Ron Paul is a crackpot. That in an of itself is not disqualifying. I've argued for years that the presence of crackpots in our political system is a good thing, whether it's Henry B. Gonzales or Cynthia McKinney from the Dem side, or Ron Paul or Allen West from the Repub side.
However, crackpots have to be utterly sincere and straightforward in their crackpottery, and on that count, Paul's newsletters are disqualifying.
At best, the newsletters are cynically manipulative demagoguery with venal and mercenary motives. At worst, he believed what was published in his name. Both possibilities are disqualifying. After that, the rest of your "grades" don't matter.
I thought your argument was based on the assumption of necessity
It is. But since the assumption seems to have been conceded, I took the next step. We can skip all the folderol we've all heard a thousand times before and skip to the chase: If it's a collective decision about a public good, we're always going to have a collective mechanism of some kind, whether it's the Divine Right of Kings or a Quaker Meeting or the Electoral College.
If it's necessary, then imputing moral value to it is meaningless.
If I chop off your arms with a sword because I'm sick of reading your childish libertarian nonsense on LoOG, that's evil. If I chop off your arms with a surgical tool because they're gangrenous and it's necessary to save your life, that's not evil. It's not good, either, except insofar as "saving Jason's life" is regarded as a creditable moral value.
"Chopping off arms" and "coercive acquisition of wealth" cannot be determined to be evil based on simply those terms alone even though the obvious, common-sensical but wrong tendency is to believe so at first instance.
any amount of coercion should give us pause just the same.
Why? "Just the same" as what? Should any amount of amputation give me concern? When I'm diagnosed with bone cancer and told I'll be dead in a month if the leg isn't removed, and probably live another forty years if it is removed, do I stop to ponder the evil the doctor is doing to my leg? The "same" as if some loan shark is threatening the same leg with a chainsaw?
I don't think hypocrisy is the issue. I said I thought the DoI's concepts were a sincere expression and the MS legislature honestly believed their philosophy.
The Emancipation Proclamation enacts a regime preference while the Gettysburg Address expresses a concept. I just think in all three cases the regime preference is dominant and prior to the concept.
As a matter of fact, as I cogitate I come to realize that when concepts are dominant and prior to a regime preference, the more likely that regime is to be ineffective and inhumane.
Although it seems as if "concepts" are the prevailing motives, a close reading reveals that it's actually regime preference at work. Not that Jefferson wasn't a sincere creature of the Enlightenment nor that the MS legislature wasn't not honestly committed to states rights, it's just clear from the text that the real things perpetrated in favor or opposed to a particular regime preference were the driving motive.
Another way to look at it. Remove the regime preferences from those documents and what do you have? Pretty-sounding and unexceptional banalities that don't really do anything. Remove the the concepts and what do you have? You still have texts of political force that would by themselves justify the actions taken, Independence and Secession respectively.
(Of course, one can always say that adopting something consistent with one’s concept of liberty that I might not otherwise adopt actually functions as a ploy to legitimate the regime/policy preferences that my “concept of liberty” serves so well.)
Coises! Foiled again! I know for certain that I anticipated going there. But more importantly, I have a hunch that that's where WW is going (or going to go in future arguments). There's a fragrance of disillusionment to the quoted passage, disillusionment with First Principles as the engine of social or political improvement.
The argument, as I understood it, is that political philosophy is fundamentally post hoc. In other words, they assuredly do not "inform each other" because the regime preference causes the philosophical rationale for the regime.
If WW is right, all your "concept of 'liberty'" contributes is a little extra energy into a feedback loop.
At what point should the government be protecting children?
I was say the default is at every point absent a positive argument to the contrary. Now the degree to which such positive arguments might overturn the default position is highly debateable (and it seems like Tod's interested in exactly that in his new front-pager). I think there's a good argument against protecting a child from "riding a bike to school" but I don't think there is for "shooting an Uzi at a gun show."
Frankly, I think that's ridiculous. It was always ridiculous but it's even more ridiculous nowadays. I do not want to sue or prosecute after I get poisoned, I want to not get poisoned in the first place.
However, it may in fact be that most people would rather get poisoned and sue or prosecute afterward than not get poisoned in the first place. In which case, you should be able to win elections and install that kind of regulatory regime. But I haven't seen that happening in the advanced economies for the last 140 years or so. Because that's not what most people want.
I suppose the incompetent husband would live a life of pain and regret if he accidentally killed his family. That's punishment enough.
