Psychopolitik 2.0

Sure, the complex can stump people easily, making even geniuses seem feeble-minded.  But true capital-S Stupid is immune to simplicity.  Capital-S Stupid is so powerful that a coin flip can be read as less than a 50/50 chance.  Number 3 has my vote, Kevin.

Been following the discussion fallout from Rod Long’s essay on Cato Unbound.  Spotted some blog responses I found rather curious, figure I’d provide my two cents…

-Tyler Cowen, referring to remarks by Matt Yglesias (which amounted to “watch me completely ignore Dr Long’s point!”, IMO):

In my view at the margin it would be better to have both less corporate privilege and less labor union privilege.  Maybe we have no good theory (much less a strategy) for how to get there, but surely some marginal improvements are possible and who knows maybe more. […] Sometimes the left-wing tactics, especially supporting labor unions, are exactly what lead to greater corporatism.  Look at the forthcoming GM bailout.

The unspoken assumption here is that corporate privilege vs organized labor privilege is analogous to chicken vs egg.  Which one came first?  We don’t know!

…well, actually we do.  Since dinosaurs, which laid eggs, were walking the earth before chickens, the egg had to be first.  Likewise, since historically speaking the concept of labor organization not being replied to with violence is fairly recent, corporate privilege had to be be first.  People that the law doesn’t say can’t be assaulted yet are powerless by definition, so needless to say they were also privilegeless.

As for the union responsibility for encouraged corporatism, this is itself a symptom of previous interference.  The previous spontaneous nature of labor organizing has been regulated out of existence, shaping the modern form to be inherently political.  Of course groups like the UAW seek to extract resources via government force, because within the narrow parameters of “acceptable” activism that’s their only option.  If someone takes up tactic X after you’ve declared tactic Y to be void, and you don’t like X, then to gripe about X instead of taking back the ban on Y prompts more questions than it answers.

I’d like for there to be less privilege too — no privilege, to be exact.  But while statism itself is the key problem, going after statism from labor first strikes me like cops showing up to the scene of an attempted armed robbery & arresting the guy that fired in self-defense instead of the idiot robber.

-Bryan Caplan reads this from Roderick:

if there is “nothing special or different about government privileges for corporations,” they ask, why have I chosen to “single them out” (especially since I have not chosen to challenge the legitimacy of the corporate form itself)? My answer is that the primary and disproportionate beneficiaries of government privilege tend to be corporations, particularly large corporations.

…and decides, somehow, to argue that corporate privilege is outweighed by — get this — 1st world labor privilege due to immigration restriction:

I’m afraid Rod overlooks much more important beneficiaries of government privilege than corporations: Lower-skilled workers in the First World.  Lower-skilled workers in places like the U.S. earn several times as much as equally-qualified people in the Third World.  The reason is clearly immigration restrictions - with modern transportation and credit markets, there’s no way that price differentials of that size could long persist.  In fact, as a recent paper by Clemens, Montenegro, and Pritchett points out, the “price wedge” between the First World and the poorest Third World countries is the largest that has ever been measured.  When you recall that labor earns about 70% of GDP, it should be clear that we’re talking about a massive distortion in a massive market.

Now of course I’m the first person to point out that immigration hurts lower-skilled Americans less than most people think.  But there are literally billions of lower-skilled workers who would love to move to the First World.  That is more than enough to sharply reduce the wages of lower-skilled workers lucky enough to be born in a more-developed country.

To an extent, he does have a point: obviously the lower-end workforce in the West, if dropped into the 3rd world, would be considered wealthy.  Sure that ignores the difference in cost of living, how the benefit of infrastructure in the developed world is distributed, and just how much of our dealings with poorer nations is intended to rig the rules of globalization against them, but in terms of pure numbers the claim is correct.   I don’t question the remark, I question his reason for attaching such importance to it.

Suppose that all of the immigration restrictions were dropped, immediately.  The sudden increase in competition in the labor market would, on paper, drop wages.  But this is within the assumption of all other structure remaining exactly as it is, which would be impossible under a real-world scenario where such liberalization could take place.  You mean to tell me that mass migration to the West would simply happen absent any efforts by the nations left to address why their people decided their countries suck?  Besides, I’d suspect that the parameters of those trade deals might have something to do with it…

It has to be asked: it only makes sense to consider the constant balancing involved with global trade, but why is there so little thought about the condition of the 3rd world coming UP vs the 1st coming DOWN?  You chew on that, I’mma chew on something else today.

