RedStateEclectic

A Ship with the Engine Off

Notes Steven Kates, author of the best introduction to economics there is:

If even Chris Matthews is done with Obama, who’s left? You can even watch the video here but this is the text:

‘What part of the presidency does Obama like? He doesn’t like dealing with other politicians — that means his own cabinet, that means members of the congress, either party. He doesn’t particularly like the press…. He likes to write the speeches, likes to rewrite what Favreau and the others wrote for the first draft,’ Matthews said.

‘So what part does he like? He likes going on the road, campaigning, visiting businesses like he does every couple days somewhere in Ohio or somewhere,’ Matthews continued. ‘But what part does he like? He doesn’t like lobbying for the bills he cares about. He doesn’t like selling to the press. He doesn’t like giving orders or giving somebody the power to give orders. He doesn’t seem to like being an executive.’

On Tuesday’s program, Matthews similarly called Obama ‘a ship with the engine off.’

“A ship with the engine off.” He’s actually much worse than that and far more destructive but it will do for now.

The source.

Compare this with what Richard Epstein has to say (in the first 2 minutes of the below video) about his former colleague.

 

Against Political Biology

Lysenko, one of the masters of political biology.

Following up on my Scientists Not Interested in Science, find below a level-headed reminder of some facts of basic, depoliticised biology.

In his summary, Luboš Motl writes:

The basic theme of the [below] article is simple and most of us learned it as fifth-graders: CO₂ is primarily the plant food while its other implications for nature are negligible in comparison. Humanitarian organizations should work hard to help the mankind to increase the CO₂ concentration and it's surprising that virtually all of them are failing to do so.

Thus, ex-moonwalker Harrison Schmitt and physics professor Will Happer of Princeton argue:

Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.

The entire brief article.

Despicable Optimists

For German intellectuals, optimism is a sort of American mental illness.

Read more in this post at NoTricksZone, the blog of an admirable American living in Germany.

Palatine Boors

[W]hy should the Palatine Boors [ie Germans] be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.

The source.

 I'm asking you, Benjamin, don't let's be beastly to the Germans.

See also A Plea to James.

PS

The above image represents the distribution of German Americans according to the 2000 census.

Why is Google Telling People That James O'Keefe is an Identity Thief?

I subscribe to a myriad of email lists from lots of different political organizations, including Project Veritas from James O'Keefe.  You might remember him as the activist filmmaker who created a series of undercover videos that forced ACORN out of business to change their name.

These emails routinely end up routed to the spam bucket, probably the result of people who either didn't realize they signed up or got tired of seeing them and clicked "spam" instead of "Unsubscribe." That action sends a message back to Google's e-brain, essentially telling the system that because lots of people seem to think this is spam, it probably is.

I check my Spam folder every few days and add the misdirected newsletters' email adddresses to my address book, which seems to route things to my inbox .

I've seen lots and lots of misdirected mail. From eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, MoveOn.org, The GOP, The DNC my dentist, my eye doctor...the list goes on and on.  But what I haven't seen on them is this:

A message from Google, implying that O'Keefe had used previous communications to scam recipients.

I'm not big on conspiracy theories, but like I said, I've pulled plenty of list-type messages from my spam folder, and I've never seen any of them with this red warning emblazened across it.  

In fact, just this morning, Michelle Malkin's newsletter was also in my spam box. Not surprising, because I just signed up for it, and her email wasn't in my inbox.  But it didn't have a big red scary warning splashed across it. (Yet?)

And just to clarify -  I have seen this red message before but only on emails from real scammers. You know the type - the ones that claim to be from Paypal, your bank, or a Nigerian prince asking for your account number and password. 

So, I had to ask: Why is Google now telling people that James O'Keefe is an identity thief?

 

**************

I want to follow you on Twitter! Follow me, and I'll follow back.

Related articles

James O'Keefe calls out Mother Jones over secret taping hypocrisy

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The Democrats Bug Mitch McConnell. No, Really. Like, As In, Watergate.

