I agree with you that civil liberties are popular in the abstract but not so popular in actual practice for the most part especially civil liberties dealing with the rights of alleged and actual defendants in criminal cases. The exclusionary rule and confrontation clauses are probably some of the most vexing issues in jurisprudence. I don't think any country has come up with an adequate solution to the problem of illegally seized evidence. Most people can agree that search warrants are good and that police should follow them.
The problem with criminal law is that crime is more inherently emotional than most other aspects of law. Civil litigation is usually only vexing to the parties in the case with a few big blockbuster exceptions that are highly political like Duke v. Wall-Mart, Ledbetter, Brown v. Board of Ed, Lawerence v. Texas, Roe v. Wade, etc. People react strongly and it is very hard to be counterintuitive and defend civil liberties in the face of shocking and notorious crime. It might be one of the hardest things in the world. Certain crimes produce more strong reactions than others and there is a lot of really appalling facts in criminal law.
A lot of civil libertarians are fond of quoting Ben Franklin's line on "People who prefer security over liberty deserve neither." But no one has ever really come up with a practical way of convincing non civil libertarians on how to accept this line. Also no one has come up with a good metric on how much danger is acceptable in the name of liberty. This is a hard question to answer and most people do not want to be martyrs for liberty. Most people would probably rather put up with the indignities of a security state than risk harm by terrorists however remote.
Who was the most ardent civil libertarian on the Supreme Court? Probably William Douglas. Most people also considered him a cantankerous jerk and all-around not very pleasant person. The best spokespeople for civil liberties on the bench were probably a lot more affable and charming like Earl Warren and William Brennan but even they often managed to earn the scorn of conservatives.
What are the mobility rates of people in developed nations over people in less developed nations?
I know a lot of people who are very mobile in the US but they tend to come from the upper-middle class. Basically they were born and grew up in one area, probably went to undergrad in a different city or state, then grad school or first job somewhere else, and then they eventually find a "home" in their late 20s-early 40s. Sometimes later.
How many people in the United States stay local for college/university vs. going to somewhere where commuting is impossible?
I think mobility is an increasing part of being part of the upper-middle class unless you long to a profession (lawyer/doctor) that is local in nature. Lawyers are constrained by bar licenses to a certain extent (it is very common to have two or three but more is excessive) and medicine is a more local profession in general. The business people who really pull ahead are the ones who don't mind uprooting their families to live abroad when the corporation needs it.
Like others, I thought this was a very good post and agree like you that I don't know what the solution is. The author of the Atlantic article suggests that the solution might end up being something dramatic like punitive actions to drag the global elite down to the nation-state level especially if people feel left behind. So people would use the tools of liberal democracy to destroy the global elite who have transcended liberal-democracy and the nation-state.
Living in San Francisco for four years has turned my body composition to gossamer by 15 percent. Luckily I am still 85 percent New York concrete and steal.
Very oblique reference to a probably not really Kurt Vonnegut quote is hopefully not lost.
Yes I know but that is part of the point. The current United States is not Afghanistan or Somalia. We have a long time to go before we are close to the anarchy that is Mad Max.
And there are very few people alive (if any) who can remember when America was that bad.
As I mentioned before on another post, The Old West actually had a lot of gun control.
Cowboys and others were not allowed to go around town with their guns. Upon entering a town, people had to check in their guns with the Sheriff or at a large hotel and receive a ticket. You could pick up your gun again when leaving town. The mythic fight at the OK-Coral was because the person did not want to check his gun.
This is a very good post. I am not in complete agreement but it was all very well thought out.
I've never been much of a cluber but was convinced to go clubbing by a friend in January 2011. There was a double homicide at the club that night. Both were stabbing murders. One seemed to be very random. The other might have been gang-related, I don't remember.
The police were trying to keep things as calm and orderly as possible while they investigated. Sadly they were dealing with a lot of young 20-somethings who were drunk and probably a decent amount were high. Eventually the police decided to let people leave through the back entrance while asking people if they saw anything. Some people tried to create a bit of a panic in order to overwhelm the police and push through.
This was when the murders were done with a knife. I can't imagine what the panic would be like if a gun was involved.
