Author: Redactor

Categories
folly free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Madison’s Angels to the Rescue?

Something called “behavioral economics” has arisen in recent decades, testing and probing many of the assumptions-cum-postulates of basic microeconomics. Researchers have discovered that human beings are prone to biases, cognitive errors, and a whole bevy of choice glitches. We are not perfectly rational.

Shocking, I know.

Some people draw an odd moral from this: Since people are such fools, they require the help of government to regulate them from utter folly and ruin.

Economist David Henderson quotes one of his Facebook friends, TV creative director John Papola, as supplying the “most succinct criticism” of this tack: “Why in the world do behavioral economists who study our flaws and irrational quirks advocate centralized power in the hands of a small group of flawed overlords? If people are irrational, so are government regulators, only they have corrupting monopoly power.”

You’ve seen this kind of argument before, in political theory. James Madison famously noted that

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Just so: Were we entirely rational, no regulation would be necessary — no laws would. But, given universal human limitations, the regulators themselves require regulation, and a (non-existent) supply of non-biased, error-resistant rationality, to boot.

Forget vast reams of regulations and huge teams of bureaucrats. Instead, perfect the basic rule of law, regulating markets by a well-conceived basic set of rules.

And expect some imperfection.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

No Labels, No Clue

Some big players at the game of politics misinterpret the nature of today’s general political discontent, and offer only hollow novelty in response.

Take the “No Labels” movement.

A number of big-name politicians, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, push the idea of a centrist, can-do spirit, a bi-partisan effort that will transcend the nastiness of the current Establishment Insider/Tea Party Outsider split. Their trendy-sounding “No Labels” label communicates their allegedly co-operative, spectrum-transcendent message. Their slogan? “Not Left. Not Right. Forward.”

According to Linda Killian, of Politics Daily, “the message No Labels is espousing is exactly what a majority of Americans, who are fed up with both parties, say they want from their government.”

This seems to fly in the face of what I’ve gleaned of American disgust. And it distorts the actual landscape of power. No Labels “pragmatism” is as mainstream as you can get, as Matt Welch noted in Reason:

Barack Obama and John McCain both ran for president as post-ideological pragmatists. So did, in their own ways, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. It remains an attractive pose, and will always draw cheers from the indefatigable problem-solvers drawn to power like cowbirds to cattle.

America’s growing disaffection with politicians springs from the continual betrayals of common sense by both parties — including centrist can-doers.

“No Labels”? Phooey. Instead: “No Bailouts. No Over-spending. No Ignoring the Voters.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Big Box, Big Apple

Whether to let a business open up should not hinge on opinion polls. But a recent survey of New Yorkers does underscore the absurdity of banning Wal-Mart from the Big Apple.

If you’re used to seeing a Wal-Mart every 30 miles, you may be surprised to learn that there’s not a single Wal-Mart in New York’s five boroughs. Unions have marshaled political clout to keep the company out. Now, with the store again trying to gain a foothold in the area, “community” activist Pat Boone complains that “We need good paying jobs, not minimum wage jobs.” Wal-Mart pays more than minimum wage. But ask yourself: Is no pay for no work really better than a reasonable entry-level wage that sustains some folks’ homes and hearths?

And who is the “we” that this “community” activist speaks of? The unemployed workers who would flock to the job-application lines if Wal-Mart came to town? The 71 percent of New Yorkers who, according to Douglas Schoen’s survey of 1000 New Yorkers, would cram the store’s aisles?

Too often, political power caters to interest groups eager to force others to conform to their own way of thinking. Markets, by contrast, are all about offering a value and then letting people decide for themselves whether they want to pay for it.

So let Wal-Mart open up, New York. Let honest, hard-working people get the best deals for food and supplies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Tire Trade War, Tiring

Political folly comes around, again and again, like a puncture in a rapidly deflating tire as you drive down the freeway. The end is never good.

President Obama and congressional Democrats pushed a tariff hike on China-made tires, up to 35 percent — and the WTO okayed it. They excuse their action because they wish to “retaliate” against China for its alleged monetary “manipulations” — manipulations that bear remarkable resemblance to our own Federal Reserve’s policies, by the way — which they say cause our current trade imbalance.

