RedStateEclectic

Regulation - Good, Moot, and Malign

Image credit.

Sight or sound of the word "regulation" should not be a cue triggering reflexive reactions - which unfortunately they do with many of us.

Liberty calls for regulation, its supporters ought to be aware of the liberating and wonderfully facilitating effects that proper regulations bring about.

For the sake of liberty, we need to step in the political arena to defend and foster reasonable regulation, but also to unmask the manifold abuses to which regulation may lead.

There are those who think because most people hold political views different from theirs, we therefore live in a decaying civilization dominated by the basest forces.

The below article by Cory Doctorow will be "happy news" for them. "Didn't I tell you!" they will shout. And indubitably, there is much foul in the State of Denmark, and deplorably, Segarra's case may well be as egregious as it appears at first reading.

Carmen Segarra is a former FTC regulator who joined the fed after the financial crisis to help rescue the banking system -- but she was so shocked by the naked regulatory capture on display that she ended up buying a covert recorder from a "spy shop" and used it to secretly record her colleagues letting Goldman Sachs get away with pretty much anything it wanted to do.

The source.

At the same time, we should not lose sight of other developments in the regulatory field. I see an important role for those on the side of liberty not just to track down - rarely done by those who think they know it's all one big deceit anyway - and denounce regulation, but to make it better; and an important part of improvement consists in admitting and honing one's faculties of fair and open perception so as to be able to identify, understand, develop and strengthen reasonable forms of regulation. 

When the watchdogs aren't working too well, it is partly because of the submissive fascination of the left with everything involving state control, which seems to trump their dislike of corporate symbols of capitalism such as Goldman Sachs; and it is also partly because other forces potentially critical of regulation go over the top in a different way, dreaming a nirvana-fallacy-dream that keeps them inactive, apart perhaps from verbal outrage.

What they overlook is that no matter how much more free our society might become, regulation will always be an area of contention, of fallible trials, and of hard-to-decide or even undecidable issues, with loads of regulatory problems happening at once and dynamically, i.e. changing their decisive features constantly.   

Ayres and Braithwaith have written an interesting book ("Responsive Regulation. Transcending the Deregulation Debate") on dimensions of regulation that lie beyond uncritical approval and wholesale rejection of regulatory efforts.

See also Administrative Creep and Intellectual Property - Patents as Prizes.

Related articles

The Liberal Pull of Technology

Intellectual Property - Patents as Prizes

An interesting defense of patents. I looked Cooter up at YouTube because I am about to read his Strategic Constitution which promises to be a truly comprehensive account of the interplay between society and constitutional arrangements. A great complement to Richard Epstein's excellent The Classical Liberal Constitution.

The lecture starts at time mark 09:00.

The Classical Liberal Constitution (2/2)

 

Tomorrow (15 minutes left not to be lying), I expect delivery of Richard Epstein's magisterial "The Classical Liberal Constitution" which will be one of the tomes that I shall engross myself in over the next half year to gain a deeper understanding of the nexus of law and liberty.

Writes CATO:

In his latest book, a wide-ranging tome covering vast areas of our law, Richard Epstein mounts a principled attack on modern Supreme Court jurisprudence and much of the legal scholarship that has grown up around it. The major disarray that infects every area of modern American life, he argues, from deficits and debt to health care, financial services, declining standards of living and more, could not have happened under the original constitutional structure, faithfully interpreted in light of changed circumstances. It arose from a profound progressive break with the classical liberal tradition that guided the drafting and interpretation of the Constitution.

 

For the full lecture click here.

See also The Classical Liberal Constitution (1/2).

Copyright Troll Righthaven Sues Bloggers Over Content It Does Not Own

Righthaven, a litigation factory outfit targeting bloggers for publishing excerpts from Las Vegas Review-Journal, apparently does not have the legal standing to sue for infringement as they do not even own the copyright to the content they are suing bloggers over.

From Wired's Threat Level:

Copyright troll Righthaven told a federal judge Thursday that it has revised its contract with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to give it full copyright ownership over some of the newspapers’ content. It’s a bid to squelch a legal controversy over whether it has the right to sue bloggers who’ve quoted from the articles without permission.

Three decisions in the past week found that Righthaven, which has lodged more than 200 suits, never had standing to sue over content produced by Stephens Media publications, including the Review-Journal. In one ruling, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt dismissed Righthaven’s well-publicized case against the Democratic Underground blog, finding that Righthaven attempted to “manufacture” standing to sue. In that case, Democratic Underground was targeted for posting four paragraphs from a 34-paragraph story published by the paper.