You bring up a very good point. Largely because I brought up the same point below ;)
Our society is a lot more complicated than the society of the early American Republic. It was very easy for Thomas Jefferson to imagine a country filled with small and self-sufficient yeoman farmers.
Doing so now would result in a great reduction of wealth.
I suppose this is another example when not having any Scot-Presbyterian or Calvinist blood in my veins is a bit of a problem.
I don't see the problem with a government providing a safety net and social welfare programs. In fact, I would say that this is one of the primary responsibilities of civil government. Yes there are issues of paying for things is important. But the whole concept of moral hazard is an odd one when it comes to healthcare. Why do we always hear about moral hazard in the U.S.? Do British conservatives and libertarians talk about moral hazard and the welfare state? I imagine not.
As you said, the writer was an 18th-century Scott, he could not imagine how complex society would get and this goes beyond the Industrial and post-Industrial society. This goes to medical advancements and other procedures. When the writer lived it was quite possible to imagine a low-government society filled with largely self-sufficient yeoman farmers. Same with the early American republic. Now we would view such a nation as being a poor one. Likewise, modern medicine can provide for relatively happy lives for people who would have been quickly dead during the 18th-century.
Complex society produces complex problems that demand often very tricky solutions. These are not necessarily cures just policies that make a problem better or worse.
Cronyism and partisan patronage seem to be problems that are vexing to all forms of government and not just liberal democracies. There are always hacks of all ideologies seeking a sinecure. Some positions will always be seen as a reward for party loyalty and service. For example plumber ambassadorships like Japan and the UK. I don't think these are problems that society will ever be rid of because they are the result of human emotion and psychology, not forms of government. You can find ways to minimize the impact of cronyism but it will never go away.
For all of our troubles, the basic forms of American democracy have so far proven to be very secure. Same with the British parliamentary system and in countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The GOP is now controlled by a very hard-right base. They have destroyed or cowered all their moderates. Even the most conservative Democrats (who tend to give most Democrat no end of grief) tend to be more liberal than the most liberal Republican.
Romney might want to be a moderate but he is controlled by a far-right base. He knows what they want and he will give them far-right judges and justices. Very young ones at that who can be on the judiciary for decades and impede progress.
There seems to be a certain subset of libertarian/conservative whose reason of existence is too piss off imaginary liberals. Starw-men liberals who want to assign five social workers to every citizen from craddle to grave.
There are a lot of times when I am convinced that if you told a conservative or libertarian that a liberal policy solution would have a 100 percent (or even 90-95 percent) success rate, the libertarians and conservatives would still be against it. Their reasoning would be to annoy liberals.
You are right about not being able to argue with these people. I am generally not a fan of internet memes but I saw one from a friend this week. The statement was "Arguing with Republicans is like playing chess with a pigeon. You can be the best chess player in the world but the pigeon will still walk all over the board, knock over pieces, and squawk in victory"
I don't take it as a given that unemployment is really the only issue in this election.
It is an important issue along with the rest of the economy but there is never a single issue.
A lot of liberals like me do not want to see President Romney appoint someone who will make Justice Thomas look like William Brennan. A lot of conservatives do not want to see President Obama replace another Supreme Court justice.
And this is always one example.
I think culture war issues have and always will be a permanent part of the American political landscape. I am currently reading a history book on the United States in 1857. There is a lot of truth in the cliche that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." A lot of the same type of rhetoric was coming from the same people on the same issues.
I don't know whether this is uplifting or depressing.
Whenever I listen to hardcore gun people and CCW zealots, I always imagine that they see the world as a post-apocalyptic movie. This is no longer the suburbs but Mad Max.
I agree that mobility is important and that the financial/mortgage crisis showed us how bad immobility can be but there is more than being attached to a house that is worth less than paid for with a bad mortgage. I would say that home ownership has more to do with immobility than rent control. Most people I know with rent control in NYC are artist types who got their apartments decades ago. These people are often true bohemians and never going to leave New York.
However this raises a lot more questions about home ownership than rent control. The idea that home ownership is bad is still very much a contrarian argument. Homeownership for better or for worse is still a corner of the American middle class/way of life. There was also questions about communities that are too residential/not economically diverse and too far from urban centers (hence preferences for urbanism by many policy and planning plates.)
