaltung (the standardization of political, economic, and social institutions in authoritarian states). Er … no, please, not that!

In addition to nutzenschmirz, Munger has coined the term Tradenfreude, meaning “joy … at observing the ‘well-contrived machine’ of commercial society, with everyone trading with everyone else for conveniences and necessities.” By extension, he adds Tradenschmerz, meaning the hatred reserved for free markets by many leftists.

Nutzenschmerz is an emotive force that shapes the Marxist psyche. It could be dismissed as incidental to a shallow grasp of the mutually beneficial nature of voluntary trade. However, it also demonstrates a fundamental disrespect for property rights. It’s a rejection of the very things that motivate human action, and which enable cooperation on a scale unprecedented over nearly all of human history preceding the Scottish Enlightenment.

I propose that we should all practice a philosophy of Nutzenfreude, by which I mean taking pleasure in the Paretian successes of others. It might be vicarious, or it might signal the genesis of new opportunities for the rest of us! The thing is, those successes all represent human progress to one degree or another, from which we all derive incremental benefits. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be watchful for harms or externalities, but neither should we regard every success with suspicion, or worse, nutzenschmerz!

Do as Munger says: fight nutzenschmerz! And revel in nutzenfreude!

The Critical Race Dialectic

07 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by in Critical Race Theory, Social Justice

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The very notion of impartiality requires decisions that are independent of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual preference, gender identity, or any other component of identity. The great irony of identity politics is its insistence on using characteristics of identity as the key drivers in a broad range of human decisions. It does so in an effort to redress injustices, often in the distant past. This necessarily penalizes individuals bearing no responsibility for the original injustices, and of course those penalties are also assessed on the basis of identity.

That would seem to limit the political viability of reparations for injustices of the distant past, but identity politics seeks to foster a sense of contemporary and immediate relevance to claims of compensable injustice. That’s one way to rationalize the kind of massive redistribution contemplated by this movement. Those who would stand to benefit must be convinced of their ongoing victimhood, and those who would pay must be convinced of their guilt: despite all good intentions, they practice unconscious bias in all of their actions, words, and thoughts. If successful, the possibilities for transfers of wealth and power in all matters are limited only by the negative-sum reality of this scam.

The kind of propaganda referenced above is the province of Critical Race Theory (CRT). S.G.Cheah explains:

“Critical Theory originated from Immanuel Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Critical Philosophy states that ‘proper inquiry is not about what is out there in reality, but rather about the character and foundations of experience itself.’”

For a more detailed analysis of Kant’s “Critiques” of pure reason, practical reason, and judgement, see here. His primary focus was theology, but the adherents obviously found much broader application. The brief explanation quoted above is pretty accurate, and probably offers all the intellectual underpinnings critical race theorists require to push their agenda.

If one’s “experience” is the only evidence that matters, then the ravings of any lunatic must be taken at face value, and as truth. A concession to objective reality is tolerated only when and if it confirms an individual’s mood affiliation. And what defines one’s experience if not one’s inner feelings about events? Thus, regardless of facts, CRT would have us bow to mere feelings, perceptions, and assertions of harm said to be inflicted by the so-called “privileged”.

If I believe I’ve experienced racism, then CRT supports the conclusion that I have experienced racism. It is not confined to situations of overt discrimination. It goes for any conflict I might have with someone of a different race; any transaction in which I might feel disadvantaged; any life circumstance that I experience as “unfair”; or any judgement against me in a court of law. Racism is reality if I “experience” the world as racist (or sexist or homophobic or transphobic, for that matter.) These charges are conveniently leveled against those who have enjoyed any differential success in the world, irrespective of race, but primarily against whites and often Asians regardless of success.

Apparently, under CRT, one’s “experience” may extend to perceptions that today’s culture and institutions are evolved from any version of history one might choose to conjure. A prominent case are the lies promoted by the New York Times’ 1619 Project that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery. Jonah Goldberg’s thoughts on that topic are worth reading.

CRT has spawned some incredibly bad research. Here’s a review of two academic papers on the connection between the use of the “N-word” in LLP Google searches and 1) gun purchases “motivated by white racial animus”, and 2) “anti-black voting patterns”. The authors of those papers drew behavioral conclusions from mere coincidental events, based more upon their personal biases than objective evidence. They undoubtedly were aware of the weaknesses of using Google trends to gauge attitudes, but they willfully ignored that evidence.

