February 14, 2007

You Keep Using That Word...

Kevin Drum joins in the piling on Glenn Reynolds for his proposal for dealing with Iran. I don't agree with Glenn's prescription, for various reasons I won't bother to get into here, but I'm curious about part of Kevin's response. According to him, "killing civilian scientists and civilian leaders, even if you do it quietly, is unquestionably terrorism." Really?

Terrorism involves attacks designed to gain political support by convincing the government of a nation to acede to their demands rather than endure more attacks. Terrorism is not necessarily attacks against civilian targets, and attacks against civilian targets are not necessarily terrorism. Strikes at enemy leaders or civilians directly involved in the war effort have been accepted as legitimate targets in the past. In World War II the Allies leveled entire cities in attempts to destroy enemy factories. There is little doubt the Allies would have done whatever it would take to go after German scientists involved in their atomic bomb project if they had believed it had a reasonable chance of success. One can argue the morality of such attacks, but it's hard to reconcile them as terrorism.

Update: Welcome, Instapundit readers, and thanks to Glenn for the link. Don't forget to check out the main page while you're here.

Posted at 06:51 PM · Philosophy · Comments (3) · TrackBack (0)

February 13, 2007

It's the End of the World As We Know It

It's a vital issue. There is no compromise, no way of cutting a deal that is acceptable to our side. If we don't act, catastrophe will result. Evil is ascendant, and we are all doomed if we do not act now. Iraq? No. Iran? No. Amanda Marcotte's resignation from the Edwards campaign.

"How long will it be before they use this power to deny anyone suspected of being an atheist, or the 'wrong' religion, the right to work in a given field, or even to speak?" I'll go out on a limb here and suggest quite some time. Indeed, I'd say that the odds of this prediction coming true are somewhat lower than the chances Saddam Hussein was going to strike at the United States with WMD-equipped remotely piloted vehicles.

But this is an all-too human mentality. We all want to believe that we are caught up in causes greater than ourselves, although not all of us choose to sign on to apocalyptic beliefs. For those who do, the specifics may vary from person to person, but the theme is the same. There's a great threat to us out there. Among our own nation there are evil people who deny the threat. It is up to our small group of committed believers to save the world by acting now.

Are there real threats out there? Absolutely. But they are nowhere near as prevalent as a lot of us would like to believe. And trying to make them so only encourages people to inappropriate and extreme measures, because they think the situation is so much more dire than it truly is.

Posted at 03:54 PM · Philosophy · Comments (8) · TrackBack (0)

February 12, 2007

Argument 101

If there is a war looming with Iran, and there are those who are quite convinced that it is, I am quite curious to see what those who are convinced it is coming will say if it does occur. Will they blame themselves for not convincing others of the coming threat, or will they blame the rest of us for not listening? Were I a betting man, I'd say the latter.

Jim Henley was kind enough to link to yesterday's essay discussing the logic of going to war with Iran. His commenters are, to put it mildly, not overly impressed with my arguments, which is fair enough. One of the reasons I have comments on the blog is to allow people to observe where I have erred, even if I don't always agree with their assessment. But what I found amusing was that the arguments were phrased to be as insulting as possible. Again, that's their right, but it's hard not to get a chuckle out of the notion that these people are the same ones who complain that nobody listens to them when they warn about the coming war.

Any attempt to prevent the U.S. from going to war in Iran will hinge on convincing people that the administration does, in fact, plan to do so and that doing so would be a bad idea. And, as I've noted many times in the past, convincing other people of the rightness of your position takes a lot more than simply being correct, or we wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq four years ago. Human beings are emotional creatures. While logic does play a role in how we come to a decision, it is not the primary motivator. When people are angry or insulted, they frequently make logical errors. Therefore, if we are to convince the general public that we are correct, we have to argue on both logical and emotional levels. That does not mean we should try and scare people into believing us, but it does mean that our arguments need to consider the emotions of those we disagree with.

This makes a lot of people angry in itself. They think to themselves, 'Hey, I'm right, I shouldn't have to worry about the feelings of the people who are wrong!' That is only true, however, if they don't care if they convince others. Consider our situation right now in Iraq. The surge is viewed poorly by a majority of Americans or Congress. If a majority vote were required to make the surge go forward, it would probably fail. Yet it is going forward, and even if Congress passes a resolution condemning it, the resolution will be nonbinding. Even though a majority of Congress believes the surge is a bad idea, they are unwilling to take any real measures to prevent it. How much more difficult will it be, then, to convince Congress that war in Iran is a real threat and that they must act to prevent it? It will require more than a majority belief that is the case, based on what we're seeing in Iraq. That means convincing a lot of people to think differently than they do now. And as unfair as it may seem, when one begins by insulting those who don't already agree with us, it's a foregone conclusion we're not going to convince many people we're correct.

I find it particularly amusing that this attitude seems prevalent on Jim's site, because Jim is, of course, a libertarian. Those familiar with the Libertarian Party will understand why. Whereas the Democratic and Republican Parties are very open, the Libertarian Party is the exact opposite. Libertarians (big-L), as a very broad rule, would rather be pure and lose than make compromises and win. Which is a great recipe for losing.

Like it or not, if those opposed to expanding the war to Iran hope to see the administration stopped, it's going to require accepting the aid of those who are, perhaps, insufficiently ideologically pure on other issues. If you're not willing to accept that, I've got to wonder just how serious you are about actually wanting to address the problem.

Posted at 09:55 AM · Philosophy · Comments (2) · TrackBack (0)

February 08, 2007

Choices

"For a warrior there is no other end to the journey."

-- Alyt Neroon, Babylon 5

Geez, I'm sick for a few days and I miss a thread where I'm actually a featured player. I'm going to lose my egotist's society membership card if I'm not careful. Fortunately, I'm firmly of the belief that it's never to late to talk about myself, and since the thread dovetailed rather neatly with some thoughts of my own that I've been kicking around for some time, I just couldn't resist.

As many readers are probably aware, the court martial for First Lieutenant Ehren Watada began on Monday (although it has since been delayed due to a mistrial and is now scheduled for another attempt in mid-March). 1LT Watada will be on trial for missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer, the first for his decision not to deploy with his unit to Iraq, the second for comments he has made about the President in the course of his arguments against the war. 1LT Watada is something of a hero among many who oppose the war for his refusal to go to Iraq; he says that the war is illegal and that he is justified in not going because he cannot legally be ordered to fight an illegal war (which is true if the war is illegal).

I respect 1LT Watada's willingness to risk jail and a dishonorable discharge for his beliefs. It takes courage to stand up for a position that, among Watada's peers, has to be incredibly unpopular.
Unfortunately, I do not believe 1LT Watada's arguments hold water. I am not a lawyer, but I believe that Massachusetts v. Laird established that Congress does not have to pass a formal declaration of war in order to meet the Constitutional requirement for so doing (where are those strict constructionists when you need them?). Nor do I think that appeals to international law establish the illegality of the Iraq war. Iraq was in breach of the 1991 cease fire agreement for the better part of a decade. Because the agreement was a cease fire and not a peace treaty, the United States had every right to resume the war begun in 1991. The war was many things, but I do not believe 1LT Watada has a case if his defense rests solely on the argument Iraq is an illegal war.

Still, as Bob McManus pointed out, if enough soldiers would refuse to go, it would eventually force the United States to end the war for lack of manpower. While the war is not illegal, it is, in my opinion, a disaster that is almost certainly going to end with the U.S. leaving Iraq to work out its problems on its own and with the aid of its neighbors. Isn't it worth it, then, to work to bring that about sooner rather than later by doing what we can to stop the war? To some degree, I think the answer to that question is yes. I respect the willingness of those who attend protest marches and who harangue their Representatives and Senators to do more to bring the war to a close. But I cannot bring myself to join those ranks.

The writers of the Constitution were very careful to establish civilian control over the military. They were well aware of the dangers of a standing army, dangers I believe we would do well to remember today, and they wanted to make sure that there would be no Napoleons making mischief in North America (note to pedants: yes, I know Napoleon hadn't yet caused any mischief when the Constitution was written, but he serves to make the point better than some lesser-known figure). Even during the American Civil War, when there were calls for American generals, particularly George McClellan, to set themselves up as dictator to win the war, no general ever gave it serious thought that I am aware, and in the 20th century the extremely popular General Douglas MacArthur did not attempt to defy President Truman when Truman relieved him. This does not mean that soldiers do not or can not be permitted personal opinions; as a survey of milblogs today or a review of soldiers' diaries from past conflicts can quickly reveal, American soldiers have always had their own strongly-held views about what the government ought to be doing with them. But when push comes to shove, they shut up and do what they're told. It has to be that way.

