Category: ideological culture

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free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Paying for Agreement

How do you get a body of professionals to go along with your program?

Pay them.

It’s an old idea: He who pays the piper calls the tune.

The pipers are economists. The paymaster is not you, but the Federal Reserve. There’s a suprising amount of agreement amongst even disagreeing economists that the Federal Reserve is, on the whole, “a good thing,” a necessary thing, even an institution whose existence and rationale must not be questioned.

Shocking, but less so when you apply what is called “Public Choice” analysis to economists themselves. Assume that economists are self-interested. Assume that they like to get paid. Opinions turn out to be somewhat elastic, even given some very hard facts. The results?

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Nicely, a few economists bring this up, every now and then. Garett Jones on EconTalk did, reviving a letter monetary economist Milton Friedman wrote to researcher David M. Levy in the early 1990s. Friedman summarized the situation concisely, saying that the Fed

hires directly roughly half of all economists specializing in the field of money, and indirectly provides funds for a large fraction of the remainder. I have no doubt that is a major reason why the Federal Reserve, despite such a poor record of performance, has such a high public standing.

This also helps explain why there was a major shift away from laissez faire amongst economists. In the 20th century, the “worldly philosophers” developed a new labor market; they found that they could make a great deal of money working for government. And they don’t get paid for telling the government not to do what it wants to do, or to fire most economists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Our Youth

Adults have expressed disappointment in the behavior of young people since civilization began. You can read complaints about “the kids these days” on cuneiform tablets.

That being said, I have some sympathy for U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)., who has asked MTV to cancel its latest “reality TV” extravaganza, Buckwild, slated to debut in January. This West Virginia-based show show emulates Jersey Shore, a low-level satire on low-life New Jersey twentysomethings that I know too much about . . . without ever having watched.

“As a U.S. Senator, I am repulsed at this business venture,” Manchin asserts. He seems especially troubled by the fact that “some Americans are making money off of the poor decisions of our youth. I cannot imagine that anyone who loves this country would feel proud about profiting off of” the presumably horrid show.

First, as Ed Krayewski notes on Reason’s Hit and Run, were the senator really to take pride in business, he could mind his own: “The Senate . . . hasn’t passed a budget in more than 1,200 days. And, unlike MTV, it’s their job.”

Second, this is “Reality TV” here, folks. Not much to see. The truth is that Americans, for reasons ranging from Schadenfreude to mirth, like watching people make fools of themselves. And the youngsters hired on to play the foul-mouthed, inebriated, uncultured, promiscuous ninnies of Buckwild will be well paid for their efforts, and, as Americans chortle at them, they’ll chuckle all the way to the bank.

Third, they perform a useful service. Most folks watching fools don’t want to become fools themselves. They laugh. And, in so doing, begin to grow up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture too much government

A Streetcar Named Veblen

Around the country, cities are going ahead with trolley and streetcar projects, as well as light rail. I just returned from Seattle. Capitol Hill was torn apart at huge expense — all to add a streetcar line to cover a stretch where no buses now run.

Trains are cool; trolleys are neat; streetcars have cachet. But as transportation economist and city-planning critic Randal O’Toole puts it, these are all more costly than buses. Far more costly. They rack up huge costs in infrastructure, and the ridership for them rarely increases enough to pay off even maintenance costs much less the capital outlays.

But for real transportation insanity, California’s your place. There, the bullet-train project has spiraled out of control, “forcing” the state’s pixillated pols to court the state’s employee pension funds to “invest” in their beloved boondoggle.

Why this madness? What’s going on here?

I think Thorstein Veblen explained it. Inadvertently.

Veblen was the economist of our great-grandfathers’ generation who characterized capitalism’s failures as the wastefulness of the rich, in terms of “conspicuous consumption.” He thought that there should be more government, and that this would be . . . less wasteful.

Well, we got that “more government.” It’s far more wasteful than the billionaires of old. At least they got rich providing benefits for the masses. Today, governments tax the masses to pay for vast, inefficient schemes to . . . move the masses. And the masses stay away. In droves.

The “conspicuous consumption” is in the public realm.

It turns out that spending other people’s money makes folks in government less responsible and more enticed by technological gewgaws and the strange tides of high-cost fashion.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

The Dictators’ Drones

Partisanship leads to mass delusion.

The “targeted” drone runs of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama have killed thousands of innocent people in foreign lands — without a declaration of war.

