A Stitch in Haste
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/
A collection of real-world libertarian, individualist and laissez-faire rants on policy, culture and other current events by an average, everyday lawyer & investment banker and part-time pop scholar.en-us2008-06-28T11:06+00:00Kip's Law Sighting: Ms. Maureen Felix of West Orange, New Jersey
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1209921244.shtml
And who, you might be wondering, is Ms. Maureen Felix of West Orange, New Jersey?...Kip2008-05-04T17:05+00:00
She holds the prestigious position of "random interviewee on the street" — and now seeks the higher office of your mommy:
The thought of taxing a Big Mac or a Wendy's burger came up at a New Jersey Hospital Association meeting where Gov. Jon S. Corzine was asked if it could be an option to help fund struggling hospitals. At the meeting, he reportedly called it a "constructive suggestion."
A spokesperson for the governor, however, told CBS 2 on Wednesday: "The governor is open to reasonable solutions to help solve our financing problems, but there are no plans for any fast food tax."
...
"I think this country has gone too much in the direction of fast and unhealthy food, and if people are taxed they may terminate that and turn toward more healthy foods," said West Orange resident Maureen Felix.
Of course, why anyone should give any kind of a damn what Ms. Maureen Felix of West Orange, New Jersey, thinks about whether fast food (defined how? by whom?) should be taxed (to what extent? with revenues deployed how?) — or about anything else, for that matter — remains unanswered. As does the precedent question of what basis a free society has in the first place for using taxation to control behavior rather than solely to raise revenue to fund legitimate public goods.
Because to nanny-staters, no such reason is required. Ms. Maureen Felix of West Orange, New Jersey, has an opinion, damn it. The fact that her opinion is baseless, uncorroborated, un-American, anti-freedom — not to mention mind-bogglingly stupid — in no way changes the fact that Ms. Maureen Felix of West Orange, New Jersey, has an opinion, damn it. What right do you have to mock it? And, more importantly, what right does a politician have to ignore it?
She is, after all, Ms. Maureen Felix of West Orange, New Jersey!
Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.
Via Fark. More thoughts at QandO.]]>Kip's Law Sighting: <i>Nudge</i> and the Fallacy of "Soft Paternalism"
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1208986046.shtml
Far too much cyber-ink is being spilled regarding a new book by a noted legal scholar, Cass Sunstein, and an equally noted economist, Richard Thaler, called Nudge....Kip2008-04-23T21:04+00:00Nudge.
An excerpt from the book's introduction:
Many of the policies we recommend can and have been implemented by the private sector (with or without a nudge from the government). Employers, for example, are important choice architects in many of the examples we discuss in this book. In areas involving health care and retirement plans, we think that employers can give employees some helpful nudges. Private companies that want to make money, and to do good, can even benefit from environmental nudges, helping to reduce air pollution (and the emission of greenhouse gases). But as we shall show, the same points that justify libertarian paternalism on the part of private institutions apply to government as well.
The premise of Nudge, usually referred to as "soft paternalism" (or, outrageously, "libertarian paternalism") can be summed up with great ease:
You're stupid.
If "stupid" seems too harsh a word, then substitute "irrational."
You're irrational, for example, because you don't max out or even contribute at all to your 401(k) plan, even if your employer matches your contributions. You're irrational because you don't sign your organ donor card. You're irrational because you make all kinds of choices that are "wrong."
What (supposedly) makes Sunstein and Thaler different from any other two-bit hubris-drenched central planner wannabe is that they claim to define "wrong" not by their own subjective tastes and preferences, but by objective standards. To ignore a costless opportunity to get free money is, they submit, objectively irrational. To deny some innocent person access to your organs after you're dead is, they submit, objectively irrational. And so on.
What also (supposedly) makes Sunstein and Thaler different is that they claim not to want to coerce anybody to behave rationally. They do not want to force you to enroll in your 401(k) plan. They do not want to seize your body after you die. All they want is to rejigger the rules a bit so that you do not have to "choose to be rational" (e.g., by having to opt in to a 401(k) plan) but rather that you would have to "choose to be irrational" (e.g., by having to opt out of your 401(k) plan). Yes, they're going to be paternalistic toward you, but not at the point of a gun.
All they want to do is "nudge" you.
What of course does not make Sunstein and Thaler different, meanwhile, is that they want to be ones doing the nudging. Kip's Law prevails yet again.
Two things amaze me about the excessive hype over Nudge. First, it seems to me that the book's thesis is, at the end of the day, its own worst enemy. A complex, dual-disciplined (i.e., law and economics) theory that, when put to the test, can only generate a handful of de minimis policy recommendations — default opt-in to 401(k) plans, a presumption of consent in organ donation, etc. — can hardly be described as revolutionary — or, for that matter, useful. To the extent that the soft paternalists truthfully say, "this far, no further" (i.e., to the extent they are eager to assure us that their proposals are "no big deal"), then they only win by losing. If the debate is simply whether the entry for "soft paternalism" should read, "harmless" or "mostly harmless,"* then the soft paternalists have lost that debate before they've even started.
Second, and far more relevant in the context of Kip's Law, is that the debate is definitely not between "harmless" and "mostly harmless." No activist legislator, nanny-stater or other anti-freedom malcontent is going to take a theory like "soft paternalism" and invoke it only in the context of 401(k) plans and organ donation. Even if all you promise to do is "nudge," then suddenly you're going to start seeing lots of things that need "nudging."
The tax code is one giant nudge: nudging us into home ownership, child rearing, charitable donating, etc. Apologists for Social Security insist that it is merely a "nudge" into saving for retirement (indeed, Thaler was a leading advisor to President Bush on Social Security reform). Hillary Clinton insists that she is not a health care socialist — she just wants to "nudge" us into (compulsory) insurance programs (which, somehow, does not constitute "socialized medicine" — but that's a whole other blogpost).