Nobody in their right mind wants to go into combat for the sake of going into combat. While I cannot speak from experience, I believe I am on safe ground in saying that war is a horrible, dehumanizing, degrading experience that does terrible things to all who experience it. Given a choice, many soldiers would opt out of combat; indeed, even during truly existential wars in our history, our government has had to rely on a draft to muster sufficient combat power to win. Today, however, all of our soldiers are volunteers, and except for perhaps a very thin slice of them, all have had the opportunity to opt out of the service since the war began. Why they have not done so varies from individual to individual. Some may have been tempted by the large reenlistment bonuses available to them. Others may enjoy the military and are willing to suffer the occasional deployment as a cost of that life. Others may not want to let down their comrades in arms. There are probably as many reasons as there are soldiers who have made those choices, in fact. And I have no doubt that one factor that prevents more people from bailing out when the time comes for them to deploy is the knowledge that they would face legal charges if they did so, as they should.

As has been noted many times before, the United States is not a democracy. It is a republic. We elect men and women to make decisions for us. As long as they make those decisions in accordance with the framework we have set out, we are bound by law to respect those decisions. It doesn't matter if someone personally believes that the income tax is unconstitutional: our system has determined that it is, and if you choose not to pay it, you will suffer the consequences. This system works, in large part, because we all implicitly agree to it. There are many more citizens than there are police and soldiers; if enough people disobey the law, it is almost impossible for the government to enforce it (see speed limit laws as a textbook example, where enforcement is generally used more as a fund raiser than anything else). Of course, if enough people choose not to go along with it, the system breaks down and we all get to start over again. Given that Adams and Madison are long dead and I can't think of a single modern politician who stacks up to either of those gentlemen, I'm not overly enamored of such a result.

I happen to think that, for Congress to meet its Constitutional requirement of declaring war, they ought to have to formally declare that a state of war exists between the United States and whatever nation or group we're supposed to be fighting. But I cannot be the arbiter of what is constitutional, because if I can, than we all can and we no longer have a constitution. We have to subordinate our own beliefs to our system or the system simply doesn't work. And while I am libertarian in many of my beliefs, I am not of the belief that we can get by without government at all. The system only works if we agree to be bound by it. Therefore I, and every other soldier who volunteers to serve, have to be willing to abide by the results of our system. And our system, our government, says that this war is a legal war and that we must fight it.

I suspect that some will argue that there are some things that are worth tearing everything down for. I concur with that belief, but I do not think it obtains in this case. Our situation is not yet so grim that we need to tear down the very foundations of our republic in order to set things right. Perhaps it will yet come to that. But we're not there yet. I hope we never reach such a point. Until then, I cannot escape the conclusion that it is the duty of soldiers to obey their orders and fight where and when their government tells them to fight.

Posted at 08:14 AM · Personal • · Philosophy • · War · Comments (3) · TrackBack (0)

February 05, 2007

God and Sports

I know I'm stepping on someone else's schtick here, but the postgame comments from the Super Bowl last night just rubbed me the wrong way. During the presentation of the Lombardi Trophy, Colts owner Jim Irsay (who's lucky there wasn't a sniper from Baltimore in the crowd), coach Tony Dungy, and quarterback Peyton Manning all made sure to thank God for their victory over the Bears last night. I'll confess that I'm not a religious scholar or anything close to it, but I wasn't really aware that God was calling the shots in sports now. Does the Colts' victory last night indicate that they prayed harder than the Bears? Did Lovey Smith somehow offend God, resulting in Rex Grossman's terrible performance? Are the Colts just better people than the Bears?

I'm sure that, if pressed on those questions, none of those gentlemen would agree that the Bears lost because they are somehow morally deficient in God's eyes. That being the case, it sure would be nice if they could stop going on about thanking God for their victory. If there is a God, I'd like to think he's got better things to do than decide who's going to win the Super Bowl.

Posted at 08:20 AM · Philosophy • · Unimportant (Non-Baseball) Sports · Comments (3) · TrackBack (0)

February 04, 2007

That Totalitarian Itch

Before I even get into the subject of this post, a few caveats. No one person (not even the President or the head of a political organization) speaks for everyone on their side of the political debate except in a very few cases. You can't point to anyone on either side of the political fence, highlight some dumb statement of theirs, and use that as 'proof' that the other side believes something nefarious, ridiculous, or heinous.

Having said all that, George Soros' latest comments reveal a rather chilling aspect of the left. In a speech at Davos (where Americans seem to feel a desperate need to fit in by crapping on their own country; see also Kerry, John), Soros explained that "America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany...We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process." Unfortunately, Godwin's Law does not apply to political speech, so Soros wasn't laughed off the stage as he should have been. For those unfamiliar with post-WWII Germany, what Soros is calling for is for the Republican Party to be treated as the Nazis were following WWII, where they were generally not permitted to hold public office and the party itself was outlawed. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Republican Party?

As that last sentence reminds us, the impulse to crush anyone we disagree with it sadly bipartisan. Republican government is very frustrating at times, because no matter what you do, the wrong people win elections sometimes. (From my perspective, the wrong people have been winning elections for about 75 years or so, but I'm a bit extreme in that respect.) This is one of the reasons that I advocate such strict limits on government power: the more government is permitted to do, the more likely those powers will be misused when the 'wrong' people own the keys to the kingdom. If government is only given the minimum powers necessary (say, foreign policy, national defense, and courts, all strictly off the top of my head), the amount of harm it can do is necessarily limited. Yes, I realize that the amount of good it can do is limited as well, but given that it is so much easier to destroy than create, I tend to favor minimizing evil over maximizing good. In any case, with government able to do so much, and as our ongoing adventures in Iraq remind us, with it able to cause such severe problems, it's tempting for a certain type of person to want to make sure that their political enemies never get the chance. So it is with Mr. Soros and his ilk, who feel that Republicans have caused so much harm they should simply be wiped out.

While this is not currently a mainstream position in the Democratic Party, Mr. Soros' words are going to get more of a hearing than you or I, since he gives an immense amount of money to Democratic and leftist causes, and in our system of government, that kind of person gets a lot of influence. I don't expect Democratic politicians to begin spouting this kind of doggerel anytime soon, I should note. I highlight Mr. Soros' words only because I find them illustrative of the growing and disturbing tendency of American politics towards extremism and demonization of opponents. If we are going to continue to live together, a possibility I sometime wonder about, we're going to need to get over this need to believe that the other side is made up of nothing but the dregs of humanity. Instead a growing number of us seem convinced that it's vital to drive off that bridge as quickly as possible.

Update: Kudos to Mr. Soros for backing off his rhetoric. He gets bonus points for actually apologizing, as opposed to the more typical 'I'm sorry if anyone was offended' apology.

Posted at 10:38 AM · Philosophy · Comments (6) · TrackBack (0)

January 17, 2007

Corpophobia

One of the intriguing differences between liberals and libertarians is their attitudes towards corporations. Speaking strictly for myself, while I maintain a healthy respect for the dangers corporations can pose to society, I'm far more concerned about the power of government than I am about the power of corporations. Liberals, conversely, seem immune to fears of government power (the reaction to the Bush administration by the left seems to be not 'too much government power is bad' but 'we have to make sure Republicans never are in power') but are terrified of the power of corporations.

It ought to go without saying that there is a vast difference between corporate power and government power, but since it clearly does not, let's review. Government power is the power of coercion: if you do not pay your taxes, the government will extract them from you. If you do not buy a Wii or Windows Vista or a new Mac, you may have to endure annoying commercials during your favorite programs, if you watch TV or listen to radio, but Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will not send their thugs to your house to take your money forcibly. That is a significant difference.

It does not mean that corporations cannot cause problems if their power is not checked by any means; a century ago the government would often stand aside or even aid businesses in breaking strikes. Any government which permits or aids businesses in using force against citizens is illegitimate in my eyes, as I consider the primary duty of any government to be the protection of its citizens rights against force. This has to include preventing corporations from hiring thugs just as it prevents an angry person from hiring a hitman. But, given that our government currently does not permit businesses to utilize violence to further their business plans, it seems reasonably clear that corporate power is well behind government power.

Yet I continue to see questions like this: "[W]hy is it okay with you for major corporations to control what people read/see/hear, but not okay for the government to force corporations to let all American political opinions be broadcast[?]" Now I can't speak for everyone, but I'm quite sure that corporations do not control what I read/see/hear in my life. True, if I choose to watch television, I must choose between various options brought to me by corporations; that means I have to choose between ~150 channels on the basic package I pay for with DirectTV. If I don't like what's on any of those channels, I can watch a DVD. Again, those are generally brought to me via corporations, but given the variety of choices available to me, it's difficult to see this as truly limiting. The same is true of what I listen to between radio stations, books on tape, CDs, etc., and what I read (particularly as long as I have internet access). It is true, I suppose, that corporations are involved in just about all of those processes at some point or another, but I continue to be mystified by the idea that is inherently bad. I still get to choose what I read, what I watch, and what I listen to, and my choices continue to expand as barriers to entry fall. Ten years ago I would have had a very hard time getting anything I write in front of anyone; today, millions of people can read what I have to say (though I'm very sorry to report that only tens actually do so). What, precisely, is the horror of corporations I'm supposed to be worrying about here?

