Author: Redactor

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Townhall: Rand Paul is wrong

Rand Paul is running for the presidency. You can tell, because some of his statements seem designed more to assuage fears of his radicalism than make sense of the current and worsening crisis. Click on over to Townhall, for this week’s Common Sense column, and then come back here to links for further reading.

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video

Video: The Federalist View of the Constitution

The United States Constitution is widely misinterpreted today because, in the 19th century, the nationalist interpretation of the document won out. But establishing a nation-state wasn’t the intent of the founders — clearly, if one looks at the debates over ratification in the states. For remember: it was the states that debated and accepted a narrow view of the Constitution as establishing a federation. Not a “nation,” and certainly not an empire.

Two notes of caution: 1. This is a conversation between historian Tom Woods and historian Brion McClanahan, and they are pitching a series of online lectures that I’ve not seen (but am tempted to take a look at: perhaps you will be, too). 2. This is a YouTube video, and many of the comments are not worth reading because ill-mannered and crude.

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Thought

F. A. Hayek

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Fed Up

No one is really fit to “run the economy.” The pretense of the ability can be fun to watch, amongst economists as well as pundits. But because they’re doing the impossible, what they say can lurch from wisdom to utter folly in the space of a paragraph.

Neil Irwin, at the Washington Post, admits that the Federal Reserve’s current policy of pumping more and more money into the economy may finally be working, “but that may not be a good thing.”

I suspect he’s right.

But not for the right reason.

Irwin notes that the Fed “in September introduced a policy meant to boost housing and stock prices, and now, nine months later, housing prices and stock prices have risen quite a bit. Enough, indeed, to (so far) offset the impact of higher taxes that went into effect Jan. 1 and federal spending cuts that took effect March 1.” But the problem, he goes on, “is that these channels through which monetary policy affects the economy tend to offer the most direct benefits to those who already have high incomes and high levels of wealth.”

Irwin sees the problem as inequality: the policy helps the rich get richer and does little for the poor. His solution is fiscal policy that throws more money directly at the poor.

Yet there’s not much reason to believe his preferred giveaway would actually “stimulate” the economy. The Fed’s current policy, on the other hand, may stimulate, a bit, but will lead to a new boom-bust cycle.

The poor need jobs; the rich need to invest. But all this requires a degree of stability and trust and sustainable prices — not government-knows-best tinkering with the money supply. Or yet more deficit spending.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture

Ding Jinhao Was There

Boys will be boys. And tourists will be tourists.

Not long ago, a graffito was spotted on an ancient Egyptian wall — a stone relief, with pictographs and representations and the whole gamut of ancient Egyptian art — photographed and then posted to the Internet, where it got more than 100, 000 comments.

It was soon discovered to have been scratched into the wall by a 15-year-old lad from Nanjing: his mark read “Ding Jinhao was here.” And then came the firestorm. Though the BBC tells us that Egypt’s ministry of antiquities has dubbed the scratchmarks “superficial,” the “controversy comes days after Wang Yang, one of China’s four vice-premiers, said . . . that the ‘uncivilised behaviour’ of some Chinese tourists was harming the country’s image.”

Welcome, China!

Previously, the world had been blessed with the Ugly American, the Annoying European, and the Over-Photographing Japanese — tourists from wealthy or up-and-coming countries not uniformly presenting their respective nations in the best possible light as they tramped abroad.

In this case, though, it’s worth noting that most of the scandal is confined to China itself. The bloggers’ ire was primarily an in-group thing, and even the government (especially the government?) has gotten in on the shame game bandwagon, trying to needle tourists to behave themselves. (So much so that the desecrating teen’s father pleaded for the critics to let up — “too much pressure,” he said.)

As an I-try-not-to-be-ugly American, I appreciate the Chinese concern for manners and image — honor, really. And hope that all their graffiti remains easy to repair, and that the concern for national honor doesn’t go too far in over-reaction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Voltaire

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Doctoring, Priced

Any number of economists will tell you that medicine just has to be different from other goods and services provided on the market. They will offer elaborate theories to explain, for instance, why competitive markets won’t work for health care, and why more government is necessary, and why, in fact, today’s hospitals don’t publish their prices.

I see this mainstream “explanation” as mere apologetics, designed to justify evermore government. The truth is that medicine is “different” because legislation — at local, state, and federal levels — has made the industry different. It’s an accident of history, not something “natural” to this particular market.

But, as Obamacare further consolidates medicine under the government rubric, there appear some daring examples of non-compliance. The latest is from Dr. Michael Ciampi, of South Portland, Maine, whose family practice group has stopped accepting insurance payments of any kind, public or private.

Posting its prices on the Web, Ciampi Family Practice claims to offer substantial savings over other providers. And other benefits, too, including house calls:

Because we no longer contract with insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid, we can be more flexible and innovative. We use technology when it helps us take better care of patients, but we refuse to use it for technology’s sake. We will not spend our visit staring at a computer screen instead of looking at you. We can also spend more time with patients than the typical provider in a “big box” medical practice. . . . We do not have physician assistants or nurse practitioners.

Ciampi is not the only (or biggest) provider to do this.

Could competition just erupt without a government-provided “solution”? Could “the market” provide the leadership medicine needs now?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Voltaire

All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws.

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Thought

Russian proverb

Wolves are not killed because they are gray, but because they eat sheep.

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national politics & policies too much government

Regulating Protest

How did our founders manage to establish a republic committed to free speech and the rights of the individual without a Federal Election Commission?

Not only did the Sons of Liberty and other patriots lack a functioning FEC to protect them from “big-money interests,” many of the political communications of the founding era, including works as consequential as The Federalist Papers, were put forth anonymously. Horrors!

Consider organizing like-minded people during colonial times: No TV, radio, the Internet, smart phones . . . and sans, too, the Internal Revenue Service, strategically blocking them from creating non-profit groups that “criticize how the country is run.”

Which brings up the sorry case of Lois G. Lerner, head of the IRS’s exempt organizations division, now mired in the muck of controversy over unequal treatment of non-profit organizations. She expressed her innocence in the whole affair, but then took the Fifth, refusing to testify.

Ms. Lerner’s now on paid leave. That’ll learn ’er.

I bumped into her back in the 1990s, while I headed U.S. Term Limits and she led the FEC’s enforcement division, which was targeting conservative and libertarian groups. The FEC was never able to prove we did anything wrong, but did cost us plenty of time and money defending against their assault.

What sparked the FEC’s action, then, was incumbent Congressman Mike Synar’s complaint after we informed the people of Oklahoma that Synar opposed term limits. He lost in the Democratic Party primary . . . to a guy who spent less than $3,000.

Yes, that’s the sort of speech the folks in Washington want to regulate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.