The main theme of Greg Greenwald’s terrific and much-tweeted Guardian article, “Obama: a GOP president should have rules limiting the kill list,” is how Americans have deluded themselves by partisan loyalty and trust into caring about constitutional limits only when thinking about “the other guys.” Democrats fear Republicans in charge, but not their own “Messiah” (to use Andy Levy’s term for the president, on RedEye).

Republicans fear The Socialist Kenyan with his finger on the button, setting off cluster bombs and cruise missiles and the like, but applauded the previous, “Texan” president’s bombing runs a great thing, just what the War on Terror required.

But of course, when drone strikes in multiple Muslim countries kill thousands, when innocents are killed “collaterally” (the previous euphemism) but are redefined as “terrorists” because of proximity or familial relationships, and when even American citizens overseas are targeted for kills without any legal framework for such decisions, something has gotten out of hand.

The president is now above the law, like a Roman emperor. Might as well call him “dictator” and let it go at that.

Both progressives and conservatives need to be reminded that the rule of law — as “inconvenient” as it may seem when it comes to fighting terrorism — is there to protect all of us, including those who wield power.

And not merely from others. Also from ourselves.

Why? Power tends to corrupt. No one is immune. And who seeks to be corrupted?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture

Fifty Out 1.4 Million

Black Friday’s mass anti-WalMart protests focused on how poorly WalMart treats its employees. Or so run the allegations. A typical sign said “Living Wage NOW.”

But it was a funny sort of labor-relations protest. There were marchers. And there was media coverage. Lots.

What there wasn’t a lot of, though? Walk-out WalMart employees. A few hundred showed up, nationwide, says OUR WalMart, the protesting organization; WalMart itself puts the walkout number at about 50.

That’s out of 1.4 million workers overall.

The whole spectacle seems so strange. It’s not the workers protesting wage and conditions, really, but those who don’t work there. The protestors demand higher wages for WalMart employees. But from what I can tell, actual employees feel rather lucky to have their jobs.

Could we be witnessing a new form of unionizing? Outside agitators working to get in? That is, could the protestors be trying to force up wages so that they could replace current WalMart workers?

For many of the most vocal WalMart critics, that seems unlikely. They hate WalMart. One gets the idea, from following their typical spiels, that what they are really up to is hurting the company.

And, if the folks at Reason magazine are right, raising prices. What many object to is the fact that WalMart has succeeded precisely because it has decreased prices to consumers.

In olden days, the common presumption was that cheaper prices were what we wanted from business: more goods for less, thus providing betterment to vastly increasing numbers of people.

On the professional left, such eternal verities no longer seem to apply.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency ideological culture insider corruption

The Big Turkey

On Wednesday, President Obama issued a pardon. To a turkey.

Every president since Harry Truman has been given a live bird for Thanksgiving by the National Turkey Federation. No, it apparently doesn’t violate any sort of gift ban, nor should it — sure seems harmless enough to me on that score.

Over the years, several presidents declined to feast on the birds they were given. Then, in more recent times, presidents have made a big media production out of officially pardoning the turkeys (who then reportedly live out their days on George Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon).

So, what’s the problem?

For a photo-op, Mr. Obama — just like Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton before him — saves the gift bird’s life, only to have another unpublicized turkey killed and then devoured behind closed doors.

Neither a vegan or a vegetarian, I certainly don’t begrudge him for eating the meat. I did likewise. What offends is the spectacle of someone seeking to pardon his turkey and eat it, too.

You can’t dismiss this as “mere symbolism,” for the fake pardon symbolizes more than Washington insiders can comprehend. In our nation’s capital, politicians

  • argue for fiscal responsibility one minute and then plunge us further into debt the next,
  • demand sacrifices from the people while living high on the hog, and
  • decry the influence of special interests at press conferences and then deposit their checks at the bank.

One famous turkey lives, thanks to the powerful public kindness of our potentate; another, unknown (no doubt “middle-class”) bird dies for the benefit of that same boss.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly ideological culture responsibility

Judicial Temblor

A scientist does not kill anybody by failing to predict an imminent earthquake, even if he believes and says that it is unlikely to occur just before it does occur. Non-omniscient seismologists don’t kill people; earthquakes kill people.

Nevertheless, Judge Marco Billo sentenced six Italian scientists and a government official to six years in prison for manslaughter, and also billed them for court costs and damages to the tune of $10.2 million.

Some residents of the Italian town of d’Aquila applaud the penalties.

The seven defendants were members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risk, which had convened not long before the earthquake struck d’Aquila in April 2009, killing 309 people. Commission members did not issue a warning because the kind of small tremors that had been putting townsfolk on edge were, in their experience, not often the prelude to a major earthquake.