I understand that corporations can do bad things. I am a firm believer in some kind of government intervention to address negative externalities like environmental costs. I have no objection to laws that limit how much of the spectrum any one person or organization can control. There are many laws on the books to restrict corporations I do not find particularly objectionable. But I remain utterly confused by the notion that I should be more fearful of corporate power than of government power. Microsoft is arguably one one of the most power corporations on the planet, but when it went up against the U.S. government, it lost rather decisively. Please name the last domestic organization to take on the U.S. government and win.

If there is one thing I've learned from blogging, however, it is that what seems self-evident to me is often something others have never considered, and vice versa. So I would be curious to hear some explanations for why corporate power is to be more greatly feared than government power.

Posted at 11:46 AM · Philosophy · Comments (12) · TrackBack (0)

Never About Right and Wrong

Today's blogospheric set-to, the argument over what it means if you were right or wrong about the war in Iraq. Megan McArdle argues that many of the doves were right for the wrong reasons and notes that hawks often are reluctant to admit error given the reception they receive if they do. Kevin Drum notes that the U.S. failure in Iraq does not mean that preventive war doctrine is necessarily incorrect. Publius, my replacement at ObWings (not everyone gets dealt for a founding father), takes a look at his own logic for opposing the war and how they have held up over time.

The argument, for my money, is not really about Iraq, but about the future. Each side doesn't, as a rule, listen to the other side's arguments (go back to early 2003 and take a look around the blogosphere to see how many bloggers on either side were actually engaging the issues raised by their opponents). They would prefer not to listen to their arguments in the future. Thus, the ongoing dispute.

Those who opposed the war would like nothing better than if those who supported the war to be discredited forever. The logic is, to its credit, easy to understand: they were wrong then, therefore they are wrong now. There's a limited appeal to that argument; certainly in future debates it is only fair to note that I supported the Iraq war, so my judgement is open to question, at least in questions of foreign policy. Conversely, I suspect that those who opposed the war have been wrong in other cases at other times, so I tend to believe it's better to examine the argument than the person advancing it. On the third hand, I would be expected to argue that, since I still want to be able to have a voice in the debate. Where you come down on this issue will, I think, ultimately come down to where you stood on the war.

Those who supported the war, meanwhile, are pushing the argument that the doves were right for the wrong reasons because it allows them to continue to disregard the doves. They can take on the low-hanging fruit and note that, contrary to some doves' claims, Baghdad did not become the new Stalingrad, or that simplistic slogans like 'no blood for oil' are no substitute for a foreign policy. And I have little doubt that some doves were reflexively opposed to the invasion for various reasons, from a naive belief in the power of pacifism to knee-jerk anti-Americanism. But, as nice as it might be for me as a war supporter to be able to argue that the doves were right for the wrong reasons, that is dismissive of the doves who were right for the right reasons. Jim Henley comes to mind first for me; I greatly regret not having listened more closely to what he was saying in 2002 and 2003, and while I'm sure a careful search of his archive would turn up incorrect assumptions as well, if we're setting the bar at perfection we may as well give up on the whole idea of reasoned discussion. Jim, and doves like him, were right about Iraq for the right reasons, and while I can't speak as well to liberal doves because I didn't interact with them as I did with Jim back in 2002, I suspect that many of them were correct about the war for good reasons as well.

Ultimately I see the entire argument as foolish. Some people were right about Iraq for the wrong reasons. Some were wrong for the right reasons. Some were right for the right reasons, and some were wrong for the wrong reasons. If there is anything to be learned from the arguments over going to war in Iraq, it is the wholly unsurprising realization that many of us make up our minds first and assemble reasons to support our decision, rather than the reverse and that we would all be a lot better off if we were better able to think critically. But the next time there is a major foreign policy issue that divides the country, we'll see much of the same. People will throw out a past position's failure as a reason to dismiss an argument rather than taking on that argument itself, appeals to reason will drown in appeals to emotion, and the whole process will begin again. Aren't politics wonderful?

Posted at 09:43 AM · Philosophy · Comments (8) · TrackBack (0)

Fairness Revisited

To follow-up on yesterday's essay, I'd like to set down some very simple principles that cause me to oppose any attempt to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.

I do not want the government to have the power to decide what broadcasters must air. I would hope that the abuses of the Bush administration would make my reasons for this abundantly clear, but it would seem that is not the case. Assuming the creation of a Fairness Doctrine that requires equal time for all viewpoints, how do people think the Bush administration might have used that? Whenever anyone put out a program that made claims unfavorable to the Bush administration, they would be forced to put out an equal-length program making claims favorable to the Bush administration. That might be 'fair' in some sense of the word, but I do not see it as at all good for political discourse. Allowing the government to decide what is fair is a slippery slope I would prefer to avoid.

Nobody has yet been able to come up with an objective definition of fair. Would fairness require giving creationists equal time with biologists? Global warming skeptics equal time with climatologists? In fact, I would argue that much that is wrong with today's media is that they are too fair, in a sense. Reading most newspapers, it seems as if reporters build their story by listening to one person, accepting what they say at face value, then finding an opposing view, accepting what they say at face value, putting both POVs in the story and calling it news. That is a broad generalization, but I suspect that many of my political opponents on the left would agree that it does happen far too often, and it is terribly damaging to the public interest, however fair it may be. Until someone can come up with a definition of fair that is so objective people on all sides of the political spectrum agree with it, a fairness doctrine is nothing but an invitation to government meddling and mediocre journalism.

I had hoped that yesterday's post might at least bear fruit with some who support a fairness doctrine laying out some ideas on how it would overcome these flaws, but no luck thus far. I hope that this revision may spur some tiny commentary on the issues I've raised.

Posted at 07:29 AM · Philosophy · Comments (6) · TrackBack (0)

January 16, 2007

The Beauty of 'Fairness'

"There's no two things on Earth are equal or have an equal chance." Sergeant Buster Kilrain, Gettysburg

Via Captain's Quarters, I see that Representative Dennis Kucinich, in between Presidential runs, has decided to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine. For those unfamiliar with the Fairness Doctrine, the basic idea was that if a station ran a broadcast deemed to advocate a particular point of view, it had to provide equal time for the other side. This was intended to provide a variety of points of view in broadcast media. Instead, it led to opinion (other than that of the media) being generally banished from the airwaves. As is so often the case when the government criminalizes behavior, the Fairness Doctrine created a marvelous means for politicians to suppress unfriendly speech through selective enforcement of the doctrine. Members of both the Kennedy and Nixon administrations admitted using the Fairness Doctrine to lash out at networks deemed unfriendly to their administrations.

The larger problem with the Fairness Doctrine, however, is that fairness is by its nature a subjective term. Who gets to decide what 'fair' is? If President Bush appears on television, the Democrats generally get a response, but nobody else does (other than the talking heads, of course). Libertarians don't get the opportunity to present their case with free air time. Nor do Objectivists, Socialists, Communists, or any of the other myriad schools of political thought. Is that fair? Democrats and Republicans likely think so. Those of us who don't hew to either party tend to disagree. Since the Fairness Doctrine would be implemented by a government dominated by those political parties, we can rest assured that 'fair' would go no further than acknowledging those two sides. Fairness, it should be clear to see, is almost entirely in the eye of the beholder.

Since fairness is subjective, the fact it is [Update: it is Democrats pushing the issue, not 'the Democrats'] the Democrats who are pushing so hard for a new Fairness Doctrine suggests that, were they successful, they would change the current broadcast landscape. Talk radio would go away, because the left is poorly represented by talk radio. Fox News might find itself in trouble as well, as many on the left believe Fox News is nothing but an extension of the Republican Party. While I can sympathize with the frustration that many Democrats feel about the relative success of conservative talk radio vs. liberal talk radio (although liberal talk radio still seems a pretty young medium; I suspect the conservative dominance will fade as more talented liberal hosts are found), but shutting down conservative voices strikes me as an inappropriate response, particularly for a party that likes to claim it supports civil liberties like freedom of speech. (While it's not the stated goal of the Democrats to eliminate conservative talk radio, the fact is that the Fairness Doctrine guaranteed that such programs did not exist because there's no audience for the other side, and so stations would stick to programming that didn't cost them money.)

Should freedom of speech apply to the airwaves? The original justification for the Fairness Doctrine included the fact spectrum is limited, so not everyone can have access to a radio or TV station, and while the spectrum is a lot larger now than it was then (or, more precisely, we can use more of it), it is still a finite resource. On the other hand, there are laws in place to guarantee that the spectrum cannot be completely dominated by a particular network, and if those laws are insufficient, it seems to me that fixing those is a better way to ensure multiple viewpoints are aired than a doctrine that will restrict the airwaves rather than improving the discourse. The fact remains, as any blogger trying to boost traffic knows, that the public decides what they want to listen to with little regard for fairness or equal opportunity. Conservatives read conservative web sites and listen to conservative radio. Liberals read liberal web sites and listen to NPR (just kidding). Yes, there are people who cross the lines to read what the other side is saying, but they are the exception. For whatever reason, conservatives tend to be drawn to talk radio. Whether that's because the MSM is dominated by liberals as they claim or because the format just happens to appeal to their temperament (or, more likely, for reasons I'm not aware of), it appears likely that liberal talk radio just isn't going to do as well. A new Fairness Doctrine may eliminate conservative talk radio, but I fail to see how that is a victory for any but Democratic partisans.