CRT is being taught to our children in public schools and probably in some private schools. This is nothing short of an indoctrination campaign. Of course, CRT made much earlier inroads in higher education. A new web site, criticalrace.org, includes a searchable database on CRT training at U.S. universities, as well as links to a variety of articles on CRT. Many private corporations have been eager to jump on board with CRT. Take a look at the instructor’s notes on the poster boards at the racial struggle session shown below. Here is a longer description.

This is literally a propaganda putsch, and it is meeting with far more success than I would have thought possible. I’ve apparently misjudged the ability of my countrymen to think independently, or to think at all. Here are examples of the success of CRT advocates in convincing whites of their individual and collective guilt. There are individuals now so convinced of the guilt of all white people that they can’t help but make complete fools of themselves:

“We will only achieve tolerance and unity once white people accept that they are evil, repugnant, worthless trash whose very existence is a vomit stain on the fabric of society.”

Speak for yourself! I have to conclude that this poor woman recognizes something quite damning within herself, and she feels it necessary to project her innermost racism onto others who happen to share her skin color.

Now here’s a man to admire: Lt. Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina. He isn’t having any of the CRT crap, and he knows how to give it back to the petty stringers in the media as well as anyone.

CRT is a lie, or many lies. Racists certainly walk among us, but to condemn all whites of racism, or to allege racism by any class with presumed privilege, is a gross violation of ethics. Guilt of recompensable racism cannot be established by mere claims about anyone else’s “experience” without impartial adjudication. The thoughts and actions of decent people are not dominated by racial animus or repugnance, and any presumption to the contrary must be rejected in the absence of objective proof. Everyone matters, and we must insist on equality under the law. That does not mean equality of outcome, and it is not an excuse for blaming negative outcomes on anyone skilled and/or fortunate enough to have enjoyed more positive outcomes. If the fact that blacks have not achieved average economic parity with whites is evidence of “systemic racism”, I would suggest it has more to do with short-sighted public policy efforts to engineer social outcomes than with racism. More on that in a later post.

Note: the graphic at the top is from New Discourses.

Scorning the Language of the Left

12 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by in Censorship, Leftism, Political Correctness

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It’s hard not to ridicule some the language adopted by our lefty friends, and it can be fun! But it’s not just them. We hear it now from employers, schools, and otherwise sensible people too eager to signal their modernity and virtue. Lionel Shriver dissects some of this “Lefty Lingo” in an entertaining piece in Harper’s. It’s funny, but it aroused my contempt for the smugness of the “wokescenti” (a term Shriver attributes too Meghan Daum) and my pity for those “normals” simply desperate to project progressive sophistication.

Here are a few of Shriver’s observations:

“Privilege”: makes you incapable of understanding that which you criticize.

“Whereas a privilege can be acquired through merit—e.g., students with good grades got to go bowling with our teacher in sixth grade—privilege, sans the article, is implicitly unearned and undeserved. The designation neatly dispossesses those so stigmatized of any credit for their achievements while discounting as immaterial those hurdles an individual with a perceived leg up might still have had to overcome (an alcoholic parent, a stutter, even poverty). For privilege is a static state into which you are born, stained by original sin. Just as you can’t earn yourself into privilege, you can’t earn yourself out of it, either. … . it’s intriguing that the P-bomb is most frequently dropped by folks of European heritage, either to convey a posturing humility (“I acknowledge my privilege”) or to demonize the Bad White People, the better to distinguish themselves as the Good White People.

Meanwhile, it isn’t clear what an admission of privilege calls you to do, aside from cower. That tired injunction ‘Check your privilege’ translates simply to ‘S.T.F.U.’—and it’s telling that ‘Shut the fuck up’ is now a sufficiently commonplace imperative to have lodged in text-speak.”

“Cisgender”: “Cis-” is a linguistic shell game whereby the typical case is labelled cis-typical.

