by Andrew
In which I write about what people seem to have thought I was writing about when I talked about libertarian Democrats. For those looking to catch up, you can start here, here, and here.
While I am not really a libertarian, I do tend to distrust aggregations of power because, even if those power centers are necessary, they will attract people who wish to acquire power to impose their will. That is the case whether the power in question is a government, a corporation, a union, or even a mob. But I do reserve special care for government power over any other kind, and I believe there are good reasons for doing so.
We grant government a monopoly on the use of force. In a civilized society, it is inappropriate to initate the use of force (except in obvious cases of imminent danger). Only government agents are granted the power to initiate force legitimately, because ultimately it is force that underlies government, although in modern society that force is well-hidden because most citizens have internalized the rules of their society. Having given this power to government, it should surprise no one that people who seek to gain power for themselves will frequently seek out government office in order to do so. The power, after all, already exists, so a person seeking to impose his will on others can use the extant apparatus of government to do so without having to first create it. Bill Gates may have wielded a lot of power when he ran Microsoft, but he had to build it from the ground up. President Bush immediately inherited far greater power simply by winning (being declared the winner, if you prefer) the 2000 election.
Government also has a patina of legitimacy that most other forms of power lack. Few of us are foolish enough to believe that corporations won’t act to serve their bottom line, regardless of the effects that may have on the rest of us. Nor are too many people still naive enough to believe that unions will act in the best interests of all (or even, necessarily, in the best interests of their members). But government has a legitimacy these other forms of power do not, because we insist on holding elections to choose who will serve in government. This is a wise precaution (although it tends to founder for lack of an informed electorate, but that’s a topic for another time), because the assent of the people is a legitimate source of power, if properly restrained. We therefore tend to accept the use of government power in ways that would be more firmly resisted if attempted by other sources of power. This makes government power easier to abuse.
Government is also generally granted powers that would be grounds for prosecution if utilized by other power centers. Given the current climate concerning the federal government’s power to monitor people’s phone calls, imprison people for years without charge, torture suspected terrorists, and so on, one might think that questions about government power would be a bit more common than they are. But our culture has changed so greatly from our beginnings that the idea that maybe government shouldn’t be allowed to do these things at all has little traction. Some are concerned only because they’re worried what President Bush might do with those powers (just as some who rightly raised alarms about some things President Clinton did now turn a blind eye because they share party allegiance with the man in office). Many more, probably most, simply don’t see any real danger with the government having those powers. And there are arguments to be made in favor of granting government some of the powers the Bush administration has taken to itself. None of those arguments apply, however, to a corporation or other power base. Government gets a special dispensation to do things that we would not tolerate from any other source.
American culture has changed a great deal since the closing years of the 19th century. Defenders of big government argue that corporations will return to their habits of a century ago if not vigorously restrained by activist government. While I’m confident that many large businesses would, if they thought they could get away with it, doing so is not as simple as some seem to think. Does anyone think that a business could get away with hiring people to physically assault their laborers in today’s society? I am not a journalist, but that sounds like an awfully good story for the media to run with, and that kind of publicity would hardly help a business’s bottom line. When you consider what businesses already do to avoid negative publicity, the idea they would throw those principles away to gain an advantage with their workers seems implausible at best.
This kind of thinking also assumes that shrinking the government would be done in such a way as to eliminate any government oversight over business. Even assuming that would be desirable, it would hardly be politically practical. Contrary to the beliefs of some, right-wingers are not particularly eager to return to the days when rivers could catch on fire and when nobody needed to fear drowning in the Hudson River because they would dissolve first. While we might favor redesigning the EPA to make it less burdensome, I would only support such changes if they were tied to stringent requirements to continue to reduce our environmental impact so we can all enjoy the beauty of nature for the foreseeable future. Nor would we support eliminating the police who would still be required to protect people from violence, such as the use of violence by business against its workers. This, indeed, is one of the primary functions of government: to protect people’s rights, and there are few rights more fundamental than the right not to be physically assaulted. Even were libertarians to seize power, one of the last functions of government they would dismantle would be the police power, because that’s one of the few functions of government that nearly all libertarians (less the anarcho-capitalists) agree on.
I would not suggest, and have not suggested, that we simply throw out the federal government and trust the good will of corporations. I make no argument in favor of the benign intentions of business; they exist to make money, and in that pursuit we can expect some of them to do everything they believe they can get away with in order to maximize their profits. Any concentration of power poses a threat to individual liberty.
But in today’s society it seems crystal clear that the power possessed by government is of a wholly different nature than that possessed by any other power center. Government can do things no other organization can. It has more actual power in terms of armies and police, it has a veneer of respectability that no other organization can approach, and it has the advantage of cultural deferment to government power. Can businesses abuse their power? Absolutely. Can businesses in contemporary America do more damage than the United States Government? I look forward to someone on this site explaining to me how Bill Gates represents a greater threat to their liberties than President Bush.
Ultimately, this is an academic discussion for the United States. No state is going to voluntarily surrender power, and modern American culture tends to view the government’s purview as virtually limitless. The discussion on the role of the government between liberals and libertarians reminds of nothing so much as the old W.C. Fields routine in which he approaches an attractive young woman and asks, "Would you sleep with me for $1 million?" She thinks about it and nods, "Sure, for $1 million, I’d do it." Fields then asks, "Would you sleep with me for $20?" The young lady slaps him and asks, "What kind of woman do you think I am?" Fields rejoinder: "We have already established that; now we’re just haggling over price."
There are two things wrong, I think, with your comparison between governments and corporations — and the assumption that there are clearcut distinctions between them.
The first thing I’d disagree with is the idea that “a business could [not] get away with hiring people to physically assault their laborers in today’s society.” This rather mistakes what business can get away with. To cite two recent instances: the asbestos business — which is not simply about mining, but about using asbestos in industrial products – got away, for more than 30 years, with practices that the various companies involved — for instance, W. Grace – knew were lethal. And as we know from Eric Schlosser’s book on the meatpacking industry, its dangers are doubly hidden by the placement of its hugest factories in isolated areas in the Midwest and its hiring of a largely non-English speaking, often illegal crew to man them.
To get away with paying the price that could legally be exacted from them, via the court, they simply pay off the legislature to pass legislation heavily limiting liability for their actions.
I use pay off intentionally (see the recent NYT story about donations to Ohio’s state judges and the voting patterns that reflect those donations). The picture of the strict compartmentalization of the state and of private enterprises underconceptualizes, or simply ignores, the real way in which the state’s legislative bodies are composed. There is, firstly, an election process that is largely, now, on the ticket of the big donors. Then there is the career trajectory of legislators. That trajectory – as well as the trajectory of their aids — displays a pretty common pattern. After retirement or defeat, it is not uncommon for legislators to take very well paying jobs with the very companies they used to legislate over. And the cycling of aids through K street, think tanks and businesses is also easy to map. Hence, the supposed wall between government and private enterprise is, in reality, a porous membrane.
The second problem is that corporations now openly “monopolize violence” in certain traditional government functions. The prison system, for one – wackenhut guards do the guarding in Texas prisons. Not state employees. And dyncorps does the prisonholding in Afghanistan.
The same libertarians who plug the private sector also have shown themselves pretty eager to tear down the wall separating business from government. So, they argue their points using a theory of the rigid separation of the two, even as they argue for policies that inevitably lead towards the collapse of the two. Big government conservatism is the inevitable product of this contradiction.
Great post. Some thoughts:
1. Can we get down to specific cases? What parts of government should we shrink or eliminate?
2. I don’t think anyone is really worried about corporations hiring private armies like they did back in the day. What concerns liberals (or at least me) are corporations acting abusively in their role as employers. Especially big corporations, like wal-mart.
3. “modern American culture tends to view the government’s purview as virtually limitless.” I don’t know about this. I think if you visited the social democracies of Europe, you’d find people with a far more expansive view of government’s role than we have here.
Thanks for the post!
julian,
1. A subject for another post, I think.
2. I see this as an area where we would definitely want to be careful in how we change things. I am not trying to suggest that we should cut back government without care, as I am firmly of the belief that government is vital to the success of modern societies. I just think that less of it is needed than we currently have.
3. Probably true. I speak from an American perspective, of course, and the European perspective doubtless would floor me in many ways. Still, it does seem to me that even in America a disturbing number of people seem to view the government as a sugar daddy of some kind.
Hmmm, I don’t think you can create a hierarchy of
government
corporations=unions
because unions, under ideal circumstances, are democratic bodies, where as corporations are only democratic bodies in a very loosest of senses. Thus, a union has a leg up on corporations.
Someone pointed out that a lot of the power of government naturally derives from the organizing principles that occur when population density increases. If you accept that, then you have to take the view that increased government power and control are inevitable, something which you seem to note with the ‘it’s academic’. If it is just academic, holding on to the notion that things can be kept the same is not conservatism, it is just contrarianism.
Well, that points out two things I didn’t say in less than a paragraph. I’m a little disappointed you didn’t try for the trifecta.
Whoops, that’s two things I didn’t say in three paragraphs. My mistake.
Thank you for an interesting post.
You write: “We grant government a monopoly on the use of force. In a civilized society, it is inappropriate to initiate the use of force (except in obvious cases of imminent danger). Only government agents are granted the power to initiate force legitimately, because ultimately it is force that underlies government, although in modern society that force is well-hidden because most citizens have internalized the rules of their society.”
I have a slight quibble with this statement: Isn’t this “monopoly on the use of force” always granted “until further notice”? Which is to say that a people always retains the sovereign and inalienable right to undo a government with whatever means, forceful or not, it chooses? In most cases, it will understandably choose a non-violent (eg, elections) method, but if the people feels those methods are faulty or untrustworthy, for whatever reason, they are entitled to use others, including force.
My reasoning is simple. It is clear that, as Mao Tse-tung so eloquently noted, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” (Problems of War and Strategy, 6 November 1938). If, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” then these men are entitled to redress if the government instituted no longer represents the consent of the governed (not needing it, perhaps, through its own use of force to repress).
So, while in principle government are granted monopolies on the use of force, in fact these monopolies represent only the sovereign people’s permission (coerced or not, admittedly) which may be redefined or withdrawn altogether as necessary.
In addition, when, as in the cases of the French and Russian revolutions, or even the American, the people choose to revoke their respective governments’ monopolies on the use of force, it can hardly be found to be “inappropriate” by historical criteria, even if bloody and wasteful and a slew of other quite real negatives.
Edouard,
That’s an interesting point, and it touches on something I’ve considered writing about before: the question of when a people can legitimately rise up against a government. I concur that the people do have every right to withdraw the monopoly on force granted to the government, but I suspect trying to determine when that step should be taken is problematic.
Andrew, this is a helpful post, and I’ve moved closer to agreement that government is the most powerful force in this society. The devil’s in the details — or in the price-haggling ;).
a disturbing number of people seem to view the government as a sugar daddy of some kind
Especially those “persons” known as corporations, and the .5% of the population who have contributed most massively to the debt that will plague our grandchildren by being released from paying their share of taxes.
The specific political problem we have is that government has been acting far too much on behalf of corporations, and far too little on behalf of the majority of citizens. As corporations and government have become more and more entwined over the last thirty years, it’s also become necessary to move into specifics when making characterizations of what “government” is doing, or the role of corporations in the action may be thus obscured.
Now the threat to workers and citizens posed by the government-corporate embrace has been compounded by the frightening expansion of government power in the last several years. (and the last several weeks.)
It’ll be a long, hard road back.
Nell,
No argument on corporations, but I’ll take exception to the ‘not paid fair share’ argument. What, precisely, do you consider their ‘fair share’? The top ten percent already pays 3-4 times that in taxes, if not more. Not to mention the fact there are two components to debt: money in and money out. Were the government even marginally capable of reining in spending, our debt could be markedly reduced without dealing with issues of whether or not people are paying their ‘fair’ share.
Andrew –
Good post.
You lost me here:
“modern American culture tends to view the government’s purview as virtually limitless”
Can you expand this a bit? It seems like an overstatement, perhaps I am misunderstanding what you have in mind.
Thank you –
russell,
Consider that a bit of hyperbole. I’m sure there are still some areas where the public does not expect the federal government to step in, although I confess I might be hard-pressed to identify any.
“I don’t think anyone is really worried about corporations hiring private armies like they did back in the day. What concerns liberals (or at least me) are corporations acting abusively in their role as employers.”
The problem I have with this formulation is that “abusively” is interpreted rather broadly. If it includes “paying less than what liberals think is a ‘fair’ wage” I’m not going to be able to come on board.
“modern American culture tends to view the government’s purview as virtually limitless”
It isn’t all of American culture. But it is a lot. It isn’t limitless, but the “sugar daddy” formulation is apt.
Were the government even marginally capable of reining in spending, our debt could be markedly reduced without dealing with issues of whether or not people are paying their ‘fair’ share.
The gov’t isn’t capable of reining in spending because people don’t want it reigned in. This is in part because they currently don’t have to pay the full costs of the present spending due to the deficit. If taxes were hiked to the point where there were no deficit there might be an actual move to reign in the spending, but right now we’re living off the largess of pension and mutual funds, and the Japanese and Chinese central banks.
What, precisely, do you consider their ‘fair share’? The top ten percent already pays 3-4 times that in taxes, if not more.
Don’t you need to know what percent of the income the top 10 percent earn before you can make a value judgment on whether they pay enough in taxes?
The WSJ editorial board is fond of playing games with this statistic by noting that some-odd years ago the top 5% of income earners in the US paid 20% of the income taxes levied, whereas today they pay 25% of the income taxes levied, conveniently ignoring the fact that the top 5% earn 25% of the income in the country today, whereas some-odd years ago the top 5% only earned 20% of the income. They also always manage to leave out payroll taxes when making this calculation.
Contra some of the commentators above, I am worried about business doing far more things to the average citizen than just using violence or even acting abusively as employers. Generally speaking, the reforms and regulations imposed since the 1880’s were imposed to deal with specific abuses, whether monopolization of significant industries, raising costs on other producers and consumers while creating monopolistic profits (Antitrust), to selling spoiled and harmful food (FDA), to 60+ hour work weeks (maximum hours/overtime laws), to child labor, etc.
On the other thread, I posted what struck me as an important question here as to what replaces government regulations with respect to tainted food, and received no response. I think that, before we dispense with government regulation as a means of protecting consumers, we need to think through the implications.
Dan, I’ll answer that question as soon as you show me where I advocated dispensing with government regulation. You show me that and you’ll get all the answers you ever wanted, but first I’d like to see where I made that suggestion, or if this is just another assumption that people know what I really mean, regardless of what I say.
Thoughtful essay, Andrew.
But government has a legitimacy these other forms of power do not, because we insist on holding elections to choose who will serve in government.
I think the mandate of heaven is the monopoly of force. Elections are just a mechanism that allow heaven to revoke its mandate without resorting to revolution (the ultimate election). Whether a hereditary monarch or an elected president, a head of state can legitimately exercise force in ways no corporate CEO or union leader ever could, no matter how democratic the officer’s election.
To quote Justice Jackson, “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.”
Andrew,
“Dan, I’ll answer that question as soon as you show me where I advocated dispensing with government regulation.”
Not dispensing, but all throughout your essay, you advocate reducing it, especially here:
“But in today’s society it seems crystal clear that the power possessed by government is of a wholly different nature than that possessed by any other power center. Government can do things no other organization can. It has more actual power in terms of armies and police, it has a veneer of respectability that no other organization can approach, and it has the advantage of cultural deferment to government power. Can businesses abuse their power? Absolutely. Can businesses in contemporary America do more damage than the United States Government? I look forward to someone on this site explaining to me how Bill Gates represents a greater threat to their liberties than President Bush.”
I am pointing out how I view business as a whole as a greater threat — because so many of my daily decisions depend on the good actions of business.
“I am pointing out how I view business as a whole as a greater threat — because so many of my daily decisions depend on the good actions of business.”
But “business as a whole” doesn’t really exist. That is like saying that “people as a whole” worry you because many of your daily decisions depend on the good actions of people.
Concentration of power, not just raw power is important. 51 of the top 100 largest economic entities are corporations. This means that an enormous amount of power is concentrated in the hands of very few people. This trend is monotonically increasing.
Sure, Bill Gates doesn’t pose any threat that we know of. He’s probably a wonderful guy.
But how about the bin Laden corporation? Andrew assumes that someone with the economic power greater than the majority of countries on the planet will be innocuous at worst. But the rise of non-state actors in our global security state is something that shows this assumption is rather naive.
Saudis? I hear those corporate entities that are raking in zillions of dollars are doing a great job at supporting the very thing that is the greatest threat to “our way of life”.
Or so I hear.
That is like saying that “people as a whole” worry you because many of your daily decisions depend on the good actions of people.
People as a whole worry me, look who they elected to lead this country the last six years (I was complicit on the first four).
Sebastian,
“But “business as a whole” doesn’t really exist. That is like saying that “people as a whole” worry you because many of your daily decisions depend on the good actions of people.”
But if we are aggregating government as a whole here, then it is only logical that we do the same with business as a whole.
“5% of income earners in the US paid 20% of the income taxes levied, whereas today they pay 25% of the income taxes levied, conveniently ignoring the fact that the top 5% earn 25% of the income in the country today, whereas some-odd years ago the top 5% only earned 20%”
I think we can figure out this number for sure.
I just googled this quickly there may be some dispute about it. I am sure if there is others will quickly pounce on it.
Hal, I specifically note on numerous occasions that I have no more faith in the good intentions of business than I do in the good intentions of any other group. The idea that I assume otherwise is, to put it politely, incorrect.
Dan,
You do realize that businesses operate as individuals, while the federal government tends to operate as a unit, right? That, just maybe, trying to say that Macy’s and Gimbel’s are the same as Uncle Sam is, well, perhaps a bit misleading?
Andrew,
power possessed by government is of a wholly different nature than that possessed by any other power center. Government can do things no other organization can.
So I guess they can have bad intentions but can’t do? What, exactly? Fund revolutions? Foment unrest? Train armies of terrorists?
What exactly can’t they do that prevents them from exercising this enormous power in ways that would be just as bad as any rogue state?
Andrew,
You do realize that one of the areas of law I cited was the antitrust laws, right? It’s what (theoretically, anyway) prevent Macy’s and Gimbel’s from ganging up on the consumer. So no, I don’t think I am being misleading.
I do, on the other hand, feel you issued a general challenge, and I responded to it. Please answer my response.
“But ‘business as a whole’ doesn’t really exist.”
Are you saying that the American Chamber of Commerce, and allied bodies, doesn’t exist?
You do realize that businesses operate as individuals, while the federal government tends to operate as a unit, right?
Right. That’s why we have three branches of government – or used to, at least.