Practically any incursion into personal autonomy can be repackaged as a "nudge" — from seat belt laws to the war on drugs. Some anti-liberty laws are "nudgier" than others, to be sure. But all derive from a belief that the government is legitimately authorized not just to protect us from each other, but also to protect us from ourselves — to "nudge" us.
Mario Rizzo, a noted free-market economist at NYU, puts this in terms of "slippery slopes" —
The new paternalism claims that careful policy interventions can help people make better decisions in terms of their own welfare, with only mild or nonexistent infringement of personal autonomy and choice. This claim to moderation is not sustainable. Applying the insights of the modern literature on slippery slopes to new paternalist policies suggests that such policies are particularly vulnerable to expansion. This is true even if policymakers are fully rational. More importantly, the slippery-slope potential is especially great if policymakers are not fully rational, but instead share the behavioral and cognitive biases attributed to the people their policies are supposed to help. Accepting the new paternalist approach creates a risk of accepting, in the long run, greater restrictions on individual autonomy than have been heretofore acknowledged.
Or you can just "opt out" of Rizzo and "opt in" to Lewis Black: Government is human beings.
Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.
---
(*Explanation, for the uninitiated, here.)]]>"Comment Left Elsewhere" of the Day
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1208703046.shtml
A libertarian relegates himself — and all his confreres — to the (supposedly noble) role of court jester:...Kip2008-04-21T12:04+00:00court jester:
So maybe the moral question isn't, what use can libertarians be to liberals, but what use can libertarians be to anybody? We are not going to bring about either a minarchist or anarcho-capitalist society anytime soon, where "soon" can be translated as ever. Truth be told, I'm not convinced that a purely minarchist society would be all that great to live in. As for anarcho-capitalism, I think even a lot of an-caps agree that it requires a long-term project of learning how to live that way as society. I think libertarians are, rather, the court jesters of politics. I mean that in a good way. We whisper to Caesar that that he is mortal. We caper about, turning ourselves blue if necessary, reminding everyone that government power is inescapably violent and inescapably self-interested. You're probably not going to care, but we're going to make you actively decide not to care. And sometimes, maybe you'll care after all. As a class, we can be stupendously silly people, believing and saying the most absurd things. But our rulers are silly people too, in different and more malignant ways. And as fools, we have the freedom to say so.
I would have preferred "Don Quixote" to "court jester." Just as inaccurate, but less insulting.
As I commented at the blog that brought this "stupendously silly" post to my attention:
This is the classic anti-libertarian straw man argument. How sad to see it come from a self-professed "libertarian."
Not all policies are binary; indeed almost none are.
Libertarians can argue for, work for, and achieve incremental change, not just asymptotic (i.e., never-achievable) "ideal states."
Maybe we can't ever bring about "separation of economy and state" — but we can bring about deregulation of this industry or that.
Maybe we can't ever bring about a taxless society — but we can bring about lower tax rates based solely on funding legitimate public goods rather than on controlling behavior or bringing about somebody else's subjective notions of "social justice."
Maybe we can't ever bring about perfect individual autonomy — but we can show why the war on drugs is a disaster and work towards its curtailment.
Maybe we can't ever bring about the abolition of the public square (or public schools), but we can keep the theocrats from turning them into their auxiliary pulpits.
One final thought: Libertarians don't need, either morally or pragmatically, to win over a single voter or politician — just judges (compare Lawrence v. Texas to Kelo v. New London). And, net-net, we're pretty good at that (not infallible, but pretty good).
This (utterly libertarian) framework is both legal and just — and why, in the very long run at least, libertarians tend to win.
It's quite simple really: Ignoring futility is not a virtue. But libertarianism is not futile.]]>Are We Heading Toward Socialized Medicine? (Part Two)
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1208517618.shtml
Homeowners insurance is a truly private market. Anyone screeching about a "homeowners insurance crisis"?...Kip2008-04-18T11:04+00:00
Auto insurance is not quite a truly private market, but it's light-years beyond health insurance. People may grumble about their car insurance, but at least it's a competitive industry (just ask Dennis Haysbert, or the gecko) where people can switch carriers with relative ease and choose from a variety of options that best suits their individual needs.*
The only people who have anything remotely similar to "private health insurance," meanwhile, are the self-employed. They too are affected by the tax code (which is why they are not part of the "5%" the Urban Institute mentions), but at least they enjoy the flexibility to make their own insurance decisions and comparison shop for coverage that they most prefer.
Medicare, on the other hand, is a financial disaster in which the working poor pay the health care costs of the retired rich — this incidentally somehow constitutes being "progressive." The truly enlightened approach — taxpayers providing basic health care to the incompetent and indigent as part of a humane social safety net — is already in place via Medicaid (assisted by not-for-profit institutions and private charity). To the extent that Medicaid is not covering everyone and everything it should, then let's expand it (unlike the Democrats' recent despicable SCHIP fraud, expanding Medicaid would not send most libertarians to the barricades). If most libertarians, provided with persuasive evidence of its propriety, would be okay with simply expanding Medicaid, then why is it such an abominable concept for the "socially concerned" radical left (whom, recall, universally insist that "compassionate libertarianism" is an oxymoron)?
One way or the other, let's not pretend that there is a universal "right to suck at the taxpayer teat" cloaked as a "right to health care." And let's certainly not pretend that the current system is a "private market" or that its shortcomings are a "market failure."
---
*Note, however, the insolent lie that health care socialists use about how "we mandate that people have auto insurance." What "we" mandate in most states is that people have liability coverage, to prevent innocent third parties from incurring the costs of a motorist's negligence. But private health insurance is not analogous to liability coverage — it's analogous to collision coverage: insulating you from your own costs, not someone else's. I am not aware of any jurisdiction that requires motorists to carry collision coverage. In that sense — the only sense that matters — auto insurance is indeed a "truly private market." (As for the follow-up lie that health insurance is indeed analogous to liability coverage, because "we all pay for the uninsured" — see this post.)