“Denoting, say, a woman born a woman who thinks she’s a woman, this freighted neologism deliberately peculiarizes being born a sex and placidly accepting your fate, and even suggests that there’s something a bit passive and conformist about complying with the arbitrary caprices of your mother’s doctor. Moreover, unless a discussion specifically regards transgenderism, in which case we might need to distinguish the rest of the population (‘non-trans’ would do nicely), we don’t really need this word, except as a banner for how gendercool we are. It’s no more necessary than words for ‘a dog that is not a cat,’ a ‘lamppost that is not a fire hydrant,’ or ‘a table that is actually a table.’ Presumably, in order to mark entities that are what they appear to be, we could append ‘cis’ to anything and everything. ‘Cisblue’ would mean blue and not yellow. ‘Cisboring’ would mean genuinely dull, and not secretly entertaining after all.”

“Microaggression“: Anything you say that bothers them, even a little.

“… a perverse concoction, implying that the offense in question is so minuscule as to be invisible to the naked eye, yet also that it’s terribly important. The word cultivates hypersensitivity.”

“_____-phobic”: the typical use of this suffix in identity politics stands “phobia” on its head. To be fair, however, it started with a presumption that people hate that which they fear. Maybe also that they fear and hate that which they don’t care for, but we’ll just focus on fear and hate. For example, there is the notion that men have deep fears about their own sexuality. Thus, the prototypical gay-basher in film is often compensating for his own repressed homosexual longings, you see. And now, the idea is that we always fear “otherness” and probably hate it too. Both assertions are tenuous. At least those narratives are rooted in “fear”, but it’s not quite the same phenomenon as hate, and yet “phobic” seems to have been redefined as odium:

“The ubiquitous ‘transphobic,’ ‘Islamophobic,’ and ‘homophobic’ are also eccentric, in that the reprobates so branded are not really being accused of fearfulness but hatred.”

“LGBTQ“: Lumping all these “types” together can be misleading, as they do not always speak in unison on public policy. But if we must, how about “Let’s Go Back To ‘Queer'”, as Shriver suggests. The LGBs I know don’t seem to mind it as a descriptor, but maybe that’s only when they say it. Not sure about the trannies. There is a great Libertarian economist who is transsexual ( Dierdre McCloskey), and somehow “queer” doesn’t seem quite right for her. Perhaps she’s just a great woman.

“The alphabet soup of ‘LGBTQ’ continues to add letters: LGBTQIAGNC, LGBTQQIP2SAA, or even LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA. A three-year-old bashing the keyboard would produce a more functional shorthand, and we already have a simpler locution: queer.”

“Problematic”, “Troubling” and “Inappropriate”: I’m sure some of what I’ve said above is all three. I must confess I’ve used these terms myself, and they are perfectly good words. It’s just funny when the Left uses them in the following ways.

“Rare instances of left-wing understatement, ‘problematic’ and ‘troubling’ are coyly nonspecific red flags for political transgression that obviate spelling out exactly what sin has been committed (thereby eliding the argument). Similarly, the all-purpose adjectival workhorse ‘inappropriate’ presumes a shared set of social norms that in the throes of the culture wars we conspicuously lack. This euphemistic tsk-tsk projects the prim censure of a mother alarmed that her daughter’s low-cut blouse is too revealing for church. ‘Inappropriate’ is laced with disgust, while once again skipping the argument. By conceit, the appalling nature of the misbehavior at issue is glaringly obvious to everyone, so what’s wrong with it goes without saying.”

Here are a few others among my favorites:

“Patriarchy“: This serves the same function as “privilege” but is directed more specifically at the privilege enjoyed by males. Usually white, heterosexual males. It seeks to preemptively discredit any argument a male might make, and often it is used to discredit Western political and economic thought generally. That’s because so much of it was the product of the patriarchy, don’t you know! And remember, it means that males are simply incapable of understanding the plight of females … and children, let alone queers! Apparently fathers are bad, especially if they’re still straight. Mothers are good, unless they stand with the patriarchy.

“Hate Speech“: This expression contributes nothing to our understanding of speech that is not protected by the Constitution. If anything its use is intended to deny certain kinds of protected speech. Sure, originally it was targeted at such aberrations as racist or anti-gay rhetoric, assuming that always meant “hate”, but even those are protected as long as they stop short of “fighting words”. There are many kinds of opinions that now seem to qualify as “hate speech” in the eyes of the Identitarian Left, even when not truly “hateful”, such as church teachings in disapproval of homosexuality. There is also a tendency to characterize certain policy positions as “hate speech”, such as limits on immigration and opposition to “living wage” laws. Hypersensitivity, once more.