You’re not arguing against our arguments, you’re arguing against us.
I sincerely don't think so. As I believe I tried to say, I'm arguing against frequently unstated premises, in fact, those frequently unstated premises are frequently unstated MAJOR premises.
I don’t see where The Government would get the right to prevent this woman from selling her wedding cakes.
And yet, earlier you seemed to deny, or at least slough off, the idea that you were proposing "no regulatory regime at all." Well, you know, regulating food production and sales so as to protect the health, safety and value-received of the public is one of the oldest and most-established "rights" of government (I'd call it more a duty or obligation, actually).
So bored housewife cooks and sells wedding cake and nobody has the right to say she can't. But she's bored and screws up and her customers get sick. Then what?
Er. No. I really don't "kinda agree with" you two because your implicit and sometimes explicit model of the political economy is completely wrong.
Thus, when you end up saying something that seems to superficially agree with something that I might say, I don't agree with it becauase I know the premises are ... well, frankly, ridiculous.
Christopher, I'd say "naive" rather than "evil" because what is going to happen if the agenda above is enacted is that the Kochs will get to continue and expand their poisoning of the atmosphere while, I'm sorry, but your uncle still isn't going to be able to make a living selling potentially unsafe toys, even if the law allowed him to.
Stories about lemonade stands and bored housewives who might want to bake wedding cakes do not portray an accurate model of the actual political economy we actually live in, which is a large, incredibly complex system dominated by large, incredibly complex institutions in varying degrees of coordination and conflict.
And what do I get from you guys? An illusion where if only if only if only we could all own our own little wooden-toy or wedding cake business then we could all get rich if we could all just sell wedding cakes and wooden toys to each other as sole proprietors.
As I said--ridiculous. In a sense, it's not even Capitalistic, it's PRE-Capital.
The CoC usually fights for the rights of huge corps to exploit people and write their own regulations. It is a lobbying cartel of the already rich and powerful.
Correct. And yet, their rhetoric is indistinguishable from the above disquisition down to the punctuation. Why do you think that is?
That is because the benefits to the "rich and powerful" of the deregulation agenda are orders of magnitude greater than for the sole proprietor.
all our legal framework, from economic policy to structural limitations on commerce has the effect of redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich.
No, that's how I interpert "amalgam of stories people I know have told."
you’d object to my description of your philosophy
Why would I object? I just told you I recognize that incumbent protection, bureaucratic imperative, regulatory capture and such were legitimate issues. Which means that when I propose an anti-deregulation agenda in opposition to your deregulation agenda, intellectual honesty obligates me to concede that some part of what I propose can be rightly described as "incumbent protection" or "pro-regulatory capture" or whatever.
I simply prefer having in a place a regulatory regime probably subject to capture than no regulatory regime at all.
Oh. Not just anecdotal, but personal. And ideologically self-serving at that. So libertarian Jay has some libertarian friends who project libertarian storylines to rationalize their own failure to live up to John Galt? Why am I not surprised?
How's that for freelance psychoanalyzing?
New regulation will get captured. Getting rid of captured regulation tends to be something that they push for.
Well. Okay then. So why do you object when I conclude that you prefer a country more at the mercy of business and corporatism? As a progressive, I say "Remove the capture," as a libertarian you say "Remove the regulation."
Just what kind of country do you imagine you'll live in with business and corporatism less beholden to regulatory restraints?
Oh, go ahead. You had no problem freelance psychoanalyzing your imaginary opopressed entrepreneur deciding after all to work for your imaginary Massive Conglomerate.
I would indeed have mocked them for being anecdotal had you linked to or referred to anecdotes. Please please PLEASE cite the "Lemonade Stand" at the U.S. Open in Bethesda anecdote from earlier this year. I love mocking that anecdote and it'll warm Erik's heart to see his lemonade stand hit referenced again.
On your most substantive and most fair point, that's one of things that has always surprised me about libertarians/classical liberals/supply-siders and others of similar sentiment. Look, not only do I understand your point about "onerous regulation," on a case-by-case basis, I bet I probably agree with you a lot more than you might suspect. Not as much as MattY, probably, but still, some. I recognize there's a problem with incumbent protection, bureaucratic imperatives and regulatory capture and such.