We are fortunate enough to live in a country and an age where it has never been easier to get your message in front of your fellow citizens. Sure, TV and radio are still costly and relatively exclusive, but the internet has given millions of other people a voice in the discussion, and while most of those are looking at pornography and bitching about movies, a nontrivial fraction are having an effect on our political dialogue. Take a look at how many people look at The Daily Kos or Instapundit; it may not be as many as watch the evening news just yet, but the momentum appears to be in the internet's favor. A requirement for 'fairness' that will be applied according to wholly subjective criteria that will rely heavily on who is in office at the time doesn't seem calculated to do a thing to aid political dialogue.

I would be curious to hear why people think shutting down political speech is somehow good for the country, or why they believe that a new Fairness Doctrine would not shut down political speech given the law's history.

Posted at 04:04 PM · Philosophy · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0)

January 10, 2007

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Everyone lies, Michael. The innocent lie because they don't want to be blamed for something they didn't do, and the guilty lie because they don't have any other choice.

Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, Babylon 5

The fifth amendment to the Constitution is pretty important. It protects all of us from being forced to possibly incriminate ourselves should we find ourselves accused of a crime. You do hear it argued from time to time that, if you don't have anything to hide, why fear testifying, but that's a fool's game. First of all, just because you are innocent, it doesn't mean you don't have anything to hide. We all have things we'd rather keep private (well, reviewing some reality TV shows, maybe some of us don't), and we should not be required to lose that privacy simply because we've been accused of a crime. Second, one of the best things about our legal system is the supposition of innocence: we can't send someone to prison (or worse) unless we can prove they're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. While that means that some of the guilty get off, it also serves as an important (although eroding) check on the power of the state. Without the supposition of innocence, the government can imprison anyone it wants simply by accusing them. (See Jose Padilla for exhibit A of this shameful behavior.)

Of course, the problem with the fifth amendment is that it goes against human nature. If someone takes the fifth, the average person assumes they are doing so because they are, in fact, guilty. Which is silly when you think about it, since in most cases the crime the person is accused with is heinous enough that risking perjury charges isn't generally a major concern. Nonetheless, taking the fifth is generally regarding as equivalent to admitting one's guilt, which is unfortunate. For the reasons I listed above, people ought to be able to protect their privacy without being assumed to be criminals.

Today's exhibit is Mark McGwire, who fell well short of election to the Hall of Fame yesterday in large part because it is assumed that he used performance-enhancing drugs during his career. And Steve Buckley at the Boston Herald is tickled pink about that, citing McGwire's testimony before Congress as proof of the slugger's guilt. Buckley calls McGwire's response, "I'm not here to talk about the past," a 'cheap lawyer's trick,' as if utilizing the rights our ancestors fought and died for 200+ years ago is somehow sleazy.

I don't know if Mark McGwire used steroids during his career. If I had to bet money on it, I'd bet that he did. But I can't prove it, and while McGwire is not actually on trial, I see no reason why the presumption of innocence should not apply in his case as well, if only to remind people of the principle and why it matters. I don't care if McGwire goes into the HoF or not, but I care a great deal about retaining (and in many cases) reinstating the rights laid out in the Bill of Rights (including those troublesome ninth and tenth amendments).

Posted at 05:57 PM · Baseball • · Philosophy · Comments (1) · TrackBack (0)

January 02, 2007

You Keep Using That Word...

"He didn't fall? Inconceivable!" "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Vizzini and Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

One of the biggest problems we run into when talking with other people is that the words we use often mean something very different to us than to the person we're arguing with. Obsidian Wings has provided two excellent examples of that in the past week, with hilzoy's Still More Fiscal Discipline and Sebastian's "What do Conservatives and Liberals Do in a Society?" In the former, hilzoy tries to burnish her fiscal discipline bona fides by coming out against an expansion of the Army. In the latter, Sebastian tries to take on some of the differences between liberals and conservatives. In each case, the discussions tend to devolve into disputes, disputes that will never be resolved because of their origins.

In 'Fiscal Discipline,' the dispute centers on that term: what does fiscal discipline mean? To hiilzoy, since she's against spending money on a larger military, that is an expression of fiscal discipline. Sebastian, contrariwise, argues that because hilzoy would be opposed to a larger military regardless of cost, her decision is not an instance of fiscal discipline, but an expression of policy preferences. I tend to agree with Sebastian, but the dispute is ultimately irresolvable because hilzoy defines fiscal discipline differently from Sebastian.

In 'Liberals and Conservatives,' the same problem exists, but in even greater form, as terms like conservative and liberal have far more flexibility than relatively staid terms like fiscal discipline. If one believes in minimizing coercion, are you a liberal, or a conservative? What defines a liberal vs. a conservative? I could provide definitions, but the odds are good that most self-described conservatives and all self-described liberals would disagree with my definitions. (Why would all liberals disagree, but only some conservatives? Because I trend a little rightward in my politics, so my definition of conservatism would have a better shot at accuracy. Any attempt I make to define liberalism, however, will founder on the rocks of misunderstanding.) For most people, those labels are little more than shorthand for what they like and what they dislike; if you're a Democrat, your description of liberalism will be of largely, if not entirely, good things, while your description or conservatism will be of largely, if not entirely, bad things. This is natural; if you consider yourself a liberal, the odds are pretty good it's not because you think liberalism is a collection of bad ideas. It does make discussion of the issue difficult at best.

There is an old joke about how the military services differ.

The Joint Chiefs once told the Navy to "secure a building," to which they responded by turning off the lights and locking the doors.

The Joint Chiefs then instructed Army personnel to "secure the building," and they occupied the building so no one could enter.

Upon receiving the exact same order, the Marines assaulted the building, captured it, and set up defenses with suppressive fire & amphibious assault vehicles, established reconnaissance and communications channels, and prepared for close hand-to-hand combat if the situation arose.

But the Air Force, on the other hand, acted most swiftly on the command, and took out a three-year lease with an option to buy.

In the Army, we have an entire manual dedicated to definitions: Field Manual 1-02, Operational Terms and Graphics. In FM 1-02, you can find definitions of military terms of art from agility to zone of fire, naturally including secure (In an operational context, to gain possession of a position or terrain feature with or without force, and to make such disposition as will prevent, as far as possible, its destruction or loss by enemy action. See FM 3-90. (Army) 1. A tactical mission task that involves preventing a unit, facility, or geographical location from being damaged or destroyed as a result of enemy action. (FM 3-90) 2. One of the five breaching fundamentals. Those actions which eliminate the enemy's ability to interfere with the reduction and passage of combat power through a lane. Secure may be accomplished by maneuver or by fires. (FM 3-34.2) See also assault; breach; denial measure; reduce; suppress. Aren't you glad you asked?) We lay terms out like this because very bad things can happen if you tell a unit to seize an objective (To employ combat forces to occupy physically and control a designated area.) when you really wanted it to clear the objective (A tactical mission task that requires the commander to remove all enemy forces and eliminate organized resistance in an assigned area.) The Army is far from perfect in actually utilizing doctrinal terms (there are many commanders who like to 'flex' their forces, to 'chop' a platoon to a different company, and so on), but as with much of its doctrine, the Army has identified a problem and created a solution for it. (Army doctrine is, by and large, excellent; unfortunately, it is rarely applied.)

FM 1-02 does little good for non-military applications, but the problem of imprecise definitions remains. The cynic in me says that very few people online are really interested in getting at the truth of any particular issue anyhow, but for those few who do, discussions still tend to falter because people tend to disagree on terms. This is unfortunate in itself, but it also tends to lead discussions into unproductive territory in short order, as disputes quickly arise out of different understandings of terms. So much discussion on blogs (probably a majority) tends to devolve into little more than bickering over the same old points, (were I more creative, I might come up with a list to speed things up: argument #12, President Reagan did/did not end the Cold War; argument #35, President Clinton should/should not have been been impeached; etc.), and much of the discussion tends to be ultimately pointless because there is no 'right' answer because neither side accepts the terms of the other.

I thought I had a point when I started this, but the truth is, I'm not sure there's a solution to this. We are emotional creatures. We develop attachments to our beliefs, and we're adapted to seek out evidence that fits our preconceived view of the universe and to set aside that evidence that does not fit our world view. Even if we were to agree to settle definitions prior to moving on to the question at hand, I doubt we could agree on our definitions any more than we agree on how to deal with the problems we face (or even which problems we need to address). Sure, there are a very small number of people out there who are looking to be challenged, but most of us are just looking to hear other people confirm what we already believe. Attempts to hold discussions between opposing philosophies on the internet are doomed to failure because, ultimately, they're dependent on people who are looking for answers, not people who think they already have the answers.