“Sustainability“: What a virtue signal! It’s now a big game to characterize whatever you do as promoting “sustainability”. But let’s get one thing straight: an activity is sustainable only if its benefits exceed its resource costs. That is the outcome sought by voluntary participants in markets, or they do not trade. Benefits and costs “estimated” by government bureaucrats without the benefit of market prices are not reliable guides to sustainability. Nor is Lefty politics a reliable guide to sustainability. Subsidies for favored activities actually undermine that goal.

There are many other Lefty catch phrases and preferred ways of speaking. We didn’t even get to “safe space”, “social justice”, and the pronoun controversy. Shriver closes with some general thoughts on the lefty lingo. I’ll close by quoting one of those points:

“The whole lexicon is of a piece. Its usage advertises that one has bought into a set menu of opinions—about race, gender, climate change, abortion, tax policy, #MeToo, Trump, Brexit, Brett Kavanaugh, probably Israel, and a great deal else. Reflexive resort to this argot therefore implies not that you think the same way as others of your political disposition but that you don’t think. You have ordered the prix fixe; you’re not in the kitchen cooking dinner for yourself.”

 

Hillary’s (C)mail Fail

13 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in National Security, Privilege

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Clinton email

Hillary Clinton’s classified email scandal might look like a minor distraction once facts about the suspicious dealings of the Clinton Foundation are unraveled. I’ll cover the foundation later this week. In this post, I’ll review some considerations relevant to the email case. This is the second in a three-part series of posts on Hillary’s more recent foibles, following the first installment on her role in the Benghazi disaster.

Hillary Clinton’s “grossly negligent” misuse of classified email during her tenure as Secretary of State was harshly criticized by FBI Director James Comey last week. Nevertheless, the Bureau declined to recommend an indictment to the Department of Justice (DOJ) based on their inability to prove mens rea, or any awareness of guilt or an intent to do harm. It is doubtful that Clinton had any intent to harm the country. At a minimum, however, Comey’s statements implied that she did not take security seriously.

The basis of any claim that Clinton lacked awareness of her security responsibilities is shaky, to say the least. Clinton’s private email stunt was a willful effort to avoid legitimate scrutiny, such as FOIA requests. The IT expert who set up her private servers and other devices pled the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination! There have been reports that Clinton asked aides to remove classified markings (also see here). All we have from the State Department on that allegation is a denial. Clinton repeatedly lied to the public and to Congress (under oath) about classified material and the number of devices she used. She also lied to a federal judge (under oath) about having turned over all work-related emails to the State Department. Many of those emails were deleted, leaving suspicious gaps in the pattern of traffic. Indeed, Clinton’s actions in the case give every appearance of an effort to obstruct justice.

Some of the missing emails will come to light. Wikileaks has released a trove of Clinton’s emails showing additional classified material. There are also pending civil cases related to the emails in which the plaintiffs wish to subpoena Mrs. Clinton. Needless to say, her lawyers are making every effort to stop the subpoenas.

Jacob Sullum at Reason discusses Comey’s decision in the context of mens rea. He notes that Clinton’s offenses were certainly prosecutable under the letter of the law. Despite denials from Clinton apologists, the case of a Navy operations specialist in 1992 is instructive. The defendant in that case claimed that willingness to mishandle classified information was not sufficient for a conviction, but the military court disagreed under the same provision of the law referenced by Comey:

“… the court turned to the subsection at issue in Mrs. Clinton’s case: ‘Section 793(f) has an even lower threshold, punishing loss of classified materials through ‘gross negligence’ and punishing failing to promptly report a loss of classified materials.’”