Righthaven seems to have built a business model around suing bloggers in a bid to force them to settle. And for the most part, they have been successful. In light of this new development, however, the bloggers that had settled with Righthaven are now mulling legal action against the company.

Cross-posted to Jayel Aheram.

Capitalism in One Lesson

Thought-provoking in different ways to many of us, I am still not convinced of the Rothbardian idealism conveyed in the below excellent video: Capitalism in One Lesson. Like von Mises and Hayek, I consider a central coercive power indispensable. While its absence may be desirable, like pleasurable satiation by the mere inhalation of air, it is not feasible. Liberty, the best possible control and inhibition of illegitimate coercion among men, is akin to the efficiency of a capitalist economy - it is asymptotic, and never attainable in full and for good. In the course of improving efficiency, a free economy eliminates prior levels of efficiency that are being made obsolete by improvement. In this way, capitalism (i.e. the economy of a free society) is marvellous, but not perfect. However, capitalism is a whole lot better than attempts to substitute it by politics.

Liberty is a process of adaptation that changes the terms of adaptation under which it operates, so that conditions always prevail that require renewed adaptation rather than delivering a non-perfectible final outcome. Liberty is the precondition of the most advanced level of civilisation, precisely because it ensures the highest possible adaptability of humankind. Its economy is an open, self-metamorphosing system, i.e. ever open to new outcomes/forms of adaptation, like true science.

Liberty is perfectible but never perfect. This seems to hold true for one of its most fundamental desiderata: avoidance of coercion.

See also the motto of this blog.

From the below superb video outline of the economy of a free society:

Democracy [in it's present totalitarian form, G.T.] is not peaceful trading and sharing under property rights, but a forceful grab of security and arbitration in a certain area by a central power. Public voting then determines who makes and interprets the rules. So what happens is that everyone tries to use the rule making power of the state in their own advantage. It will be a constant push toward the erosion of the freedom to produce, own, trade, and act; and very little in way of holding it back.

Quote of text starting at time mark 7:26, and ending at 8:00.

Make sure to watch the 14 minute video in its entirety:

 

The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion

German newspaper Der Spiegel asks, "Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law?"

German authors during this period wrote ceaselessly. Around 14,000 new publications appeared in a single year in 1843. Measured against population numbers at the time, this reaches nearly today's level. And although novels were published as well, the majority of the works were academic papers.

The situation in England was very different. "For the period of the Enlightenment and bourgeois emancipation, we see deplorable progress in Great Britain," Höffner states.

Equally Developed Industrial Nation

Indeed, only 1,000 new works appeared annually in England at that time -- 10 times fewer than in Germany -- and this was not without consequences. Höffner believes it was the chronically weak book market that caused England, the colonial power, to fritter away its head start within the span of a century, while the underdeveloped agrarian state of Germany caught up rapidly, becoming an equally developed industrial nation by 1900.

Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development -- in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.

Ludwig von Mises - Telling It Like It Is

In his short article Ludwig von Mises: Setting the Record Straight, Mark W. Hendrickson not only accomplishes an admirable summary of large parts of von Mises work, he also aptly defends the Austrian thinker against the Etikettenschwindel (false labeling) that sadly is being committed by some of his most superb supporters.

... the strangest misconception today involves anarchism. One of my colleagues now avoids labeling himself an Austrian economist because his interlocutors then assume that he is an anarchist.

Mises, the definitive Austrian economist, rejected anarchism.

But today, Austrian economics and anarcho-capitalism are often regarded as two sides of the same coin. 

Here is Mises on anarchism:

Society cannot do without a social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, i.e. without state and government. The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, p. 90.

There are people who call government an evil, although a necessary evil.  However, what is needed in order to attain a definite end must not be called an evil ... Government may even be called the most beneficial of all earthly institutions as without it no peaceful human cooperation, no civilization and no moral life would be possible. Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 57.

Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. Liberalism, pp. 36-7.

Liberalism [in the European sense-the philosophy of free markets and limited government] differs radically from anarchism.  It has nothing in common with the absurd illusions of the anarchists... Liberalism is not so foolish as to aim at the abolition of the state. Omnipotent Government, p. 48

[Anarchists are] shallow-minded, dull, [and suffer from] illusions and self-deception. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, pp. 98-9.