There are plenty of examples of businesses operating as a unit. Cartels are a good example.
Government also has a patina of legitimacy that most other forms of power lack. Few of us are foolish enough to believe that corporations won’t act to serve their bottom line, regardless of the effects that may have on the rest of us. Nor are too many people still naive enough to believe that unions will act in the best interests of all (or even, necessarily, in the best interests of their members). But government has a legitimacy these other forms of power do not, because we insist on holding elections to choose who will serve in government. This is a wise precaution (although it tends to founder for lack of an informed electorate, but that’s a topic for another time), because the assent of the people is a legitimate source of power, if properly restrained. We therefore tend to accept the use of government power in ways that would be more firmly resisted if attempted by other sources of power. This makes government power easier to abuse.
Andrew — This bit of your argument troubles me, if I understand it. What you appear to be saying is that the power of government is more easily abused because of the ‘patina of legitimacy’ it has. The thing is, that ‘patina’ is derived from its actual legitimacy (which you acknowledge), the fact that it’s derived from the consent of the people and expected to be exercised in the public interest.
Here, you look to be saying ‘Government power is abused whenever it’s exerted in a way not exactly in the public interest’ (which is true, and is certainly going to happen sometimes) but implicitly contrasting it with private power, which is only accidentally ever going to be exerted in the public interest — there’s no reason that it should ever be, except where the public interest coincidentally lines up with its own privat interests. Under that line of analysis, it seems that even if private power were vastly more harmful than government power, you’d consider harm caused by government power ‘abuse’ and evidence that power should be taken away from the government, but harm caused by private actors not problematic in anything like the same way.
(I do apologize if I have appeared to attribute a position to you that you don’t hold. I’m trying to tease out implications from your argument, and may easily have gone down the wrong track.)
“But if we are aggregating government as a whole here, then it is only logical that we do the same with business as a whole.”
No. Government actually aggreagtes itself. In any given location you are likely to be governmentally under the influence of only two entities: the federal government’s subdivisions and the state government’s subdivisions. For most of the things we are discussing, city or other local governments have power only as delegated or allowed by the state (with federal preemption of course). So even if you add that you have three entities. That isn’t true of business at all. In most situations you can choose between two or more businesses for practically any function in a large city.
Sebastian,
I am going to give you the same antitrust answer I gave Andrew.
“Are you saying that the American Chamber of Commerce, and allied bodies, doesn’t exist?”
And your point is what? That the Chamber of Commerce operationally controls any of its members?
If you think the Chambers of Commerce operate with anything like the power of governments I strongly suggest that you attend some of their meetings.
And in I suspect you will find that the scary things you think it does involve lobbying the government to impose the government’s use of force on something.
Funny how “the government” comes in to play there.
Sebastian: Oil Cartel. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. We also have plenty examples of price fixing and countless other collective behavior that businesses colluded to bring about.
It’s ludicrous to claim that collective behavior in businesses is so rare as to be non-existent. Common interests are – well – quite common and a common interest is all that is needed to organize businesses collectively.
That the Chamber of Commerce operationally controls any of its members?
And your saying that a government controls all it’s members?
If you think the Chambers of Commerce operate with anything like the power of governments
How about the oil cartels? They have power rivalling almost all the governments on this planet.
Dan,
If you think business is a greater threat to you than government, I am quite convinced that there is nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise.
Hal,
Government doesn’t need to raise an army, etc. It already has one. Given time and a completely inert government, I’m sure that business could theoretically become a greater nuisance, but I’m trying to deal with the world as it is.
Liz,
Hmmm, an interesting question. I suppose I would consider government abuse of power worse in terms of it being a betrayal of a trust, although that would not necessarily make it worse in an absolute sense. That doesn’t mean I’d be willing to accept a harm from business that I would not accept from government (although I suppose I could think of exceptions, given time). Only that government is a public trust, and therefore is held to a higher standard. Private power can most certainly be abused, and indeed I would argue that the primary function of government is to protect the people from such violations.
My basic point is that, in looking at the harm government can do relative to the harm business can do, it seems clear to me that government is a much greater threat to personal liberty than business. An argument can be made that things were different a century ago. They may be different a century from now. But right now, in the United States, I’m a lot more worried about what the government could do to me than I am about what business could do to me, and I believe that the reasons I’ve laid out here justify that ranking.
“The thing is, that ‘patina’ is derived from its actual legitimacy (which you acknowledge), the fact that it’s derived from the consent of the people and expected to be exercised in the public interest.”
No I don’t think that is what Andrew is saying. He is saying that when it is used illegtimately (see Balko on drug raids for instance, or see Bush and torture) it has a false veneer of legitimacy.
Hal,
“It’s ludicrous to claim that collective behavior in businesses is so rare as to be non-existent. Common interests are – well – quite common and a common interest is all that is needed to organize businesses collectively.”
Not only that, but collective behavior was far more common before it was prohibited by the government.
Andrew,
“If you think business is a greater threat to you than government, I am quite convinced that there is nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise.”
Funny. I thought you were just asking us to explain to you why some feel that way. I have explained why I feel my life is far more likely to be taken by business than government, and your response is this?
Government doesn’t need to raise an army, etc. It already has one.
So, they just spontaneously form? Armies are darn hard to raise. They are extremely expensive to maintain and are – for the most part – largely used to control the very population the government has to work with.
Corporations, on the other hand, have no such problems. When they want something done, they can outsource it to existing armies of governments or any one of the number of mercenary organizations out there.
You’re acting like this is a liability for corporations. It isn’t. They don’t *need* a huge standing army. This means they don’t have to waste a lot of time, effort and money doing something that doesn’t progress their goals.
And hey. One terrorist attack can completely ruin a country for decades – just look at 9/11. Didn’t take an army to do that.
“It’s ludicrous to claim that collective behavior in businesses is so rare as to be non-existent.”
Who said non-existent? I said less collective than government.
And even an oil cartel is interested in oil, not everything.
The question was power. A corrupt oil cartel has much less power to change your personal life than any random corrupt police officer. Heck, a corrupt building inspector can hurt you more than a whole oil cartel.
Dantheman,
Not only that, but collective behavior was far more common before it was prohibited by the government.
Yea, it’s curious as to how Sebastian has neglected the great history of the Railroad barons, the oil barons and – for that matter – the British East India Company. IIRC, the British East India Company *was* the government.
I’m not really sure what this thing is about things that weren’t in the post. On one hand, I can see that you are talking about the things you are talking about, and don’t want to talk about other things and it is certainly unfair to assign you opinions that you don’t have. But this seems more preemptive ‘left field is poison’, such that you are setting the terms of the debate so as to make sure that your argument wins, which you accused Gary of doing to you. At some point, we have to accept responsibilities for the implications of our ideas, even if they are not ever in our mind and we are only made aware of them when someone points them out. You strongly objected to someone (russell?) suggesting your position wasn’t thought out. But if say you didn’t talk about it, it becomes difficult to discuss the ramifications of your position.
You seem not to want to accept that unions are a step up above corporations in terms of democratic will, which is fine, but it then makes it seem that the consent of the governed is irrelevant to this, yet the fundamental difference between Bill Gates and George Bush in this is that no one gave Bill Gates that kind of consent. LB’s point about patina of legitimacy needs to be kept in mind. You can’t take the fact that they are different and then say ‘see they are different, so how can you think that Bill Gates is more of a threat than George Bush’. Furthermore, Gates’ influence is much more susceptible to public opinion, but if I were to point out that if you lived in Bhopal in December 1984, the president of Union Carbide had a lot more power than the then PM of India at the time, Rajiv Gandhi.
You also said ‘Ultimately, this is an academic discussion for the United States.’ This creates a situation where you are either suggesting that we go out and try these things out somewhere else, or that what you are setting up conditions where, because you argue that something is better than the way historical trends seem to be going, your argument can’t be taken issue with. That’s fine, rhetorically speaking, but at some point, someone (like Paul Bremer?) is going to try and apply less-government-esque principles to a situation and be completely shocked that they don’t work out so well.
But this ‘I’m only going to talk about what I wrote, and I never ever mentioned X’ kinda puts a kibosh on having the rather messy practical aspects of these questions emerge. Sure, you never said anything about goverment regulations, and sarcastically, I could suggest that maybe you just can’t wait for more of them, which would be another rhetorical trick. But goverment regulations in some basic ways define the interface between corporations and government, as well as the interface between corporations and citizens, so it seems like they have to come up, regardless of whether you mentioned them or not.
I do believe that you have a great sense of perspective on your ideas, which is what makes you such a great fit for this site, so please take my points as attempts to wrestle with your ideas as they appear on the screen rather than your intentions.
None of you are bothering with scale. There has NEVER BEEN a US corporation with the power of or exceeding (or even approaching) the US government. Not in 1800s, not in the 1900s, not now. The oil cartels you seems so afraid of didn’t approach the power of the US government at the time and certainly wouldn’t approach it now.
And at no point have Andrew or I suggested that the collective action power of corporations is untroubling. We suggest that the collective action power of government is more troubling because it is more powerful. Every single thing you have expressed worry about for corporations applies even more so to governments.
Dan,
Sorry, got lost in the thread. Although I confess that I am hard-pressed to come up with a better answer. In modern society, it is in business’s best interests to have happy customers. Do you honestly believe that the company that distributed the contaminated spinach recently did so knowingly because they figured it would be easier than fixing the problem? If you think that, then we’re at such odds in our beliefs than I might as well try convincing you that the sun comes up in the west. The fact is, that business is probably going to pay a huge price for that error (as they should, I should note), and I’m quite confident that the ownership would quite happily pay a hefty sum to not have sent out the contaminated spinach in the first place. Government regulation probably was necessary a century ago, when there was a lot fewer options for people buying food, but today if a business demonstrates they don’t care about their customers, there are generally quite a few other businesses willing to step in and solve that problem for the consumer. I’m not saying that means we should necessarily throw out government regulations, however.
But, again, if you’re really that much more afraid that business will kill you than government, I really can’t think of what else might convince you. The government can come into your home and kill you with relative impunity. Business might kill you with a bad product, but has every incentive not to do so. So, quite frankly, I think your perception of threats is out of whack. Doubtless you feel the same way about mine.
I said less collective than government.
My lord, it’s like you never heard of divided government. Or a lame duck president. Or you’ve never been to a city council meeting.
Businesses can act with almost perfect unity when dollars are on the line.
So, I’m wondering what distinction you’re drawing here.
a corrupt building inspector can hurt you more than a whole oil cartel.
So can someone with a shotgun, or a skin head and a baseball bat. I mean, really?
But then, the oil cartels can bring an entire nation to its knees and bring down a President (see Carter, Jimmy).
“But then, the oil cartels can bring an entire nation to its knees and bring down a President (see Carter, Jimmy).”
Anyone want to think for two seconds about whether or not OPEC is a cartel of oil producing GOVERNMENTS?
Sheesh.
Whoops
if I were to point out that if you lived in Bhopal in December 1984, the president of Union Carbide had a lot more power than the then PM of India at the time, Rajiv Gandhi. I would then supply some pithy line to score rhetorical points which you can fill in as you like.
At any rate, we again seem to be moving into the space left by the excluded middle, so I just want to suggest that corporations do have a role, but as the ability of corporations to alter people’s lives increases (and if you’ve spent anytime with a Windows blue screen of death, please don’t tell me that that Bill Gates doesn’t have some ability to alter your life ;^)) something has to arise to counterbalance that power. Certainly desktop publishing, the internet, people power sort of things have risen up, but I don’t think that government is going to sit on the sidelines, especially when people use the similar basic mechanisms that corporations use to influence politicians.
lj,
I just don’t see how it matters where unions and corporations are relative to one another on the power scale when the thrust of my argument is that nothing out there is as high up on the scale as the government is. It was not my intent to fence the issue off to win the argument, but to fence the issue off because I fail to see how it is germane to the argument. Whether unions are more or less democratic than business, government is still more powerful than both.
As to the argument about the current state of affairs in the U.S., my intent was simply to point out that comments about getting rid of regulation, etc., are hypotheticals with little grounding in reality; big government is here to stay. Which means that government will remain a bigger threat to individual liberty than business.
“Businesses can act with almost perfect unity when dollars are on the line.”
What does this even mean? Politicians can act with almost perfect unity when power is on the line. I feel so much safer.
“My lord, it’s like you never heard of divided government.”
It is almost like you’ve never heard of competition. Monopolies without government help are very fragile. They are much more likely to exist when the government uses government force to keep out competition.
Andrew — I want to interject one thing into the conversation here. It sounds like when you speak of government you mean the modern national state — a centralized entity which governs a territory with set borders. Government has the monopoly on force within those borders and the duty to protect the citizens within those borders against both internal and external forces that threaten the citizens’ wellbeing.
Multinational orporations are non-territorial entities. They do not have the same sort of power within a territory that the state has over that territory, but they have considerable power across boundaries due to the non-territorial nature of the market. Some states are better than others at controlling corporations within their borders. Others are bound by IMF regulation to follow the dictates of private corporations when regulating their own economy.
Discussions of who has the most power are largely dependent on venue.
Andrew,
Thanks for the response, although we still disagree.
“Do you honestly believe that the company that distributed the contaminated spinach recently did so knowingly because they figured it would be easier than fixing the problem?”
Knowingly? No. Recklessly being uncaring about the danger because the liability would be less than the cost of making changes to correct? Absolutely, and it has been documented numerous times in numerous businesses, from Ralph Nader and Chevrolet to the regularly occurring e. coli outbreaks at meat packing facilities to pollution reducing technology at coal burning electric plants.
“The fact is, that business is probably going to pay a huge price for that error (as they should, I should note)”
And this is exactly my point. If the governmental watchdogs did not exist, the spinach processor could escape most, if not all, of its liability by muddying the waters when any injured consumers sued. They might even believe their own statements that it must be someone else’s products which caused the harm, so they wouldn’t stop selling the spinach until far more people died.
There has NEVER BEEN a US corporation with the power of or exceeding (or even approaching) the US government.
Well, sure. But are you really so scared of the US government? Really. Why do you still live here, then. Perhaps someplace like Somolia where there is a less powerful government? Or maybe Sudan.
Governments exist for a reason, and the fact that we have a powerful government means we are a powerful people. Sure, it can be abused (most notably, by people who are curiously for smaller government, as is happening at the moment).
Every single thing you have expressed worry about for corporations applies even more so to governments.
Untrue. Corporations operate without the constraints imposed on governments. For one, as I pointed out, they don’t need a standing army to control an unruly population that doesn’t like what they’re doing. You don’t like what the corporation is doing? The security guards (armed, by the way) escort you out. This is a plus, not a minus.
Crap.
double crap.
out damned italics
nous,
Saddam Hussein might disagree with you there. 😉
Yes, I am discussing the modern state, and really primarily America, since that’s where I can speak most accurately (which, it is to be noted, is different from speaking accurately). Also because it’s most germane to me: unfair as it may be, I have little to fear from foreign governments, but that paradoxically means I have more to fear from my own.
Anyone want to think for two seconds about whether or not OPEC is a cartel of oil producing GOVERNMENTS?
Anyone want to think for two seconds about the merger of corporations and governments? Hello?
What does this even mean? Politicians can act with almost perfect unity when power is on the line. I feel so much safer.
Well, if you get your nose out of the details, you’ll see that you were arguing that governments – unlike businesses – can operate collectively. It’s an existence proof that your argument is wrong. My lord, please pay attention.
It is almost like you’ve never heard of competition.
Yes, and you never heard of the rail road barons, the oil barrons, and apparently laws that prevent monopolies and other anti-competitive practices – practices that would be common place if, drum roll please, not for *government*.
They are much more likely to exist when the government uses government force to keep out competition.
Again, merger of corporations and government.
This the the nub of the problem. But you have it backwards. It’s the weak governments that support monopolies. And it’s this supplanting of government with corporations which is the thing we’re scared of.
“And this is exactly my point. If the governmental watchdogs did not exist, the spinach processor could escape most, if not all, of its liability by muddying the waters when any injured consumers sued.”
Actually no. Typically in a consumer product suit if you had anything to do with the product at any time you are on the hook unless you can prove the fault was with someone else AND unless that someone else can afford to pay the damages.
Thanks Andrew, and two small points.
I think the idea that everyone who has argued against Andrew therefore thinks that corporations have more power than government is an assumption into some of our mental images that is not necessarily true. My own view of corporations versus government, at least at this present moment in history, is that they are a bit like the King Kong versus T. Rex fight, and the reason this is is that the power of the two has grown in proportion to each other. Note that this is a chicken/egg thing, and I’m not saying that government was forced to expand or corporations would take over the world. But the thing that you need to do is put those leg chains on the _two_ of them before they start fighting.
To deal with the question of hierarchies, the historic rise of labor unions occurred precisely at a time to put leg chains on one of the participants at a time when they were behaving very badly, so I might suggest that unions took the role of wielder of power from the masses at a time when the government was unwilling to view itself in such a way (of course, war fatigue and a recoiling from the massive control necessary to put down the Civil war played no small part in this). So even though the power differential is not much today, the historical antecedents tell a different story, which is why making the hierarchy as undifferentiated between corporations and unions leads to a different conclusion than the one I have.
“Anyone want to think for two seconds about the merger of corporations and governments? Hello?”
What are even saying there? OPEC is a cartel controlled (in as much as a cartel is controlled, which is much less than you seem to think) by the governments of oil producing states. If you think the merger of corporations and governments in that context means that the corporations are the ones in control you are deeply mistaken.
Typically in a consumer product suit
Suits only exist under a government. Remember, it was the business men that went to the government to create business law so that such suits were possible. Without government, there wouldn’t be any of these suits which you are using as an example of the checks on businesses.
Businesses *love* monopolies. They all strive to be one. Everything the do serves this goal. Competition – alone – isn’t sufficient to keep this at bay. That’s why we have a huge history of laws against anti-competitive practices.
There’s only one catch, and that’s Catch 22 :
“They can do anything to us
that we can’t stop them from doing”
Experience amends this to “can and will”
The American constitutional government
was set up and has evolved mostly
to give the populace a way to stop them, where “them” is the government.
That system worked tolerably well, with lapses of course, for a long time, and I’m hopeful that it can be restored nearly to working condition in the future, after the pendulum swings and we recover from the deep lapse we’re living through today.
But what can restrain corporations when they are headed by criminals?
Or by people whose arrogant self-interest blinds them to any ethical relationship with the rest of society. Such people are not rare; in my experience, they’re as common in business as they are in politicians. And there’s a _lot_ more business people than politicians in the US.
> Does anyone think that a business could get away
> with hiring people to physically assault
> their laborers in today’s society?
Yes, of course. It’s called Corporate Security, and it’s a burgeoning industry.