Nevertheless, Sullum thinks Comey’s defense of mens rea protections for individuals accused of certain violations of law is admirable, and I agree (except Comey’s second clause in the quote below, regarding “in that statute in particular“, is not strictly true). The explosion of federal law, especially regulatory law, makes this more crucial than ever from a libertarian perspective. Here is Comey:

“‘The protection we have as Americans is that the government in general, and in that statute in particular, has to prove before [it] can prosecute any of us that we did this thing that’s forbidden by the law, and when we did it, we knew we were doing something that was unlawful. We don’t have to know the code number, but [the government must show] that we knew we were doing something that was unlawful.’“

For background on the issue of a defendant’s willingness to violate the law, Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation has a great article called  “Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse But It Is In Reality“. By that title, Rosenzweig means that there are so many federal crimes today that ignorance of the law very often should be a valid excuse. However, the contention that Hillary Clinton was ignorant of the law regarding her duties in handling classified information is dubious at best.

Unfortunately, Clinton’s interview with the FBI just days before Comey’s announcement was not conducted by Comey, was not made under oath, and was not recorded. That leaves significant doubt about the seriousness of the FBI’s effort to learn the truth about the record, or any contradictions in the record, that might shed light on Clinton’s awareness or intent to violate the law. And Attorney General Loretta Lynch, after a “personal” meeting with Bill Clinton, recused herself and her office from prosecutorial duties prior to Comey’s announcement, stating that she would accept the FBI’s recommendation without examining the case. That step casts doubt on her seriousness as an independent prosecutor. Hillary skates, for now.

 

Socialism Is Concentrated Power

10 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in Big Government, Capitalism, Markets

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Power

Nobody likes to defend concentrated power, yet socialists earnestly crave power concentrated in the state. And state power is absolute power. They must imagine that those wielding state power, now and always, will be the sort of nice, benevolent folks they imagine themselves to be. Well, if only more power can be concentrated in the state, it will be alright. Good luck with that! Once granted, watch out.

While this sort of magical thinking might seem naive, another paradox of leftist thinking is even more befuddling: the never-yielding distrust of capitalism and private initiative, a system under which power is largely dispersed. The attitude is more than a little misanthropic. It’s as if socialists expect us to believe that someone forces us to engage in transactions with private sellers, transactions that are always unfavorable in some way. But every transaction in a private economy is voluntary, dependent only on how both parties assess benefits relative to costs. Anyone can make a bad deal, of course, and you might get ripped off by an unscrupulous buyer or seller from time-to-time. But you are free to perform due diligence. You are free to assess risks.

The left goes so far as to blame capitalism for poverty, demonstrating a complete disconnect with reality. For a better perspective on the economic miracles made possible by capitalism, I  recommend a few timely pieces of reading: economist Richard Rahn makes note of the incredible bounty of products and technology brought to us by capitalism. This includes transformative breakthroughs in almost every area of life: communication, computing, transportation, refrigeration, safety, food, medicine and on and on:

“Almost all of the great innovations came from those in the private sector who created them out of the desire for more wealth or just intellectual curiosity. The socialist countries have produced almost nothing — except for bread lines, coercive and destructive taxation and regulation, and gulags. Yet politicians all over the world proudly proclaim themselves to be socialists and attack the capitalist wealth creators and innovators — as if the real world had never existed.“

At the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), Chelsea German and Marian L. Tupy offer ample evidence of capitalism’s successes as they shred an absurd opinion piece in Forbes magazine claiming that  capitalism “will starve humanity“:

“Throughout most of human history, almost everyone lived in extreme poverty. Only in the last two centuries has wealth dramatically increased. Early adopters of capitalism, such as the United States, have seen their average incomes skyrocket.“

German and Tupy have a more detailed post here with statistics showing dramatic increases in the standard of living enjoyed by poor households in the U.S., increases for which capitalism is largely responsible.

Last month, Don Boudreaux reflected on the well being of average Americans today compared to an individual at the extreme high end of the wealth distribution 100 years ago. Boudreaux catalogues the many ways in which John D. Rockefeller’s comforts were drastically inferior to those available today. He concludes that trading places with Rockefeller would be a questionable deal:

“Honestly, I wouldn’t be remotely tempted to quit the 2016 me so that I could be a one-billion-dollar-richer me in 1916. This fact means that, by 1916 standards, I am today more than a billionaire. It means, at least given my preferences, I am today materially richer than was John D. Rockefeller in 1916. And if, as I think is true, my preferences here are not unusual, then nearly every middle-class American today is richer than was America’s richest man a mere 100 years ago.“

I maintain that even when power is concentrated in large private companies, the situation is far preferable to concentrated power in government. First, private companies do not have the police power necessary for absolute government authority. They cannot force you to do anything. Second, private companies do not simply shuffle resources and up-charge, as the left might have you believe; they innovate and create value as an inducement to trade, a concept that is rare in state-controlled activities. When any form of competition is present, private companies discipline each other, encouraging better quality and restraint on the prices charged for their wares. Even trading with a monopolist confers gains from trade, despite its drawbacks relative to trade in competitive markets.