The problem is, whenever and wherever a marginal regulation is elimnated in service of marginal job or firm creation, and I mean whenever, as in ALWAYS, in accord with the libertarian pipedream of having some new Steve Jobs in a garage become a great success, Massive Conglomerate ALWAYS exploits that change to its own ends. We end up with 1% marginal job or firm creation and 99% corporatist exploitation.
It just surprises me that after decades of things like that happening that libertarians haven't figured it out yet.
Tee hee. I hate to even partially and temporarily defend Jay, but I will. He seems to be talking about (if he was truly as erudite as Robert claimed he'd have made this explicit) job creation AT THE MARGINS.
When unemployment is a lot lower, these "onerous" regulations aren't at the margins. Potential employers just deal with them and hire anyway because the returns are still positive, or potential entrepreneurs decide the risk of starting the business is still worthwhile. But when those decisions are a closer call, as now, the "onerous" regulations matter more.
There are numerous problems with that, though. One, it's essentially a marginal case--in other words, it wouldn't create that many jobs to reduce "onerous" regulations unless those reductions were massive. Two, since many, probably most, such regulations are a matter of municipal ordnance or state law (in fact, probably ALL the imaginary examples he lists are state/local) the coordination problem is almost impossible to solve barring a massive Federal pre-emption. Which would be hilarious to see a libertarian argue for. And Three, when employment picks back up, those non-regulations will recede from the margins just as the regulations did--we'll simply be left with a country more at the mercy of business and corporatism.
I know Jay would probably like that. But I wouldn't and I guess a voting majority of the country wouldn't, either.
I don't object to the substance above as much as Christopher's description of it as "brilliant" and Robert's's Best Evah! claim above.
It's b(l)og-standard Chamber of Commerce boilerplate and regulation House GOP talking points. And it's not even that good in those terms. At least the CoC usually trots out some real-life bogus "victim" and the House GOP usually includes some lie that's so outrageous it's at least amusing.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “A poll for the times”
E.D.:
Cool man! Thanks!
Did you take the poll?
On “Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Civil War”
Wow!
Blaise is front-paging the League ... while E.D. is front-paging Atlantic.
Everybody's movin' up a slot!
On “Dying on That Hillock”
Chris:
Ron Paul is a crackpot. That in an of itself is not disqualifying. I've argued for years that the presence of crackpots in our political system is a good thing, whether it's Henry B. Gonzales or Cynthia McKinney from the Dem side, or Ron Paul or Allen West from the Repub side.
However, crackpots have to be utterly sincere and straightforward in their crackpottery, and on that count, Paul's newsletters are disqualifying.
At best, the newsletters are cynically manipulative demagoguery with venal and mercenary motives. At worst, he believed what was published in his name. Both possibilities are disqualifying. After that, the rest of your "grades" don't matter.
On “A Very, Very Fond Farewell”
Blaise:
Speaking of fond farewells, we discovered sad and upsetting news about Bill Harrison.
(I've been lurking in the threads here a little bit to see if you appeared)
On “The Case against (that thing you call) Democracy”
James:
I thought your argument was based on the assumption of necessity
It is. But since the assumption seems to have been conceded, I took the next step. We can skip all the folderol we've all heard a thousand times before and skip to the chase: If it's a collective decision about a public good, we're always going to have a collective mechanism of some kind, whether it's the Divine Right of Kings or a Quaker Meeting or the Electoral College.
"
James:
is that sure it may damn well be necessary
And what mechanism do we use to determine that?
"
Jason:
If it's necessary, then imputing moral value to it is meaningless.
If I chop off your arms with a sword because I'm sick of reading your childish libertarian nonsense on LoOG, that's evil. If I chop off your arms with a surgical tool because they're gangrenous and it's necessary to save your life, that's not evil. It's not good, either, except insofar as "saving Jason's life" is regarded as a creditable moral value.
"Chopping off arms" and "coercive acquisition of wealth" cannot be determined to be evil based on simply those terms alone even though the obvious, common-sensical but wrong tendency is to believe so at first instance.
any amount of coercion should give us pause just the same.
Why? "Just the same" as what? Should any amount of amputation give me concern? When I'm diagnosed with bone cancer and told I'll be dead in a month if the leg isn't removed, and probably live another forty years if it is removed, do I stop to ponder the evil the doctor is doing to my leg? The "same" as if some loan shark is threatening the same leg with a chainsaw?
On “A conversation for the times”
Erik:
Wow. There seems to be a sudden and severe shortage of bloodthirsty neocon warmongering commentary. So am I going to have to fill in?