James O'Keefe vs. Piers Morgan

Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (3/3)

Image credit.

The idea that all human concerns can be dealt with in a market context, by voluntary transactions, which is usually implied by AC, is patently inapplicable in reality. Markets only work to the extent that agreement (of a certain sort) is possible. But life is full of issues where agreement is not possible. So, there is a competition amongst intransigent concerns (“political scarcity”), and we must often yield to positions we do not like, and there must be sufficient authority to police controversy in the face of unforgiving opposition.

Large communities work differently than small groups. Coordination and cooperation in very large groups requires adequate forms of authority, powerful enforcement agencies. We cannot do without them. We must try to keep them sufficiently constrained. But there is no guarantee that we will be able to keep them under control. I am not aware of a social technology that can preclude the enormous toxic potential of the state. I sincerely regret this state of affairs; but the matter is not altered by insisting on the impossible – a world without the constraints that I have tried to outline in this note, as well as here and here. We must enter the political process and try to shape the political mood and the state so as to enhance liberty and ensure respect for her. It is an open-ended battle. We have no better means.

There is another conundrum associated with AC. Take my part of Germany as it was 1 000 years ago, and compare it to today. The difference is a huge increase in liberty. At the same time, we register a huge increase in the extent and impact of the state. Would AC deny that liberty has increased? If not, I cannot take that position seriously. If yes, how is a substantial increase of liberty compatible with substantial state growth? Ah, all the additional liberty is due to non-state agents! Well, that, however, is hardly credible. It is not my neighbour or my girl friend who enforce my rights, it is the state. And if I can prove that my neighbour has stolen X from my premises, I can be pretty sure, the state will rectify the matter.

I am not defending the state – like I do not defend the elephant. I look at both, and acknowledge their features and reality.

If one wishes to promote more liberty, one has to acknowledge the substratum within which she will have to be fought for and established.

I shall not deal with the poor philosophical underpinnings of Rothbard-type of AC; I think Feser has done an excellent job at it - for more see Natural Ends and Prudential Judgement.

 It is worth noting, however, that Rothbard clearly believes that the nature of the state can be deduced without reference to the empirical world – a preposterous position that must lead to conclusions severely at odds with reality. It only goes to show the solipsistic, the hedonistic dogmatism underlying his approach to the issue.

Not only is the AC approach in its dominant Rothbardian variant methodologically fatally flawed (in its unsustainable, anti-empirical apriorism), it is also attitudinally repugnant: people who fail to discover the purportedly self-evident features of AC’s actually contradictory system of non sequiturs and arbitrary and uncompelling premises are treated as idiots or collaborators of evil powers. Naturally, an incoherent and empirically false theory can be maintained only by dogmatic arrogance.

Thus, the Rothbardian AC sits in his rocking chair savouring the joys of self-righteousness to be had from (the travesty of) an axiomatic theory of politics and morality. He refrains from politics, and specialises one-sidedly in complaining about the state. He diverts talent and impetus away from the freedom movement, binding it in self righteous, morbid inaction ( - Bob Higgs strikes me as a prime example of AC as a form of personal depression).

The adherent of AC does not understand the conditions of liberty, he damages the reputation of liberty, distorts its meaning and weakens its forces. He is either enraged, depressed, or both, and full of acerbic contempt for anyone with a divergent view.

Personally, I find it a lot harder to be a liberal, now that I have given up my implicit AC-illusions. By the latter term I mean this: since most of the valuable material that I used in recent years in order to educate myself about issues concerning liberty were provided by AC-sources, I developed the AC-habit of restricting my perceptions of the state to its lamentable aspects. This habit makes life easier, things always fit into a neat pattern. And there is a huge industry (blogs etc.) that caters to this view. I can no longer convince myself of the simplicity of that stance.

Liberty, to me, is not an end in itself. I give precedence to the unending quest by which I seek to approximate truth.

I see a certain analogy between the struggle for liberty and the Christian notion of original sin. Man is apt to act sinfully and must constantly struggle not to yield to this propensity. Liberty is a battle not to yield to conditions of the human life that tend toward arbitrariness and inordinate domination. It is an endless endeavour, never to be replaced by a final state of uncontested and perfect liberty.