Note also that "auto insurance" does not cover routine maintenance, and certainly not gas & tolls. Yet what we call "health care insurance" — which as Arnold Kling has noted is really "health cost insulation" — does include routine (and perhaps not so routine) "maintenance" expenses such as annual physicals, flu shots and disease tests. This removal of direct payment for direct service is yet another reason why health care expenses are rising disproportionately and why the current system is hardly a "truly private market."]]>What Separates Bloomberg from Chavez and Mugabe?
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1208106085.shtml
Possibly not much:...Kip2008-04-13T19:04+00:00Possibly not much:
A source with close ties to the administration says the mayor wants to remain in public office after his tenure ends on Dec. 31, 2009, and is discussing running for a third term.
...
One tantalizing scenario that has been discussed, according to the source, has Bloomberg asking a new Charter Revision Commission to put a referendum on the ballot amending term limits so that he could serve a third term.
...
Bloomberg said during his January State of the City address that he planned to appoint the new Charter Revision Commission and have it conduct a top-to-bottom review of government. He would appoint all members of the commission and could request the body put the term-limit issue on the November ballot.
Another "source" says the report is nonsense. Let's hope so.
Even if the report is bunk, what is undeniably true is that Bloomberg is as megalomaniacal a moral defective as anyone in current American politics. If he does not seek a third term, or the White House, or the governor's mansion, it would not be due to a lack of appetite for power on his part.
From his first day in office, Bloomberg has proceeded from the dual premises (to him, they're axioms) that: (1) every idea he has is, by definition, brilliant; and (2) everyone who disagrees with him is, by definition, a moron. He has, more brazenly than any currently serving politician I can name, simultaneously climbed the twin summits of "worst activist legislator" and "worst nanny-stater." He has set entirely new standards of hubris, by which every future moral defective New York politician will be measured.
As joyous a day as January 20, 2009, will be, I am at least as excited about January 1, 2010, when Bloomberg will (hopefully) morph from "dedicated public servant" to "dedicated public gadfly."]]>What is the "Job of Modern Finance"?
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1207785711.shtml
Robert J. Samuelson proffers one typically collectivist answer:...Kip2008-04-10T00:04+00:00typically collectivist answer:
Except for oil executives, no group of business leaders is now more resented than the titans of finance — bankers, traders, hedge fund managers. They are blamed for the housing crisis, global financial turmoil and a possible recession. But this broad indictment, though true, is only half the story. The job of modern finance is to allocate Americans' nearly $2 trillion in annual savings to its most productive uses; the paradox of finance is that its virtues and vices come tightly packaged together.
This is, of course, utter nonsense.
The "job" of modern finance is the same as any other industry's "job" — to provide a good or service that customers want. Whether that good or service (i.e., the supply) or customers' desire for it (i.e., the demand) are more or less (or not at all) "productive" is completely beside the point.
The "job" of a food company (or especially a restaurant) is not necessarily "to allocate food to its most productive uses." The "job" of a food company (or very especially a restaurant) is to satisfy customers. "Productivity" (defined however you like) is secondary at best.
So too with "modern finance" — and every other sector in a capitalist (i.e., free) economy: Who wants what, who is willing to provide it, and can they be brought together in voluntary exchange? All else is economic detritus.
If competent consenting adults wanted to take on risky levels of mortgage debt, and if banks and other institutions wanted to loan them the funds to do so, and if other companies wanted to buy up those risky mortgages and package them into complicated (and risky) securities, and if institutional investors wanted to buy those complicated (and risky) securities — then "modern finance" did exactly what it was supposed to do. The fact that so many of these voluntary transactions turned out to be unwise, unprofitable and even calamitous — i.e., if they turned out not to be the "most productive uses" — is not the point. People sought, as is their right in a free society, to take big gambles. The fact that they lost does not constitute a "market failure." Indeed, the exact opposite is true.
There are footnotes, to be sure. Where there was fraud (e.g., predatory borrowers who lied on their mortgage applications in order to exploit lenders), then free markets can indeed be impeded. Such anti-capitalist endeavors were, one could say, an "unproductive allocation of resources." Point conceded.
But that kind of risk is also nothing unique to "modern finance." Unscrupulous sellers — and buyers — try to exploit each other all the time. And in response, we have developed a combination of tort, contract and criminal law to constrain them — glued together by the (capitalist) concept of "due diligence" (i.e., the self-imposed vigilance expected of competent consenting adults in a free society). This system provides all the protection one ought to need.
For the government or its central planner / nanny state apologists to attempt more (bailouts, recisions of contracts, tax breaks, etc.) confuses the orthogonal notions of "market failure" and "market participant failure." The subprime fiasco is strictly a case of the latter; to treat it as the former will only result in the wrong cures being applied to the wrong illness.]]>Kip's Law Sighting: Must Every Private Transaction Have a "Public Use"?
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1207707613.shtml
To review: Regardless of what one thinks of the propriety of the government blocking strictly private employment contracts between competent consenting adults at the lower end of the work spectrum...Kip2008-04-09T02:04+00:00review: Regardless of what one thinks of the propriety of the government blocking strictly private employment contracts between competent consenting adults at the lower end of the work spectrum (i.e., minimum wage laws), the arguments for such incursions upon freedom of contract have exactly zero relevance to the upper end of the work spectrum. Stated differently, malcontents need an alternative rationalization for their disturbed voyeurism regarding "excessive" executive compensation ("Excessive"? To whom? By what standard?)
For some among the hubris class, the the latest fashionable rationalization is the fiction of "rising income inequality." (A fiction, as I explained recently, because income percentiles are not constant over time -- today's "top 1%" are neither yesterday's "top 1%" nor tomorrow's "top 1%," and likewise for the "bottom 20%.")