*You* go try to distribute union literature outside a Walmart, and report back, m’kay? Have a nice time.
You haven’t spent much time in the hardscrabble end of the economy, have you?
It happens often — private security goons rough up someone powerless, and nothing happens to them.
And the reason that it doesn’t happen more often is that government authority exists to prosecute private abuses, not because of social expectations. People haven’t changed much, but the law and the enforcement of the law have changed dramatically.
Humans are still tribal, xenophobic, irrational, tragic taken either singly or in groups.
The law and government, the Magna Carta, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — _these_ are what has changed our culture to a human civilization.
So Democrats rely on government to stop “them”, where them is any private agency that threatens the shared civil society. It sorta works, sometimes, and that’s usually good enough.
And better than the alternatives.
“They are much more likely to exist when the government uses government force to keep out competition.
Again, merger of corporations and government.”
Wait I may have come to a breakthrough. Though Andrew I would have sworn already mentioned it.
When people with a libertarian bent complain about government power are you interpreting that as a complaint about government power except when the government does what corporations want?
Because from my libertarian perspective, when you complain about company power gained only because it can influence the direction and impact of government force, that sounds like something I agree is a problem. That sounds like evidence FOR my case, not AGAINST it.
“Businesses *love* monopolies. They all strive to be one. Everything the do serves this goal. Competition – alone – isn’t sufficient to keep this at bay.”
Sentence one is true. Sentence two is not. Most cases where competition can’t thwart monopolies is due to the fact that government has limited competition.
“Suits only exist under a government. Remember, it was the business men that went to the government to create business law so that such suits were possible. Without government, there wouldn’t be any of these suits which you are using as an example of the checks on businesses.”
Ok, I’m done. I didn’t realize you were arguing with the person who doesn’t believe in any government. If you can get responses from him, let me know.
If you think the merger of corporations and governments in that context means that the corporations are the ones in control you are deeply mistaken.
You’re down at the microscopic level again and seem to have completely missed the point of this argument.
No one is arguing that corporations are the ones in control. All I was arguing was that many corporations have powers that exceed states. They aren’t encumbered as states and that means that they can cause stunning amount of damage. Just like governments.
At least one thread of this argument started because you were making the claim that business are nothing to worry about in comparison with governments. I think they are equal in threat. You seem to be arguing that I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head over business because they can’t possibly organize collectively like governments. Andrew argues that because they can’t raise standing armies that they aren’t in the same threat class.
“No one is arguing that corporations are the ones in control. All I was arguing was that many corporations have powers that exceed states.”
You mentioned OPEC as an example. It isn’t a cartel of corporations. It is a cartel of states. Was it just a bad example?
Because from my libertarian perspective, when you complain about company power gained only because it can influence the direction and impact of government force, that sounds like something I agree is a problem. That sounds like evidence FOR my case, not AGAINST it.
This throws the baby out with the bath water. The problem is your (or at least the abstract libertarian “you”) philosophy says governments shouldn’t interfere with business. Shuck the anti-competitive practices law. Screw anti-monopoly laws. Let the market sort it out!
The problem is that without these government functions, precisely what you fear is the end result.
So, from my perspective, I want a strong government which is accountable to me (the collective “me”) to prevent the same crap you’re worried about.
From my lefty perspective, when you complain about government power gained only because it can influence the direction and impact of corporate force, that sounds like something I agree is a problem. That sounds like evidence FOR my case, not AGAINST it.
Andrew argues that because they can’t raise standing armies that they aren’t in the same threat class.
Indeed I do. To which you respond that, because business can induce government to do its bidding, that makes business at least as dangerous as government. Personally, I still see that as a threat from government, since in your hypothetical government is being abused (I hope we can at least agree on that) to serve the interests of a particular business or class of businesses. But I’m still having my liberties taken away by the government, not by the business. The fact it’s at the behest of a business gives me good reason to a) decry excessive government power and b) work for good government, but the threat is still the government and not the business. For the government can also do those things without the business, while the business cannot do those things without the government.
Most cases where competition can’t thwart monopolies is due to the fact that government has limited competition.
Really? So who’s the competition of the US government? What felled the rule of the rail road barrons? What brought down the oil barrons? Was there some competition the US governemnt faced that allowed these actions to come about?
Hal,
Please answer this question: are you of the belief that government power is unimpeachable as long as it is not being used at the behest of business?
“From my lefty perspective, when you complain about government power gained only because it can influence the direction and impact of corporate force, that sounds like something I agree is a problem. That sounds like evidence FOR my case, not AGAINST it.”
The difference is that you think the government shouldn’t do what the corporations want, it should do what you want.
I think the government shouldn’t be doing many of those things at the beck and call of anyone.
Andrew — Hussein was a head of state, not a CEO or a religious leader. Conflicts between heads of states are resolved through political policy by whatever means.
Malawi, on the other hand, may have something to say about the relative control they have over their own territory compared to the corporations that were operating there while they were under IMF regulation. So might Argentina.
“Most cases where competition can’t thwart monopolies is due to the fact that government has limited competition.
Really? So who’s the competition of the US government?”
I think you are misinterpreting ‘has’. I’ll restate: “Most cases where competition can’t thwart monopolies is due to the fact that government has acted to limit competiton.”
To which you respond that, because business can induce government to do its bidding, that makes business at least as dangerous as government.
No, to which I responded that a corporation, unlike a government, doesn’t need a standing army to merely exist. It’s called dead weight. If the government didn’t need a standing army to keep it’s people in line, it can do so much more. This is one reason why the US is so powerful. If, like most countries, our government had to use the army to control people instead of sending them into foriegn countries, our power would be far, far smaller than it is now.
while the business cannot do those things without the government.
IIRC, you don’t work for a large corporation, do you?
nous,
Sorry…was just trying to lighten things up a little. It’s so tense in here these days I’m thinking about investing in a coal mine.
The fact it’s at the behest of a business gives me good reason to a) decry excessive government power and b) work for good government, but the threat is still the government and not the business. For the government can also do those things without the business, while the business cannot do those things without the government.
But (as I argued in the post you linked) the problem isn’t excessive government power. The least power that it is practical for a government to have is enough for corporations to co-opt for oppressive purposes — you can’t have a government without police powers, and once it has police powers, it can misuse police powers. The problem is inadequately controlled government power. And a lot of things that seem to look to people of your ideological bent like expansions of government, or inefficiencies, look to me like controls on government power — regulations mandating transparency, Civil Service protections, that sort of thing.
you don’t work for a large corporation, do you?
Based on your line of argument, I suspect that I do.
But (as I argued in the post you linked) the problem isn’t excessive government power.
I think that’s ultimately a matter of opinion rather than fact. Though I do concur with your assessment that whatever power a government has will be enough to tempt corporations into attempts to co-opt it, which is an excellent argument (to me) for both minimizing government power and placing as many brakes as possible on it.
regulations mandating transparency
I can speak only for myself and not for others of my ideological bent, but I have no objection to more transparency in government.
Andrew — no worries and no crankiness here.
I think you are misinterpreting ‘has’. I’ll restate: “Most cases where competition can’t thwart monopolies is due to the fact that government has acted to limit competiton.”
Apologies. I did misinterpret that.
However, the reason why the government acted was because of the power of the business man. Power isn’t the issue. It’s what the power is used for. You and Andrew seem to be claiming that it’s the mere fact the power exists is a bad thing and therefore, it must be stopped.
My point is that government will always exist. The question is what form. Business will use government – if the people let them do it. This has been the case throughout history. It’s only recently that people have been pushing back, severing this collusion between business and government. That’s where we are today.
What you seem to be pushing is the rolling back of the very thing that seems to be the only weapon available to people to keep bad government from happening.
IIRC, Andrew used to have a graphic from the Incredibles on his old blog. What you both seem to be saying is that we have to limit the power in our own government – power which we use to make our lives demonstrably better than it was in the past – because it might be used for bad purposes if things go wrong or the wrong people are running things.
This belief seems like a suicide pact.
Based on your line of argument, I suspect that I do.
Well, I’m certainly not making that point. I actually do think we have a pretty darn good country and system of government… However, I’ve always wondered about your chosen profession and how you can be a part of the very thing – heck, the very *weapon* – that your philosophy seems to hold out as the antithesis of what should be happening.
Myself, I don’t see any problem with it, but – at least from my perspective – it would seem like there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance in your daily life.
IIRC, Andrew used to have a graphic from the Incredibles on his old blog. What you both seem to be saying is that we have to limit the power in our own government – power which we use to make our lives demonstrably better than it was in the past – because it might be used for bad purposes if things go wrong or the wrong people are running things.
First of all, you clearly need to visit my site more often. As should everyone, quite frankly, because I keep the best stuff over there.
Second of all, I would submit to you that government power will be used for bad purposes. Not only that, but I’ll go you one further and tell you that government power is being used for bad purposes right now, and I’m amazed that any reader of this site can suggest otherwise with a straight face.
I’ve always wondered about your chosen profession and how you can be a part of the very thing – heck, the very *weapon* – that your philosophy seems to hold out as the antithesis of what should be happening.
If there is a God, He’s got a sense of humor. I’m in the Army because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at. On the other hand, despite what a number of my readers seem to believe, I am not an anarchist, and even very few true libertarians dispute the need for a nation to maintain an army.
I agree generally with LB’s comments, and think that corporation vs. government discussions aren’t all that useful, unless one is ready to talk about specific aspects of government power.
Any government is going to have the power to arrest people on suspicion of having committed a crime. I realize that Sebastian and Andrew are not positing a government that lacks this power. But once there is such a power, there is potential for abuse.
Any government is going to have the power of eminent domain. Only in la-la land is a government unable to compel the sale of lands for public roads. Limitations on this power to make it unusable at the behest of corporations — utilities, railroads, shopping mall builders — are a fine subject of discussion, but it’s a discussion you’re going to have to have with the people who represent the corporations, not ‘the Left.’ I’m not sure we would want to have a world where a utility can’t force the sale of a strip of land to build a power line — there are real advantages to having power generated in big facilities (like, eg, Hoover dam), and then shipped across wires to a bunch of other places where it can be used (like, eg, Los Angeles). The world where utilities and railroads can’t run lines with even minimal efficiency isn’t exactly what most folks on either side of the Lib-Lib divide would want.
Lastly, I agree that the federal government is very powerful — it can nuke my house, for God’s sake. My health insurance company is also powerful, as it can deny my claims (were I to have one — I’m not hinting at illness here). Obviously, the power to nuke my house dwarfs the power to deny my insurance claims, but guess which one I’m more afraid of? This is because I’m not a nut about what the relative risks actually are.
I’m amazed that any reader of this site can suggest otherwise with a straight face.
I’m not suggesting otherwise.
The reason why we’re currently in the state were in wrt this country is because the mechanisms we relied upon to keep it in control have been systematically and purposefully thwarted. Are you calling for a revolution? I do seem to remember something about all enemies foreign and domestic.
But that would be silly, wouldn’t it?
But it does seem like your argument is pretty much the standard stock of Greenpeace and anti-nukes. All power can be used for bad purposes. All power is likely being used for bad purposes at this point in time. It doesn’t mean we should shun power. It means we have to be smart.
Unfortunately, for our country, we’ve kind of lost sight of that. IIRC, a lot of that had to do with demonizing the left and a concerted effort of making “liberal” a pejorative.
Hal,
I’m sure you didn’t intend this, but even though your comment was framed innocuously, it seems to be really close the coloring outside the lines. Andrew’s work needs to be separated from the points he is arguing, or the whole thing just gets too personal. Andrew handled it with aplomb, but I’m not sure everyone else can be counted on to be as even tempered
LJ, my apologies. I’ll step away from that line… Didn’t mean anything by sidling up to it.
Andrew, you say that the government is abusing its power. OK, can you cite an example where the proper solution is deprive it of the power, and the cure doesn’t end up worse than the disease?
I ask because, as I noted on the prior thread, each power of government arose from specific circumstances.
I’ll throw a monkey wrench into the discussion by noting that corporate power is simply a delegation of government power. Corporations are chartered by governments and all the advantages that have made them such a successful business model are granted by governments. My libertarian leanings tell me that the two greatest mistakes made by the founding fathers were allowing people to be treated as property and leaving the door open for property to be treated as persons. It is time we remembered that the major advantage granted to corporations is absolving the owners of a business of responsibility for how that business is conducted. How about we move to restore some responsibility?
How about we move to restore some responsibility?
Rather than seeing everything in terms of increasing power, I tend to see things in terms of disintermediation, so that new and wonderous ways have been created to prevent people from taking responsiblity/considering the implications of their actions. Thus, I tend to think that ‘restoring responsibility’ isn’t really in the cards, new ways of attaching responsibility is the only option available.
Charley,
Sure. Remove the power of government to enter people’s homes without a search warrant that meets a strict probable cause standard, enforce the exclusionary rule on any search and seizure in which the police do not announce themselves and give the resident at least two minutes to answer the door, and prosecute officers who fail to meet these standards or who harm innocents in the course of executing a warrant.
I’ll bet you any amount you care to name that making that one change alone would be a hell of a lot better than the disease.
“And your point is what? That the Chamber of Commerce operationally controls any of its members?”
No. If you care to move the goalposts, I can’t stop you. It wouldn’t be the first time.
You stated: “But ‘business as a whole’ doesn’t really exist.”
I demonstrated it does. Now you’re moving the goalposts to ask about “operational control.”
That’s nice.
It would be awfully nice to have a discussion without your being called on this, Sebastian.
“I ask because, as I noted on the prior thread, each power of government arose from specific circumstances.”
And then applied in areas vastly different. Let me try an analogy. I have a friend who was really, horrifically abused as a child. He was tortured mentally and sexually abused by multiple people who should have been keeping him safe. As a result he developed all sorts of defense mechanisms that helped him get through his teen years. I’m certain that these defense mechanisms were necessary to keep him from turning into a raving lunatic and/or commit suicide.
Now he is in his 40s and he can’t form good relationships with people. The same things which helped him survive his teens–depersonalizing sexuality, not trusting, lashing out with anger–are making his whole life miserable now.
His defense mechanisms weren’t created by him for no reason whatsoever. But they are screwing up his life now.
Baskaborr,
I’m a bit confused. It’s my understanding that corporations got their standing through an overreaching court reporter. Where did the founding fathers err in this matter?
His defense mechanisms weren’t created by him for no reason whatsoever. But they are screwing up his life now.
And so the logical conclusion is that we should strip parents, guardians and other people with power over children of this power?
That would be the solution to preventing tragedies like your friend’s?
“I demonstrated it does. Now you’re moving the goalposts to ask about “operational control.”
That’s nice.
It would be awfully nice to have a discussion without your being called on this, Sebastian.”
The Chamber of Commerce isn’t “business as a whole” in any analogous sense to the government.
Full stop.
We are discussing it in reference to the government, and since my comment has a context replying to an actual statement: “I am pointing out how I view business as a whole as a greater threat — because so many of my daily decisions depend on the good actions of business.”
My response wasn’t just that it didn’t exist it was that the category was unuseful to the conversation:
“But “business as a whole” doesn’t really exist. That is like saying that “people as a whole” worry you because many of your daily decisions depend on the good actions of people.”
Your Chamber of Commerce suggestion is not a counterexample proving that “business as a whole” exists in the sense that Dantheman used it.
That isn’t me redefining anything. That is you failing to bother with the context of the conversation so that you can engage in nit-picking–which in this case is completely off the mark.
If we are going to talk about what would be nice in a discussion–it would be really nice to have one with you that didn’t involve not-to-the-point nit-picking.
Here is why I consider corporations to be a greater threat to me and my well being than government.
Government is accountable to me. Corporations are not.
I vote for my selectmen, state rep and senator, governor, federal rep and senator, and president. I communicate with all of their offices on a semi-regular basis. Other the President, I receive replies that indicate that, at a minimum, my opinion has been registered.
I know, personally, all of the above up to and including my federal house rep. Many of these people live in my community, I know their families, I know where they live, and I can go talk to them if I want to. I can contribute money and time to any political person whose views I support.
I have absolutely no access to any significant officer of any corporation whose actions are likely to influence my life. I cannot call them on the phone. Try sometime, and see if you get through. If I write them I receive nothing other than a boilerplate response. I cannot vote for them unless I am a shareholder, and then only as a formality.
They have legal obligations to maintain a certain degree of financial transparency, and they can’t break any laws. Other than that, they do whatever the hell they want, and I have nothing whatsoever to say about it.
The government has an army. I have never, at any time, believed that the government’s army would do me the slightest harm.
Corporations have money, enormous amounts of it, measured in the billions of dollars. I have never, at any time, doubted that they would screw me in a heartbeat if they could get away with it, if it meant they could make more.
It’s not because the people in corporations are bad people. By far, most are not. On the contrary, most are excellent people. It’s because the raison d’etre of corporations is to make the most efficient use of capital while limiting the liability of the investors. That is, historically, legally, and in fact, why they exist.
If this was an authoritarian state, I would feel differently. It’s not, and that’s why I, personally, will exert myself in every way I can to put Democrats back in power. They have their faults, but they don’t seem to have that authoritarian streak that seems to plague Republicans.
As long as the government remains accountable to me, I don’t worry about it’s monopoly on force. I worry far more about the ability of corporations to use their financial resources to further their own interests at the expense of mine.
If corporations wish to make themselves accountable to me, my opinion will change. I don’t see that happening.
Thanks –
Remove the power of government to enter people’s homes without a search warrant that meets a strict probable cause standard, enforce the exclusionary rule on any search and seizure in which the police do not announce themselves and give the resident at least two minutes to answer the door, and prosecute officers who fail to meet these standards or who harm innocents in the course of executing a warrant.
Amen.
Thanks –
I haven’t read the comments closely yet, but I do seem to notice a lot of discussion of regulatory power and corporate power. What I found remarkable about Andrew’s post is at least the first few paragraphs do seem to be focused on the police powers and directly coercive powers of the gov’t.
I would take an guess from this post that various redistributive programs and regulatory agencies would be fairly low on Andrew’s list of potential dangers, and that things like the FBI, DEA, CIA, ATF, and the military would be high on the agenda for minimizing. The guys with warrants and guns.
And Andrew, in comments, has said he considers the draft an unconstitutional abomination, and that, IIRC, he would prefer to return to a military looking like that of the 30s.
I am late to this thread today.
Here’s my take on this thread:
Man, it’s like ships passing in the night. At least turn on some running lights!
Let’s look at the issue of liberal libertarianism in the following perspective.
We’re too damn rich. Americans create so much wealth every day that both the government and corporations can, by scooping up just a fraction of that wealth, obtain enormous power.
How do we reduce both corporate and govt power? One way would to become poor. Nobody’s much worried about the power wielded by the top 500 Zimbabwean corporations.