See also Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (1/3) and Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (2/3).

Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (2/3)

Image credit.

There are two more important aspects concerning the inevitability of the state – and in as much as state structures are inevitable we have simply got to work with them to achieve freedom as best as possible – anyone who runs away from this inconvenient constraint, as do statists and anarchist, is not capable of serving freedom.

Aspect One: Human capabilities are often prismatic and ambiguous, capable of creating both good and evil, the useful and the useless etc from the same essential resource base. But this ambivalence is a vital tool in the business of adapting to a changing environment – it is part of the conditio humana. Take aggression: human beings would be incapable of surviving if they did not have the ability to become aggressive. It’s a matter of dosage and context whether aggression is good or bad.  We cannot preclude that we will – often with the best of intentions use our human talents to drift from the realm of the good over into the realm of the bad.  We may disagree on what is good and what is bad. We may differ in our assessments as to whether a certain type of action is going to elicit good or bad consequences. There is any number of occasions to move from good to bad, and to not concur as to the moral nature of the state achieved. All we can do is learn from experience, try to avoid the most egregious excesses, and - at least as a last resort - wait for cultural evolution to weed out those practices most detrimental to our species. In this sense, the state will develop within a corridor defined by the natural limits to its destructiveness and the limits to its functional strengths. Within this corridor the state develops as a highly complex evolutionary product, indeed a composite product, for which it is often difficult or impossible to determine whether or how problematic aspects are related to welcome aspects and vice versa.

This brings me to Aspect Two: I have developed 3 theorems to explain the persistence of the state, the reason why no civilisation (since the Neolithic, which saw the emergence of enough productivity to sustain specialists of violence, power-wielding, administration and other state functionaries) has ever existed that does not elicit state structures.

Theorem 1: Whenever there is a chance to influence people and outcomes by power and force, people will develop Structures of Maximal Power (SMP) – and be it for purely defensive reasons. This launches a persistent competition for SMP, the most powerful and sophisticated variant of which being the modern territorial central state.

Theorem 2: In order to overthrow a SMP you need another SMP that is even more powerful.

Theorem 3: The individual has two options in the face of SMP. (3a) Either he complies, in which case he supports the SMP. (3b) Or he resists and revolts, in which case Theorem 2 applies.

As for Theorem 3a: Never underestimate the motives for an individual to wish to comply with and support the state; the most powerful of all being the state’s ability to overcome anarchy, or if you like anomie (both of which words have the same meaning to me, as the absence of SMP means violent chaos, a gory rush to develop stable SMP where none exist).

Well captured in Mancur Olson’s theory of the transition from regimes of roving bandits and stationary bandits (the state), both rulers and the people benefit from state structures as compared with anarchy. As the success of the Taliban attests, people support those – even though disliked in many other respects by them – who can bring an end to anarchy. The difference between anarchy and non-anarchy is huge. Which is – regrettably - hard to understand by people thoroughly used to (state guaranteed) peace.  

http://www.svt.ntnu.no/iss/Indra.de.Soysa/POL3503H05/olson.pdf

See also Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (1/3) and Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (3/3).

Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (1/3)

Image credit.

I have come to believe that anarcho-capitalism (AC) is a second – rather successful – attempt at usurping the meaning of liberalism; the first usurpation having been accomplished by America’s socialists and social democrats, i.e. the Democratic party, its doctrine and followers.

I see classical liberalism standing between and clearly separated from two extremes: statism - an attitude that uncritically ascribes more benignity and problem solving capability to the state than is warranted; and anarchism, which is statism in reverse, ascribing counterfactually total malignity and dysfunctionality to the state. Both extremes represent a form of escapism, a running away from an uncomfortable area of ambiguity.

The classical liberal, by contrast, bears up against the tension that emanates from the ambivalent mix of good and bad which has evolved along with the state. He faces this messy part of reality, recognising that the state is an evolutionary product that will not go away (in any reasonably foreseeable time) and, in fact, represents a condition of liberty, a requirement for liberty to exist.