Others are less creative and just flat out claim the prerogative to subject all transactions to mob veto because -- well, because it's the mob:
Net income at Office Depot fell 23 percent last year compared with 2006; its share price fell 64 percent. Steve Odland, its chief, made nearly $18 million all told -- some 85 percent more than in 2006. With the share price of Toll Brothers, the luxury home builder, plummeting, it seems reasonable that Robert Toll, its chief, got no bonus. Still, the company took steps to ensure that he gets one this year, even if home-building doesn't recover.
It's hard to square the conceit that chief executives are rewarded for improving companies' performance with the fact that chiefs at 10 financial-services firms in the study made $320 million last year, even as their banks reported mortgage-related losses of $55 billion.
Of course, it's only "hard to square the conceit" of what other people make when you try to square it in the first place. And you only try to square it when you suffer from some ignoble mixture of envy and schadenfreude. It's one thing to feel compassion for the less fortunate; it's another thing altogether to loathe the more fortunate.
It's quite simple really: If you are uncomfortable or indignant about what the CEOs of Office Depot and Toll Brothers are paid, then don't invest in Office Depot or Toll Brothers. Don't work there. Don't shop there. But don't project your fiscal sociopathy onto others and pretend that you're not the one with an pathological fixation on something that is, literally, none of your business.
More:
In any case, the combination of inexorable income growth at the very apex of society and stagnation everywhere else can serve no public good.
The Bush administration has focused its economic policies on cutting taxes for the very richest Americans. Taxation needs urgently to become more progressive. If the United States is to continue to embrace globalization, technological innovation and other forces that contribute to economic growth, it has to share the spoils better.
One wonders how to say this any more remedially: Private contracts do not need to serve a "public good." Person A paying, out of his own pocket, Person B a sum that Person C happens thinks is "too high" is not an "externality," and Person C has no right, either alone or ganging up with his neighbors, to block or punish that transaction.
The rest is just flat-out lying: The Bush tax cuts did not benefit "the rich" at the expense of "the poor" and the federal income tax is already obscenely progressive. The data are what they are; wishing they were "oppressive" does not make them so.
(One might also note -- since the Times can't be bothered -- that Internal Revenue Code Section 162(m) already disallows the deduction of salaries above $1 million as a business expense for publicly traded corporations -- a figure which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been adjusted for inflation. Such salaries are therefore double-taxed much as corporate dividends are double-taxed. At some point "punitive" tax policy -- which is abhorrent enough -- becomes downright sadistic tax policy. Except to the Times -- for which too much bloodsucking is never enough.
---
I find it laughably ironic, incidentally, that someone at the Times chose the headline "Corporate Croesus" for this silly editorial. For those not in the know:
Croesus consulted the oracle of Delphi in Greece. The oracle replied: "If Croesus goes to war he will destroy a great empire." So Croesus went out to meet the army of Cyrus and was utterly defeated, he destroyed his own great empire.
Leave it to the Times not to understand the difference between capitalism and warfare, between an entrepreneur and an emperor, between selling and plundering, between the civility of private contracts and the barbarism of mob rule.
More:
The old story goes on to relate that Cyrus ordered Croesus to be burned alive. When Croesus saw the flames creeping upward to consume him, he remembered the words of the wise Solon and cried out, "O Solon! Solon! Solon!" Supposedly Cyrus was so moved by the story of how Solon had warned the proud king that he ordered Croesus to be released. Cyrus asked to Croesus why he shouted Solon's name, and Croesus asked him another question "what your soldiers are doing now?", showing the Persian soldiers taking all the treasures and destroying everything; Cyrus replied "They are plundering your city"; then Croesus said "They are not plundering my city, it's your city now and your soldiers are destroying your city". After that short conversation Cyrus the Great stopped his soldiers.
The worst thing that can ever happen to an advocate of central planning is to actually become a central planner. For when they do, then learn the hard way that there is indeed a difference between building a business and seizing it, between running a firm and controlling it, between making something and stealing something.]]>Hoki, Hoki, Happy, Hour
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1207272512.shtml
Just a quick pass-long so Tony doesn't get upset with me:...Kip2008-04-04T01:04+00:00pass-long so Tony doesn't get upset with me:
A federal magistrate has overturned Virginia's decades-old ban on alcohol-related advertising in college newspapers, saying that the law violates the student publications' constitutional right to free speech.
U.S. Magistrate Judge M. Hannah Lauck sided with the student newspapers at the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, which said the restrictions on alcohol references -- including phrases such as "happy hour" -- in print and online media hampered their ability to make money because they've had to turn down potential advertisers.
My long-standing view is unchanged: Truthful commercial advertising should enjoy full First Amendment protection on a par with political speech. The fact that these are college media outlets is utterly irrelevant.
Also irrelevant is the notion that bars or breweries have no "need" to advertise (e.g., via college publications or websites). Such arrogant micromanaging conveniently blanks out the fact that there are students (or graduate students or employees or whoever) who are over 21, not to mention the lack of any evidence whatsoever to suggest that advertising a happy hour "worsens" alcohol abuse, intoxication-catalyzed crime or injury, or any other purported "social harm." (And even if it did, so what? The First Amendment ought not yield so impotently to dubious alcohol-related "externalities" any more than it ought yield to dubious pornography-related "externalities.")
The case is Educational Media Company v. Swecker, No. 3:06CV396 (E.D. Va., March 31, 2008) (PDF - 36 pages)]]>Activist Legislators: Another Call to Ban Anonymous Internet Posting
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1205234477.shtml
"Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."...Kip2008-03-11T11:03+00:00
--McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995)
Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal.
The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site. Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.
If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.
One wonders what goes through the minds of hillbilly legislators when they proclaim their idiocy to the world in this manner. One wonders how such people figure out which shoe goes on which foot. (Do they even wear shoes in Kentucky?)