I would not like to go through the expense and effort of building this gluttonous masterpiece of foodCrazy, but I would like to eat some.  If only that could be arranged…

Vache Folle, on this “center-right vs center-left nation” garbage:

I keep hearing folks remark that America is “Center-Right”, but nobody ever seems to ask them what they mean by that. Just where is this Center of which they speak?

Let us imagine the political spectrum as a straight line in keeping with the usual metaphor. If that line is infinite in length, as straight lines are, then any point on the line would be the “center” because there would be an infinite length on either side of the point. If America is even one point to the right, would that make it “Center-Right”? And what would that even mean? Nothing really unless you have some definition of the center.

Exactly.  In fact, in more ways than that one, there’s no such thing as the “center”.

Take the common description of the “center” in modern US politics.   It’s shorthand for those that don’t particularly side with either — relatively within the mainstream, of course.  If that’s the case, then it’d include everyone from the willfully ignorant who barely pay attention and should reconsider being involved at all, to religious statists with “populist” views on economics, to the general “hands off my wallet, eyes out of my bedroom” quasi-libertarian types.  This pile-up is why saying that a party must “move to the center” is nonsense.

Ok, say that despite it making no sense you still accept the concept of “the center” and all that are included in it.  Problem is, people don’t tend to pick at the ballot box like they pick at a buffet.  The mainstream media image of calculating automatrons with a checklist and a blood vow to pull the lever for whoever fills the most checks is bunk.   This is because politics is also cultural.  Consider the following:

-Say hypothetically you fit the social conservative/fiscal populist mold — “Tony Perkins is right on culture, Nader is right on economics!”.  Chances are, if you’re a white guy from rural Alabama, you’re already voting Republican.  Sure, they’re clearly not anti-corporate or concerned for the proverbial Little Guy, but they hate abortion & gays, and so do you, dammit!

-Now, same beliefs as above, but you’re black.  Pulling that Republican lever got really difficult all of a sudden, didn’t it?  “Yeah they hate gays & abortion, but they also hate ME!  Fuck that!”

-Ok, you’re now the quasi-libertarian.  You’re not an anarchist, the actual Libertarian Party seems to be a bunch of kooks to you, but in general getting the government out of your life appeals to you.  Question is why?  Everyone has their particular sticking points with the State, what are yours?  If you’re an avid hunter from Texas with a sizeable gun collection, a huge truck, an autographed photo of you & Jeff Foxworthy, and a lack of knowledge of the size of the corporate welfare state vs the rest of it, you probably see hordes of liberals & hippies in your nightmares…

-…but if you’re a quasi-libertarian recent college grad with a tech job, an apartment in the city, and a bong on your living room table, and you’ve argued with people about torrent site preference, chances are your fears are more along the lines of people that remind you of your grandparents (who still can’t use a VCR, let alone a computer) deciding what you can and cannot do while at your computer desk.  Honestly, you’re screwed either way, but you’re probably too distracted by the fact that the next commander in chief has the same model Blackberry you have to listen to me.

This type of confusion and irrationality is just a sign of something I’ve long believed about “mainstream” politics: they pick you more than you pick them.  How else to explain a son & grandson of Navy admirals suddenly becoming an advocate for “Average Joe” at election time & the winner that turned out to think Hillary Clinton at State was a good idea being the candidate whose argument during the primary was effectively “on foreign policy this woman is an idiot”?

Roughly overheard a few minutes ago on ABCs yak fest (I’m waiting for football), while talking about the economy and making the inevitable Saint FDR references:

Some dude that looks like George Costanza with a goatee: “In 1941 the US went on a war footing, and unemployment from the depression vanished.  Look at how the auto companies adapted, they started making planes!  We can do that now with fuel efficient cars!”

David Brooks: “See, this is what I fear.  That with an ‘auto czar’, we’re going to get into the government attempting to direct the economy –”

Stephanopolis: “…isn’t that happening already?”

George slicked that out like he was waiting for it or something.  Where’s the rim shot?

Food should go in one end and out the other.  My body failed its biology tests for a few days, but I’m OK now, I think.

D.L. Hughley, re: Prop 8 in California:

If what he meant by this quote…

“I’m not particularly homophobic, but when I read the bill, the way it was written, it was a) a little confusing when I read it, it asked me to make a decision that I couldn’t quantify on the ballot. I can’t for whatever reasons, is it my religious upbringing, I don’t condone the gay lifestyle, but I also don’t condone the government being involved in two people’s affairs. So there was no place for me to vote and I think a lot of black people that I talked to found themselves in that same quandary.”

…was that there should’ve been a 3rd option on the ballot of “Regardless of my own view of homosexuality, I object to the involvement of government at any level in sanctioning or rejecting relationships, whether gay or straight”, then he has a point.