How, then, did Austrian economics — and by extension, Ludwig von Mises — come to be painted with an anarchist brush? Ironically, from the success of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Lew Rockwell founded The Mises Institute in 1983. (I attended its inaugural dinner.) As the Institute evolved, it came to be dominated by Murray Rothbard. Rothbard's economic thought was derived from Mises, but his anarcho-capitalist political philosophy was drawn from other sources. The Mises Institute is doing a lot of excellent work in exposing the counterproductive nature of government intervention into economic matters. Indeed, I wish them continued success in their fight against economic illiberalism. In retrospect, though, it seems that there would be less confusion about Austrian/Misesian economics today if Rockwell had named his think-tank "The Rothbard Institute."  I think Mises would be disappointed that the institute named after him would be known as a center of anarchist thought, but what's done is done. I am sure that if Mises were here today, his energies would be focused on the fight for economic rationality — i.e., free markets — rather than defending his personal reputation. 

The source. 

Personally, I consider the anarchist deviation in libertarians a form of (largely unconscious) cowardice born from a hankering for an implied perfection that liberty will never be able to achieve. Liberty will always be a struggle for liberty, a very precarious struggle.

See also the motto of RedStateEclectic, which Laura, our wonderful hostess, has chosen so felicitously.

Copying Is Not Theft

A fun, remixed version of Nina Paley's song (and video) is on YouTube.

The video actually does a decent job explaining in layman's terms the concept of real property and how wrong-headed it is to apply it to intangible things like information.

The catchy lyrics somehow gets the point across that acquiring another person's scarce resources in form of tangible goods through coercion or fraud (the definition of theft) is not the same as making a copy of someone's photos of kittens and sunsets.

More

1. www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8JDEsfK6Qs&feature=response_...
2. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw-MFeR8Frw&feature=response_...

Bootleggers and Baptists

“Baptists” point to the moral high ground and give vital and vocal endorsement of laudable public benefits promised by a desired regulation. Baptists flourish when their moral message forms a visible foundation for political action.

“Bootleggers” are much less visible but no less vital. Bootleggers, who expect to profit from the very regulatory restrictions desired by Baptists, grease the political machinery with some of their expected proceeds. They are simply in it for the money.

The theory’s name draws on colorful tales of states’ efforts to regulate alcoholic beverages by banning Sunday sales at legal outlets. Baptists fervently endorsed such actions on moral grounds.

Bootleggers tolerated the actions gleefully because their effect was to limit competition.

It is worth noting that it is the details of a regulation that usually win the endorsement of bootleggers, not just the broader principle that may matter most to Baptists.

Thus, for instance, bootleggers would not support restrictions on the Sunday consumption of alcoholic beverages, although Baptists might. Bootleggers want to limit competition, not intake. Important to the theory is the notion that bootleggers can rely on Baptists to monitor enforcement of the restrictions that benefit bootleggers. [...]

B&B theory helps to explain how leaders of consumer groups help major pharmaceutical companies — the ones with approved chemical entities — by valiantly supporting a cautious FDA approval process.

The theory explains why holders of permits to produce and market EPA-approved insecticides value the efforts of environmental groups who oppose rule changes that facilitate the entry of new, and sometimes less risky, substitutes. Indeed, once the theory is explained, bootleggers and Baptists seem to come out of the woodwork. They are every where.

Perhaps we should expect no less. Political action, which by definition always serves some interest groups, requires politicians to appeal to popular icons. By making a “Baptist” appeal, the canny politician enables voters to feel better by endorsing socially accepted values in the voting booth.
 
The same politician, if he is adroit, also can enjoy the support of appreciative bootleggers in the costly struggle to hold office. Bootleggers and Baptists are part of the glue that binds the body politic.

The source.

Science a Public Good? Myths of Government Funding of Science

The British Libertarian Terence Kealey, Vice Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, on the myth of science being a public good and the concomitant "need" of government funding of science, as well as a number of related issues - with quite a lot of references to America and American history. Very stimulating. For those with a little time at hand and an interest in the subject-matter, it is well-worth watching the entire video - a lengthy piece of a little over 90 minutes, the lecture taking up the first 25 minutes, roughly.

Terence Kealey - 'The Myth of Science as a Public Good' from oxford libertarian on Vimeo.