We Have Come A Long Way

by Mario Rizzo  

This is more an intellectual experiment than a normal post. What I am asking you to do is to clear your mind of its cobwebs. Just “marvel” at the contrast between the classic statements of the limits of the federal government and the recent report in the Wall Street Journal:   

“The U.S. pay czar will cut in half the average compensation for 175 employees at firms receiving large sums of government aid, with the vast majority of salaries coming in under $500,000, according to people familiar with the government’s plans.

As expected, the biggest cut will be to salaries, which will drop by 90% on average. Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department’s special master for compensation, also intends to demand a host of corporate governance changes at those firms.”

I am not here concerned with whether this is a good idea but I am simply in a state of naïve wonderment that we got to the point where this is legally possible.

Props to Obama

by Roger Koppl

Obama has been a bitter disappointment to me, though not really a surprise.  He is skilled at signaling goodness while concentrating benefits and dispersing costs.  That’s the norm for elected officials, especially at his level.  Bush was an exception because he was only mediocre at signaling goodness and yet a genius at increasing state power.  Still you gotta give Obama your props when he deserves them.  His statement on the prize was beautiful.  That’s the Obama I voted for!  Too bad that’s not the Obama making real choices as this Toronto Star op ed by Haroon Siddiqui chronicles.

The Real David Hume: A Curmudgeonly Reaction

by Mario Rizzo  

I admit upfront that I did not find David Brooks’s New York Times column on Mr. Bentham and Mr. Hume as updated characters at all amusing, funny or informative. I am sure I am in the minority. It is no comfort to me that Brooks seems to favor “Mr. Hume.” I leave it to Jeremy Bentham’s partisans to evaluate his portrayal.  

I think David Hume was one of the greatest political philosophers of all time. 

Politics in One Lesson

by Roger Koppl

It is better to signal goodness than to do good.

That’s it.  That’s the lesson.  (Thanks to Steve Horwitz for the title of this post.)  Democratic politics is mostly about signals not substance.  The lesson is simple, but somehow hard to learn.

The Political Element In Empirical Data?

by Mario Rizzo  

In a recent article in the Financial Times Joseph Stiglitz argues for a more comprehensive measure of social well-being than Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  

As all principles of economics students know, GDP leaves out many interesting things. When I was a student the prime example was: When a man marries his paid housekeeper GDP falls. I am not sure how to adjust this if the housekeeper is also a man and they move to a state with gay marriage. Humor aside, you get the point. GDP misses stuff.  

Nevertheless, Stiglitz has bigger fish to fry. This is just a sample:  

“What we measure affects what we do. If we have the wrong metrics, we will strive for the wrong things. In the quest to increase GDP, we may end up with a society in which most citizens have become worse off. We care, moreover, not just for how well off we are today but how well off we will be in the future. If we are borrowing unsustainably from this future, we should want to know.” 

Did I get all the “we’s”?

Thomas Friedman Is Wrong

by Roger Koppl

Thomas Friedman defends “one-party autocracy” as represented by China. Presumably, his defense is a sardonic. He is trying to smack down the Republican Party in the US for “standing, arms folded and saying ‘no.’” Sardonic tone notwithstanding, he says something revealing. “It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.”

Fantasy Is Not a Serious Policy Option

by Gene Callahan

You may have seen the status going around Facebook that reads, “[JOHN DOE] thinks that no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.” (This is meant to be an argument for Obama’s health care package, I surmise.)

Well, I posted as my status another blurb, not original to me, that says, “No one should be frozen in carbonite, or be slowly digested for a thousand years in the bowels of a sarlaac, just because they couldn’t pay Jabba the Hut what they owe him.”

Ted Kennedy’s contributions to freedom

by Roger Koppl

Friends of liberty should be kinder and gentler toward the memory of Edward Kennedy. He was the poster boy for the American “liberalism” that exaggerates the power of government to act in socially beneficial ways. He has thus drawn acerbic commentary from some liberals in the old fashioned sense of free exchange and individual liberty. Some conservatives have been unkind as well. I suppose the conservatives have nothing to thank Kennedy for beyond being a convenient target of vituperation. But liberals in the good old fashioned sense have a few things to thank Kennedy for and they should therefore be kinder and gentler to his memory. I wouldn’t comment on Kennedy’s overall legacy, but I would like to point to some important ways in which he helped to increase liberty in America and the world.

Special Interest Hypocrisy

by Mario Rizzo 

President Obama is complaining that the “special interests” are threatening his as-yet uncertain healthcare proposals. (Recall there is no Senate bill and nothing says that House bill won’t change significantly.)   

There is an interesting lesson here. What is meant by “special interests” and “general interests”?

The Calculus of Consent and Rawls

by Gene Callahan

I have a confession to make: I’m currently reading The Calculus of Consent for the first time. I thought it might be interesting and useful to post some of my thoughts on the book here. (And, please note, I’m posting to a blog, not writing a research paper — I am not doing a literature review to see if someone else has noted similar thoughts at some point.) First of all, consider this passage:

“For individual decisions on constitutional questions to be combined, some rules must be laid down; but, if so, who chooses these rules? And so on.