On “The Value of Political Concepts”
Tom:
I don't think hypocrisy is the issue. I said I thought the DoI's concepts were a sincere expression and the MS legislature honestly believed their philosophy.
The Emancipation Proclamation enacts a regime preference while the Gettysburg Address expresses a concept. I just think in all three cases the regime preference is dominant and prior to the concept.
As a matter of fact, as I cogitate I come to realize that when concepts are dominant and prior to a regime preference, the more likely that regime is to be ineffective and inhumane.
"
Tom:
Hey ya. I juxtaposed the DoI precisely to preclude that sort of thing.
I like your reference. If I paired that with the Emancipation Proclamation I could extend my argument.
"
Pierre:
Let me juxtapose, almost comically, two pieces of evidence, first the Declaration of Independence, thenMississippi Secession Resolutions
Although it seems as if "concepts" are the prevailing motives, a close reading reveals that it's actually regime preference at work. Not that Jefferson wasn't a sincere creature of the Enlightenment nor that the MS legislature wasn't not honestly committed to states rights, it's just clear from the text that the real things perpetrated in favor or opposed to a particular regime preference were the driving motive.
Another way to look at it. Remove the regime preferences from those documents and what do you have? Pretty-sounding and unexceptional banalities that don't really do anything. Remove the the concepts and what do you have? You still have texts of political force that would by themselves justify the actions taken, Independence and Secession respectively.
"
Pierre:
Coises! Foiled again! I know for certain that I anticipated going there. But more importantly, I have a hunch that that's where WW is going (or going to go in future arguments). There's a fragrance of disillusionment to the quoted passage, disillusionment with First Principles as the engine of social or political improvement.
"
Pierre:
You seem to be rebutting WW by assertion.
The argument, as I understood it, is that political philosophy is fundamentally post hoc. In other words, they assuredly do not "inform each other" because the regime preference causes the philosophical rationale for the regime.
If WW is right, all your "concept of 'liberty'" contributes is a little extra energy into a feedback loop.
On “Unintended Consequences Sunday Sidebar Comment Request Open Thread”
Jay:
I was say the default is at every point absent a positive argument to the contrary. Now the degree to which such positive arguments might overturn the default position is highly debateable (and it seems like Tod's interested in exactly that in his new front-pager). I think there's a good argument against protecting a child from "riding a bike to school" but I don't think there is for "shooting an Uzi at a gun show."
"
Density:
Chocolate wedding cake? How tacky. THAT should be criminal violation.
"
Jay:
Fine. But ...
Frankly, I think that's ridiculous. It was always ridiculous but it's even more ridiculous nowadays. I do not want to sue or prosecute after I get poisoned, I want to not get poisoned in the first place.
However, it may in fact be that most people would rather get poisoned and sue or prosecute afterward than not get poisoned in the first place. In which case, you should be able to win elections and install that kind of regulatory regime. But I haven't seen that happening in the advanced economies for the last 140 years or so. Because that's not what most people want.
I suppose the incompetent husband would live a life of pain and regret if he accidentally killed his family. That's punishment enough.
"
Jay:
I sincerely don't think so. As I believe I tried to say, I'm arguing against frequently unstated premises, in fact, those frequently unstated premises are frequently unstated MAJOR premises.
And yet, earlier you seemed to deny, or at least slough off, the idea that you were proposing "no regulatory regime at all." Well, you know, regulating food production and sales so as to protect the health, safety and value-received of the public is one of the oldest and most-established "rights" of government (I'd call it more a duty or obligation, actually).
So bored housewife cooks and sells wedding cake and nobody has the right to say she can't. But she's bored and screws up and her customers get sick. Then what?
"
Jay & Christopher:
Er. No. I really don't "kinda agree with" you two because your implicit and sometimes explicit model of the political economy is completely wrong.
Thus, when you end up saying something that seems to superficially agree with something that I might say, I don't agree with it becauase I know the premises are ... well, frankly, ridiculous.
Christopher, I'd say "naive" rather than "evil" because what is going to happen if the agenda above is enacted is that the Kochs will get to continue and expand their poisoning of the atmosphere while, I'm sorry, but your uncle still isn't going to be able to make a living selling potentially unsafe toys, even if the law allowed him to.
Stories about lemonade stands and bored housewives who might want to bake wedding cakes do not portray an accurate model of the actual political economy we actually live in, which is a large, incredibly complex system dominated by large, incredibly complex institutions in varying degrees of coordination and conflict.