In the end though, most people are not nomads and want to settle down sooner rather than later. I imagine even in these days of easy traveling, many people do not move far from home or eventually come back.
Some questions and I am not necessarily saying this in terms of being pro-rent control:
1. Is there any evidence (not theory, actual evidence) that markets without rent control would produce adequate and affordable housing for the working class/poor?
Matt Y wrote about San Francisco needing new housing quick a few months ago. This might be true but can anyone provide any evidence that landlords and developers would want to cater to anyone other than the upper-middle professional classes. All of the new housing in the Bay Area seems targeted towards educated types in the tech industry. Maybe there is a lot of demand here but some of the less-educated workers in my office have commutes of three to four hours a day because that is where they can afford to live.
What kind of housing policies will allow people with modest incomes to have shorter commutes? I know NYC tried to offer lucrative tax abatements to condo developers to create 80/20 buildings (20 percent for modest or law income residents) but the developers found it more profitable to just pay a fine or sum to the NYC Housing Department than actually create subsidized rents for a small portion of the building.
2. On the mobility issue, I think this is more tricky. A lot of people don't want to move because they don't want to move. They are close to their friends, families, and loved ones even if there might be jobs in North Dakota or whereever. Or other reasons. This is where people in life care more than economics. Why should people be forced to uproot themselves from their families?
Even for those of us who want to move, there are issues. I have strongly considered moving back to NYC. I've done some steps towards this like take and pass the NY Bar but I can't move back without a job but getting a job seems to require being in NYC. This is not a simple trick. Many landlords also want proof of employment like pay stubs. I have a good bit of untouchable savings but the simple fact is that moving back to NYC would require a job first.
It is merely an ideological disagreement with neo-liberalism. I remain unconvinced that it will lead to what Matt Y says it will and I do think he is too technocratic.
I have leveled my criticism's at him in other posts.
It is my general critique of neo-liberalism. I think, like Libertarians often, they are not good at dealing with realities. Ne0-Liberals are highly complicit in growing income inequality and not being too critical of stuff in the private sector. They focused too much on the privitization and not enough on protecting workers or equal growth for all socio-economic strata. Matt Y is typical of writers in the Brooks/Friedman set where it is more about coming up with a routine and counter-intuitive arguments than truth. He is the kind of policy wonk that seems to find electioneering and convincing people to be distasteful.
I am not arguing for income caps but you can't have all the growth in the one percent.
I also really like urban living, public transportation, and walkable neighborhoods.
However, I don't want urban living to resemble something like Seoul in South Korea where everyone lives in really large and anonymous concrete buildings or the hell sprawl that is Los Angeles (though Venice Beach and other parts are very nice).
My preferred urbanism as always been low-rise urbanism. The kind you see in Brownstone Brooklyn, San Francisco, parts of Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Boston/Cambridge, Philadelphia, etc.
I often get the sense from Matt Y that he would rid this all down.
I don't think so. You can't deliver medicine or other physical items through the internet and in rural areas, the Post Office is the only option.
UPS and FedEx don't deliver to rural areas and often hand over post offices for delivery.
I live in San Francisco. Every now and then I order something on-line and have it sent to my office and the company decides to use UPS. UPS for reasons unknown to me decides to hand it over to the Post Office to deliver even though my office is in the height of downtown and not rural America.
As I understand the main problems for the post-office are that they are required to make huge future payments to their health and pension funds in ways that other organizations are not. If you got rid of these requirements, the Post Office would be healthy.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Paul Ryan?”
Is picking Ryan the equivalent of going all the way home with the base? Or does it only get him to second?
On “Popular Erosion Of Liberty: Do You Feel Lucky?”
This is a very good post.
I agree with you that civil liberties are popular in the abstract but not so popular in actual practice for the most part especially civil liberties dealing with the rights of alleged and actual defendants in criminal cases. The exclusionary rule and confrontation clauses are probably some of the most vexing issues in jurisprudence. I don't think any country has come up with an adequate solution to the problem of illegally seized evidence. Most people can agree that search warrants are good and that police should follow them.