And, like non-economists everywhere, these buffoons judge the trade deficit a horrible thing. The fact that U.S. consumer’s get great benefit from lower-priced goods coming from China, and can — as a result of less expensive, Chinese-made tires – afford to replace their tires more often, thereby saving lives and health-care costs, doesn’t appear in politicians’ protectionist arguments.

It’s the economy that’s making our representatives stupid, of course. Blaming foreign competition is an easy out, when times get tough. It helps you avoid blaming your own country’s regulations, taxes, and (ahem) monetary policy.

This blame game is nothing new. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was pushed through early in the Great Depression, and it made a lot of sense to . . . politicians.

But the the trade wars the infamous tariff engendered became a major factor in making the Great Depression so Great.

Our politicians, reviving tired old policies — regarding tires, no less — merely make matters worse. Greatly worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Commerce, Compulsion and the Constitution

Every once in a while a judge attends to the Constitution, and freedom lovers cheer wildly as if this were very strange, even wondrous. I guess it is, considered in light of the sweep of human history.

Should the Democrats’ “health care reform” package kick in fully, it would compel people to purchase medical insurance by punishing abstainers with a steep, extra tax. So hurray for Judge Henry Hudson of the federal district court in Richmond, according to whose recent decision the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not empower Congress to point a gun to our heads and force us to buy health insurance.

If the Constitution could be honestly read that way, it would mean that the Founding Fathers had fought to replace British tyranny with an even worse home-grown one. But no, no Founder thought that giving the federal government power to smooth trade relations among the states equaled authorization for universal, compulsory purchase of books, booze, bobby pins — or whatever Congress-Approved “health care” delivery system some future central planners might concoct. Nor does it.

We’re not out of danger yet, obviously. There are many more battles to come, many other provisions of “Obamacare” that have yet to be challenged and quashed in courts or in Congress. But in any tough job, you need to accomplish the first step.

Judge Hudson’s common-sense conclusion sounds like a great first step to me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Starting Somewhere With Term Limits

To be effective in reversing the big-government tide, the new GOP majority in the House must exercise the discipline to shake off bad old habits. Where to start? Term limits.

And the term limits can start with leadership.

In 1994, the GOP imposed term limits on committee chairmen. Although there was a little wavering around the edges of that reform, the party did retain it until the Democrats gained the majority in 2008 and promptly chucked the idea of committee chair term limits.

Having regained the majority, some Republicans are mumbling about “granting exceptions” to committee chair limits for this guy and that guy and the other guy. But rampant exceptions to sensible reforms would show that nothing much is changing in how Congress does business. And a lot’s got to change.

Other Republicans, though, are talking about term limits not only for committee chairmen but for all leadership positions. The new Majority Leader-to-be, Eric Cantor, tells The Hill he’d support “a six-year term limit for each position.”

Hear, hear. Bravo!

But let’s shout out loudest for term limits on all members of Congress. Senator Tom Coburn and others have sponsored a constitutional amendment to impose a maximum of two six-year terms in the Senate, three two-year terms in the House. A hard sell to the entrenched incumbent? Sure. Fifteen years ago, a similar effort failed. But like most good failure, it can be built upon.

Let’s start at the top.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Sad Ending to a Vexing Tale

Officials of and lawyers for Columbia University must be chortling in ecstatic gloat. They’ve gotten away with something very much like theft.

But it’s all above-board and legal, thanks to the Supreme Court, which would not hear the case of property owner Nick Sprayregen, from whom Columbia aims to take property. Sprayregen doesn’t want to sell, as he makes quite clear in something he wrote a few days ago for The Huffington Post.

Yup, this is another travesty of “eminent domain.”

Actually, I’ve written about this case before. Two years ago I called your attention to some of what was going on, calling it a scam: “Columbia has acquired many buildings in the neighborhood, but is not maintaining them. Because of Columbia’s own run-down buildings, the state has formally declared the neighborhood to be ‘blighted.’ If the entire area is now condemned, full ownership can be transferred to Columbia.” In 2009, Damon Root wrote in the New York Post more extensively about Columbia’s tricky maneuvers.

The first legal battle against Columbia succeeded, but an appeals court ruled against that initial finding, on dubious grounds.

Sprayregen understands what’s at issue:

Eminent domain is not for private institutions like Columbia to expand their profit-making efforts beyond what the free market would allow. I believe that what Columbia has been trying to do is illegal. . . .