One can I suppose forgive Mr. Couch for not being an attorney, but can one really forgive him for not asking an attorney whether anonymous speech (such as, e.g., The Federalist Papers) is protected by the First Amendment? Or whether the question of anonymous Internet posting has been previously addressed? Or can one really forgive him for not taking all of ten seconds, four words and Google to find his own answer?
And, most importantly, can one forgive him for not giving a damn one way or the other? He had a jackass proposal tailored to his jackass constituents. What does the Constitution have to have do with it, right?
Just another hard-working day for another hard-working politician. Unfortunately.
(Via Slashdot.)]]>Homeschooling and <i>Pierce</i> as Sword Rather than Shield
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1204982313.shtml
As often heretofore pointed out, rights guaranteed by the Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which has no reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the state. The...Kip2008-03-08T13:03+00:00As often heretofore pointed out, rights guaranteed by the Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which has no reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the state. The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.
--Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925)
Some commentators, not unreasonably, are pointing out that the decision by a California intermediate appeals court finding that there is no "right to uncredentialed homeschooling" is actually based on long-standing precedent, including Pierce v. Society of Sisters, quoted and hyperlinked above.
So, I'm not sure what all the uproar is about, at least in terms of the legal issues. The Supreme Court made this determination in 1925.
The "uproar," as I explained in a comment at that blog, is as follows:
Are you suggesting that Supreme Court decisions are never wrong or outrageous?
And, incidentally, your reading of Pierce is itself wrong. It did not explicitly hold there is "no right to homeschool." It held that a state may "require that all children of proper age attend some school." The notion that (acceptable) homeschooling is not "some school" is a novel and controversial interpretation.
Given that Pierce is widely considered to be one of the first "substantive due process" cases, it is hardly surprising that libertarians are aghast at seeing it now used as a sword against parental autonomy. It would be akin to suggesting that Roe v. Wade authorized state laws requiring compulsory abortions.
Again, the question, properly framed, is not whether states should have the power to ban homeschooling, but instead what authority states should have to prevent bad homeschooling, with "bad" determined on a case-by-case basis in the same way that the state intervenes in matters of child abuse or neglect.]]>California Court: No Right to Homeschool
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1204928335.shtml
As someone who has been warning my fellow libertarians for some time now about not being too absolutist in insisting that there is an unlimited right of parents to homeschool...Kip2008-03-07T22:03+00:00warning my fellow libertarians for some time now about not being too absolutist in insisting that there is an unlimited right of parents to homeschool their children, I felt an especial sense of Whoa! upon hearing that an intermediate appeals court in California held that there is no right whatsoever to home school and that non-credentialed homeschooling can even be prosecuted as a criminal act:
The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home.
...
"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. "Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling under the provisions of these laws." Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.
...
The ruling was applauded by a director for the state's largest teachers union.
I have no doubt of that last sentence.
It is a fine line (or a massive chasm, depending on your point of view) between insisting, as I do, that there is no right to badly homeschool your child and this court's ruling that there is no right to homeschool whatsoever. Regardless, I do not think it is a line that can be crossed.
The authority to regulate homeschooling derives from the obligation of the government to protect the incompetent -- in this case minor children. To homeschool poorly is simply a variation of child neglect -- malnutrition of the mind, if you will. Indeed, this particular court case began not as a homeschooling charge but as a physical abuse complaint.
But child neglect, like any other offense against another person, should have to be proven on a case-by-case basis. To adopt a bright-line rule that any homeschooling is "bad" homeschooling is arbitrary, irrational -- and likely an unconstitutional violation of due process. Even in the knowledge that some homeschooling will be bad homeschooling, the state should be required to demonstrate that a particular parent is failing to properly homeschool a particular child, just as it should be required to demonstrate that a particular parent is neglecting or abusing a particular child.*
(Indeed, the court addressed this question and preposterously dismissed it: "It is unreasonably difficult and expensive for a state to supervise parents who instruct children in their homes." Facts to support that outlandish, sweeping and conclusory assertion: none.)
The only three explanations for a bright-line rule criminalizing all non-credentialed homeschooling are: (a) intellectual laziness by legislators and judges; (b) budgetary stinginess by the government, or (c) pandering to teacher unions. But not "the best interests of the child." That is the one factor that ought to trump all else and demand a (rebuttable) presumption of propriety regarding homeschooling.
*Regarding this "particular parent failing to properly homeschool this particular child," the record should reflect that it was indeed a case of radical fundamentalist Christians trying to provide a typical (i.e., redacted, inadequate and incorrect) "Bible-based" pseudo-education of the kind I have warned about. Indeed, it was the children themselves who sued to be removed from their abusive (but "Christian") parents and thereby receive a bona fide education (with fewer beatings in the process).]]>The Other Tragedy of the Commons
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1204770263.shtml
You all know the primary Tragedy of the Commons. When property is owned publicly, or its use is subsidized such that the price to use it is artificially low or...Kip2008-03-06T02:03+00:00Tragedy of the Commons. When property is owned publicly, or its use is subsidized such that the price to use it is artificially low or even zero, it will be overused. If no one owns the meadow and if everyone may freely graze their cows on it, then the meadow will be overgrazed to everyone's detriment.
But there is another Tragedy of the Commons: When property is managed publicly, it will often be underused. The politician or bureaucrat responsible for managing the commons may decide, rationally or irrationally, that sheep should be kept off the commons, or that a new and improved variety of grass should not be planted on it, or that the meadow should be off limits on Sundays, or that gay weddings can't be performed on it, etc.
Want to browse Vanity Fair magazine on the Denver airport's free Wi-Fi system? Sorry. You'll have to buy it at the newsstand, because DIA's Internet filter blocks Vanity Fair as "provocative."