And what do I get from you guys? An illusion where if only if only if only we could all own our own little wooden-toy or wedding cake business then we could all get rich if we could all just sell wedding cakes and wooden toys to each other as sole proprietors.
As I said--ridiculous. In a sense, it's not even Capitalistic, it's PRE-Capital.
"
Christopher:
Correct. And yet, their rhetoric is indistinguishable from the above disquisition down to the punctuation. Why do you think that is?
That is because the benefits to the "rich and powerful" of the deregulation agenda are orders of magnitude greater than for the sole proprietor.
Class warfare!!
"
Jay:
Okay. Maybe a little uncharitable. But I need that to offset the earlier "brilliant" and "erudite."
"
Jay:
No, that's how I interpert "amalgam of stories people I know have told."
Why would I object? I just told you I recognize that incumbent protection, bureaucratic imperative, regulatory capture and such were legitimate issues. Which means that when I propose an anti-deregulation agenda in opposition to your deregulation agenda, intellectual honesty obligates me to concede that some part of what I propose can be rightly described as "incumbent protection" or "pro-regulatory capture" or whatever.
I simply prefer having in a place a regulatory regime probably subject to capture than no regulatory regime at all.
"
Jay:
Oh. Not just anecdotal, but personal. And ideologically self-serving at that. So libertarian Jay has some libertarian friends who project libertarian storylines to rationalize their own failure to live up to John Galt? Why am I not surprised?
How's that for freelance psychoanalyzing?
"
Jay:
Oh, go ahead. You had no problem freelance psychoanalyzing your imaginary opopressed entrepreneur deciding after all to work for your imaginary Massive Conglomerate.
I would indeed have mocked them for being anecdotal had you linked to or referred to anecdotes. Please please PLEASE cite the "Lemonade Stand" at the U.S. Open in Bethesda anecdote from earlier this year. I love mocking that anecdote and it'll warm Erik's heart to see his lemonade stand hit referenced again.
On your most substantive and most fair point, that's one of things that has always surprised me about libertarians/classical liberals/supply-siders and others of similar sentiment. Look, not only do I understand your point about "onerous regulation," on a case-by-case basis, I bet I probably agree with you a lot more than you might suspect. Not as much as MattY, probably, but still, some. I recognize there's a problem with incumbent protection, bureaucratic imperatives and regulatory capture and such.
The problem is, whenever and wherever a marginal regulation is elimnated in service of marginal job or firm creation, and I mean whenever, as in ALWAYS, in accord with the libertarian pipedream of having some new Steve Jobs in a garage become a great success, Massive Conglomerate ALWAYS exploits that change to its own ends. We end up with 1% marginal job or firm creation and 99% corporatist exploitation.
It just surprises me that after decades of things like that happening that libertarians haven't figured it out yet.
"
Mike:
Tee hee. I hate to even partially and temporarily defend Jay, but I will. He seems to be talking about (if he was truly as erudite as Robert claimed he'd have made this explicit) job creation AT THE MARGINS.
When unemployment is a lot lower, these "onerous" regulations aren't at the margins. Potential employers just deal with them and hire anyway because the returns are still positive, or potential entrepreneurs decide the risk of starting the business is still worthwhile. But when those decisions are a closer call, as now, the "onerous" regulations matter more.
There are numerous problems with that, though. One, it's essentially a marginal case--in other words, it wouldn't create that many jobs to reduce "onerous" regulations unless those reductions were massive. Two, since many, probably most, such regulations are a matter of municipal ordnance or state law (in fact, probably ALL the imaginary examples he lists are state/local) the coordination problem is almost impossible to solve barring a massive Federal pre-emption. Which would be hilarious to see a libertarian argue for. And Three, when employment picks back up, those non-regulations will recede from the margins just as the regulations did--we'll simply be left with a country more at the mercy of business and corporatism.
I know Jay would probably like that. But I wouldn't and I guess a voting majority of the country wouldn't, either.
"
I don't object to the substance above as much as Christopher's description of it as "brilliant" and Robert's's Best Evah! claim above.
It's b(l)og-standard Chamber of Commerce boilerplate and regulation House GOP talking points. And it's not even that good in those terms. At least the CoC usually trots out some real-life bogus "victim" and the House GOP usually includes some lie that's so outrageous it's at least amusing.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.