One way this country got rich was to emphasize the mobility of labor. For example, when I lived in France I noted that most young and even middle-aged adults spent every weekend with their families. I see my parents about 5 times a year.
But by disconnecting ourselves from our tribal / family roots (and becoming very wealthy as a result), we naturally turn to government to provide those things which used to be provided by family. (See Social Security.)
So the philosophy underlying liberal libertarianism should separate out those acts of government which serve our collective needs (like Social Security) from those acts which appear to serve our collective needs but actually serve the needs of the government as a separate entity (like secrecy).
At some level I’m just baffled by libertarianism as found on the internet which, generally, can be reduced to “Americans should rely on their government less!”
why? It’s responsive to the will of the majority, mostly. It generally catches the right bad guy. It has promulgated a series of programs that allow us to worry less about the impoverishment of ourselves and our family. All in all, looking around the planet and back through time it’s a pretty good government.
When I arrived in California from New York, I was exposed to the first time to a peculiar Western US libertarianism, which believes that the government is evil and individualism is supreme. But when I ask these “rugged” “individualists” if their house has running water, mostly I get blank stares. Government, ie our collective actions, has made the West livable.
(I find it particularly ironic that SH, one of the strongest conservative libertarians posting here, lives in San Diego, a city udderly dependent on the federal teat.)
“Government is accountable to me. Corporations are not.”
The funny thing is that isn’t true at all. Corporations are called to account all the time. Corporations go out of business daily because they didn’t do enough of what people wanted.
businesses operate as individuals
Not politically, they don’t. They form PACs and lobbies. The Chamber of Commerce leads the way in “tort reform” (i.e., stripping away the only real method most consumers have of holding corporations accountable for harm); this benefits huge numbers of businesses, at the expense of all consumers (and trial lawyers, gravy for the Republican Party as a Dem-defunding measure).
Now I am going thru comments.
“I concur that the people do have every right to withdraw the monopoly on force granted to the government, but I suspect trying to determine when that step should be taken is problematic.”
Whenever the “people” are willing and capable, which I will expect to be very very rarely. When it is an overwhelming majority of the people, the case is clear, but really should not in practice arise.
The case when a minority feels itself so oppressed that it no longer feels it has a stake in preserving the system does not, to me, entail a “right”. But I am not a “rights” guy.
Ther Latter Day Saints have a “Right” to practice their religion as long as the other 90 whatever percent of us don’t vote to take it away. But we can take it away, and oppress the LDS. At that point, the LDS has a “right” to protect themselves, with force if necessary, and check to see just how serious the rest of us are in our intentions and determinations.
Most of the time, with a strong 2nd Amendment, the majority will find a way to accomodate reasonable minorities. Legitimacy is not gained by force of arms, but by the consent of the minority. The rest is power.
The 2nd amendment is the enforcement mechanism for the 1st.
Andrew, you say that the government is abusing its power. OK, can you cite an example where the proper solution is deprive it of the power, and the cure doesn’t end up worse than the disease?
I would posit that removing the ability of the FCC to fine broadcasters for boobies and swears, and rely on both indutry self-monitoring and the power of consumers to boycott and to change channels would be a cure whose effectiveness would be much better than the potential chilling effects of the disease. It worked for the motion picture industry.
Oh, also, since every time the word “libertarian” comes up here a bunch of people start accusing us of wanting to get rid of the FDA and Social Security, I’ll state that the arms of government I personally am most concerned about and would like to see severely limited are:
— The DEA (abolish it!)
— municipal police forces (and their increasing militarization)
— the FCC (for its mismanagement of the spectrum, its regulatory capture by large ownership groups and its nonsensical fining policies)
Nell,
“businesses operate as individuals
Not politically, they don’t. They form PACs and lobbies.”
Isn’t that what individuals do? Isn’t that what the Democratic and Republican Parties are?
Gary, I’m sorry about my closing comment to you. It was mean-spirited and wrong.
“The funny thing is that isn’t true at all. Corporations are called to account all the time. Corporations go out of business daily because they didn’t do enough of what people wanted.”
Yes, they are called to account, but not to me.
Corporations are accountable to the law, and to the market. They are not accountable to me, at all. If you doubt this, pick your favorite corporation with whose policies you disagree, and try to change them.
Corporations go out of business if they don’t make money. No doubt, that has lots to do with “doing what people want”. Also no doubt, that is not in the least what I am talking about.
As mentioned elsewhere, corporations do not harm me by making me buy stuff I don’t want. If I don’t want it, I don’t buy it. I have no problem with a market-based economy.
Corporations harm me and my community when they externalize the costs of their activities in whatever way they can get away with and leave us holding the bag.
Corporations harm me and my community when they do things I would go to jail for and are punished with a fine that leaves them with a net profit.
Corporations harm me and my community when they influence public policy to favor their own interests at the expense of mine due to the their ability to throw much, much more money than I will ever dream of commanding at the process.
It has nothing, whatsoever, to do with meeting consumer demand poorly, well, or at all. It has to do with accountability.
Accountability in the sense I am talking about it has nothing to do with making money or failing to make money. It has to do with answering for your actions. It is extraordinarily rare, and only in the case of egregious wrongdoing, that people responsible for the governance of corporations are required to do that.
I’m not talking about getting fired because you didn’t make money. I’m talking about being held accountable for specific harm caused.
Government is accountable to me. Corporations are not.
Thanks –
russell,
You’re one of 100,000,000 voters. I’d submit that corporations are likely to be at least as responsive to your desires as government, and frequently much more so, since there are not a huge number of companies in the world that have all that many customers.
Government may give you a more satisfactory experience when you complain about it, but I question how effectively you can change government policy relative to changing corporate policy. I’ll also note that, if government really is as responsive to you as you believe, than you can control corporations via the government. I suspect the reverse is somewhat more difficult.
Andrew says he is not an anarchist. I am very close to one.
Do I have to bold it? The Homestead Strikers AA Union had Carnegie, Frick, the Pinkertons, the local sheriff beat and gave the State Militia a scare.
It is like people do not know how to organize anymore, do not as Abe Lincoln said, “understnd mathematics”. They have granted way too much mythical power, power they own, to gov’t and corporations. And really have surrendered almost all of their autonomy and personal responsibility.
I ain’t scared of Microsoft. There are probably 50 million plus Windows Users. Give me a hundred thousand of those and a gov’t that stays out of the way, and I can kill Microsoft in a week. I get them free; Microsoft is gonna have to pay a lot of Pinkertons a lot of money to guard the gates.
Well, sure Bob. But there seem to be a few flaws with this line of thinking wrt implementation strategies.
It is like people do not know how to organize anymore
Yes, it’s a lost skill. One not easily regained. Consider how long it took to learn in the first place. And now with several generations behind us, it may take that long again.
Of course, I grew up on an era of domestic violence, the 50s and 60s. Come to think on it, an awful lot of American history contains political violence. Just lately there ain’t been much. I liked the old days better, and that ain’t just nostalgia.
1. Politics is violence, either recieved of given.
3. The biggest Army usually wins. Quantity beats quality. I wish I could convince the Pentagon of that, but that is another very ancient story.
“But there seem to be a few flaws with this line of thinking wrt implementation strategies.”
I can think of plenty of trivial peaceful examples. Classic Coke.
Some not so trivial and not completely peaceful. The anti-abortion movement. ID.
It is the left that has forgotten how to organize and exercise private power.
It is the left that has forgotten how to organize and exercise private power.
See, I knew it was all the liberals’ fault!
*ducks*
Sounds to me like most commenters support some sort of restoration of a citizen’s rights under the Fourth Amendment.
The bit that most offends me is civil forfeiture, in which the property of persons arrested for certain reasons can be taken and sold without ever charging that person with a crime, much less convicting — and the proceeds of the sale accrue to the arresting authority. This seems to my (admittedly untrained) mind to be so obviously, so blatantly unconstitutional, (not to mention being a bad-outcome policy with perverse incentives that simply invite abuse) that my faith in the judiciary is shaken — how can it possibly be Constitutional?
But it also seems to me that we have bigger fish to fry — the loss of habeus corpus, the legalization of certain kinds of torture, and the assertion of absolute and arbitrary power by the executive and his legal theorists seem more important to me just at this point in US history.
It would be nice if one of the major political parties actively and actually defended the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. The Democratic party seems to fail at this task when enough corporate profits are promised in return for our rights — viz. the shameful copyright extension bills, and the DMCA, and yes the failure to regulate media centralization.
And yes especially in the hypocrisy and futility of the War On Some Drugs.
But the national Republican party has spent the last five years joyfully demolishing the foundations of representative government in favor of a “unitary executive” with monarchial powers.
Certainly libertarians must oppose this development. Musn’t they?
Why would they vote for autocracy?
8:09 2) is so oversimplified as to be completely wrong. I might defend it anyway, especially if I had 100k people in front of me.
I am outahere.
Doesn’t anybody want to talk about taxes anymore? Wait! Don’t answer that.
Certainly libertarians must oppose this development. Musn’t they?
Why would they vote for autocracy?
Who are you asking this of? Do you know libertarians who are voting Republican? (I’m sure there are some.)
[Civil forfeiture] seems to my (admittedly untrained) mind to be so obviously, so blatantly unconstitutional, (not to mention being a bad-outcome policy with perverse incentives that simply invite abuse) that my faith in the judiciary is shaken — how can it possibly be Constitutional?
The short answer is a combination of drug war hysteria and Scalia/Thomas deciding that anything the legislature labels “civil” is in fact “civil.” (though justice ginsberg is not entirely innocent on this issue, IIRC)
Andrew, I must have misundertood the very first thing you wrote at the beginning of this discussion yesterday.
> libertarian Democrat trope again,
> this time at Cato. I suppose, as
> a nominal libertarian (I’m really > more of a small-r republican,
> actually), I ought to be
> flattered that the Democrats are
> at least looking for our votes now.
So I was trying to take the discussion full circle, by explaining why I thought a libertarian, or a small-r republican for that matter, would find some common cause with today’s Democratic party, not so much in hopes of a restoration of the Fourth Amendment, but at least in attempt to forestall tyranny.
The lesser of two weevils theory of voting, I’m afraid.
“Laugh about it shout about it
When you’ve got to choose.”
joel,
The purpose of that essay was simply to note that any attempt at a long-term marriage between libertarians and Democrats is doomed to come to a bad end. I specifically noted that libertarians could vote tactically for Democrats in order to create divided government, a strategy I hope will bear some fruit next month.
Just because I don’t like the Democrats doesn’t mean I won’t vote for them.
Scattered thoughts.
#A. One of Jim Henley’s readers pointed out that the great betrayal of American liberty in our time is happening in the single area that even the most minarchist of non-anarchist libertarians grants legitimacy to: the security of the nation as a whole (as opposed to the well-being of any of its members). The fact that the moral crisis is happening there, rather than in the Department of Commerce or Education or whatever should have some bearing on libertarian and conservative talk about where the risks in state power actually lie, but I haven’t yet seen that happen.
#B. Speculation: It is as impossible to construct a charter for a government immune to corruption and abuse as it is to construct an ethical code that will make people wise and good. Or, alternatively, it is as impossible to stop the invention of techniques for corrupting government as it is to stop the invention of techniques for improving transportation, communication, and medicine, because it is the same underlying motive at work – the extension of will power over external barriers to the achievement of one’s desires. You might say, and I might agree, that harnessing the formerly neutral power of the state for one’s own advantage is immoral in a way that finding a cure for erectile disfunction or making it impossible for outsiders to listen to a phone conversation is not. But then one of the tenets of economics since Adam Smith is a moral neutrality, and an acceptance of greed as a legitimate motive power. To say that you can build a tamper-proof state is to mark off a field of endeavor that you wish to make immune to the invisible hand.
Understand that I’m sympathetic to the desire. A state that couldn’t have granted personhood to corporations, for instance, is a state that wouldn’t have needed a lot of things since then. But it did, as surely _and for the same reasons_ that buggy whip manufacturing is no longer a big deal. Most of us accept that improvements in the targeting of communication are morally neutral, and (perhaps more important here) that even when we find them noxious, there’s little way to separate them out from stuff we don’t in any clean way in advance. Stuff hangs together, from engineering to administration to marketing. I’m simply saying that politicking is as inseparably connected.
#C. The regulatory state and the social-welfare state emerge via the same processes that give rise to consumer rating agencies, radar detectors, home security systems, portable insulin monitors, and the like – in the face of a situation some find undesirable, competing “technologies” vie for attention and support. Within the workings of the state we see this as well, with competing inventions, analyses, and responses, sometimes usefully competing, sometimes not. (The war between the FBI and the Justice Department pre-9/11 comes to mind as an example of “not”.) The libertarian impulse to treat this as anything other than the usual marketplace of ideas reflects a lack of conviction in the basic libertarian insights, or a lack of insight into their meaning. The state’s power moves and shifts exactly like any other group’s or idea’s effective power _and you can’t stop that any more than you can stop invention_.
#D. So finding ways to influence the process toward outcomes one finds desirable would be a more useful response than one that requires denying the very thing one praises in every single other context.
(For what it’s worth, I’m a moral absolutist. I just see it asi mpossible for any institution to ever approach the morally best more than temporarily and in a limited way.)
Hmmm. I completely agree with Andrew’s suggestions about the police and the exclusionary rule. However, I also agree with CharleyCarp here, and with LB’s post on Unfogged. And if I were CharleyCarp — well, all sorts of people would be wondering why they were paying good money only to get me as a lawyer, but in addition, I’d reply to Andrew’s reply to my request for an example of a limitation of government power that would do good by saying: yes, OK, there’s an example, and there are probably more; but the more interesting question is, are the preponderance of cases like this?
For myself (back to being me now), I think CC is right to say that discussions of government power are not useful in the abstract. For one thing, when a government decides (say) to pass a regulation, that’s not normally taking a whole new power; it’s exercising a power the government already has. So that regulation doesn’t add to the sum of government powers; it adds to the government’s exercises of it.
More to the point, though, government powers are not equally threatening to people. The police power clearly is, as is the military, and the fact that, as CC noted, the government could nuke my house. But its ability to mandate that drugs meet standards for purity is not, nor is its ability to post State Department travel advisories, or its power to provide us with all that good stuff we get from the NOAA. And when I ask myself, how could the NOAA possibly be threatening to me?, it’s really not at all clear how it could be, if (as for corporations) we’re assuming that it does not act illegally. (Without that assumption, the answer to the question ‘how can corporations harm me?’ is, basically; easily. Hire a hit man to kill me; hire a bulldozer to level my house; whatever.)
I tend to be very wary of the police powers of the state. (See infinitely many previous posts on civil liberties.) But I am not nearly as wary of other kinds of government power — e.g., the power to order inspection of meat packing facilities when certain conditions are met. In fact, I think that corruption is as likely to take the form of preventing such powers from being exercised, as of causing them to be exercised pointlessly, or in the wrong direction (so to speak.) I also think that these powers are needed to check corporate abuse — externalizing costs, failing to take needed safety steps, etc. Probably one difference between me and many libertarians is that I think that while the market deals with such things in some cases, it doesn’t deal with them at all in others (e.g., where the problems are hard for an individual to discover or understand), and also that there are cases in which it’s better to discover the problem through some form of mandated testing than by (say) having people die of contaminated drugs, and then having the market respond.
also that there are cases in which it’s better to discover the problem through some form of mandated testing than by (say) having people die of contaminated drugs, and then having the market respond.
Well, in this particular case, this IS a failure of the market.
I think there is a tendency to forget that the market is an expression on the macro level—and that it is not necessarily a solution on the micro scale. The market WILL introduce a correction in the case of contaminated drugs, but it’s not a particularly good one for the people who died.
On the other hand, the FDA makes mistakes as well. I’m not advocating abolishing it, mind you, only pointing out that the idea the government can provide a perfect solution is as likely to run into trouble as the idea the market can.
Governments and markets are tools, and like all tools, sometimes when you use them they’ll slip and you’ll clip your knuckles.
Andrew: true. I think that in cases like this, one should just use whichever tool seems likely to work best. But this neutral attitude is based on the fact that I don’t worry that there is one general thing, “government power”, such that an addition to it in the form of an added area of FDA oversight produces more power that can later be used by the police to bang down my door. (It can, of course, be used by the police to impose fines on companies when they violate its rules, but, as I said, I don’t see this as directly strengthening its ability to do stuff to other citizens.)
Andrew –
You’re one of 100,000,000 voters.
Yes, for president of the US.
I’m one of probaby 5,000 people that actually vote for selectmen in my town, and they also have very large influence on my daily life. I know them personally, and have spoken with them directly, by which I mean face to face, on a variety of issues.
Ditto my state rep and senator, and my House rep.
I’m probably one of 5,000 people who contact my House rep’s office on any kind of regular basis. I know folks in his office by name. I have gotten their direct participation and support in things I’ve done politically in my town.
There’s nothing special about me, I just pick up the phone. Anyone could do it.
Of course, in theory I could have a commensurately large influence on local corporations, due to my being a similarly large part of their target population.
My potential levers with them are either to not buy their stuff, or to somehow dissuade others from patronizing them. The first assumes I want to buy what they are selling, the latter assumes I have some way of identifying, contacting, and changing the behavior of their other customers. Both are more often than not untrue.
I’d submit that corporations are likely to be at least as responsive to your desires as government, and frequently much more so, since there are not a huge number of companies in the world that have all that many customers.
The assumption here, and in Sebastian’s comments, is that companies whose practices I wish to change are somehow influenced by whether I buy their products or not.
The two facts are, more often than not, completely unrelated.
I want the utility company that operates a non-compliant coal burning plant two miles upwind of my home to install scrubbers.
I want the construction company that is building eight 3,000 square foot McMansions on three acres of land next to a wildlife sanctuary around the corner from my house to leave some open land.
I want the tanning companies who dumped heavy metals into the harbor next to my town for a hundred years, which chemicals in turn induced exotic fatal cancers in two good friends of my wife and I, killing them in their fifties, to come back and clean up the mess they made.
None of those people will pick up the phone when I call.
As a simple practical matter, I find that I have far more access to political people who have some effect on my life than the officers of any corporation that does the same.
Government may give you a more satisfactory experience when you complain about it, but I question how effectively you can change government policy relative to changing corporate policy.
I would estimate that I have had a very, very, very tiny direct effect on government policies that are important to me. I would estimate that I have had zero effect on corporate policies that are important to me.
I’ll also note that, if government really is as responsive to you as you believe, than you can control corporations via the government.
That’s my plan.
I suspect the reverse is somewhat more difficult.
The reverse is not necessary.
Thanks –
I recall a discussion online involving a small city imposing a small tax on its residents in order to raise the money to get high speed broadband into the city, where the cable company found it uneconomical to provide.