If not, then I’m confused as to WTF he would’ve meant otherwise, and suspect it made no sense.

(Props.)

For all the hype on tech sites over Windows 7, I’m not seeing anything that’s actually relevant in use yet.  The GUI pictures look like Vista w/ a dash of OSX thrown in, and what really counts isn’t something that can be screen-capped anyway.

System resources use and stability.  Wake me when there’s news on that front.

Via Sullivan: John Cohn thinks we’re all either dumb or insane:

One reason for the casual support for letting GM fail is the assumption that bankruptcy would be no big deal: As USA Today editorialized recently, “Bankruptcy need not mean that the company disappears.” But, while it’s worked out that way for the airlines, among others, it’s unlikely a GM business failure would play out in the same fashion. In order to seek so-called Chapter 11 status, a distressed company must find some way to operate while the bankruptcy court keeps creditors at bay. But GM can’t build cars without parts, and it can’t get parts without credit. Chapter 11 companies typically get that sort of credit from something called Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) loans. But the same Wall Street meltdown that has dragged down the economy and GM sales has also dried up the DIP money GM would need to operate.

That’s why many analysts and scholars believe GM would likely end up in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would entail total liquidation. The company would close its doors, immediately throwing more than 100,000 people out of work. And, according to experts, the damage would spread quickly. Automobile parts suppliers in the United States rely disproportionately on GM’s business to stay afloat. If GM shut down, many if not all of the suppliers would soon follow. Without parts, Chrysler, Ford, and eventually foreign-owned factories in the United States would have to cease operations. From Toledo to Tuscaloosa, the nation’s assembly lines could go silent, sending a chill through their local economies as the idled workers stopped spending money. (emphasis mine)

So, though all of the “big three” US-based auto makers are in financial trouble, one in particular has so much else depending on them that their collapse would be the economic equivalent of a nuclear bomb.  Thousands, whether directly or at length, effectively have the Politburo Detroit deciding their fate on a regular basis.  Because of this, the company is taking up begging (albeit with a veiled threat), various pundits are talking it up, and Mr New Politics is toying with a very old idea.

Left unspoken, of course, is how such a poorly run company lasted this long at such a size…

I say the following not as a serious recommendation, as 1) it would be a compromise of principle since it allows for state involvement, though one that would work differently than the current ones thrust on us all the time, 2) I don’t know how it would actually work if done, & 3) I know it has no chance in hell of being done anyway, but consider this scenario: instead of a straight bailout, the company is seized from management and broken up, with the pieces controlled by groups of the employees,  w/ the aid of the suppliers on logistics.  From there, the inevitable state assistance goes to the workers, with the ones that ran the company into the ground deliberately left holding the bag.  Obviously, this would be much more justified than what is going to happen…

Karl (Hess, not Marx) once asked, within the realization of the degree of government favortism behind their status, what should happen to General Motors in a liberated society.  Increasingly, it’s looking like it’ll have to be asked what to do with them within a corporatist society that it has, somehow, still managed to fail in.

Blargh:

Higher taxes on alcohol can make a night out more expensive but could save lives, according to a study released Thursday.

Each time the state of Alaska raised its alcoholic beverage tax, fewer deaths were caused by or related to alcohol, according to the study that examined 28 years of data.

When Alaska raised its alcohol tax in 1983, deaths caused by or related to alcohol dropped 29 percent. A 2002 tax increase was followed by an 11 percent reduction, according to the study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

“Increasing alcohol taxes saves lives; that’s the bottom line,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Alexander Wagenaar,a professor at the University of Florida’s Department of Epidemiology and Health Policy Research. “The tax increase caused some reduction in consumption of alcohol. The reduction saved lives.”

The study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, tracked the number of deaths for every quarter in Alaska from 1976 to 2004.

Going by the logic here — that saving people from themselves (the study focused solely on health issues, not drunk driving deaths or domestic violence) is a worthwhile activity — they’re missing an opportunity with these occasional tax increases.  Why not raise them 50%?  Or 100%?  Hell, do it every year, until so much of the price of booze is tax that it might as well be illegal!  But suppose some people scrounge up enough money to still buy it?  Maybe someone wins the lottery and celebrates with their friends over drinks?  There’d still be lives at stake!  Are we going to let some die for our convenience?  Of course not!  The only just thing, then, is to ban that demon liquid, that scourge of mind & body.  Our lives depend on it, dammit!  Besides, it worked wonderfully before…oh, wait, it didn’t.  Never mind.