Yes, that's a little downbeat, but five years into the blogosphere, I think it's a pretty accurate assessment. It doesn't mean the blogosphere doesn't have value or that there isn't a point to blogging (otherwise, why would I bother). But the idea that this blog, or any blog, is going to change minds is pretty much a lost cause.

Posted at 09:03 PM · Philosophy · Comments (6) · TrackBack (0)

December 08, 2006

The Peace Myth

Former Minnesota Twins manager Tom Kelly used to drive observers crazy with how he would manage his players. He might have an absolutely terrible shortstop playing for him, but Kelly would never cut him from the team until and unless he had a known quantity with which to replace him. The press hated that, and the fans hated it still more. Get rid of him now...anybody would be better than what we've got now, went the cries. But Kelly ignored those calls, and during his tenure in Minnesota brought two World Championships to town.

One of the most interesting beliefs of the 21st century is the idea that peace is the default condition of mankind. This belief is helped along in America because we have been uniquely fortunate to have been relatively peaceful during much of our existence. I say relatively, because the United States has certainly seen its share of war. But most wars we have fought have been wars of choice, where the average American did not have to feel any great threat to his well being. Even during World War II, unless you lived in Alaska or Hawaii, the war posed very little threat to you, although you doubtless felt the pinch of rationing. Today, despite having been at war for over five years, it is difficult to see much different in the day-to-day life of most Americans, and because we could bring the troops home whenever we so choose, it's easy to think that war is just something we choose to do.

While comforting, the idea that peace is the default state of mankind is belied by several millenia of human history. It is difficult to find a time in the world's history when some group or nation-state wasn't using force against another in hopes of getting its way. If the Bible is to be believed, it didn't take very long at all for people to figure out they could get things they wanted by force. One of the primary justifications for government is to prevent people from using force against one another. It should hardly be surprising that in parts of the world where government is often only observed in the breach, people still tend to resort to force to try and get what they want. Even in nations with a strong history of government such as the United States, crime remains a problem for many citizens.

Doubtless because the U.S. does have such a long history of strong government, many Americans continue to cling to the myth that peace is the normal state of mankind, however. And as with all false beliefs, this assumption leads to incorrect conclusions when applied to decision making. The most important case in point at the moment is Iraq. For the average American, the ongoing violence in Iraq is almost incomprehensible. Iraqis have an admittedly-imperfect central government, but there is a method in place to make changes to the government to improve it, and the vast majority of Iraqs would be far better off if the violence in Iraq came to an end. Yet the default position of many Iraqis is not only to act to stop the violence, but to perpetuate it, as Shia and Sunni continue to push for deaths from the other sect to avenge deaths in their own sect, a cycle that solves nothing and that makes it that much less likely Iraq will become a decent place for people to live. It makes no sense to us, but it clearly makes enough sense to the Iraqis that it continues.

Most human beings want to just live their life unfettered by outside influence. But it only takes a very small number to cause a great deal of trouble, and there are more than enough people who want to tell other people how to live their lives to cause all the trouble the world could ever need. And while the west is fortunate enough to have political channels for those people to funnel their energies into, the rest of the world isn't so lucky. Particularly when a power vacuum occurs, those people are willing and able to kill a lot of their fellows to gain the power they want.

This all sounds obvious enough, and to a great extent it is, but it seems clear that those who run the United States' foreign policy didn't think of it. In both Iraq and Afghanistan our policies were predicated on the assumption that peace was the default state in those nations, and that once the fighting was over, things would settle down and we would have peaceful, republican states where autocracies once stood. A great number of Iraqis and smaller numbers of Afghans and Americans have paid the price for these miscalculations. Peace doesn't just happen; it requires work, maybe more work than war does. We have forgotten that, because most of the work that has allowed us to live largely in peace was accomplished before we were born. Now we should have relearned the lesson, however, as it is more clear every day that bringing peace to Iraq and Afghanistan is a challenge, one that may be beyond our abilities to resolve.

A lot of people on the right are concerned about thoughts of discussion with Iran and Syria about Iraq. Iran is Hezbollah's sponsor and is also aiding Shia insurgents in Iraq. Syria is in the process of trying to return Lebanon to its orbit and is aiding Sunni insurgents in Iraq. There is some question of what we have to offer those two nations without simply capitulating to their demands and further undermining our position in the world. Being seen as a paper tiger is not a bad thing because of trite notions of pride or embarrassment. It is bad because it increases the odds of someone doing something that will force us to respond because they assume we won't. Had Neville Chamberlain's accession to Germany in 1938 truly led to peace in our time, it would have been called statesmanship. Because it instead led Germany to assume Britain wouldn't fight for Poland either, it was a disaster. (Yes, I know, it's a hideously overused example, but bear with me.) I'm not overly concerned that either Syria or Iran is poised to become the next Nazi Germany, but it is not unreasonable to worry that either or both of them could cause a still-significant number of deaths by miscalculating American resolve, so I think that those on the right who are leery of negotiations have a valid point. Extricating ourselves from Iraq is of only limited utility if we set ourselves up for something worse down the road.

I am still-more sympathetic to those who are angry about the aid Syria and Iran have provided to those seeking to kill American soldiers. That is, arguably, an act of war, and our decision not to strike back at those powers can be maddening, as it may act as encouragement to those nations that they can strike at us with impunity. However, I think that American forbearance towards Iran and Syria marks one of the wisest decisions the Bush administration has made during the war. However frustrating it is to realize that Iran and Syria are waging a proxy war against us, turning that war into a hot war would not make the situation better. Yes, if the U.S. turned its mind to it, we could probably eliminate the regimes of Iran and Syria, albeit at great cost. But then what? Other than some mild emotional satisfaction, what would we gain? Now we would be responsible for a territory far larger and more heavily populated than Iraq, filled with yet more people looking to kill us with our forces spread still thinner.

The peace, such as it is, between the U.S. and Syria and Iran is hardly the best position we could be in. It does have the virtue, however, of being mostly peaceful. If we destroy that, we would open a bigger Pandora's Box than the one we kicked over in Iraq, having already established we're not sure how to return to peace there. Like Tom Kelly's shortstop, the situation with Iran and Syria has a lot of flaws. But before we replace it, we ought to be damn sure the new shortstop will be an improvement.

Posted at 05:42 AM · Philosophy · Comments (6) · TrackBack (0)

December 02, 2006

Hidden Costs

Army personnel are all-too-familiar with the plight of the red-cockaded woodpecker. An endangered species, the woodpecker has an affinity for military posts, which often have large tracts of woodland. Since they're endangered, the Army marks all trees that contain a woodpecker next, and heaven help anyone who gets within 50-100 meters of a nest. It can put a dent in training, but the Army doesn't fool around when it comes to the environment.

Outside the military environs, however, people have a few other options for dealing with endangered species. And in the town of Boiling Spring Lake, North Carolina, residents have chosen an interesting method: clear-cutting every pine tree in the area to ensure their property values aren't harmed.

Very few people would agree with the idea that businesses ought to be able to inflict the costs of their negative externalities on others. If I were to make, say, Thneeds by cutting down Truffula trees and starving the Brown Bar-ba-loots, it would be inappropriate for me to receive all the profits for my Thneeds while the local community had to bear all the costs of missing Truffula fruits, starving Brown Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans who can't sing because of all the smoke from the Thneed factory, and so on. Because I created those costs, by rights I ought to pay for them.

Yet this is precisely what we do with environmental issues under current laws. While I can't condone property owners acting in such a way as to further endanger the woodpecker, I can certainly understand their feelings. If a red-cockaded woodpecker is found on their property, their property values will drop into the sewer, as few people will want to buy a property where they will face onerous restrictions on what they can and cannot do in order to protect the woodpeckers. But if we as a people agree that we want to preserve species like the woodpecker, why should only the people who have the misfortune to have a woodpecker on their property pay the costs of preserving it?

Of course, there's a very good reason why we inflict these costs on the few rather than agreeing to pay for the costs collectively: if the government were forced to pay for those costs rather than simply using government power to force the unlucky few to pay, there would be less agreement on environmental protection. Sure, we might still agree on protecting photogenic species like the red cockaded woodpecker or national symbols like the bald eagle, but there would probably be a lot more objection to protecting fish or insects. So we hide the costs, except for those people whose luck allows them to own property that is devalued. It may be effective, but it's not honest.

Posted at 05:05 PM · Philosophy · Comments (1) · TrackBack (0)

November 26, 2006

Other People's Money

On election night I made a comment about minimum wage initiatives passing by nothing that "[i]t's nice to know that there are plenty of voters out there who are quite willing to be generous with everyone else's money." This spurred Gary Farber to comment, "Logically, how is this different from any other expenditure of tax monies, other than that this is one you don't like (which is an opinion you're perfectly entitled to, of course, but not a logical argument against it)?" Not a surprising response, I suppose, but an amusing one nonetheless, and one I think worth answering.

