Is not the minimal state, the framework for utopia, an inspiring vision?
The minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual rights with the dignity this constitutes. Treating us with respect by respecting our rights, it allows us, individually or with whom we choose, to choose our life and to realize our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity. How dare any state or group of individuals do more. Or less.
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State And Utopia (1974), pp. 333-334 (conclusion).
On January 7, 1940, the Finnish 9th Division completely destroyed the much-larger Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi Road, in a crucial battle during Finland’s Winter War.
It is not the astronomer’s business to consider whether it would be better if the sun were nearer or farther from the earth, or if he turned round her, instead of turning round him. Nor is it the chemist’s business to consider whether carbonic acid and carbonic oxide are noxious gases that ought not to exist. It has never been thought desirable to make Newton responsible for tiles falling on the people’s heads.
Economists, however, are held answerable for the laws which they discover.
Yves Guyot, The Principles of Social Economy (1892).
On January 6, 1907, Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome, Italy.
In 1912 on this date, New Mexico became the 47th state of America’s United States, and in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his “Four Freedoms” State of the Union speech, emphasizing vague “freedoms” that enabled government to usurp definable freedoms.
Many people don’t seem to realize that a prohibition (banning something) is AUTHORITARIAN BY DEFINITION. Whether it’s drugs, guns, alcohol, offensive language, dangerous ideas, texting while walking(!), plastic straws(!)… authoritarians are perfectly happy to use government violence to force the rest of us behave as they wish. Because they think they know what’s right for everybody else. They are the authorities. They are the keepers of the truth. For the rest of us, the message is clear: obey or be punished.
The spectacle of people screaming about Trump’s “authoritarianism” while simultaneously demanding more regulations, more bans, more restrictions… would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.
A “rule of law” is based on general principles, and makes room for — or, better yet, is based upon — the protection of individual rights.
It used to be common to say, “a rule of law, not of men”; it was even as common in political oratory as was spouted out over drinks at the Rotary. But as the modern Regulatory State has grown in scope and power, most folks seem to have lost track of the notion. It is now not even a cliché. Few even of our most educated folks can explain this idea. Vast swaths of the mis-educated public appear not to “get” the idea of limiting government to the enforcement of a few general principles; instead, they cry for more “regulations” (along with additional spending and maybe even a whole new division of the executive government) every time a crisis, tragedy or atrocity occurs.
So we are left with a political culture in which the words of Tacitus seem to a majority as implausible at best, evil at worst: “The more the laws, the more corrupt the State.” Contrary to today’s trendy prejudice, we do not need “more laws” — edicts legislated by representatives, or regulations concocted by bureaucracies — we need Law.
One thing you notice when engaging in public policy discussions is the misuse of statistics in a particular way: truncating a timeline of data, to focus almost exclusively on short-term trends rather than a more meaningful long-term (“secular”) accounting of trends.
For example, you will often see proponents of state aid discuss the decrease in poverty after the War on Poverty began. And there definitely has been. But when we look at long-term trends, we see a long history of diminishing poverty levels in America, and improvements were more dramatic before, not after, the increase in welfare state spending in the 1960s.
Another trend line you might notice regards crime. Some folks focus on very recent upticks in some violent crimes, and demand that we “do something.” But the longer-term trend has been for a reduction in almost all forms of crime since the early 1990s.
What if something similar has been going on in “climate change”/“global warming” politics and reportage?
Along with even more disturbing near-term mis-reporting.
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.
Republicans are especially good at deficit spending. Give them control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, and watch the money flow! It happened under George W.Bush, and now under President Donald Trump.
But note: the Democrats have gained control of the House of Representatives. We might see some restraint on government growth, if for no better reason than “divided government,” in which the two major parties can more effectively do damage to each other’s spending.
Nancy Pelosi, again Speaker of the House, has a monkey wrench to throw into Republican spending plans, not excluding that much-promised, little acted-upon Trump promise, “The Wall.”
It is called “PayGo,” or, in the Twittersphere, #PayGo.
Not something new (Democrats have used it before), the House rule aims to limit any new expenditures to equal cuts in old spending.
Effective? Well, in capping the deficit at a trillion dollars annually . . . until they vote for exceptions to the rule.
And effectiveenough to annoy Republicans!
And now, to rile up progressives, too.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has made a big deal about her opposition. She has opposed Pelosi’s attempt to re-establish the rule.
Heedless of any danger that could result from further adding to the now-$22 trillion national debt, progressives scorn the idea of fiscal responsibility as “austerian,” claimingthe whole idea was somehow disproven by “economic history,” in the Tweeted words of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
The “real” beneficiaries would be the corporations, progs say, and that PayGo would work against the “progressive agenda” of increasing government programs without limit.