Their crime, then, was for uttering less-than-omniscient judgments in their field.

Suppose the defendants had instead determined that there should be an evacuation, that the town were then evacuated, and that a person died on the way out of town in a way directly attributable to the evacuation — but no earthquake then ensued. Also manslaughter?

If inability to eliminate uncertainty about future hazards is a crime, then we’re all guilty. But the real crime was committed by anyone having anything to do with this miscarriage of justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Munch on This

Self-righteousness is not new. But it hasn’t gone out of style, either — at least regarding moralistic dieters.

There’s even a study on it. In an article by Diane Mapes in Today’s Health, we learn “that organic food may just make people act a bit like jerks.”

Mapes focuses on the work of psychologist Kendall Eskine, who “noticed a lot of organic foods are marketed with moral terminology, like Honest Tea, and wondered if you exposed people to organic food, if it would make them pat themselves on the back for their moral and environmental choices. I wondered if they would be more altruistic or not.”

To find out, Eskine and his team divided 60 people into three groups. One group was shown pictures of clearly labeled organic food, like apples and spinach. Another group was shown comfort foods such as brownies and cookies. And a third group — the controls — were shown non-organic, non-comfort foods like rice, mustard and oatmeal. After viewing the pictures, each person was then asked to read a series of vignettes describing moral transgressions.

The results? Those merely exposed to organic foods judged moral transgressors more harshly, and, when it came to helping strangers, “the organic people also proved to be more selfish, volunteering” much less time than the control and comfort food groups offered.

According to the oft-cited “happiness paradox,” the more you fixate on happiness the less happy you become. With moral smugness, the more you fixate on the rightness of your choices, the less moral you become.

A general principle? A one-shot study that will gain no reproducible results?

In either case, it may be worth keeping an eye on . . . ourselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Owning Up to Racism

Last week, actress Stacey Dash tweeted her support for Republican candidate Mitt Romney. And unleashed a firestorm, including AP coverage — “Do Black People Support Obama Because He’s Black?”

On Twitter, she was called “jigaboo,” “traitor,” “house nigger” and worse. . . .

The theme of the insults: A black woman would have to be stupid, subservient or both to choose a white Republican over the first black president.

It might behoove Twits (those who use Twitter?) to take a breath every now and then and not immediately type out the first thing that comes to their heads. Especially if they’re racists, like those who tapped out these vile attacks on Ms. Dash.

What should the president’s skin color or her skin color have to do with whether she chooses to support Obama or Romney or whomever?

Funny, while attacking her for being stupid and subservient, this “progressive” beat-down crowd is upset precisely because Dash is smart enough — independent enough — to think for herself, refusing to be subservient to them.

It’s scary that this sort of racism is so blatant, even after the long and difficult progress made on civil rights; scary, too, that today a black person can be “high-tech lynched” online for thinking and acting and speaking in ways not somehow assigned to his or her race.

Slavery is long over. The laws that made blacks second-class citizens have been repealed. So, why do some progressives think they own blacks?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Alfred Nobel Rolls Over

The Nobel Committee, having whetted its appetite for absurdity with a long string of goofy Peace Prize Awards, especially but not limited to the 2009 award for Barack Obama (who had done nothing but get elected to earn it), went all the way by giving the 2012 award to the European Union.

Barack Obama went on to become a “war president,” even regularly picking targets for assassination by drone. So, could Europe continue the trend and head straight towards war?

Maybe. Last year, former French Prime Minister Alain Juppe warned that the unions debt crisis could lead to “the explosion of the European Union itself,” and warned of growing nationalism. And violent unrest.

Dire warnings from former heads of state are one thing. Actual military movements are another. And Switzerland seems to be preparing for the worst:

The Swiss defense ministry told CNBC that it doesn’t rule out having to deploy troops in the coming years.

“It’s not excluded that the consequences of the financial crisis in Switzerland can lead to protests and violence,” a spokesperson told CNBC.com. “The army must be ready when the police in such cases requests for subsidiary help.”

Talk about financial contagion!

Cooler heads may prevail, of course. Matthew Feeney, writing at reason.com, notes that the “most obvious argument against the possibility of war is that there are no likely candidates for the part of aggressor.” And Europe hasn’t exactly been engaging in a massive military build-up, unlike before the two world wars.

Alas, that doesn’t preclude massive rioting and uprisings.

Sovereign financial bankruptcy usually follows war, rather than preceding it. I guess that provides something like hope.

This is Common Sense. Im Paul Jacob.