I was immensely amused by the discussion where the doctrinaire libertarian was ranting about faceless government operatives, ripping off the citizenry and blocking off free market solutions. It apparently never dawned on this guy that a) the market FAILED for these individuals, and b) the government was far from faceless, it was lobbied BY the citizens who knew each and every elected politician AND employee, who ASKED the local city government to provide a solution that the market didn’t want to provide.
it was lobbied BY the citizens
Presumably you mean by a large portion of the citizens — while the market failed for the citizens who wanted cable, those who didn’t want cable were subsequently forced to pay extra taxes to support those who did.
Not that that wasn’t a fair trade-off in the given situation, but we shouldn’t hide the costs of this sort of government action by treating a majority as if it were a unanimity.
The idea behind regulation is you are trying to solve a problem before it kills off a number of people. Usually regulations don’t get put into place until history shows why they might be a good idea. (Example: FDA regulation of medications. Anti-trust laws.) Regulations are also often a way to make sure everyone is speaking the same language and producing the same product. Don’t think Andrew wants to get rid of that sort of stuff….
Andrew, you seem rational and realistic on the checks-and-balances between business, society, and government. Can you please start educating those of your claimed brethern so they understand as well? I am dreadfully annoyed by the so-called libertarians that rant about how everything should be left up to the market but never seem to notice that all the legal remedies they want to use require law courts and an enforcing agency; in short, a government. Heck, the concept of “private property” mandates some way of backing that up–otherwise your so-called property will simply be taken from you by anyone bigger and badder than you are.
And anarchic-libertarians? Sheesh. If living in a location with no taxes, laws, and tons of guns is what they want, why don’t they all move to Iraq? Should be heaven for them. Of course, living in a Mad Max world is nasty, brutish, and short, but I guess that’s the price you have to pay for living up to (or down to) your ideals…
OT: Talk about deja vu all over again:
How many crucial six month intervals does this make?
Jim has an excuse at his blog, it should be noted.
“Andrew, you seem rational and realistic on the checks-and-balances between business, society, and government. Can you please start educating those of your claimed brethern so they understand as well?”
I’m mostly on break from commenting this evening, for various reasons, including a cold, and other of my ailments, but I have to say that this sort of thing is something that I’d like to see discouraged by heavy stamping on feet, though probably not shooting.
People are not, in fact, stand-ins for others who hold beliefs of the same label, and most certainly shouldn’t be asked to deal with them, even in the lightest fashion.
Really, do you want to take responsibility or have to deal with all the folks who wear the same label you do?
Presumably you mean by a large portion of the citizens — while the market failed for the citizens who wanted cable, those who didn’t want cable were subsequently forced to pay extra taxes to support those who did.
I think the point is that making the dividing line between citizen and government is an artificial one in these cases, and the ideological arguments fail to a great deal, when applied on this scale.
Gary-
I don’t think it was posed as a responsibility as much as opportunity. If Andrew disagrees with those who share his label, he should spend as much time engaging their arguments as he does the arguments of other groups he disagrees with.
I do think you have to deal with people that share your label if you value rational debate and have any desire to avoid us v them type politics.
I believe I have commented before about this dangerous idea you have about the primacy of violence, how the thing that ultimately keeps society functioning is the threat of violence.
It’s no more the threat of state violence which keeps our society together than it is the threat of state violence which keeps me from hitting my wife and kids. Trust, not violence, is the key.
“If Andrew disagrees with those who share his label, he should spend as much time engaging their arguments as he does the arguments of other groups he disagrees with.”
Maybe, but it’s kinda self-righteous of people to lecture others on what they should be doing. Is anyone interested in volunteering for that? Is anyone claiming that Democrats should primarily focus on the errors of fellow Democrats?
If not, why hold a hypocritical double-standard?
“I believe I have commented before about this dangerous idea you have about the primacy of violence, how the thing that ultimately keeps society functioning is the threat of violence.”
What’s this in response to, exactly?
Acknowledgement: On re-reading, I see that it was LizardBreath who pointed out that the police power is what allows for government tyranny, and that she develops the thought at Unfogged, both in the post and in some fascinating exchanges in the comments. I’m very happy indeed in this case to give credit where it’s due.
“What’s this in response to, exactly?”
Could be me. I use the word more generously than many, partly as rhetorical trope,partly as metaphor; partly out of a differing and much broader perception.
Whether 100k+ people on the Mall listening to MLK involves a threat of violence depends on who is watching;certainly the non-violent politics of MLK and Gandhi/Ghandi became violent after they lost control.
The accumulation and concentration of power; the excitement of passion;is always dangerous
From Civilization and Its Discontents …Siggie
“Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but that a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment.”
…
“The existence of this tendency to aggression which we can detect in ourselves and rightly presume to be present in others is the factor that disturbs our relations with our neighbours and makes it necessary for culture to institute its high demands. Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another. Their interests in their common work would not hold them together; the passions of instinct are stronger than reasoned interests. Culture has to call up every possible reinforcement in order to erect barriers against the aggressive instincts of men and hold their manifestations in check by reaction-formations in men’s minds”
…
I have never claimed to be pretty.
Random speculation here. I phrase it as a statement to encourage attacks, I mean, constructive criticism. 🙂
Stance: The libertarian vote isn’t worth Democratic wooing. There are no adjustments the Democratic Party could make in order to please libertarians that wouldn’t end up driving away more existing Democratic voters. Furthermore, libertarian support would always be contingent and haphazard – I mean, it is settling for second-best, and it’s hard to wax enthusiastic about that. Dollar for dollar, hour for hour, trying to make a worldview fundamentally not in tune with libertarian values seem marginally acceptable is a dead waste. There are people out there willing to be persuaded with a lot less effort.
Sorry I had to duck out. Thanks both Phil and Andrew — my question was not rhetorical at all, and I do agree on a stronger exclusionary rule, and a weaker FCC.
The first can be had as a matter of state law — it might not provide protection from the conduct of federal authorities, but because most law enforcement activity is state and local, a state statute mandating stronger exclusion would have some real value. The political problem, though, is that the immediate beneficiary of a stronger exclusionary rule is someone on trial for a crime, for which there is evidence (some drugs, a gun) obtained improperly. That is, a guy who did have the drugs and the gun. Guys with drugs and guns may well be popular among some segments of society, but among people who vote, I’d guess they don’t poll all that well.
So, how to get from point A to point B? The people currently in office are probably hopeless on this issue — many got where they are by demagoguing crime. Liberals have been burned pretty badly on this stove, and everyone should imagine some real hesitancy to take this one on.
And it kind of comes to my nuke the house / deny the claims point: a Liberal politician who puts constitutional rights of criminals ahead of national health care — in terms of how political capital is to be spent — isn’t going to do very well in Liberal circles. I’m not a Libertarian, but suspect that the Libertarian politician who wants to put this issue ahead of tax cuts, or getting rid of zoning, or whatever else it is that you guys actually want to do that’s going to directly benefit actual members, is going to face the same problem.
No true anarchist would admit to being an anarchist.
Sebastian,
“Typically in a consumer product suit if you had anything to do with the product at any time you are on the hook unless you can prove the fault was with someone else AND unless that someone else can afford to pay the damages.”
True, but a suit seeking damages from food poisoning is hardly a typical consumer product suit. Without the investigating power of the government, an isolated food poisoning case has huge hurdles to cross before there’s any hope of recovery, starting with:
a. what was the victim’s hygeine practices?
b. what were the hygeine practices of all others in the house who handled the food?
c. which of the many foods eaten that day caused the food poisoning? This is especially difficult if all the food was either eaten or thrown in the trash before anyone took ill.
d. what were the practices at the store the food was sold at?
Favorable answers to all of these are needed to get a case against the food supplier.
while the market failed for the citizens who wanted cable, those who didn’t want cable
So now the role of govt is to guarantee people cable TV? And people wonder about those of us who worry about govt spreading itself into every area of life.
If I refused to pay the extra tax that covered your cable TV, would you send armed cops to enforce that law? Is it worth that to you?
Fred at Slacktivist, in an earlier comment to Scott:
tzs,
Given that I can rarely convince people here of anything, I see little reason to believe I would be any more successful elsewhere.
Harald,
I’m going to assume that was aimed at me. I’m thrilled that you believe that love is all you need, and I’m sure the Fab Four are as well. But as much as you may hate to admit it, what ultimately undergirds a state is violence, pure and simple. Want an example? Don’t pay your taxes and see what happens. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to avoid violence, of course, because most Western societies do have a very high level of trust, but sooner or later force will come into play.
This is for the simple reason it’s the only tool that governments have, in the end. I suppose my neighbors could all ostracize me for refusing to pay my taxes, but more likely if I get away with it, others will choose to do so as well, and then you’re on the road to watching the entire system collapse.
I’m sorry you think this idea is so ‘dangerous,’ but it is nonetheless true. Trust is a very important factor in successful civilizations, but one of the reasons that trust exists is the knowledge that people who violate that trust get the iron fist, sometimes without the benefit of the velvet glove. Societies don’t work otherwise, because the moral compact between citizens breaks down without a way to enforce the contract.
I suspect you may be under the misapprehension that I’m arguing that violence is the first resort of the state, and is the determining factor in how all people act. Again, in Western cultures this is certainly not the case. Most of us pay our taxes, obey the laws, and so on because we have implicitly accepted that social contract. But that does not mean the violence isn’t there; it underpins the system by ensuring that the outliers who break the contract pay a price for their decision. Without that enforcement mechanism, you may rest assured that over time the entire system will break down, because human beings have a very sharply tuned sense of ‘fairness,’ and if I can get away with not paying my taxes, pretty soon other people are going to want to get away with that as well.
hilzoy,
To return to your assumption of Charley’s question, I ask you this: how many examples of reduced government power that will not lead to chaos and anarchy must I provide before you’ll agree that perhaps we should fix some of them? Ten? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand?
As noted in the original post, I have no great expectations of tearing down this massive edifice we’ve constructed in Washington. All I’m trying to do is make some changes on the margins. I don’t see why I should have to demonstrate that the entire system is bad before I’m permitted an opportunity to suggest changing some areas I consider bad; I should hope that we’re not trapped with the option of either accepting this system as it is, or throwing out the entire thing.
Coming in very late here, but I have to say I think that corporate power does not approach government power.
To my mind, the great argument for this is the police power of government. Someone mentioned a corrupt building inspector. A better example is an ambitious prosecutor. Get in the crosshairs of one and you have major problems.
We’ve all read about cases where convicted criminals were exonerated, often after many years in jail, on the basis of DNA or other very strong evidence. It is astonishing how often prosecutors resist even running the DNA tests, effectively lengthening the time an innocent person is imprisoned.
These are the publicized cases, of course. But there are many lesser matters that drag on pointlessly and unnecessarily for years. I once had the misfortune of being peripherally involved in such an investigation. I can assure you that it generated great misery and expense, before being, almost literally, laughed out of court.
This is my somewhat roundabout way of answering CharleyCarp’s question:
can you cite an example where the proper solution is deprive it of the power, and the cure doesn’t end up worse than the disease?
I think it would be useful if prosecutors in particular were somewhat accountable for the misuse of their power. I don’t doubt that Charley, and some of theother lawyers here, have much more experience with this than I do. Do you think the current rules are optimal?
Bernard, you are right. We don’t even need to posit a corrupt prosecutor. An ambitious one can be enough to really screw up your life.
As for examples of misuses of government power–farm subsidies. They are great example of things that almost any expert will agree are damaging, both sides tend to agree are stupid, and yet aren’t ever going anywhere. They are also good examples of my analogy to psychological defenses/crutches. They made sense at one time but are clearly wrong now. (By made sense I mostly mean were economically defensible by the understanding at the time).
To return to your assumption of Charley’s question, I ask you this: how many examples of reduced government power that will not lead to chaos and anarchy must I provide before you’ll agree that perhaps we should fix some of them? Ten? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand?
But Andrew, this is absurd. Hilzoy, and liberals generally, aren’t opposed at all to fixing instances of government overreach and reducing government power. Katherine, for example, has put years into investigating and opposing abuse and overexpansion of government power in the area of wrongful detention and torture. Hilzoy and other liberals have spent a great deal of effort on opposing abuse and expansion of government in the area of warrantless surveiliance. It is not even a recognizable caricature of liberalism or leftism to say that we favor the indiscriminate extension of government power.
Hilzoy’s comment at 9:25 yesterday really sums it up. Some types of the extension of government power are threatening to the freedom of the individual. There is no part of leftism that commits us to ignore those problems — we (I pontificate on behalf of all leftists here) are vitally concerned with them, and have a strong public record of being concerned with them. Others, like food safety regulations, really aren’t threatening to individual freedom. And so it’s useless discussing ‘government power’ as a unitary threat — some parts are threatening, and some are benign.
Liz,
It seemed a reasonable question. I was asked to provide an example. I did so, and Phil provided several others, to which the first response was ‘well, that’s the exception, not the norm.’ That doesn’t sound like a willingness to address the problem to my ears. When several examples are offered and the response is ‘how common is that really,’ why is it absurd to ask how many examples I must provide?
Italiacto!
Nor, I should note, am I suggesting that leftists want to expand government for the sake of expanding government.
I guess I just need to write a pre-essay to anything I write here explaining precisely what it is I’m addressing, since otherwise people make an inordinate number of assumptions that have little to nothing to do with what I’m talking about.
I wrote the first essay strictly to point out that, while libertarians might well look to Democrats to block the currently unchecked power of Republicans, the notion of a libertarian Democrat is much akin to a vegan carnivore: it just doesn’t work.
This essay was written strictly to defend why I think that government power is the most dangerous concentration of power we face. Not that other concentrations are not or can not be dangerous. Just to point out why I think that government power is in a league of its own.
I am not really trying to pen far-reaching essays that touch on many subjects at once. I have too much respect for my own limited talents to make such attempts. When I write an essay, it is generally intended to be restricted to a fairly narrow topic. Clearly, however, my skills at delineating that topic still require great work.
(thanks, Slart.)
But you’ve been reading Hilzoy’s writing for a while now — doesn’t it seem bizarre to suggest that she has any objection to fixing government overreach? You asked how many examples you had to provide “before you’ll agree that perhaps we should fix some of them?” when most of what she writes about is ‘fixing some of them’. Asking ‘what more must I do to convince you to work toward an end that you are already working toward‘ is an absurd question.
Your disagreement with Hilzoy (and me) appears to me to be on whether all exercise of government power can be analyzed as a single thing, such that reducing it anywhere lessens the odds that it will be abused anywhere else. I don’t think that’s the case, nor, I think does Hilzoy. That has nothing to do with a reluctance to address government abuse of power where it’s actually being abused.
Liz,
I give up. It was unwise of me to enter into this in the first place, I see now, and while it is too late to change my initial mistake, I can at least avoid compounding it.
I will note, in closing, however, that “Your disagreement with Hilzoy (and me) appears to me to be on whether all exercise of government power can be analyzed as a single thing, such that reducing it anywhere lessens the odds that it will be abused anywhere else.” is not, in fact, my position, and it saddens me that my skills are so poor that I have garbled the message so thoroughly.
Andrew, if I may, a suggestion. This might not help, but I’m fairly sure it won’t make anything worse.
So far you’ve been writing about the general social role of government in terms of the problems posed by power you wish it didn’t have. In doing this, as you’ve discovered, as I did in my libertarian days, it’s really easy to get oneself confused with a bunch of other sorts of folks. You need to, as it were, distinguish your brand. 🙂
One of the best ways to distinguish yourself from almost everyone else would be to find some good current examples of the successful use of very minimal governmental power. There must be some out there, and it would be a real benefit to the discussion as well as maybe making life easier for you to have some case studies to poke it, throwing in data along with the values and such.
It’s not really my place to tell you what you should worry about, but I think you’re misinterpreting the fact that a conversation takes off and develops from your very interesting and thoughtful posts, as meaning that your point has been misunderstood.
What I understood your point to be is that “Libertarians are unlikely to wholeheartedly ally with Democrats, because Libertarians oppose the extension of government power and Democrats approve of it.” I responded at Unfogged with a post attempting to convey that I thought the Libertarian opposition to extension of government power was oversimplified and misguided, because the most limited possible goverment is still capable of incredible amounts of oppression, and ‘large’ complex regulatory states are often characteristic of very free societies. While I may have misunderstood your point as well, I know that I moved on to areas that you hadn’t directly addressed.
The conversation is going to go where it’s going to go. Worrying about whether your views are directly misrepresented is one thing, but I think you might profitably relax some about simple changes in topic.
Andrew: It may have been unwise for you, but I keep learning from it.
The reason I asked for more examples wasn’t that I thought that this was an isolated incident; it was that you seemed to be stating a somewhat more general view — not that all instances of government power are in some way like the 4th amendment case (strawman!), but that enough are to make a more generalized attitude of suspicion towards expansion of government power/activity appropriate.
I mean: I tend to think, when confronted by some proposed new regulation, that the burden of proof is on the people who propose it, and that one should ask: is there a real problem that this addresses? Is there a better solution to it? Is the cure worse than the disease? Etc. But if the regulation is being proposed by, say, the FDA, I do not tend to think that it’s an additional reason for skepticism that this adds to the amount of government power.
I take it you do, and I was thinking: in that case, it really would matter whether the 4th amendment case was a unique instance, or one that could in some sense be taken as exemplary — as a sort of paradigm case, to which there are presumably tons of exceptions, but which can nonetheless serve as a kind of starting-point in one’s thinking.
That’s all. I wasn’t meaning to bog you down withe requests for millions of new examples.
I’ve never been good at relaxing. One of my more annoying failings. 🙂
When several examples are offered and the response is ‘how common is that really,’ why is it absurd to ask how many examples I must provide?
The question is how much those examples are representative of a common phenomenon. Over zealous prosecution, farm subsidies, providing cable TV, raising your taxes? Given the range of these examples, one could ask if there is anything that one would accept as an unalloyed good. Well, the armed forces is the one everyone accepts, which, ironically, seems to consume a larger percentage of the budget than anything else, iirc.
Overzealous prosecution with the range of get tough on crime measures arise from a certain demagogic urge, as CC notes, and the Dem side of the equation has been much better at attempting to guarantee individual rights (there is a reason that the Republicans are called the law and order party, I think) so this seems a pox on both houses that permits the speaker to claim moral purity without getting into the nitty-gritty of getting things done. I say this cautiously, because I don’t want to be accused of attributing bad thoughts to people taking the opposite position, but if you could explain how it is not a pox on both your houses approach, but a carefully designed engagement aimed at providing a practical roadmap to get to a better place, it would clear up a lot of things.