You might think that the Supreme Court, after Kelo, would want to clarify the matter. No such luck.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access First Amendment rights initiative, referendum, and recall

Red-lining Democracy

Why does a fellow who’s the executive director of the Greenlining Institute want to red-line democracy?

Recently, in the pages of California’s Capitol Weekly, Orson Aguilar called the state’s initiative process a “monster.” Mr. Aguilar’s main beef is that “huge corporations and business groups” spent “massive” amounts of money, and that of the more than $200 million spent on ballot measures “hardly any of it came from ordinary citizens.”

Whether one agrees with a corporation or a labor union or an interest of any kind, freedom of speech still carries moral weight. It’s worth noting that while Aguilar doesn’t like corporate spending on ballot measures, he probably doesn’t mind the corporate contributions that account for over 16 percent of the Greenlining Institute’s annual income.

But what was the result of business spending? He informs us, “Happily, many of these corporate initiatives were defeated . . .”

Aguilar doesn’t name a single detrimental measure passed by voters.

Still, according to Aguilar and seemingly every special interest group, something must be done to undercut the democratic check on government that citizens enjoy via initiative and referendum.

While admitting that the “huge number of signatures required” to place an initiative on the ballot “is almost impossible to do with just volunteers,” Aguilar bemoans the use of paid petitioners.

Never does he suggest the obvious: If we want the citizens’ voice in government, petition requirements should be made less onerous, not more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
folly too much government video

Video of the Week: California PERS Aristocracy

In vignette after vignette, this mash-up provides a helpful (and amusing) take on California’s pension fiasco:

It’s not easy thinking about government-enacted pensions, I guess. Everyone wants to retire young and well-off, and no one wants to appear stingy. But there has to be responsibility in how these things are set up.

I touched upon the subject earlier this week, in “Pension Declension.” Two of my commenters — Charles Sainte Claire and SkipppingDog — strike me as perhaps not quite getting why pension reform is necessary.

What Charles and Skipping aren’t saying is that a defined benefit plan guarantees a certain return whether or not the money has been invested to produce such a return. So, where does the money to pay the defined benefit come from?

Yep, you guessed it: The taxpayers. Future taxpayers who can’t even be blamed for having elected the dishonest pols who cut these fraudulent deals with the politically active and powerful public employee unions.

In the public sector, the pressure will then be off the workers and politicians to actually fund today what will be spent tomorrow. Which means embracing the sort of chaos now destroying states and municipalities in California and across these United States.

What about in the private sector? Did someone say “private” sector? Well, even in the private sector, it will be the taxpayers who get stuck with the bill.

To suggest that defined benefit plans are the way to go is to suggest that workers can have whatever they desire and some magic person named The Taxpayer will always be there to pay for it. It is to embrace fleecing future generations.

Of course, we’ll be told that it “worked well in the past.” In a manner of speaking. After all, Bernie Madoff’s fraudulent scam worked well “in the past.” Most rip-offs “work well” . . . that is, until the very moment when honest, hard-working people realize they’ve been had.

Categories
national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

Good and Bad in the 112th

The 112th Congress is beginning to take shape, and, well, we have good news and bad news.

Good news first: Ron Paul has been slated to chair the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee.

The Texas congressman has been toiling away at the margins of power on Capitol Hill for years. A proponent of a gold standard and a free-marketer of the “Austrian” School, he has been a voice crying in the wilderness. One of the few people in Congress who did not treat Alan Greenspan as a divine oracle, he is now one of Ben Bernanke’s harshest critics.

Of course, after recent events and bailouts and all, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke has lots of critics.

As chair of the subcommittee that watches over the Fed, Ron Paul has finally attained a position to accomplish something. This is a major reversal in the power structure. We can’t expect miracles (Ron Paul being but one man), but do expect fireworks.

Now, the bad news.

It’s been less than a month since Republicans in the House voted on a moratorium on earmarks. And already they are, reportedly, beginning to feel queasy. Perhaps as a sign of a general turncoatish nature, the next chair of the House Appropriations Committee is set to be Rep. Hal Rogers.

Sixteen-term congressman Rogers has earned a reputation for pushing pork. His hometown has received so much federal largesse it’s called “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Still, he says he’ll enforce the pork moratorium. We’ll see.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.