Let's note first that Gary sees no difference between raising the minimum wage and spending tax dollars, something the businesses who have to deal with the elevated floor on labor prices must find fascinating. I'm tempted to chalk it up to the not-uncommon belief from those on the left that all money belongs to the government, and we ought to just shut up and be grateful that the government lets us keep what it does, but I'm not sure that's Gary's point and I don't wish to tar him with that particularly distasteful brush. Nonetheless, the idea that an ordinance that requires businesses to spend a minimum amount on labor is no different that the use of tax dollars is a strange idea to me, and I suspect it is one of many areas where, while we're talking the same language, we're having a discussion from such different frames of reference that communication becomes difficult.

Well, I suppose I should start by laying out the difference between tax monies being raised to pay for something and private industry being forced to do something at the point of a gun. As is obvious from my perspective, when a government spends tax money, there is a clear relationship between the public good which is ostensibly being advanced and the government action. We want to fix some potholes? The local government issues some bonds to raise money, then uses those funds to repair the roads. The minimum wage, on the other hand, blurs that line almost to indistinction. The government isn't paying these people the minimum wage, after all. It's forcing businesses to do so, allowing proponents of the minimum wage to make arguments about the necessity of business to pay some basic wage to its workers or to argue that the business is making enough money to pay the minimum wage, and so on. Because any costs of the action are hidden behind the wall of business, it becomes more difficult to argue against because many people subscribe to the fiction that money taken from business is somehow different from money taken directly from the people.

That really wasn't the thrust of my argument, however. My point was simply that people tend to consider voting for government spending to somehow be generous, when it is nothing of the sort. Robin Hood aside, if I started holding people up for their wallets, then gave the money to the local homeless shelter, I'd still be a criminal, not a philanthropist. Before anyone gets all worked up, I'm not trying to equate taxes with theft, only to point out that there's nothing generous about spending someone else's money. Yet, somehow in today's political climate, generosity is seen more in government works than in philanthropy. Look no further than Matthew Yglesias' reaction to Warren Buffet's decision to leave much of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Yglesias would rather Buffet use those dollars to influence public policy. Because, after all, government policy has been so strikingly successful in getting people out of poverty.

Milton Friedman had it right: when you spend someone else's money on someone else, you don't pay much attention to the results, and that's what we have in America today. The U.S. government spends billions of dollars, all of it someone else's, and gets an absolutely terrible return on its investment. But this is part and parcel of our culture: as long as we're doing something, results don't really count. The important thing is to be seen doing something, and the cheapest way to do something is to tell the government to do it. That way, we can feel good about ourselves for 'helping' while barely lifting a finger to do any real work. Spare me from that kind of generosity.

Posted at 09:11 AM · Philosophy · Comments (7) · TrackBack (0)

The Open Invitation

As I mentioned when I first addressed the topic of the minimum wage last week, there was a particular turn of phrase in the post which I wanted to address in more detail. As part of her closing arguments after spooling off an impressive assortment of unhappy anecdotes, hilzoy commented "these stories should not exist in one of the wealthiest countries in the world".

That's a great argument, isn't it? I say that because it is wholly unbounded; it's a license to do anything you want without the slightest constraint, and it encapsulates what scares me about modern liberalism. I suspect that, if asked, hilzoy would concede that even if her desire for a minimum wage increase indexed to inflation was passed into law, such stories would still occur. In a country of 300 million people, such stories are guaranteed to occur, in fact. Some people are just going to be unlucky and others are going to make bad choices that put them in such situations. Which is what makes the argument so brilliant: if we accept that premise, it's a license for ever-increasing government interference.

Of course, it's fair to argue that we're already at that point, at a time when one dollar in three in this country is spent on some kind of government program. But there's plenty of room for government expansion as far as our two major political parties are concerned. This argument is just one of many deployed to justify such expansions. (I should note that, for the most part, I don't think either party is necessarily interested in government expansion for the sake of expansion; they just have myriad issues they think government should address, and massive expansion of government is just a side-effect of their quest for social justice or whatever they'd like to call it.)

There are a lot of unfortunate things that occur in this country. Every day, people are murdered, robbed, raped, they go hungry, children go without the kind of schooling that might give them some hope of rising above the circumstances of their birth...the list goes on and on and it's a horrible one. I can certainly empathize with those who want to see those things stopped. But arguing that such things shouldn't happen in America is an invalid argument, and one I'll fight at every opportunity. A valid argument would have to offer some hope that adopting the proponent's views would solve the problem raised in their argument, and that isn't the case here. We've had government trying to solve the problem of crime since the inception of government, and even in countries with markedly fewer civil rights and much harsher methods of punishment, crime still exists. So it will be with poverty. Government isn't going to solve the problem, unless it is by making everyone equally impoverished, and I'm pretty sure that isn't the goal of more than a vanishing fraction of the modern left.

It's lovely to believe that, because the United States does possess great wealth in the aggregate, sad stories about poverty never should become reality. But they do, and they will continue to do so as long as we live. That is how the world works: most things will end up scattered along a bell-shaped curve, and that means that some people are going to end up on the left of that curve. Complaints that such things shouldn't happen in America are akin to laments that the laws of physics ought to be repealed, and should be treated similarly.

Posted at 08:01 AM · Philosophy · Comments (1) · TrackBack (0)

November 19, 2006

Costs

My onetime co-blogger hilzoy is pushing for a minimum wage increase to help the poor. To defend that, hilzoy notes a number of sad stories about poor people who live on the edge and who are extremely vulnerable to economic dislocation.

The beauty of anecdotes is they're almost impossible to fight. Who wants to stand up and be the guy who's in favor of people living without electricity, without heat, without food, and so on? And make no mistake, if you don't agree with a lot of leftists about their policies for helping the less fortunate, you actively want to see the poor suffer as far as the left is concerned. The argument quickly spins away from logic into emotion, which gives the left the advantage they're quite happy to press. Which of us, after all, really wants people to suffer? If we were handed a magic wand that could eliminate poverty, I suspect there are very few people who wouldn't use it. Unfortunately, too many people think that such magic wands exist, only they use names like the minimum wage to describe them.

Hilzoy's argument is that the benefits of a minimum wage outweigh the costs. My instinctive response to that is how nice it must be to be able to make those decisions for other people. I personally would have a hard time telling someone that they're better off being out of a job than having a job for less than minimum wage. And it's pretty obvious, given the influx of illegal immigrants into the country, that there are a lot of people who are more than willing to work for less than the minimum wage, so clearly they disagree with those who say that you shouldn't be allowed to work for a lower wage than that set by the government.

Which is really my number one objection to a minimum wage: what gives the government (and particularly the federal government) the power to interfere with freedom of contract? If I'm willing to work for $5 an hour, why should the government be allowed to step in and say 'No, you either work for $5.15 an hour or not at all'? Am I the only one who thinks that's a bit insane? You have someone willing to work and someone willing to pay, but we need a bureaucracy that can prevent that transaction from occurring?

This is why I tend to chuckle when people on the left say they're about personal freedom. They're really no different from those on the right: they're willing to support the freedoms they think we should have, but they're quite willing to suppress the freedoms they think are bad for us. Sure, the freedoms the left and right want to protect and suppress vary a bit, but in the end, we end up in the same place whichever of them is in charge: only as free as our overlords are willing to allow.

There is, of course, a counter to this. Businesses tend to have more power than individuals. If Wal-Mart is only willing to offer $2/hour, as an individual who needs $5/hour (all figures, I should note, are wholly fictional, so please don't waste time explaining that nobody can live on $5/hour) I have very little leverage to force them to pay me more. If unemployment is very low and there are lots of jobs out there, some upward pressure on wages will accrue, but I can't depend on that to get me the money I need. Businesses will, of course, always try to pay people the least amount possible, and because they deal with many people, it is relatively easy for businesses to determine the going rate and not overpay for labor. Individuals, conversely, are unlikely to deal with a great number of businesses, so it is more difficult for them to know if they're not getting as much money as the market will bear. They can, of course, demand raises until they don't get them any more, but that technique carries with it the risk of termination, something the poor really can't afford. Minimum wage is seen as a solution to this by setting a floor for wages.

Unfortunately, that floor is permeable. There are plenty of immigrants willing to work for less than minimum wage. This creates two problems: first, we have a surge of illegal immigrants flooding the country, providing chances for less desirable people to come across the border in their midst (I have no objection whatsoever to illegal immigrants, I should note; they come here to work, and I'm not going to condemn that). Second, these immigrants end up taking jobs from citizens, although I'm not sure how much of that is people not getting the jobs because the immigrants undercut their wages and how much of it is people who just don't want to work. In any case, we end up with a fair sum of people who aren't gathering any benefits from minimum wage increases, and we may be exacerbating our security problem into the bargain.

Minimum wage proponents also fail to address another key fact of economics: all economics is is a means of distributing resources. That's why the supply and demand curves work the way they do: if there is very little of a resource, it will sell for more money because only a few people can have it. If there's a lot of something, its price will fall because it's not hard to get. Money is nothing more than a means to an end: a way for people to exchange their labor and production for other people's labor and production. As such, the amount of money in a system will affect prices by causing prices to rise when more money is available. Yes, this is basic economics, but it's something that people who want to raise minimum wage don't seem to consider: if there are 1,000 people trying to get their hands on 500 items and you increase the amount of money people have, what will happen to the price of that item? Obviously it will go up. There are still the same number of people who want the item, and there are no more of that item available, so all you've done by increasing the amount of money people have is to raise the price of the item. It's difficult for me to see how this helps people.