This extends to the whole question of revisiting convictions. Some would argue that judicial decisions cannot be revisited because it would raise questions about the ultimate justice of the system. When decisions are revisited, the argument goes, the trust on which the whole edifice is based collapses. That is a big factor in Japanese court decisions to not grant retrials or revisit death penalty (or almost any other conviction) after 4 death row inmates were acquitted. These grafs are from this link
The Ministry of Justice in Tokyo, which exercises central control over prosecutors across the country, often points to Japan’s adherence to the 1983 criteria as evidence that it proceeds selectively and consistently in capital cases — in implicit contrast to the United States, where similar crimes may or may not qualify for the death penalty depending on the state in which they occur. Prosecutors I spoke with in Japan said proudly, sincerely, and, no doubt, accurately that they never seek the death penalty before submitting the case to probing review by government lawyers who are in turn guided by the 1983 Supreme Court decision.
The crimes of which Hakamada was convicted qualified for the death penalty in 1966 — and would still have qualified after 1983. But he insists that he did not commit them. At his trial, he recanted the confession prosecutors had put before the judges. He described 23 straight days of daily 12-hour interrogations, punctuated by threats and beatings. “I could do nothing but crouch down on the floor trying to keep from defecating,” he later wrote to his sister. “At that moment one of the interrogators put my thumb onto an ink pad, drew it to a written confession record and ordered me, ‘Write your name here!’ [He was] shouting at me, kicking me and wrenching my arm.”
In convicting Hakamada, the Shizuoka court took note of his claims, dismissed some of his confession, and even chided the police for their tactics. But it said that there was nonetheless enough evidence to find him guilty and sentence him to death. His efforts to overturn the verdict were rejected first by the intermediate court of appeals, known as the High Court, and then by the Supreme Court, which ruled on November 11, 1980. At that point, his death sentence became “final,” as the Japanese put it. Accordingly, Hakamada was transferred from a regular prison cell to solitary confinement on death row in the Tokyo Detention Center.
But the questions about his confession have not gone away. Nor have the legal structures that may have encouraged the police to wring it out of him. Under Japanese law, courts have traditionally treated a perpetrator’s own admission as more persuasive than other evidence, including circumstantial evidence or even forensics. Suspects may be held and questioned without access to a lawyer for up to 23 days. Even after that, police are not required to let defense counsel sit in on their clients’ questioning, and the defense is not entitled to look at all the evidence in the files of police and prosecutors. The great pressure on police and prosecutors to produce confessions and the great latitude to question suspects behind closed doors have yielded recurring credible allegations of physical and psychological abuse during interrogations.
In the 1980s, such concerns led to the first death-row exonerations in Japan’s postwar history. Under Japanese law, the only way for a prisoner to escape execution after his conviction and death sentence have been upheld by the Supreme Court is to obtain a new trial based on new evidence that he is actually innocent. (There’s no exact counterpart to the habeas corpus review of the United States, under which death-row prisoners sometimes win new sentencing hearings because courts find that their constitutional rights were violated at trial.) Until 1975, that rule had been interpreted narrowly, and no one had actually been awarded a retrial. But in 1975, the Japanese Supreme Court relaxed the interpretation. It said that to obtain a retrial, a prisoner must present clear new evidence that creates a reasonable doubt as to his guilt, rather than clear new proof of innocence.
Armed with this ruling, four death-row inmates who had been protesting their innocence since the early postwar years won new trials — and were acquitted. The most notorious of these miscarriages of justice involved Sakae Menda, convicted and sentenced to die for a double ax-murder in 1948 at the age of 23. The guilty verdict and death sentence had been based on the self-contradictory testimony of a prostitute and on Menda’s own confession, which had been extracted after he had spent 80 hours in a police station without sleep. After a retrial, he walked out of prison in 1983.
The four exonerations shook Japanese society and reverberated within the powerful Ministry of Justice. There were no executions between November 1989 (shortly after the last of the exonerations) and March 1993. During that time, the civil servants who wield behind-the-scenes power at the ministry conducted a review of the embarrassing acquittals. But it did not produce any fundamental changes. According to leaked excerpts of the internal report, the ministry concluded that the four wrongful convictions reflected unique postwar conditions, such as flaws in prosecutors’ supervision of the police, that had since been corrected. The main lesson the authorities learned, David T. Johnson wrote in his study of Japan’s prosecutors, The Japanese Way of Justice (Oxford University Press, 2002), was that they must redouble their efforts to guarantee the accuracy of confessions.
The unofficial moratorium on executions ended on March 26, 1993, when three men were hanged. By that time, Iwao Hakamada was pursuing his own effort at exoneration. After the Supreme Court confirmed his conviction and sentence in 1980, a new team of lawyers, headed by Kazuo Itoh, the vice-chairman of the human rights committee of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, stepped into the case. In 1981, the lawyers filed a petition for retrial on Hakamada’s behalf. Itoh’s team asked doctors to conduct a reexamination of the physical evidence in the case, which resulted in the finding that the alleged murder weapon was the wrong size to produce the deep stab wound in one of the murdered children. The lawyers were also able to show that a door through which police said Hakamada had entered and exited the victims’ home was locked at the time of the crime. And perhaps most important in the lawyers’ eyes, they showed that a pair of bloodstained pants the police said they had recovered at the scene 14 months after the crime were too small for Hakamada.
The gathering and presentation of this new evidence took the better part of 13 years. On August 9, 1994, the Shizuoka District Court rejected Hakamada’s petition. A subsequent appeal to the Tokyo High Court failed almost exactly 10 years later, on August 27, 2004. “New evidence presented by the defense lacks clarity and contains nothing new as required to open a retrial,” Judge Fumio Yasuhiro wrote for the High Court, “and it cannot be said that it will generate reasonable doubt about the final judgment.” dna testing of the bloody pants was inconclusive, and Judge Yasuhiro agreed with prosecutors that Hakamada had been wearing them at the time of the crime. Itoh is appealing the case to the Supreme Court.
Apologies for the long quotation, but if the problem is a fear to revisit decisions because the system will be perceived to lose trust, unilaterally taking away the power of that system would not address this concern and would therefore not really address the problem, just the symptom.
On preview, I see that this may seem like piling on, so apologies if it is, but I guess a simple question is how do we distinguish a pox on both your houses approach from a compromise that is workable and meaningful?
It may have been unwise for you, but I keep learning from it.
I always knew I could be a great example for someone someday.
I just never expected it would be as cautionary example. 😉
Dammit, I wanted to get in earlier in the next thread about government power versus corporation power. Oh well, I’m late to this party too, but hopefully someone will notice.
An absolute must read, in my opinion, is Dean Baker’s “The Conservative Nanny State.” He argues, convincingly, that conservatives are not “anti-government” — they’re just anti- the parts of government they don’t like. They are in favor of government actions that systematically favor the rich. He gives excellent examples that don’t even make it onto people’s radar when they talk about “government power.” Certainly nobody in the previous thread on this topic addressed or mentioned any of Baker’s ideas.
And, best of all, the book is available for reading online — free. Here’s the link:
http://www.conservativenannystate.com/cns.html
So, it appears you and I have something else in common.
Bill Gates may have wielded a lot of power when he ran Microsoft, but he had to build it from the ground up.
No, he didn’t. As Philip Greenspun points out in How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates, Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 are “Choose your grandparents carefully” and “Choose your parents carefully”.
Does anyone think that a business could get away with hiring people to physically assault their laborers in today’s society?
Yes.
“Well, the armed forces is the one everyone accepts, which, ironically, seems to consume a larger percentage of the budget than anything else, iirc.”
Why is it ironic that the one thing almost everyone accepts as a legitimate use of government power might be better funded than things that have very contested acceptance?
“Your disagreement with Hilzoy (and me) appears to me to be on whether all exercise of government power can be analyzed as a single thing, such that reducing it anywhere lessens the odds that it will be abused anywhere else.”
This isn’t the disagreement, but it triggered a though in my head anyway.
For most people with a libertarian bent the difference is in emphasis and burden of proof. You don’t support large government interventions until it has already been shown that non-governmental methods have failed, have done so on a regular basis (because any system will have some random failures), that the governmental intervention has a good chance of in fact correcting the problem, and that the intervention isn’t likely to cause unacceptable side effects.
The Democratic Party (as currently led) is much more likely to see a problem and immediately start looking for a government solution. The question of whether or not the ‘problem’ is a real failure, whether or not the government can effectively address it, and whether or not the side effects are worth it are rarely independently raised by Democrats. (They are only slightly more often raised by Republicans, and not so much recently so this isn’t me heaping praise on the Republicans by any means).
Ohh, a despair.com sub-thread. In a similar vein their February one from some year had a giant picture of a rose with the caption:
You were meant for me….
Perhaps as a punishment.
Slart,
I suppose I should just be grateful that my life has any purpose at all, really.
Columbia. Meh. They’ve probably reverted to the original original recipe for Coke.
OK, now I’ve actually read through the thread.
First, my thanks to russell for so nicely laying out so elegantly something that most Republican type defenders of corporations tend to miss: the various ways that corporations can harm us that have nothing to do with us buying their products. Terrific examples, and very well said. Thanks!
Second, to respond to the main thread. Andrew wrote, summing up his original argument: “the notion of a libertarian Democrat is much akin to a vegan carnivore: it just doesn’t work.”
The “vegan carnivore” analogy does seem to suggest that you are saying what Lizardbreath summarized as follows: “Libertarians are unlikely to wholeheartedly ally with Democrats, because Libertarians oppose the extension of government power and Democrats approve of it.”
And, in general, what Lizardbreath and hilzoy and others seem to be saying is that Democrats in fact *do not* approve of the extension of government power, as a general principle. Therefore, there is no contradiction whatever in saying “libertarian Democrat.”
In fact, there may well be a wide range of issues on which libertarians and Democrats can agree. Perhaps a very wide range.
And depending on how far away from libertarian ideals the Republican party veers — and they look like they’re going pretty much 180 degrees away from libertarianism on pretty much every issue — libertarian Democrats may come to be the rule, rather than the exception, with the libertarian camp.
If I am reading them correctly, hilzoy and Lizardbreath are pointing out some aspects of that range of agreement between their understanding of liberal commitments and what you have said about libertarianism. And when you disagree with the examples they cite, or act like you’re not convinced, then they try to figure out what principle is making you feel like you have to continue to disagree with them. This, I take it, is what led to the “Your disagreement with Hilzoy (and me) appears to me to be on whether all exercise of government power can be analyzed as a single thing, such that reducing it anywhere lessens the odds that it will be abused anywhere else” episode. It’s not that they can’t read your original essay, it’s just that they can’t figure out why you think you have to disagree with them.
Here are the points of agreement between libertarianism (as you have spelled it out) and many forms of liberalism:
–The government has a great deal of power, and is dangerous for that reason;
–Many things that government now does are dangerous, and it should not do them;
–It is wise to think carefully before allowing the government to take new powers in new areas of life.
–Etc.
Now, certainly these ideas are *central* to libertarianism in a way that they are not central to most liberal Democrats. But liberal Democrats have no reason to deny them.
Again, I would urge reading Dean Baker’s book online (link upthread). It contains a list of a whole host of government powers that liberals have reason to think badly of — and that Republicans will defend to their dying breath.
My fave, though is still this. It’s one of those made-for-Dilbert moments.
Having (post-coffee) read the article through twice, what it sounds like to me is an argument for more transparency and accountability in government, not for less government power.
In the example you offered in another article, of a local government council making it obligatory for everyone with a septic tank to have the tank inspected annually, and there being only one company in the local government area licenced to inspect septic tanks, a whole bunch of questions come to my sceptical mind:
1. First, because I don’t know anything about septic tanks – is it generally accepted good practice to have the tank inspected on a regular basis, and if so, how often?
2. How much does it actually cost to inspect a septic tank?
3. Is the fee charged reasonable considering the costs?
4. How difficult is it to get a license to inspect septic tanks?
If all or any of the answers to questions 1, 2, 3, and 4 look suspicious – that is, if it’s generally agreed that you need to inspect a septic tank once every five years or so, and the cost of doing so isn’t that much but the fee the company charge is large and has been raised recently, and it’s all but impossible to get a license to do so – if even one of these things is true, and certainly if more than one is true, then I would (consider, depending on what other things were on my plate and how expensive the fee was) start a local campaign against the council/the new law.
I don’t need evidence that they were in collusion with the company, though finding such evidence would be jammy indeed: I just need to show that the law as passed was unreasonable. I don’t need the local newspaper on the side of the campaign (and if they take advertising from the local septic tank inspection company, they might be reluctant at first), though it helps: start a website, distribute flyers, get a petition going.
For any campaign of this kind, you need at least one person who’s prepared to be the activist, but if there’s a lot of annoyed people with septic tanks, the information you have provided will, well, annoy them. Never underestimate the power of a petition with a lot of local signatures on it delivered to a local council.
None of this is an argument that the government shouldn’t have the power to make regulations about septic tank inspections. But the people who elected the government should have the power to (a) find out about the financial interests of the people in government (b) get into direct contact with government representatives (c) find out how government representatives voted / abstained (d) listen to / read transcripts of government representatives debating (e) be able to publish information about (a)-(d) to voters (f) have a voting system that ensures all citizens can register and vote and their vote will be counted.
I will dip back in to note Seb’s excellent summation: Democrats tend to look to government first when there’s a problem. Libertarians (large and small ‘l’) look to government last. That is no small difference. And contra Kent, that does make the notion of libertarian Democrats unsustainable. The fact libertarians agree with Democrats in some areas is insufficient to bring them together as a group for anything more than tactical advantage. When discussing certain civil liberties, Democrats and libertarians can and should work together, but that no more makes the libertarians ‘libertarian Democrats’ than it does make a vegan who makes common cause with carnivores who believe that food animals should be treated humanely a ‘vegan carnivore.’
Democrats tend to look to government first when there’s a problem. Libertarians (large and small ‘l’) look to government last. That is no small difference.
But if a problem exists and has to be resolved, what solutions do libertarians look to before a solution using the power of government?
Example: The problem: Many septic tanks in a certain area are ancient and in bad condition, leaking their contents, to the detriment of the water table. One solution (to me, the most obvious) is governmental: mandate regular inspectation and repairs by law. What would be the libertarian solutions to the problem of a polluted water table? (Honest question. I’m really interested in the answer.)
Alternatively, liberals and libertarians have differing notions of relevant precedent.
We never start in a vacuum, after all. All of us looking at a problem will be reminded of others, and solutions, and things that weren’t solutions in the past but might be, and hopes, and fears, and things that bugged us about the last resolution, and so on. This is part of the free lunch of living in society: we don’t have to do everything de novo.
But differing perspectives and experiences lead us to different diagnoses, and to different cures. A liberal who looks at a social problem and suggests a government solution isn’t doing it just for kicks, most of the time, but because their sense of the problen and relevant history is that the government solution is available and will work reasonably well. A libertarian who looks at it and suggests a private solution isn’t doing it just to spite anyone or out of nasty untempered greediness, necessarily, but because their sense of the problem and relevant history is that the private one is a better fit and easier to adjust later if need be.
Now sure, we can always assume that one or both are utter nimrods. Or we can give each some credit for dealing with the world as it has been before this particular moment as well as having convictions. It has the rhetorical advantage of opening up some lines of discourse, including the often-productive questions like “So what does this one remind you of?” and “What about them reminds you of them?”
Jes provides a useful example of just what I was talking about. And now for our next trick, we’ll saw a syllogism in half.
For most people with a libertarian bent the difference is in emphasis and burden of proof. You don’t support large government interventions until it has already been shown that non-governmental methods have failed, have done so on a regular basis (because any system will have some random failures), that the governmental intervention has a good chance of in fact correcting the problem, and that the intervention isn’t likely to cause unacceptable side effects.
SH – That seems fair to me. What I’ve been trying, clumsily, to get at, is that Andrew’s vegan carnivore analogy is off; that the differences between a liberal and a libertarian position as I understand you and Andrew to hold it (to give an example, no one of you, so far as I know, wants to shut down the FDA) are matters of emphasis, rather than matters of principle. (Kent’s characterization of the whole conversation is dead on, from my point of view.) Liberals have no objection to seeking out and fixing examples of government overreach; libertarians (of the sort that doesn’t object to the FDA) aren’t opposed in principle to government solutions to problems where they can be empirically shown to be necessary. The difference is that libertarians begin from a position of extreme suspicion of government action, while liberals are less suspicious outside of issues that are core civil liberties issues.
But that suspicion feeds into an empirical argument about the wisdom of particular policies, which there’s room for within liberalism, and within the Democratic party. While a libertarian within the Democratic party is probably going to find themselves associating with people they think are misguided in the emphasis they place on suspicion of government action, they won’t find themselves fundamentally at odds with the party.
So come on over. We’d be delighted to have you. (Oh, your position on abortion is an issue, but you can go sit on the bench with Harry Reid. We’re nice to him.)
Liz,
That’s a lovely thought, but it just isn’t true. Shall we discuss Social Security reform or school vouchers a moment to illustrate the point?
Let’s agree to fix the problems Republicans have caused over the last six years. Trying to go beyond that is just going to cause more heartache.
S: Columbia. Meh.
What an inspiring example of moral clarity and the commitment to human rights across the board.
Doesn’t count until it happens here, eh?
Shall we discuss Social Security reform or school vouchers a moment to illustrate the point?
Ah, you see, two empirical questions. (And interestingly, questions in neither of which is one side unambiguously an example of ‘less government power’.)
But I recognize that you don’t see it my way. Just trying to make it clear that the door’s open over here.
Okay, I snapped.
Having now counted to ten and applied the technique of trying to think of the best possible motivation Slart could have had for his comment, I realize that ‘Meh’ may not be his reaction to workers being beaten and killed at the behest of Coca-Cola, but his estimation of the quality of the Colombia example as a response to Andrew’s question.
Even though the original Coke joke following immediately on seems to works in favor of the ‘no skin off my back’ interpretation.
Liz,
That’s a lovely sentiment, and certainly the best offer I’ve had all year, but joining a party that I already know will ignore my concerns seems imprudent. How do I know they’ll ignore them? Because the people here do, and I find it most unlikely the average Democrat is somehow more open-minded than those I find here.
(Also…isn’t one side of the SS debate to eliminate it, which seems to me an unambiguous example of less government power? I realize that side has about as much chance of winning as I do of winning the Democratic nod for President, but it still exists.)
This, of course, is why I tend towards a ‘pox on both houses’ view. Whoever wins, my principles will not get a hearing. The Republicans have demonstrated that in spades, and I see nothing in the history of the Democratic Party that suggests I should expect any more of them. If things do go well in November and the Democrats take one or both houses of Congress, I look forward to seeing them prove me wrong. But I won’t hold my breath.