The crux of the AC error lies in a tacit assumption on which the entire philosophy is based: liberty must be self-generating. The opposite is true, of course, as is nicely captured in the motto of our RSE blog. While it is certainly desirable for liberty to be self-generating, the desired condition can never come about.

Liberty is always being won from a hodge-podge of things outside of or even antithetical to liberty. The factors outside of or antithetical to liberty are persistent or are renewing themselves so that they need to be incessantly repelled and rolled back. In fact, liberty is conducive to producing anti-liberty material, for instance by allowing people to develop and propagate doctrines that compete against liberalism.

I have recently come across a quote (I can’t remember where) to the effect that philosophical schools often take perfectly reasonable continua and get into trouble by turning them into dichotomies.

That’s the problem with AC, too.  

The state is a multi-dimensional continuum which includes grown goods and bads, which are often inextricably intertwined. The state cannot be arbitrarily bad, it must be good as well, to survive.

Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on voit pas: followers of AC suffer from a bit of a Bastiat-deficit in this respect – they only see what is bad about the state, they do not see what is good about it.

However, much of what is good about the state is naturally hard to see – like peace, freedom or justice which come about when certain things DO NOT OCCUR.

I am being protected and helped in countless ways by the state. To the extent that the state depends on popular acceptance and a sound, preferably even a growing material base, it is rational for government to enforce individual rights etc. For instance, the gradual rise to power of the French central state/royal dynasty of the Carpet and the rise of its partner, the bourgeois commercial classes in France against the emperor, the clergy and the feudal power holders is a well documented example of how the state has rationally sided with individual and property rights and many other conditions conducive to free(er) markets and personal liberty.

Other forms of SMP (Structures of Maximal Power – see more in Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (2/3)) such as state leagues and city states failed to prevail in the competition with the central territorial state. In the case of these alternative, ultimately defeated SMP, the structure of coercive capability was simply not stringent enough.  Put more bluntly, they were not powerful enough to be effective supporters of budding capitalism and the freedom that comes with it.

See also Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (2/3) and Classical Liberalism vs. Anarchism (3/3).

Anthony Weiner: It Was Twitter's Fault

From a recent interview: 

“And if it wasn’t 2011 and it didn’t exist, it’s not like I would have gone out cruising bars or something like that. It was just something that technology made possible and it became possible for me to do stupid things.” 

Way to own it there, Anthony.  Here's another choice tidbit:

When they appeared in People magazine last summer, it looked like a toe-dipping of sorts. (The couple say that it was entirely for the purpose of getting a picture of (their baby) published so it would no longer have value and the paparazzi would stop camping out on their corner.)

Actually, though, that might be plausible. I'd say there's a significant chance that Twitter or even the internet doesn't exist in their home any more.

But he's considered a serious contender for mayor in NYC.  

RIP Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher:

On productiveness and the charitable instinct:“No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.” On the hostile press: “If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.”

Read more at the source.

On Europe:

Thatcher’s basic take on a tight European federation was that it was unnecessary, unworkable, and dangerous. The nation state, she insisted, should remain at the heart of the international system, and a federated Europe would threaten its sway.

Moreover, Thatcher had misgivings about the Continent as a source of moral inspiration. “During my lifetime,” she reminisced, “most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one form or another, from mainland Europe, and the solutions — from outside it.”

That insight alone is priceless, but it still pales compared with what she wrote more than a decade ago, when the euro was still a toddler, and the economies of Greece, Spain and Cyprus seemed as distant from calamity as they now are from salvation. “The European single currency,” wrote Thatcher in 2002, “is bound to fail — economically, politically, and indeed socially.”

Thatcher’s reasoning for this was not ideological. It was monetarist. There can be no such thing as a united currency without a united budget, she argued, at a time when it was impolite to suggest that the euro’s newlyweds would soon accuse each other of theft, deceit, laziness, imperialism and oppression.

The source.