Of course, government is generally not confronted with competition, unless it’s prompted by citizens who “vote with their feet”, as described by Charles Tiebout. That kind of responsiveness argues for decentralized government, however. Government services are typically monopolized, but the “terms of trade” are often worse than a monopolist would offer. It’s difficult to refuse a government service or your obligation to pay, no matter how much you abhor it, and quality usually suffers due to the extreme lack of accountability to citizen-consumers.

Capitalism gets a bad rap when private businesses engage in rent-seeking. That behavior is characterized by attempts to influence government policy for the business’ own benefit, promoting subsidies, other public spending or tax policies that go to the bottom line, and regulatory actions that disproportionally harm competitors. Those efforts put the crony in crony capitalism. But note that rent seeking is not an inherent feature of capitalism. It is enabled by the existence of activist government, its control over resources and its police power. What this means is that cronyism is fostered by power concentrated within the halls of government. In other words, private power becomes more concentrated and more impervious to competitive forces when it is favored by government. That is pure privilege.

If you dislike concentrated power, then vote for small government!

 

Censor Me, For My Fathers Have Sinned

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by in Marketplace of Ideas

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Male Privilege

Are you White? Asian? Male? A stay-at-home mom? Or maybe your family earns too much? Or your parents did? If any of those are “yes”, you just might be disqualified to engage in debate with those who self-proclaim their big-heartedness. You won’t be disqualified if your views are deemed “correct”, but then “debate” won’t really be an issue. If your views are “incorrect”, your privileged-group status is the stain of original sin, as Warren Meyer would say. Not only are you disqualified; you are an appropriate target for ad hominems.

I wrote about this phenomenon after experiencing it first-hand a few months ago in “Privileged While Males May Not Comment“. Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog just got me excited again when he expressed his amazement in “The Left and Original Sin“:

“… the sins of past generations somehow accrue to individuals of this generation. If you are male, you are born guilty for the infractions of all past males.“

Meyer mentions the recent incident involving Ben Affleck, who asked the host of a PBS documentary to omit any mention of a slave-owning Affleck ancestor:

“So an ancestor held opinions about slavery we all would find horrifying today. But given the times, I can bet that pretty much every relative of Affleck’s of that era, slaveholder or no, held opinions (say about women) that we would likely find offensive today.

Congrats to Affleck for achieving some negative alchemy here. He took an issue (his ancestor’s slave-holding) that did not reflect on him at all and converted it via some “I am a star” douchebaggery into something that makes him look like a tool.”

In addition to the demographic origins of sin mentioned above, you are likely to be stained if you believe in the profit motive, gun rights, or any number of other individual liberties. If you can’t be marked as a sinner by some privileged-group identity, the Left will find another label. If you are a black conservative, you will be called an “Uncle Tom”. Dealing with your arguments is just too inconvenient. As Meyer mentions in another recent post, Leftists are particularly unlikely to pass Bryan Caplan’s Ideological Turing test. They simply don’t listen to, or understand, other points of view.

Check My Privilege? Check Your Depth

12 Monday May 2014

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I think the best response is to ask whether the privilege monitor thinks one’s success or happiness, or one’s parent’s success or happiness, is undeserved, and what that has to do with the issue at hand. I’m amused by this piece, though he draws a pretty hard, simplistic line between those who “work” and… others. Yet he makes a good point: the “check your privilege” meme is a cheap rhetorical device aimed at delegitimizing a point of view based on one’s background or other superficial characteristics, or even one’s success, things unrelated to the content of the argument. As if success were a disqualification for entering into debate. The objective is often to silence those who would otherwise expose progressive delusions.