Ultimately the problem is systemic. So while it may be a cop-out for me to decry both parties, the fact remains neither one of them will fix the problems. Will the Democrats introduce a bill repealing the Detainee Treatment Act? Will they speak up for 4th amendment protections? I think we all know the answers to those questions, and while there are good answers to be given to them, that brings me back to the issue of the systemic problem we face.
Nell,
I will note only that my original essay was speaking primarily about the U.S. That does not mitigate the issue Jes raised, but I think that her example doesn’t invalidate my point, that I don’t think businesses in the United States are much in the habit of attacking their workers.
Septic systems do, in fact, need to be maintained on a regular basis. The sewage tends to clog the pores in the soil, so after a while the contaminated water has nowhere to go but up. Then you get a nice big sinkhole filled with raw sewage.
In extremely porous soils which don’t clog, the problem is that the bacteria-laden water can travel great distances both laterally and vertically, and can contaminate both potable water and recreation water (rivers and oceans).
My particular frustration with Andrew’s kind of libertarianism is that the default condition, when someone is getting screwed over, is to do nothing on the presumption that government involvement will make matters worse.
Now, the history of government in this country and around the planet contains plenty of examples of the law of unintended consequences, so I respect and agree with the idea that government should respond carefully to various crises.
but, to return to the provision of various safety nets, there is plenty of evidence that non-governmental solutions don’t work. By the time you need your pension, you’re too old to generate substantial new income. Being told that your company failed and you’re doomed to a penurious retirement is not acceptable. Ask the employees of United or Bethlehem Steel how they feel about the pension laws in this country.
p.s. lawyers generally use the term “police powers” to mean the full range of powers of a municipality, from land use to public health and safety to criminal.
Also…isn’t one side of the SS debate to eliminate it, which seems to me an unambiguous example of less government power?
Okay, I haven’t seen this as an active possibility in the debate. The options have been more like SS as it is now, or ‘managed accounts’ which the gov’t still has a great deal of control over. But total elimination would be ‘less government’.
I’d really be interested in seeing posts on those of your specific policy preferences informed by a desire for smaller government. I expect the reaction from the commenters here would be argumentative (what are the odds of that?), but I’d be interested. I tend to get into conversations with libertarianish-Republicans in which things like “Obviously, I’m not planning to eliminate the FDA,” are said, and then I realize that I’m very unclear on what their actual policy preferences are.
Andrew: but I think that her example doesn’t invalidate my point, that I don’t think businesses in the United States are much in the habit of attacking their workers.
No, they’re not – because they wouldn’t get away with it. But US corporations will hire people to attack their workers if they can get away with it. That’s my example.
And US corporations operating in the US will (read Fast Food Nation, the chapter on the meatpacking industry) work on the system that it’s cheaper to use workers up and kick them out than it is to run a dangerous industry with decent safeguards and health care. Because they can get away with it: not least because of the financial hooks they have into state and federal government. This doesn’t constitute direct attack: it does constitute making decisions based on profit over human lives.
I’m still interested in the libertarian answer to the leaky septic tanks/polluted water table question, by the way.
And, you know?
Will the Democrats introduce a bill repealing the Detainee Treatment Act? Will they speak up for 4th amendment protections?
I can’t say more than ‘maybe’. I can say that they are infinitely more likely to do so than the Republicans these days — that if these are the issues you’re voting on, your choice between the parties is obvious. (I can see an argument for giving up in despair because both parties stink, but if you’re making a real world choice between parties with a chance of exerting power on this issue, your only sensible choice is to vote Democratic.)
Not that you’ve said that you are currently a Republican, or that you wouldn’t vote Democratic. Just that concern on those issues isn’t a reason to avoid the Democratic party.
Francis,
My kind of libertarianism is more properly known as cynicism: someone is always getting screwed over. Government action may change who, but it generally still ends with someone getting screwed over. How much better off are American school children after forty years of government action? I have a certain degree of respect for the wisdom of Calvin Coolidge in this: nine out of ten problems you see right now will roll into the ditch before they reach you.
Liz,
I refuse to have policy preferences on the principle they might be wrong, and then where would I be?
More seriously, the problem I run into in attempting to get into the nuts and bolts is that, inevitably, the conversation devolves into some picayune discussion of some minor point, generally predicated on either an error of mine (quite common, since I am far from an expert on much of anything) or unprovable assumptions (if we wiped out Social Security tomorrow, for example, which I am not advocating, the world would not continue status quo except for the existence of those checks; there would be reactions to the changed situation that are ultimately impossible to know with certainty). Nonetheless, if only because you’re the only person who ever had a blogcrush on me and rumor has it you’re cute, I’ll do my best. (The last should be taken firmly tongue in cheek. Please don’t hit me.)
Jes,
Not being a libertarian, you’ll have to ask someone who is. 😛
Liz,
I do intend to vote Democratic in November, for all the good it will do. (I live in Colorado Springs, where the guy running to replace Hefley has been all-but-denounced by Hefley and will probably still get 60% of the vote.) But I expect that if the Democrats do win, we’re more likely to see them emulate the Republicans of the late 1990s than to make any real positive change.
Thanks for extending me a bit of rhetorical charity, there, Nell. I’m not sure that either of your reads were all that close, but the second was a great deal closer than the first. a) It was a joke, and b) it certainly wasn’t any expression of contempt for Columbian workers.
Certainly, it now goes without saying, not funny, though. I believe I’ve mentioned that my regard for my own funniness is probably unjustifiably high.
Sadly, I, like all other women posting on the internet, am a 47 year old balding fat man. But I’m still interested.
Sadly, I, like all other women posting on the internet, am a 47 year old balding fat man. But I’m still interested.
My world is over.
How much better off are American school children after forty years of government action?
Depending which American school children you were thinking of, between 1966 and 2006, I would guess some of them are quite a considerable amount better off.
I don’t know enough about US education to speak definitely, but I do know that in the UK, while people keep saying that standards are going down, in fact every non-subjective test says that educational standards are going up, and today’s school students are outperforming the students of 40 years ago. The subjective test of “School isn’t what it was in my young day!” is not reliable. 😉
In part the improvements are straightforwardly due to the advances of feminism, and the political/educational changes brought about by feminism: girls are, on average, doing far better educationally than they did 40 years ago, which – considering the averages of all children in the educational system, is bound to bring averages up. I would imagine that the same would be true for the US, given that the legal/social disadvantages for black students were far greater 40 years ago than they are today, and the legal/social disadvantages for girls, ditto.
Andrew: Not being a libertarian, you’ll have to ask someone who is. 😛
Very good; then can you answer the question not as a libertarian? What is your solution to leaky septic tanks polluting the water table?
What is your solution to leaky septic tanks polluting the water table?
I’m against it.
Andrew,
You’re against having a solution?
Septic tanks are supposed to leak, aren’t they?
Because if not, I’m in trouble.
Andrew: I’m against it.
Eh. You know, if you don’t want to answer the question “What is your solution”, it would be politer to say so. But it’s Friday: so you’re probably OD’d on too much espresso and too many frosted donuts to be sensible. I wish I were. (I like the sort with chocolate filling and chocolate frosting, plus a really big mug of latte with three shots of espresso.)
well, the true libertarian solution would be to wait for the affected parties downstream to sue. however, as many communities with Superfund sites have discovered, proving up the source of underground contamination is incredibly difficult and expensive.
an ounce of enforced prevention, in this context, really is worth several pounds of cure.
Slarti,
“Septic tanks are supposed to leak, aren’t they?”
They’re supposed to leach, not leak. Only a slight difference, in spelling, but a big difference in controlling the run-off.
Surely in all the time you’ve known me, you have learned by now that my social skills are horrifically poor?
I don’t drink coffee. No doughnuts, either.
I cannot offer a good solution because I do not know enough about septic tanks to consider what a good solution would be. I will note, however, that the reason I raised that particular issue is because my Dad mentioned having to do it and that, when the septic tank guy came over to check the system, the guy said outright that annual inspections were unnecessary.
But, if you would like a solution caveated with the fact I know next-to-nothing about septic tanks, I suspect that there is some role for government in this case, because the potential exists for destruction of a common and markets are, by their nature, poor at handling such situations. So, were I king for a day, I would get a group of people who do know something about septic systems together and have them come up with a reasonable regimen for checking to ensure that people’s septic systems were not leaking into local groundwater supplies, then implement that solution.
Well, have we verified that in this particular case there’s a true danger to the water table and that a once-a-year cleaning requirement is reasonable? In my neck of the woods, once every three years is the default recommended frequency and the costs of not maintaining one’s tank are unlikely to affect anyone besides the property owner.
Andrew: So, were I king for a day, I would get a group of people who do know something about septic systems together and have them come up with a reasonable regimen for checking to ensure that people’s septic systems were not leaking into local groundwater supplies, then implement that solution.
In short: the governmental solution. *grin*
I don’t drink coffee. No doughnuts, either.
*flails* But … how do you get through the week without coffee or doughnuts?
In short: the governmental solution.
This is precisely why I try to avoid terms like libertarian. I have said on numerous occasions that I believe that environmental regulation is an area where government interference is not just wise, but necessary.
But … how do you get through the week without coffee or doughnuts?
Poorly, it would seem.
Mr Bad Example, here: I lived in a house with a septic system for about five years, and we never once had it pumped out.
Probably, this is all a function of use, and of tank size. But in all likelihood, the septic system was overdue for maintenance. I think the low end of the recommended timescale for tankenausgepumpen is probably for the smallest tanks and the most active (and careless; you have to be careful about what you flush because some things just stubbornly defy biodegradation) of households, while ours was relatively inactive (mostly just the two adults, with a separate dry-well for the washer outflow) and very careful. And we had a truly mammoth tank; the guy must have gotten a deal on it.
In short: the governmental solution.
Well, *a* government solution, but one that’s based on the best and most impartial reading of the underlying science and data. It’s yet to be established that the governmental solution in the case under discussion could be so described.
“Columbia. Meh.”
Playing late catchup, I can’t figure out what this is in reference to. Something about the District of Columbia that I can’t find?
To continue the septic tank theme, I have relatives who are nice enough to invite my wife and me to their beautiful summer home on a bunch of lakes in a pretty state.
Once, the relatives (all fairly libertarian when it comes to government action, unlike me, and, like me, loud about their preferences) got into a rip-roaring discussion, in which they all agreed that the city fathers’ plan to force the residents (mostly summer fare) to install septic tanks or hook up to the local sewer system because population growth and the resulting human waste leeching into the lakes was causing a growing health problem in the area, was, well, think up your own invective having to do with Karl Marx’s illegitimate children.
Someone quipped quite scientifically that goose droppings alone probably cause just as much of a problem as the human waste, so why don’t the city fathers do something about that, the busybodies, to which my quiet wife, the wetland scientist, who mucks about in water treatment plants all over the West, sweetly pointed out that humans are not effected by the bacteria in goose poop too much, and then listed a long series of ugly bugs we pick up from untreated human waste.
The assembled libertarians (I exaggerate) went silent for a few moments and looked at her like she was the second coming of Emma Goldman. I tried to look innocent.
Then my uncle coughed and asked no one in particular what time it was. Five P.M. came the reply. Start fixing the martinis.
Yet another way to kill those bugs.
Andrew, I would agree that if the guy running the septic tank inspection business was the brother-in-law of the big shots who made the decision, we have a problem.
Still, an enterprising individual could start a second inspection business and underbid the next time the contract came up for renewal. As to the government using its implied monopoly force to make you do it, I’m a little upset about the stop sign at the end of my street and have thought about barricading myself in my house and threatening insurrection if they don’t let ME decide when to stop, but I’m a little anxious about the entire manpower from Fort Carson showing up at my door to convince me otherwise, which would be a role reversal neither one of us could explain.
Also, I don’t necessarily believe all Democrats look to government first to solve problems. I do believe some Republicans look to government to last.
The problems tend to exist for a very long time before ANYONE looks to government and then there is another lag while the legislative machinery works out the compromises.
To invoke Jes’ country for a moment, I’m sure liberal and conservative alike in London before 1850 or so happily slogged through sewage running in the streets every day before anyone did anything about it. Yes, there was some do-gooder whining, finally. Read about early America. I’m sure guys stood in the gutter with sewage running over their boots for decades arguing about the relative merits of taxing the citizenry to clean up the mess.
But then a libertarian caught cholera. Then EVERYONE had to step up.
I suspect there was a need for the FDA and EPA and Social Security and Medicare long, long before anyone looked to government first. We just had to wait until the guys who look to government last got over it.
But then a libertarian caught cholera.
And if you d*mn do-gooders would have just let him die, all this trouble could have been avoided.
“leeching”
leaching.
So, pass a law. I can handle it.
Andrew: If we’re going to avoid terms like “libertarian”, how will Democrats know if they have recruited libertarians or not? 😉
John Thullen: I’m sure liberal and conservative alike in London before 1850 or so happily slogged through sewage running in the streets every day before anyone did anything about it.
Sometimes you really do have to raise a great big stink to get politicians to act:
John,
When a Democrat can use the term ‘school voucher’ without being stoned, we’ll know.
hmm, affected, not “effected”.
I declare martial law.
Gary, try the link at the end of Jes’s 11:46 comment. I’m not aware of people using “Columbia” as a short form of “District of Columbia”, but it is a frequent misspelling of “Colombia”.
Andrew: When a Democrat can use the term ‘school voucher’ without being stoned, we’ll know.
First, we have to figure out which Democrats use the term ‘school voucher’ when stoned. And how stoned they have to be. Also, does being drunk count?
Andrew:
If you’re stoned, you’re already an honorary Democrat.
Until I read Nell’s rejoinder, I assumed the link had had something to do with the university in NYC.
Until I read Nell’s rejoinder, I assumed the link had had something to do with the university in NYC.
My bad. It was a stupid typo, which I regret to say I not only didn’t notice when I typed it, but I didn’t even register when I usually notice typos – a second after I hit Post.
I don’t think you did type it — wasn’t it Slart? But vastly unimportant in any case.
I don’t think you did type it — wasn’t it Slart?
It was. Oh well. Slart will probably consider my taking the blame for his typo my just desserts.
Nah. Guilt all mine; subject me to your worst. This is not quite a spelling flame, is it?
I can’t believe this thread devolved into a discussion of septic tank maintenance. Yes I can. But it really interrupted the flow, and created a horrible mess. Great thoughts are backing up and overflowing onto other threads.
Where’s the moderation?
I submit that discussion of septic tank maintenance is relevant to ANY thread on politics.
“Also, I don’t necessarily believe all Democrats look to government first to solve problems. I do believe some Republicans look to government to last.”
Look, I’m desperate for Republicans to be removed from power, but this seems typical of a lot of the complaints leveled against Andrew here. It’s somewhat disingenuous to compare _not all_ Democrats looking to government first with _some_ Republicans looking to government last (sorry to pick on you, John).
The burden constantly seems to be that Andrew is asked to defend all potential cases when that’s not even his position while the other side dismisses examples by effectively saying that democrats don’t support _all_ government, just _good_ government.
It’s almost felt like a back and forth where when things started with general principles, that was dismissed as theory and Andrew was asked for some examples, those were dismissed as isolated and he was pressed to prove the overarching point, which was dismissed as theory and… While many of you have encouraged him to relax, reading down through the comments has made me a bit surprised at his continued good graces. However, that said, this is about the most civil blog discussion I’ve seen, so in the context of this criticism, let me oddly say that it’s nice to see a _more_ civilized board than the norm :).
Slarti: This is not quite a spelling flame, is it?
I would say more a spelling flambé.
Why is it ironic that the one thing almost everyone accepts as a legitimate use of government power might be better funded than things that have very contested acceptance?
I’ll cop to using ‘it is ironic’ far too much, but my point is that the waste and pork in the defense portion of the budget far outstrips anything else in the budget. Of course, I don’t want to get into a threadfight linking pie charts and stuff like that.
I think that the irony comes in the fact that libertarians seem to have an underlying principle that things can get done without government intervention, as long as we have the very very big stick of the military to prevent Nicaragua from annexing Texas.
Now, I don’t want a flippant observation to descend into a comment spat, but it seems to me that libertarian principles, if they were applied to international relations, would result a remaking of the armed forces. However, if one wants to argue that libertarian principles only go to the water’s edge, this is a sort of American exceptionalism. I would also point out that many of Bremer’s/CPA’s hairbrained schemes for post war Iraq seemed to be libertarianism run amok, so if one wants to claim that libertarianism is good for everyone in every situation, you are going to have to wear that example around your neck.
There’s a lot of things I could say about libertarian philosophy at this point that would not be all that kind, and much of it would be because of the schmulibertarians (I can’t spell it correctly to find it, but I think there was recently an Arthur Silber post about that, who, btw, might be someone to be asked to make a guest post at ObWi) who invoke libertarian principles as cover but don’t believe the actual basis of libertarian principles unless it is to give them the moral high ground (please accept that this is not directed at anyone here)
But this is spinning off to a rant, so a couple of questions that I pose that might be interesting to answer.
-what would a libertarian armed forces look like?
-if libertarianism does not extend to the armed forces, why should this be considered a more realistic view of libertarianism
-had a libertarian been king of the US when the iron curtain collapsed, what would they have done differently?
This is pre coffee, so ignore any ranty parts.
yip:
Hey, pick away.
Actually, I think it was Sebastian way up thread who pointed out the proclivities of which Party looks to government first, which I neglected to cite in my own riff.
As to the civility of the thread, I give Andrew all of the credit for that.
It’s difficult to be uncivil to a guy who is not a libertarian or a Republican, but who still feels a little put out about folks sticking their noses into his septic tank. It’s like blaming Slart for Tom Delay’s tenure in office when Delay never actually let Slart know who he was.
lj,
I see no reason not to attack waste in the defense sector as vigorously as in any other. And, of course, some libertarians believe that national defense should be outsourced as well, although I do not subscribe to that particular belief. I do wonder, though, when I see a long rant that ends with ‘Oh, but this doesn’t apply to anyone here, of course,’ just what I’m expected to do with it. I’ll take you at your word when you say that I’m not cherry-picking libertarian principles, but then, if it doesn’t apply to me, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond.
In reverse order, it’s just to give some sort of background to my opinions, and I add that just to make it clear. I’ve got a particularly dark feelings for the Malkin trapeze act, who got her start as a libertarian, and I have never felt favorable inclined towards instahack, who using libertarian as a shield. Not to mention the noxious attempt by the Republicans to get the libertarian candidate in the race in PA. Trying to separate out those feelings (and not being all that successful) to discuss exactly what it is that’s the problem is very difficult, and when I look up at a page long comment, I get worried that you might say ‘well, I never said X, so why does this apply to me?’ So part of it is in reaction to that, which is the problem with rhetoric, the only way you can not use something is to just ignore it, which then can lead to assumptions that arguments are being cherry picked.