The problem with criminal law is that crime is more inherently emotional than most other aspects of law. Civil litigation is usually only vexing to the parties in the case with a few big blockbuster exceptions that are highly political like Duke v. Wall-Mart, Ledbetter, Brown v. Board of Ed, Lawerence v. Texas, Roe v. Wade, etc. People react strongly and it is very hard to be counterintuitive and defend civil liberties in the face of shocking and notorious crime. It might be one of the hardest things in the world. Certain crimes produce more strong reactions than others and there is a lot of really appalling facts in criminal law.
A lot of civil libertarians are fond of quoting Ben Franklin's line on "People who prefer security over liberty deserve neither." But no one has ever really come up with a practical way of convincing non civil libertarians on how to accept this line. Also no one has come up with a good metric on how much danger is acceptable in the name of liberty. This is a hard question to answer and most people do not want to be martyrs for liberty. Most people would probably rather put up with the indignities of a security state than risk harm by terrorists however remote.
Who was the most ardent civil libertarian on the Supreme Court? Probably William Douglas. Most people also considered him a cantankerous jerk and all-around not very pleasant person. The best spokespeople for civil liberties on the bench were probably a lot more affable and charming like Earl Warren and William Brennan but even they often managed to earn the scorn of conservatives.
On “Democracy Symposium: Geographic Chains of Democratic Nationalism”
What are the mobility rates of people in developed nations over people in less developed nations?
I know a lot of people who are very mobile in the US but they tend to come from the upper-middle class. Basically they were born and grew up in one area, probably went to undergrad in a different city or state, then grad school or first job somewhere else, and then they eventually find a "home" in their late 20s-early 40s. Sometimes later.
How many people in the United States stay local for college/university vs. going to somewhere where commuting is impossible?
I think mobility is an increasing part of being part of the upper-middle class unless you long to a profession (lawyer/doctor) that is local in nature. Lawyers are constrained by bar licenses to a certain extent (it is very common to have two or three but more is excessive) and medicine is a more local profession in general. The business people who really pull ahead are the ones who don't mind uprooting their families to live abroad when the corporation needs it.
"
Did you happen to see the article in the Atlantic on this issue from last summer?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/8343/
Like others, I thought this was a very good post and agree like you that I don't know what the solution is. The author of the Atlantic article suggests that the solution might end up being something dramatic like punitive actions to drag the global elite down to the nation-state level especially if people feel left behind. So people would use the tools of liberal democracy to destroy the global elite who have transcended liberal-democracy and the nation-state.
On “Convening the Democracy Symposium”
Living in San Francisco for four years has turned my body composition to gossamer by 15 percent. Luckily I am still 85 percent New York concrete and steal.
Very oblique reference to a probably not really Kurt Vonnegut quote is hopefully not lost.
On “The Unintended Costs of an Armed Society”
The number is probably more because not all states requires sheriffs to report the number of issued licenses and many do not.
"
Yes I know but that is part of the point. The current United States is not Afghanistan or Somalia. We have a long time to go before we are close to the anarchy that is Mad Max.
And there are very few people alive (if any) who can remember when America was that bad.
"
I agree.
To hear some or many CCW, it makes me wonder if they see the world as resembling Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
"
As I mentioned before on another post, The Old West actually had a lot of gun control.
Cowboys and others were not allowed to go around town with their guns. Upon entering a town, people had to check in their guns with the Sheriff or at a large hotel and receive a ticket. You could pick up your gun again when leaving town. The mythic fight at the OK-Coral was because the person did not want to check his gun.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/23/nation/la-na-tombstone-20110123
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/did-the-wild-west-have-mo_b_956035.html
"
This is a very good post. I am not in complete agreement but it was all very well thought out.
I've never been much of a cluber but was convinced to go clubbing by a friend in January 2011. There was a double homicide at the club that night. Both were stabbing murders. One seemed to be very random. The other might have been gang-related, I don't remember.
The police were trying to keep things as calm and orderly as possible while they investigated. Sadly they were dealing with a lot of young 20-somethings who were drunk and probably a decent amount were high. Eventually the police decided to let people leave through the back entrance while asking people if they saw anything. Some people tried to create a bit of a panic in order to overwhelm the police and push through.
This was when the murders were done with a knife. I can't imagine what the panic would be like if a gun was involved.