Having said all that, the damage has already been done. We're not going to repeal the minimum wage, and even in relatively red states such as Colorado, people voted to increase the minimum wage and index it to inflation. Were I a betting man, I'd guess we're not really doing much to help people, but I suppose the minimum wage does at least allow people to feel better about themselves by arguing that they're 'doing something' about poverty. I'm not sure how to value good feelings, but I suppose they're worth something. Further, as I'm not really sure how to help solve some of the problems I mentioned above, I suppose I'm not likely to convince people not to raise the minimum wage without offering some alternative solution, particularly when whatever damage the law causes is likely to be invisible. After all, we have no way of knowing how fast the economy will grow, so if laws cause it to grow less rapidly than otherwise, there's no way to prove that, so nobody notices the damage.

This is a common problem in American politics. We realize there's a problem, but we fail to find solutions that will actually solve the problem. Instead we offer some solution that does little good, and often harms people, and pretend we've fixed the problem, or wonder why our solution hasn't fixed it. Will the minimum wage help some people? I think it certainly will. Will it help more people than it harms? That's a much more difficult question, but I think the answer is no. Ultimately, raising the minimum wage will do little more than price some labor out of the market and increase prices, meaning the poor will have more money but will really be no better off. I'm not certain what the solution to improving the lot of the poor is, but increasing the amount of money they have without improving their purchasing power doesn't strike me as particularly helpful.

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Posted at 10:20 AM · Economics • · Philosophy • · Politics · Comments (5) · TrackBack (0)

November 17, 2006

The Ant and the Grasshopper

Samizdata has an amusing update to the classic tale of the ant and the grasshopper. I assume most readers are familiar with the original tale, in which the ant works hard during the summer months while the grasshopper plays games and pokes fun at the ant, only to come begging for some of the ant's bounty during the cold winter months when the grasshopper faces starvation because he didn't work hard when he could. Samizdata's take is a little more modern.

I point this out because it gave me a chuckle, but also because it illustrates one of the concerns libertarians frequently have about leftist policies. Yes, the story is exaggerated for effect, but it is a very good example of moral hazard: if government guarantees to provide something to everyone, there will be some number of people who are willing to accept that as a minimum and will not bother to work for anything more. While that choice may well be rational for them, it means that those of us who do work end up subsidizing those who choose not to. That can be a little galling, and it helps to explain why President Reagan hit a touchstone with a lot of people when he decried welfare cheats and why welfare reform was popular enough to convince President Clinton to sign it into law.

Life isn't simple, of course, and I'm not using the story to suggest we should toss social programs overboard. But it is pretty cute, and the problem it raises is one those who advocate increasing government-provided safety nets really ought to address when they're making their case.

Posted at 07:12 AM · Philosophy · Comments (5) · TrackBack (0)

November 01, 2006

Allegiances

John Cole is, understandably, upset about the direction his party has taken over the last six years.

And it makes me mad. I still think of myself as a Republican- but I think the whole party has been hijacked by frauds and religionists and crooks and liars and corporate shills, and it frustrates me to no end to see my former friends enabling them, and I wonder ‘Why can’t they see what I see?” I don’t think I am crazy, I don’t think my beliefs have changed radically, and I don’t think I have been (as suggested by others) brainwashed by my commentariat.

If there were one thing I could point to in this country as the biggest thing damaging the political process, it would political parties. Political parties (at least successful ones) exist for only one reason: to get people elected. Obviously each party wants to elect people who subscribe to certain common principles, but the nature of the American system guarantees that only two parties will be ascendant at any one time, and that those parties will of necessity have very big tents. Pick an issue, and I'll wager I can find someone in that party who's on the other side. The parties have to do that, because if they're overly doctrinaire, they can't get people elected. (See the Libertarian Party as a prime example of this.) But that focus on getting people elected means that parties are willing to put anything else aside in order to hold onto power. One need look no further than the Republican Party's embrace of the prescription drug benefit, a benefit tacked onto a program that Republicans once planned to eliminate. But that bill was seen as beneficial to the party's electoral prospects, and so it was pushed through.

Political parties also undermine the checks and balances built into our system. A major reason President Bush has been able to act with so few constraints has been the presence of a Congress dominated by the same party. Congressional Republicans don't want to harm their party, and an investigation that embarasses a Republican President would do just that. So they all go along to get along, and the vital check of legislative power has been nullified by the power of parties.

But political parties also attract personal loyalty, as I noted a few weeks ago. While the parties themselves exist to get their candidates elected, most people are drawn to a political party because they have some basic philosophical agreement. Prochoice voters tend to be drawn to the Democratic Party, while voters who care about gun rights will skew Republican. (Again, these are trends; I happen to be both prochoice and pro-gun rights and I'm neither.) Once a voter chooses a party, he will tend to identify with that party because he views it as his 'tribe.' Even a decade after leaving the Republican Party, I tend to notice slights to Republicans far more quickly than similar slights to Democrats.

We are never going to eliminate political parties. The costs of getting people elected to national office are too great, both in terms of money and organization. The checks and balances built into our system must be replaced by checks and balances imposed by the voters, by maintaining split government, for example. And we can hope that the pursuit of power for its own sake by the parties continues to drive people away from parties.

The more people who break away from the party structure, the more the parties will have to adapt to attract their votes. John is astounded that many of his old friends are still going to vote Republican, given all he has seen. But this is no surprise: I'd wager that roughly one-third of the electorate would vote Republican no matter what, and a similar number would do the same for the Democrats. It is these people, the parties bases, that help to lead to some of the problems John decries, such as the Terri Schiavo mess. Each side has to keep its base satisfied, because they're the ones who are most likely to vote. Only by peeling away some of those bases and forcing the parties to address other concerns will these things change.

And that will take time, if it happens at all. I asked a hypothetical question at Obsidian Wings of the (generally Democratic) comment base there, if they could vote Republican if the Democratic Party went bad. A fair number of them argued that the question was silly, because the Democratic Party wouldn't go bad, Republicans are evil, etc. It should hardly surprise them that many on the Republican side tend to feel the same way about Democrats. But it does, and as long as that is the case, John will continute to be shocked by how people he thought he knew can act so (in his perception) irrationally.

Posted at 11:41 AM · Philosophy · Comments (5) · TrackBack (0)

October 13, 2006

Civility

John Adams: Franklin, where were you when I needed you? You should have heard what I suffered in there.
Dr. Benjamin Franklin: Oh, I heard, all right. Along with the rest of Philadelphia. Lord, your voice is piercing, John.
John Adams: Well, I just wish to Heaven my arguments were.

There are a lot of things I enjoy about Obsidian Wings. The fact they're actually trying to establish some limited dialogue across the political spectrum is really impressive, and the reality that they've actually had some success is even more so. So a reasonable reader might well question why I'm whining and carrying on about how I'm being treated over there. Certainly I hesitated to raise the issue, and I suspect I will come to regret having said anything at all. The commenters over there are not, as best I can determine, bad people per se, and so I'm sure that there will be some attempts by people to be nicer to me that will only end badly, as they'll walk on eggshells until I say something they consider beyond the pale, at which point the frustrations that have built up while they held their tongue will come pouring out. And that's not the real problem anyhow.

When I first began blogging over there, Enrak and I had a little chat about the situation over there, and I think he hit the nail on the head with this: "My favorite is the condescending tone. You can tell that even the nice ones think that we are just sloooooow." Now I'm quite confident that they would object to that comment and claim that's not how they feel, and I'm sure that they'd mean it. But they do. It was easy enough to see in the comments left yesterday: it's not that you're dishonest, you're just taken in by the right-wing spin machine. You're good when you don't talk about stuff that makes us uncomfortable. And so on. I should note that these were not the predominant response (I erred in tying the discussion to the question of whether or not I should stay at ObWings, which inevitably made the comments into a question of whether or not people wanted me to stay as opposed to whether or not having conservative voices at ObWings was helping or hurting the site), but I suspect that those comments were not unique to those people.

We all have things we believe, and when someone challenges those beliefs, we tend to get upset. We build our lives around the things we believe, which means that if one of those beliefs turns out to be wrong, it means we've probably made some major mistakes in how we've lived our lives. It is hardly surprising that people react strongly to suggestions that their beliefs are incorrect, and I'm certainly as guilty of that as anyone. Because the regular commenters at ObWings tend to skew left, that means that the accepted belief pool does as well, which means that, for example, people who suggest that Democrats might not be perfect tend to get some flack. Yes, that's hyperbole, but not as much as it ought to be, as the cries of 'false equivalence' demonstrate every time I dare note a percieved Democratic flaw. Indeed, at least two commenters appear to be of the opinion that when I try to be even-handed, it's a dishonest debating technique that I should know isn't accurate.