You can't get to the popular gossip column perezhilton.com on DIA's Wi-Fi signal, either. Or the hipster-geek favorite boingboing.net. Or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit photos, even though the magazine's bare-breasted cover shot is on prominent display at airport stores, right next to Penthouse and Hustler.
...
[Airport bureaucrats] say they're using prudent judgment in a public, family-friendly atmosphere.
Of course, one bureaucrat's "prudent judgment" is another bureaucrat's "too prudent" and yet another's "not prudent enough." Such is always the case with hopelessly vague and subjective terms such as "prudent" (or, worse, "provocative").
So, in this instance of the "secondary" Tragedy of the Commons, "not free, but unlimited" has been replaced, not with "free and unlimited" but rather with "free, but limited." And arbitrarily limited at that. That's not a per se improvement; it's merely exchanging one constraint for another -- at the whim of a low-level bureaucrat.
An airport may well be a natural monopoly that is best owned publicly. The same cannot be said for wi-fi (which, since it is perfectly excludable, is never a public good). Even wi-fi at a public airport is not a public good. To avoid the secondary Tragedy of the Commons, the Denver airport should stick to its knitting and leave the wi-fi business to bona fide businesses.
---
Incidentally, here is Exhibit A, back from 2006.]]>More on "Libertarian Civil Disobedience"
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1204249141.shtml
The EconLog post on why libertarians seem so willing to submit to government excesses and abuses, to which I blogged a reply seems to have legs....Kip2008-02-29T01:02+00:00EconLog post on why libertarians seem so willing to submit to government excesses and abuses, to which I blogged a reply seems to have legs.
There is of course a third way [as opposed to submission or civil disobedience]: to sue, hopefully before "activist judges" who understand their solemn constitutional duty to thwart the tyranny of the majority.
Civil disobedience? We can't even get people to check "No" on the $3 Presidential Campaign Fund box on tax returns.
Also, I would submit (sorry, poor word choice) that the Taser and the increasingly lax standards by which its use is considered appropriate have made traditional 1960s-style civil disobedience difficult if not impossible.
Discuss.]]>Randle McMurphy v. Ennis Del Mar
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1204119574.shtml
"If you can't fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it."...Kip2008-02-27T13:02+00:00"If you can't fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it."
--Brokeback Mountain
Arnold Kling wonders whether libertarians who "agree" to live in high-tax, high-regulation, anti-freedom regimes aren't a bit like the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Kling recalls the scene in which the protagonist, Randle McMurphy, is shocked (sorry, poor word choice) — um, surprised to learn that his fellow confinees are self-admitted and can simply flee the cruel, sadistic tyranny of Nurse Ratched any time they like.
Somehow, I thought there was a connection between that scene and libertarians complaining about the decline of the U.S. Constitution while showing a revealed preference for living with the abuses of power that take place.
My response at that blog:
Huh? How is "libertarians don't riot in the streets" (or move to — um, where?) a revealed preference to anything?
The correct analogy would be if Nurse Ratched showed up uninvited at a libertarian's home, ordered him to lose weight, throw out his porn, use compact fluorescent bulbs and pay for her mother's pension and eldercare, and then he said, "Eh, who cares?"
But of course that wouldn't happen. The libertarian would act — because he could.
Compliance at the point of a gun is not "revealing a preference" for being robbed.
Who's right: Me or Kling?
---
Another commenter at Kling's post:
There are some choices that libertarians can make. They can move to places that are more libertarian. Move from New York to Wyoming, for example.
Second, why is it the burden of libertarians to "pack up and move" whenever their rights are infringed? A prerogative, perhaps, but not a burden. And how is choosing not to do so an indication of some contrived libertarian "hypocrisy" or "moral failing" or "revealed preference"?
]]>Linkfest: Ministry of Silly Balks
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1203173640.shtml
My aggregator is clogged with all kinds of silly from all over the world --...Kip2008-02-16T14:02+00:00 ITEM: Sydney, Australia, bans peanut butter sandwiches from government buildings under the (absolutely false) theory that the peanut-allergic can have anaphylactic attacks from merely smelling peanuts.
ITEM: A Swedish daycare center bans polka dot clothing because one employee claims it gives her migraines. All children give me migraines -- can we just ban them outright?
ITEM: Actually, maybe we can. A commentator in the U.K. proposes compulsory temporary sterilization of adolescent girls. Because three generations of imbeciles chavs are enough (but £12.8 million of British taxpayer money to "promote" long-term contraception for teens apparently is not enough -- go figure).
ITEM: Maybe the British nanny-staters can fund that £12.8 million via their other new proposal, a £10 per person smoker's permit. (Then again, this is the country that requires you to buy a permit to watch television, so perhaps this somehow seems perfectly reasonable to them.)
ITEM: China's Communist authoritarians ban horror movies. Which somehow makes them believers in "free markets" who "only" [sic!] censor political dissent.
ITEM: Quebec orders an Irish pub in Montreal to take down its English-language antique Guinness posters (which, as with my apartment, are decorations and not menus).
ITEM: A British gambling addict is suing his bookmakers for -- gasp! -- taking his bets (his losing bets, obviously). I'm not aware of any scenario in which there is a legally cognizable duty not to do business with someone simply because he previously asked you not to. Then again, this is the U.K.
ITEM: At least that British gambler is only suing for £2 million and not $54 million, like Lost Laptop Lady. (For those who have forgotten the relevance of $54 million.)
ITEM: Don't forget the "Barefoot and Pregnant Tax."]]>On the Jarvik - Lipitor Debate
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1202736664.shtml
I am on record as advocating full First Amendment protection for truthful commercial advertising (today such advertising enjoys only partial constitutional protection -- see Central Hudson Gas v. Public...Kip2008-02-11T13:02+00:00on record as advocating full First Amendment protection for truthful commercial advertising (today such advertising enjoys only partial constitutional protection -- see Central Hudson Gas v. Public Service Commission, 447 U.S. 557 (1980)).