On “Convening the Democracy Symposium”
That's a pleasant image.
"
You bring up a very good point. Largely because I brought up the same point below ;)
Our society is a lot more complicated than the society of the early American Republic. It was very easy for Thomas Jefferson to imagine a country filled with small and self-sufficient yeoman farmers.
Doing so now would result in a great reduction of wealth.
"
I suppose this is another example when not having any Scot-Presbyterian or Calvinist blood in my veins is a bit of a problem.
I don't see the problem with a government providing a safety net and social welfare programs. In fact, I would say that this is one of the primary responsibilities of civil government. Yes there are issues of paying for things is important. But the whole concept of moral hazard is an odd one when it comes to healthcare. Why do we always hear about moral hazard in the U.S.? Do British conservatives and libertarians talk about moral hazard and the welfare state? I imagine not.
As you said, the writer was an 18th-century Scott, he could not imagine how complex society would get and this goes beyond the Industrial and post-Industrial society. This goes to medical advancements and other procedures. When the writer lived it was quite possible to imagine a low-government society filled with largely self-sufficient yeoman farmers. Same with the early American republic. Now we would view such a nation as being a poor one. Likewise, modern medicine can provide for relatively happy lives for people who would have been quickly dead during the 18th-century.
Complex society produces complex problems that demand often very tricky solutions. These are not necessarily cures just policies that make a problem better or worse.
Cronyism and partisan patronage seem to be problems that are vexing to all forms of government and not just liberal democracies. There are always hacks of all ideologies seeking a sinecure. Some positions will always be seen as a reward for party loyalty and service. For example plumber ambassadorships like Japan and the UK. I don't think these are problems that society will ever be rid of because they are the result of human emotion and psychology, not forms of government. You can find ways to minimize the impact of cronyism but it will never go away.
For all of our troubles, the basic forms of American democracy have so far proven to be very secure. Same with the British parliamentary system and in countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
On “Why The Presidential Election May Not Be As Close As You Think”
Yup.
The GOP is now controlled by a very hard-right base. They have destroyed or cowered all their moderates. Even the most conservative Democrats (who tend to give most Democrat no end of grief) tend to be more liberal than the most liberal Republican.
Romney might want to be a moderate but he is controlled by a far-right base. He knows what they want and he will give them far-right judges and justices. Very young ones at that who can be on the judiciary for decades and impede progress.
On “To Protect and Serve”
There seems to be a certain subset of libertarian/conservative whose reason of existence is too piss off imaginary liberals. Starw-men liberals who want to assign five social workers to every citizen from craddle to grave.
There are a lot of times when I am convinced that if you told a conservative or libertarian that a liberal policy solution would have a 100 percent (or even 90-95 percent) success rate, the libertarians and conservatives would still be against it. Their reasoning would be to annoy liberals.
You are right about not being able to argue with these people. I am generally not a fan of internet memes but I saw one from a friend this week. The statement was "Arguing with Republicans is like playing chess with a pigeon. You can be the best chess player in the world but the pigeon will still walk all over the board, knock over pieces, and squawk in victory"
I can get behind that statement.
"
Everyone knows that Communism was just a red herring.
On “Why The Presidential Election May Not Be As Close As You Think”
I don't take it as a given that unemployment is really the only issue in this election.
It is an important issue along with the rest of the economy but there is never a single issue.
A lot of liberals like me do not want to see President Romney appoint someone who will make Justice Thomas look like William Brennan. A lot of conservatives do not want to see President Obama replace another Supreme Court justice.
And this is always one example.
I think culture war issues have and always will be a permanent part of the American political landscape. I am currently reading a history book on the United States in 1857. There is a lot of truth in the cliche that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." A lot of the same type of rhetoric was coming from the same people on the same issues.
I don't know whether this is uplifting or depressing.
On “To Protect and Serve”
Whenever I listen to hardcore gun people and CCW zealots, I always imagine that they see the world as a post-apocalyptic movie. This is no longer the suburbs but Mad Max.
On “In Which I Turn Into A Neoliberal Shill”
I agree that mobility is important and that the financial/mortgage crisis showed us how bad immobility can be but there is more than being attached to a house that is worth less than paid for with a bad mortgage. I would say that home ownership has more to do with immobility than rent control. Most people I know with rent control in NYC are artist types who got their apartments decades ago. These people are often true bohemians and never going to leave New York.