And I suppose I should acknowledge that maybe it isn't, although I'm uncertain how one could objectively weigh issues like the sexual harassment issue with Justice Thomas and President Clinton that kicked off the last fracas. Although that's not really false equivalence, now that I think about it; I was and am amazed that the idea that groups like NOW treated an accusation of sexual harassment against Justice Thomas differently than they did President Clinton is somehow controversial. Granted, I wasn't paying a great deal of attention during the Thomas hearings, but I seem to recall people repeatedly explaining that women don't lie about stuff like sexual harassment and bumper stickers that read 'Honk if you believe Anita.'

I'm sure I borrow some trouble for myself by attempting to point out Democratic foibles, but if the price of posting at ObWings is to pretend they don't exist, I can't see the point. Sure, I could point to Republican issues, but the commenters there are far better aware of Republican failings than I am anyhow; that would constitute little more than preaching to the choir. I think that if I'm bringing value to the debate, part of it is by pointing out people's blind spots. I know that I have had my own pointed out on more than one occasion over there, and that's all to the good as far as I'm concerned. I'm a lot more interested in making a good argument than I am in promoting a particular viewpoint, to be perfectly honest. It's not that I don't have strong beliefs; I certainly do, as any regular reader knows. But I want those beliefs to be based in fact as much as that is possible, so if people point to where my argument fails, that is all to the good.

Where I often fall down, however, and at least one commenter noted this, is that I have difficulty ignoring tangental arguments. Someone over there toted up the responses to my post and pointed out that it was 37-0-1 for me staying (though I doubt many people would prefer me to go would say so outright, if only out of politesse), and my first thought was, 'Who's the 1?" I am tempermentally drawn to those who oppose me, which I suppose is why Jesurgislac drives me so crazy, and I am not good at letting things go. I also find it inordinately frustrating when people attack some minor point in an essay while implying that an error there invalidates the entire essay. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there was ironclad proof that Anita Hill was telling the truth and Paula Jones was lying. My subsidiary point, that Republicans treated the issue of sexual harassment very differently based on the respective targets, remained valid, and as the entire paragraph was simply intended to illustrate that tribes will react to similiar issues differently based on the target, the facts at issue with Thomas and Clinton were quite ancillary to the thrust of the post. I have a renewed respect for Steven den Beste's ability to deal with that kind of nit-picking as long as he did, as just three months of it appear to have driven me to distraction.

Ironically, I have been trying to find a larger audience for my writing for five years, and now that I have finally done so, I am wondering whether or not I want to continue. My own experience writing at this site long ago demonstrated that these problems will occur from time-to-time, whether from honest misunderstandings or deliberate trolling, as I've seen both stop by here over the years. It was more bearable here, I think primarily because it was so rare. Should I continue to post over there, on the other hand, it shall be my lot in life. Hmmm, upon reflection, that makes me sound like a martyr, which I most assuredly am not. I am, however, amused that I now wonder whether increased traffic is worth the increased headaches that follow it. (A lament other, more popular bloggers have made before that always inspired me to say, 'Hell, yes,' when I heard it. How different things are on the other side of the screen, as it were.) Because, ultimately civility isn't the issue. Other than two twits who accused me of dishonesty, the disputes are generally civil if somewhat spirited. The real issue is that I'm trying to communicate with people who speak a different language, and my temperment is not well-suited to such work.

Posted at 07:10 AM · Philosophy · Comments (21) · TrackBack (0)

October 10, 2006

Tribalism and Politics

Steven Hopkins: Dear Sir, you are without any doubt, a rogue, a rascal, a villain, a thief, a scoundrel and a mean, dirty, stinking, sniveling, sneaking, pimping, pocket-picking, thrice double-damned no-good son-of-a-bitch. And you sign your name.
Benjamin Franklin: I’ll take a dozen right now.

A lot of things have changed since 1776, but the tendency to ascribe the worst possible motives to one's political opponents stands with death and taxes as things the world will never be rid of. Which makes it all the more fascinating that people on either side of the great political divide claim to be endlessly amazed that the people on the other side just won't be reasonable and see things their way.

Human beings are social animals, conditioned by thousands of years of evolution to band together to further their own goals, often at the expense of other groups of humans. The biblical tale of Cain and Abel resonates because, while the very first humans may not have immediately begun bashing one anothers' skulls in, it's a near-certainty it didn't take long for them to start. Survival is simply easier to accomplish when you are part of a group, and survival becomes easier still if your group can secure the elements of survival from other humans. You share the same needs, after all, and a group of raiders can secure food and other necessities much more quickly by stealing them from other humans who have gone to the trouble of growing crops, making clothing, and so on. Self-defense therefore required early humans to band together to defend themselves from raiders, if not to steal things themselves. In such circumstances, survival depended to a great deal on being able to trust the people in your group, often comprised of one's extended family. Leaving that group therefore was extremely difficult, because individuals had built up bonds of trust between one another and were accustomed to not trusting people belonging to other groups.

While we may be a long ways from those days in terms of our history and current circumstances, from an evolutionary perspective we're still generally built for those days. Joining a political party is therefore a lot more than just checking a box on a voter registration card. Emotionally we tend to identify with groups we've joined, often even after we are no longer members. Although I have not actually been a Republican for over a decade, I still often find myself becoming annoyed when I read people claiming that Republicans think this or Republicans are that. It is illogical, but quite natural: at one time in my life I identified as a Republican and as a part of that group tended to be suspicious of Democrats. (Indeed, I still am, having only extended that wise suspicion to Republicans as well.)

It would be nice, of course, if people were wholly logical. (Or perhaps not, but that's an argument for another time.) If we could all just weigh the evidence and come to a common conclusion, the world would be much simpler and easier to get along in. But people are not, and never will be, wholly logical. When people are faced with a problem, while they can apply their intellect to it, their gut automatically gets involved as well. And, because when man was living as a hunter-gatherer decision making often needed to be made quickly ere the decider ended up dead, a handy shorthand for making decisions has always been what others in our peer group are doing. This is instinctive; it is built into our basic genetic code, and will doubtless reside there long into the future, a reminder of where we came from. But what could be helpful in a more primitive society can be problematic in modern times.

As a case in point, consider the treatment accorded to President Clinton and Judge Clarence Thomas in the 1990s. (Please note that my intent here is simply to illustrate tribalism and not to try and present two precisely equal cases, so please set aside fears of equivalence for a few moments at least.) Judge Thomas was accused of sexually harassing a subordinate, Anita Hill, and was pilloried for his presumed transgression by feminist groups. The common refrain at the time was that women don't lie about such things, so it could safely be assumed that Thomas was guilty of the infractions he was accused of. Those same groups sang a very different tune later in the decade when President Clinton was accused of sexual harassment, arguing for, among other things, a 'one free grope' rule that would have been unthinkable for Judge Thomas. Why the difference? Judge Thomas was a Republican, President Clinton a Democrat, and most feminist groups are Democratic in fact if not in name. President Clinton was therefore considered a member of their tribe and worthy of protection, while Judge Thomas belonged to an enemy tribe and therefore a target. I realize that there were many Democrats who condemned both Judge Thomas and President Clinton and that this is a very simplified recounting of events, but I believe it well illustrates the point: many Democrats' principles came in second place to their tribe when push came to shove. A similar example can be seen among Republicans here in the 21st century, where many Republicans who decried excessive spending and deficits less than a decade ago now eagerly note that the deficit isn't so bad relative to GDP and that government spending can accomplish good goals if used properly, etc.

Emotions can be overcome, and often are. But I suspect that, if we're honest with ourselves, we would admit that when we hear people we agree with saying something, we look for reasons for it to be true, while we look for ways to discredit the words of those we disagree with.

Why, then, would anyone be surprised that many Republicans continue to look for reasons to vote Republican? A simple thought experiment for the Democrats in the audience: suppose (again, this is a thought experiment, so we can be very farfetched here) that 20 years from now the Democratic Party, having taken power in 2008 after the disasters of the Bush administration and the Republican Party became common knowledge, has become disturbingly corrupt. The Republican Party, while not obviously corrupt, appears to generally espouse the same beliefs you always hated: trimming government aid to the poor, cutting taxes, helping business, etc. But the Democrats have reached a point where they're no longer doing what you like, either: they're selling legislation to favored constituencies, and their sole goal appears to be to retain power rather than to accomplish their stated goals as a party. How difficult would it be for you to cross the aisle and vote Republican? Could you do it?

I'll bet you $100 right now that many Democrats reading this have already thought to themselves that this could never happen and that I'm spinning a fantasy. Hell, maybe they're right; my intent is not to suggest that this is the inevitable result of Democratic rule. But that reaction is, I think, illustrative of the power of tribalism, the instinctive need to defend that to which you belong, and to attack those groups that oppose your tribe.

Tribalism is not destiny, else we would never have created the world in which we live today. But it is not an easy thing to overcome, either. Some people never are able to get past it; I'd guess that at least 25% of voters would vote for their party regardless of wh