I am also on record, however, as not being too concerned, qua libertarian, with government licensing of the true professions -- law, medicine, accounting, veterinary, etc. (I redeem myself, however, by concurring that hair-braiding, pedicabbing and casket-selling are not "professions" and should not be subject to licensing.)
Dr. Robert Jarvik is best known for the artificial heart he pioneered more than a quarter-century ago. Since then he had toiled in relative obscurity -- until he began appearing in television ads two years ago for the Pfizer cholesterol drug Lipitor.
The ads have depicted him, among other outdoorsy pursuits, rowing a one-man racing shell swiftly across a mountain lake. "When diet and exercise aren't enough, adding Lipitor significantly lowers cholesterol," Dr. Jarvik says in the ad.
...
A Congressional committee, concerned that the Lipitor ads could be misleading, has said it wants to interview Dr. Jarvik about his role as the drug's pitchman.
Some of the questions may involve his credentials. Even though Dr. Jarvik holds a medical degree, for example, he is not a cardiologist and is not licensed to practice medicine. So what, critics ask, qualifies him to recommend Lipitor on television -- even if, as he says in some of the ads, he takes the drug himself?
And, for that matter, what qualifies him to pose as a rowing enthusiast? As it turns out, Dr. Jarvik, 61, does not actually practice the sport. The ad agency hired a stunt double for the sculling scenes.
Another report indicates that Pfizer is paying Jarvik $1.35 million to serve as "Dr. Lipitor."
Some hasty stitches:
--The fake sculling is obnoxious. Point conceded. Is it fraudulent as a matter of law? Probably not.
--Indeed, there is apparently not one expressly false statement in the ads. Jarvik does have an M.D. degree; his father did die of heart disease; he did invent an artificial heart; he does take Lipitor. He never says he is a cardiologist; indeed he never says he is licensed to practice.
--Meanwhile, it was the private sector -- media watchdog groups, medical bloggers, etc. (not to mention rowers) -- who caught Pfizer's maneuver and called them out on it. Isn't the current paradigm of "design and run your ads as you see fit, but be ready to defend them against critical reviewers" better than requiring that they be subjected to a censor panel -- or banning them outright? Throw out the whole barrel because of a few rotten apples?
--Most importantly in my view, Jarvik never "recommends" Lipitor. Indeed, these direct-to-consumer ("DTC") ads never recommend anything other than, "Ask you doctor whether Kipitor is right for you." So the idea that Jarvik, or any other non-licensed non-physician, should be blocked as a matter of law from serving as a paid spokesperson for a drug is untenable, in my opinion.
--Lipitor is hardly new; point conceded. But I personally (i.e., in a strictly non-central-planner way) think it's great that pharmaceutical companies can tell people directly that there is a new statin, or incontinence drug or arthritis treatment that they should ask their doctor about.
Bottom Line: Knowledge is power. In more ways than one.]]>Kip's Law Sighting: Professor Charles Handy
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1202357044.shtml
"Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality...Kip2008-02-07T13:02+00:00"Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality."
--Peter Drucker
Usually I have to put in a least at little effort to explain why an article demonstrates Kip's Law. Rarely does the central planning advocate do so much of the work for me:
Now that I am living for a while in California, I am staggered by the amount of "unnecessary things" that I see in the malls that dot the suburbs. America is no different from anywhere else, of course — just more so.
The conundrum is this: All that stuff creates jobs — making it, promoting it, selling it. It's literally the stuff of growth. What I'd love to ask Peter Drucker is: How do you grow an economy without the jobs and taxes that these unnecessary things produce?
...
The market, unfortunately, does not differentiate between good and bad. If the people want junk, the market will provide. So we have to fall back on the conscience of our business leaders.
The most depressing thing about this quote was that it was written by a professor of business, who even founded a business school (albeit a British business school) and who is now a visiting professor at the Drucker School of Business.
You've read enough Kip's Law Sightings to connect the dots without much help from me:
--"Unnecessary"? To whom, by what standard?
--"Good and bad"? By what criteria?
--"Junk"? Defined how?
--"Conscience"? Critiqued how?
The answers will come, of course, from Professor Handy himself. By his standards. According to his criteria. As defined by him. In accord with his conscience.
Why? Because he's just so much smarter than you.
What a betrayal of Drucker's ideas this visitor at the school named for him is spewing out. All that "unnecessary junk" in suburban California malls is there precisely because it is neither "unnecessary" nor "junk." It is there because customers find use for it (i.e., they value it). The fact that you, or I, or Handy, might not understand this valuing of particular goods by our fellow consumers is utterly without consequence. Any other metric or methodology for measuring material value (i.e., the "worth of a good") other than "it sells; people buy it" relies on some combination of hubris, context-dropping or outright delusion.
Peter Drucker became famous for his study of General Motors. I'll instead use Ford — specifically, the famous (but not entirely truthful) Henry Ford quote regarding the Model T: "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."
In fact, the Model T was, at least in some years, available in several colors. But Ford was indeed reluctant to adapt the design of the vehicle itself. He thought that the Model T was "all the car a person would, or could, ever need." His competitors, offering products with more features and comforts, proved him wrong. The Model T lost market share throughout the 1920s and production was halted in 1927. In the arrogant mindset of Henry Ford (or Charles Handy) we should be driving (black) Model T's to this day — rather than the "unnecessary junk" now on the roads.
A person's legitimate moral authority to declare something "unnecessary junk" ends with the decision not to buy it himself. Anything more — calls for regulating it, taxing it, banning it — based solely on one's own subjective determination that it is "unnecessary junk" — is a denial of the entire science of economics.
Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.]]>Is There Really a "Too Fat to Eat Out" Bill in Mississippi?