However this raises a lot more questions about home ownership than rent control. The idea that home ownership is bad is still very much a contrarian argument. Homeownership for better or for worse is still a corner of the American middle class/way of life. There was also questions about communities that are too residential/not economically diverse and too far from urban centers (hence preferences for urbanism by many policy and planning plates.)
In the end though, most people are not nomads and want to settle down sooner rather than later. I imagine even in these days of easy traveling, many people do not move far from home or eventually come back.
"
Some questions and I am not necessarily saying this in terms of being pro-rent control:
1. Is there any evidence (not theory, actual evidence) that markets without rent control would produce adequate and affordable housing for the working class/poor?
Matt Y wrote about San Francisco needing new housing quick a few months ago. This might be true but can anyone provide any evidence that landlords and developers would want to cater to anyone other than the upper-middle professional classes. All of the new housing in the Bay Area seems targeted towards educated types in the tech industry. Maybe there is a lot of demand here but some of the less-educated workers in my office have commutes of three to four hours a day because that is where they can afford to live.
What kind of housing policies will allow people with modest incomes to have shorter commutes? I know NYC tried to offer lucrative tax abatements to condo developers to create 80/20 buildings (20 percent for modest or law income residents) but the developers found it more profitable to just pay a fine or sum to the NYC Housing Department than actually create subsidized rents for a small portion of the building.
2. On the mobility issue, I think this is more tricky. A lot of people don't want to move because they don't want to move. They are close to their friends, families, and loved ones even if there might be jobs in North Dakota or whereever. Or other reasons. This is where people in life care more than economics. Why should people be forced to uproot themselves from their families?
Even for those of us who want to move, there are issues. I have strongly considered moving back to NYC. I've done some steps towards this like take and pass the NY Bar but I can't move back without a job but getting a job seems to require being in NYC. This is not a simple trick. Many landlords also want proof of employment like pay stubs. I have a good bit of untouchable savings but the simple fact is that moving back to NYC would require a job first.
"
TNC had a good quote about this recently.
He thought that people get caught plagiarizing when they want to be seen as oracles instead of just answering questions.
"
Well you can't say I did not level any criticism.
It is merely an ideological disagreement with neo-liberalism. I remain unconvinced that it will lead to what Matt Y says it will and I do think he is too technocratic.
He is certainly a polarizing writer/figure.
"
I have leveled my criticism's at him in other posts.
It is my general critique of neo-liberalism. I think, like Libertarians often, they are not good at dealing with realities. Ne0-Liberals are highly complicit in growing income inequality and not being too critical of stuff in the private sector. They focused too much on the privitization and not enough on protecting workers or equal growth for all socio-economic strata. Matt Y is typical of writers in the Brooks/Friedman set where it is more about coming up with a routine and counter-intuitive arguments than truth. He is the kind of policy wonk that seems to find electioneering and convincing people to be distasteful.
I am not arguing for income caps but you can't have all the growth in the one percent.
"
Speaking of aesthetic preferences.
I also really like urban living, public transportation, and walkable neighborhoods.
However, I don't want urban living to resemble something like Seoul in South Korea where everyone lives in really large and anonymous concrete buildings or the hell sprawl that is Los Angeles (though Venice Beach and other parts are very nice).
My preferred urbanism as always been low-rise urbanism. The kind you see in Brownstone Brooklyn, San Francisco, parts of Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Boston/Cambridge, Philadelphia, etc.
I often get the sense from Matt Y that he would rid this all down.
"
I don't think so. You can't deliver medicine or other physical items through the internet and in rural areas, the Post Office is the only option.
UPS and FedEx don't deliver to rural areas and often hand over post offices for delivery.
I live in San Francisco. Every now and then I order something on-line and have it sent to my office and the company decides to use UPS. UPS for reasons unknown to me decides to hand it over to the Post Office to deliver even though my office is in the height of downtown and not rural America.
As I understand the main problems for the post-office are that they are required to make huge future payments to their health and pension funds in ways that other organizations are not. If you got rid of these requirements, the Post Office would be healthy.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.