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1201840257.shtml
Sometimes politicians introduce sarcastic bills in their legislatures to make a "slippery slope" or "jump the shark" sort of point -- a publicity stunt....Kip2008-02-01T04:02+00:00
Please let this be that:
Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.
The location is Mississippi, the nanny state activist legislator is state representative W.T. Mayhall, Jr., and he insists it's no joke:
He said that while, regrettably, he doesn't believe his bill will pass, this is serious. He wrote it, he said, because of the "urgency of the obesity crisis and need for government action." He hopes it will "call attention to the serious problem of obesity and what it is costing the Medicare system."
The notion that "other people pay for obesity" is totally circular and obnoxious. Keep the true nature of this argument in perspective: The nanny-state central planners decide to provide public health care benefits, of whatever flavor, which are by definition paid for with public money (i.e., taxpayer money). They then turn around and tell those very same taxpayers that, since it's "the public's" money and not theirs, the government can therefore impose controls on the public's behavior to compensate for the resulting mismatch -- that the government itself created! -- between the "public" that pays for the benefits and the "public" that receives them.
The government creates the moral hazard in the first place, then turns around and decries it -- all the while escalating the tax-and-regulate, tax-and-subsidize, tax-and-ban, tax-and-control spiral and all the while defending the practice with Orwellian economic double-talk.
From the Northest liberal ivory tower of Paul Krugman to the brain-dead bumpkin bayous of Mississippi, we are as a people going totally insane.]]>My Modest Proposal is More Modest Than Your Modest Proposal
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1201832605.shtml
A law professor weighs in on the concurrent stories of the India kidney scandal and the calls in the U.K. for "opt-out" organ donation at death rather than "opt-in" —...Kip2008-02-01T02:02+00:00weighs in on the concurrent stories of the India kidney scandal and the calls in the U.K. for "opt-out" organ donation at death rather than "opt-in" —
"If poverty and wealth are often unearned, however, it is no less true that good and ill health are often unearned. ... One could, in fact, invoke such desperation as evidence that organ sale ought to be permitted but regulated."
My comment at that blawg:
Of course, a true Rawlsian (or a utilitarian) could even argue that organ donation should be compulsory. And by that I don't just mean after death, as is being proposed in the U.K.
If society is entitled to seize your unearned wealth, then why is it also not entitled to seize your unearned kidney?
And for those who think kidneys are too extreme, how about compulsory blood donations — maybe when you report for jury duty or file your tax return?
See also, "military conscription" — if the state can seize your entire body, then why not just one kidney or pint of blood?
Money is clearly the issue in situations involving the human body. Paying young women for eggs to be fertilized and men for sperm is now common practice — even though they are still regularly referred to as "donors." Yet the sale of tissue, cells and eggs for stem-cell research or organs for transplant are still the subject of vehement dispute.
The "vehement dispute" is between those who (correctly) recognize the inherent right to control oneself — an elegant synthesis of freedom of contract and bodily autonomy — and those who (incorrectly) label the revulsion of third parties as "externalities" warranting infringement of the inherent liberty of competent consenting adults.
Strangers to a contract, transaction or other arrangement might be repulsed at the notion of whites and blacks eating at the same lunch counter, or of women working outside the home, or of two gays having sexual intercourse in the privacy of their own bedroom, or of a poor healthy person selling his kidney to an ill rich person. So what? Generally speaking, we (no longer) grant revulsion the dignity of a legal argument or a majoritarian vote.
So too should it be with bodily integrity: what competent consenting adults choose to do with their bodies should not be subject to a "that's just wrong" veto by third parties, no matter how numerous or ardent they may be. Nothing is ever "just wrong." An act either infringes upon the legitimate rights of unwilling others or it does not. But there is simply no "right not to be disgusted."
"Is it not repugnant that some people are willing to let others die so that their stomachs won't become queasy at the thought that someone, somewhere is selling a kidney?"
That the answer to this question "but of course" is the most modest proposal of all.
(Via Greg Mankiw by way of East Coast Libertarian. More thoughts at Market Power.)]]>Another "Faux Externality" Anecdote: From "Boob Tax" to "Boob Tube Tax"
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1201094402.shtml
A few days ago, in another context, I wrote the following:...Kip2008-01-23T13:01+00:00the following:
Note also the lack of any outer bound for this faux-externality theory of tax-to-control policymaking. If every private transaction, by its impact (however minuscule) on supply and demand constitutes an "externality," then what isn't deserving of punitive taxes?
An alliance of more than a dozen New Mexico environmental groups will lobby again for legislative approval of a 1 percent sales tax -- or "sin tax" -- on new televisions and video games to fund outdoor education programs.
Such a tax could raise an estimated $4 million a year, according to a legislative study last year. The money would fund programs aimed at teaching students outdoors.
...
Some studies in the last five years have linked the increasing amount of time children spend watching television or playing video games to lower academic scores, obesity and increased attention-deficit disorder.
Of course, unless children are actually eating their television sets, there is no proximate relation between television and obesity (or ADHD) -- and certainly not a sufficient connection to warrant a warm-fuzzy-feeling tax on those who neither create nor suffer from the faux externality: an individual with no children, or with underweight children, would pay the tax and receive no benefit.
But tax their TVs anyway. Pretend there is an externality where there isn't one so as to legitimize your (self-serving) proposal. (Remember, the activists proposing this insolent tax are precisely the groups that would benefit from the boondoggles the tax would fund. Environmentalists can have conflicts of interest too, after all.)
Bottom line: This proposal is not a "Pigou tax" -- it is rent seeking, pure and simple. And it's bad policy.
Note also that New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the nation and has a far worse "childhood food insecurity problem" than "childhood obesity problem." Just saying.
there is no credible evidence for a new "nature deficit disorder" children are claimed to suffer from, or that getting them outside and teaching them about the environment will eradicate childhood obesity or attention deficit disorder.
As if that mattered to those nanny-staters who would save us from ourselves.]]>