I accept that libertarians want to go after waste in defense spending, but their definition of waste, and a liberal/progressive’s definition of waste is probably quite different. I think that nuclear bunker busters are quite a waste, not simply from the fact that having them ensures that countries with bunkers are going to keep digging them deeper, it seems very much the case that stepping back from these sorts of assumptions would dictate much less shock and awe and a much different armed forces.
-what would a libertarian armed forces look like?
Look, the canonical libertarian answer would probably be no _initiation_ of force. In practice, ask 10 libertarians, get 10 answers. Try, what would the democratic armed forces look like… (heck, ask that question to the last batch of democratic presidential candidates and you’ll get a wide spread of answers)
-if libertarianism does not extend to the armed forces, why should this be considered a more realistic view of libertarianism
All libertarians I know think that you have to discuss the armed forces as a part of discussing government. But, to keep repeating, if you’re looking for the a single set of precise positions, you need to ask an individual (which is probably as close to a libertarian principle as I know 🙂 ).
-had a libertarian been king of the US when the iron curtain collapsed, what would they have done differently?
Abolished the monarchy.
I’m not a libertarian, as I’ve noted previously. I suspect that I would have been wiser leaving Kos’ essay alone, in retrospect, as I appear to have stirred up quite a few feelings to no good purpose. A good lesson learned, I suppose. But all I can answer here with certainty is what I think. In that respect, I probably do cherry-pick some libertarian tenets, since, as I said, I am not one, but I do believe some of the same things they do.
To move from the general to the specific, the offense has always had an advantage over the defense when it comes to technology. It’s a lot easier to destroy something than to protect it from something, and nuclear bunker busters speak to that. There is a limit to how thoroughly an enemy can protect a site against a nuclear device. Therefore, there is a tactical case for creation of such devices. (Personally, I dislike them because I’m leery of any use of nuclear weapons, but I’m not sure I can justify that logically.)
I submit that discussion of septic tank maintenance is relevant to ANY thread on politics.
Slart, I think you should flesh out this thesis, turn it into a book, and call it “Politics and the Art of Septic Tank Maintenance”. I know I’d buy it.
Thanks yip, andrew. I have to admit that I am a bit taken with the progressive notion of a armed forces, which could just as easily attacked as the libertarian stuff here with the ‘give me an example, oh, that example doesn’t count’, so it is more a philosophical stance rather than an actual to do plan. But had we started remolding the armed forces after the Soviet collapse to be a true peace keeping force rather than an offensive force that dabbles in peace keeping, I think it would have been better. I think the notion that it could be done and done well was what motivated many on the left to support the war in Afghanistan, on the presumption that the nation building that would take place afterwards would demonstrate to other countries in the region that the benefits would outweigh everything else. I think it was Beinart who said a year or two ago that if the liberal interventionist type wants to have any credibility at all, they are going to need to figure out how to repair the damage caused by the neo-con vision of utopia.
One could argue that a force devoted to peace keeping could never be made from the parts of the armed forces that is devoted to massive applications of force, which has always been the traditional American doctrine, which may be true, but I still think that it would have been possible, and even if it weren’t, the attempt would have placed us in a better situation than we are in now.
“Gary, try the link at the end of Jes’s 11:46 comment. I’m not aware of people using ‘Columbia’ as a short form of ‘District of Columbia’, but it is a frequent misspelling of ‘Colombia’.”
Indeed, but I am sufficiently prone to being thought rude — or genuinely being rude — that I am reluctant to point that common illiteracy out. (I spent at least a minute trying to avoid making that point when asking the question, fearing the answer was going to be.)
(Reading link.)
Okay, so Slart was, ah, imprecise. Tsk.
At least he wasn’t being complementary about being complimentary.
lj,
Rather than changing the force for peacekeeping, we really need to orient it for counterinsurgency. I am reviewing the new COIN handbook now and will probably post about it over at Chez Olmsted when I’m done.
“Will the Democrats introduce a bill repealing the Detainee Treatment Act? Will they speak up for 4th amendment protections? I think we all know the answers to those questions, and while there are good answers to be given to them, that brings me back to the issue of the systemic problem we face.”
I don’t know the answer. I think it depends on a bunch of stuff, including the environment, the courage of the Democrats, what support we give them, what pressure we put on them, and so on.
You may be right if you’re assuming the cynical answer, but all I can say is that I will fight such an answer as best I can.
Hey, I’m the guy who idiotically managed to call for armed resistance, and the overthrow of the government, in a moment of complete anger and extremism and rage; don’t expect I won’t do less to fight for habeas corpus.
(I’m a little sad Bob McManus never congratulated me on my call for armed overthrow.)
Gary,
I think that it might have carried more weight if, well, you actually were armed.
I suspect that I would have been wiser leaving Kos’ essay alone, in retrospect, as I appear to have stirred up quite a few feelings to no good purpose. A good lesson learned, I suppose.
NO! WRONG! The WHOLE point of this site is to be a forum for debating strongly held views. Debates about weakly held views aren’t all that interesting.
Limiting the power of government was what the US Constitution was all about. But state constitutions (well, California’s) give very broad powers to the state govt to act for the general welfare of its citizens. Finding the appropriate balance between federal power, state power and MYOB is not only vitally important but also interesting.
to return to a point I made above, I think that most liberals have no problem with the idea that government intervention should be approached with healthy skepticism. It’s the moral component to libertarianism — that government ought not to intervene, even if government intervention could solve the problem at issue — where we part company.
As to debating the relative dangerousness of governments vs. corporations, I think that this thread pretty clearly establishes that such a debate is useless. Both can be dangerous; both need monitoring by concerned citizens.
Frankly, I see the debate on relative dangerousness asking the question: Do you want to be beaten by a baseball bat or a hockey stick?
Neither, thanks.
lj, I agree that remodelling the military after the fall of the Soviet Union was a huge missed opportunity. The continued focus on building a military capable of fighting an equal enemy was ridiculous then and has just grown more so.
Andrew, it seems like a lot of the focus on counterinsurgency has been working up through the ranks lately. What I’ve heard has suggested that the stumbling block to making this a strategic focus rather than just innovating at the tactical level remains the Pentagon. In any case, I’ll be curious to read what you post so I’ll be watching your blog (I think it was another thread here where the claim was made that cross-posting hurt readership at the original blog…).
My potential levers with them are either to not buy their stuff, or to somehow dissuade others from patronizing them. The first assumes I want to buy what they are selling, the latter assumes I have some way of identifying, contacting, and changing the behavior of their other customers. Both are more often than not untrue.
No, the latter assumes that someone has already invented the boycott, the inexpensive (or free) news release, and the internet. Fortunately, all three are in fact true. Surely you’ve heard of them? A large-scale boycott of a company and its products can be easily instigated without ever identifying a single individual consumer.
“A large-scale boycott of a company and its products can be easily instigated without ever identifying a single individual consumer.”
And, often the mere existence of the boycott is more effective than any actual losses. Often, changes will be made just to stop the negative press.
Yay! I completely agree with Andrew about septic tanks!
What I don’t agree with is this — which I copied, but now can’t recall who said it (Andrew or Seb, if memory serves, qhich it often doesn’t):
This isn’t right. For one thing, it’s only even plausible for the range of problems that normally strike people as the sort of problem where government would be a remotely plausible solution. That range is already much, much smaller than the range of ‘problems’ — e.g., it does not include problems like a leaky faucet (where the government is not my landlord), a broken car, a child with a cold, me and my persistent failure to get my email under control, and all that stuff. And I don’t mention this just to be annoying: I think it represents a real and very large range of problems where all of us agree that a governmental solution would not be best.
Moreover, I actually don’t think that wanting government to be the solution to all those problems is a partisan trait. I think that large numbers of people suppose that the government should solve a problem when it’s their problem (and it’s in that ‘not nuts to think that government should solve it’ range), and which party is likely to side on them depends on which problem it is.
For instance, Republicans seem to me to be more likely to propose government solutions to such problems as: ranchers in the West not wanting to pay fair market rent for grazing on government lands, farmers in Oregon wanting water that might otherwise support salmon diverted onto their farms, farmers in CA expecting to have the government provide heavily subsidized water rights so that they can grow rice, of all things, in perpetuity, etc.
I think that looking to government to solve one’s problems is something that people do on a bipartisan basis, and that different parties tend to be better at resisting different constituencies, depending on how much a given party relies on the constituency in question.
Personally, I do not look to the government to solve all problems, even in the narrowed range I spoke of.
Francis,
I can’t help but get a chuckle at a post in which you say I’m wrong in suggesting I should have avoided the topic, then close by noting that the debate on the topic is useless.
(I’m a little sad Bob McManus never congratulated me on my call for armed overthrow.)
That is because I did it first, on this very blog. (I just did some searching, but can’t find it;not long before you did.)
I also researched the legal stuff; and I think we have to do it in harmony or something to get arrested.
Now, OTOH, over at Unfogged we agreed that saying the Other Bad Thing will likely get the Secret Service knocking at your door.
yeah, well it’s Friday afternoon.
and didn’t someone smart once say that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?
Hil: If you want to join SH in the argument that the CVP (Central Valley Project) and SWP (State Water Project) should be put primarily to M&I (municipal and industrial — not ag.) use, I will gladly join the battle. but that’s not a topic for this thread.
issues to think about, if you want to take me on:
who decides what crops farmers grow?
California’s Central Valley is, with a controlled source of water, some of the best farmland on the planet. Why shouldn’t it be used that way? (please note that all water used in the Central Valley comes from within California.)
the farmers were there first. the massive explosion in population occurred only after the facilities were built. A core doctrine of western water law (and property law in general) is first-in-time, first in right. why should farming in the Central Valley be different?
The SWP and CVP now exist (as does all sorts of infrastructure, some of it rivalrous and some non-rivalrous, built by the federal government). While one can argue that they never should have been built in the first place, these are now sunk costs. So, on a going forward basis, what should the allocation be?
and coming full circle, there is no such thing as a “market” for large volumes of water, either potable or raw. San Diego (to continue picking on Sebastian) would have a population of at most a few hundred if it weren’t for enormous expenditures by public agencies to bring water there. Since it’s a true monopoly, there’s no way to price it at a market price.
[the last is an oversimplification. various government agencies do charge each other for delivering water in various ways. but it gets very complicated in a hurry.]
hilzoy, I don’t think there is a “real and very large range of problems where all of us agree that a governmental solution would not be best”. Nearly every time there is a crisis (however minor), there is a corresponding cry that government should “do something” about it. This doesn’t always work, but more often than not, laws are passed and power expands.
That power is then left up for grabs. Governments don’t tend to release power once they’ve acquired it. And, since that power itself is valuable, it tends to get acquired by those willing to bid the most to acquire it.
In practice, this means that regulatory and bureaucratic systems are often captured by the very groups they are designed to restrain. Consider the way the national park service was captured by logging/mining interests to the point that vast areas of federal acreage were logged that would have been uneconomical _without_ the supposed conservation services building them free logging roads.
If our goal with government is to check forces that we consider more powerful than us, we’re doomed to failure. If they are more powerful than us, they are going to be better able to win control over the government institutions created to control them.
I also don’t agree with the libertarian position that markets are enough. I think organization is required.
But the ratcheting up of government power and its subsequent cooption by powerful players in the system seems to me a greater threat than is acknowledged.
As a slight coda, I think republicans are worse at this than democrats. Their efforts to use government to control cultural definitions of morality seems to me a singularly threatening move (not to mention the general destruction of the last 1000 years of legal protections for the individual). So please don’t think when I talk about democrats that I’m coming at it from a republican perspective. I will be supporting the democrats in a month and it’s that fact that motivates me to discuss some of this in forums like this.
yip: ” Nearly every time there is a crisis (however minor), there is a corresponding cry that government should “do something” about it.”
— I think it seems this way because a lot of problems don’t so much as occur to us as possibly having a governmental solution, and that this represents a consensus we don’t normally think about. E.g., we probably all agree that the problem of not everyone who wants them having tickets to baseball games does not require a governmental solution. Likewise, the problem of having to mow one’s lawn even if you think it’s a drag, the problem of heartbreak, etc.
hilzoy, I should have been more clear. It’s not that I think there are no areas where there is no real call for government control, it’s that I think it’s a smaller area than you suggest. From your initial list, there have been calls for government to get involved in _every_ item you originally listed.
leaky faucet: mandated landlord repair standards
broken car: government sponsored repair work for lower-income families
child with a cold: all manner of government regulated child-care and health care
me and my persistent failure to get my email under control: here, they’ve actually passed legislation in terms of various anti-spam acts!
Thankfully, I have not yet heard calls for government to mend a broken heart :).
In any case, this is a relatively minor part of the point. The idea that there are some areas that government is not being called into doesn’t change the more central points on regulatory and bureaucratic capture and general struggles for control over expanded power after the initial public focus wears off.
re the new counter insurgency manual, ounce of prevention=pound of cure. hindsight I tole you so, but I can’t help feel that if we actually took that peace dividend seriously, we would have done something like that. Perhaps if a liberal had been in office when the Soviet union collapsed ;^)
yip, that’s a good point, but as I mentioned earlier, when you have population density increase, it becomes more necessary to control what your neighbors do and to make sure that small problems do not become greater ones. It’s a bit of a misnomer to claim that kids with colds are behind mandated health care and child care or leaky faucets are at the heart of demanding landlords have minimal standards, or spam in your mailbox is the sole reason for anti spam legislation. I’ve never heard of gov sponsored repair work for cars, but the reason we have mandated inspections is that a bad car can cause huge amount of damage.
While the spam legislation might be the closest to gov handling trivial problems, phishing and fake offers designed to evade the state regulatory apparatus (spammers who engage in these schemes are very careful to avoid the US mail to avoid wire fraud indictments, I believe) are the norm, and by finding a way to turn off the spigot, one deals with those kinds of problems.
Interesting reactionary post about radically changing the government. Via right-wing loons at Winds of Change.
lj, I actually agree that there is a need for oiling markets. I think effective markets are complex human creations and not some natural state of being as some libertarians treat them. I just think that there’s a need for a greater awareness of the risks of government power as a way to handle those adjustments (what I take as Andrew’s original point in the way back time). As I said before, these particulars of how far calls for government power extend are somewhat tangential to my main point and somewhat immaterial (I probably should have not mixed them into a single post and perhaps suggested some necessary connection).
The main issue for me is that these power structures we create to deal with real and pressing problems are more likely to end up under the control of the forces they are designed to restrain. As I stated, government power is open to control, and it is precisely those who are most powerful who are going to be most effective at taking that control. Particularly, powerful, concentrated interests have proven effective in this regard.
This does not mean we don’t use government for anything. It does not mean there is no place for government. It does mean that both in deciding when to make use of those powers and how to craft those powers, we must have a keen awareness of these unique risks of government power.
The costs associated with those risks lead me to prefer a much more cautious use of government power than many here seem to advocate. But, at the underlying point, I think we can agree both given current and historical events that caution is warranted. But caution is just the starting point, innovation is required because, under present conditions, we are allowing our efforts to use government for good to simply strengthen the very dangers we sought to use it against.
DaveC, that’s interesting, but I’m not sure I’d agree with either repeal of the 17th Amendment or limitation of the 14th. Taking the latter first, what happens under the 14th, and incorporation, is that a minimal standard is set for state interference with civil liberties. Through the Fourteenth, the Fourth Amendment is a floor, but if a state wants to have greater respect for privacy in interpreting its own constitutional analogues, it is free to do so. Because it is only the floor, and not the ceiling, the 14th, and the federal courts, are not forcing all states to meet the same standards everywhere — and abortion is an example. Within the constitutional limits, states have a real variety of provisions on this issue.
On state legislative selection of Senators, I’m not convinced either. The point of changing was to get rid of a body appointed by elitists of elitists, which was, at the time, a great protector of elite values. This fits the 18th century conception well, but I really don’t see any interest in stepping away from democracy in this way. I’d be interested to know if any readers think we should revert to the original method of selecting senators.
I have no problem with prosecuting leakers. I can think of plenty of reasons why the government wouldn’t want to do it — and why it isn’t often done. For one thing, if there even is any real evidence, for example, that the NYT story on the NSA program actually damaged national security, the government isn’t going to want to put introduce it at trial, much less subject it to challenge by the defendant, and its proponents to cross-examination.
In my view, the current dysfunction in the legislative branch is transitory. It’s not usually a feature of one-party rule, but in this case, where the President has something like a cult of personality going, and members of his party in Congress are loathe to challenge him seriously, the legislature isn’t doing its job.
DaveC, anyone who says something like ‘the Democrats should have introduced a bill and dared the Republicans to shoot it down’ doesn’t understand how Congress works. The Republicans don’t shoot down bills introduced by Democrats. They ignore them. Introducing legislation is often not the best use of a member’s time — while investigation often serves the change executive policy, even without legislation. Just knowing that someone is going to have to defend a policy in public has an effect on what policies get pursued. This is probably the greatest impact divided government will have, if we get there. Legislating the repeal of the MCA — while it would be good — is a waste of time. First because the President would veto any such bill, second because it’s more efficient to let him know that all claims of torture are going to be seriously investigated. The latter is enough to deter virtually any member of the armed forces from doing anything outside the field manual (if indeed they are not already deterred). Or any CIA officer.
I’m in basic agreement with most of what you say. However, one reason I advocate more governmental action rather than less is that, again, because of population, it is far easier to have problems quickly arise. So, when you invoke kids getting colds for mandated child health care, (or health care in general) you not only overlook the risk of pandemics like bird flu, but creates a situation of haves and have nots that is corrosive to society. In that regard, I would suggest Richard Evans book _Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910_, which, in the course of discussing the cholera epidemic in Hamburg, suggests the relationship between free-market approaches and the epidemic.
Sorry, that last was to yip
“I’d be interested to know if any readers think we should revert to the original method of selecting senators.”
I am actually indifferent to this. I really do not consider my Texas state legislature a group of elites, and I doubt we would turn out worse than Hutchinson and Cornyn. Senators would be more products of state politics, and might motivate more interest in state elections.
Don’t know if anyone’s still reading way down here, but a couple of quick things:
Yes, I’m aware of boycotts.
The issue here is who is more accountable to me, government or corporations. I have to cause a corporation a lot of pain before they will even notice my existence. It takes a lot of work, and often has no effect on the particular thing I’d like the corporation to change.
If you think through the examples I’ve given, I think you’ll see that boycotts or other consumer-level actions aren’t going to make a dent. It takes government intervention.
In contrast, there are a large number of political officers who I can either call directly or whose offices I can call, speak to someone I know, engage in an intelligent conversation, and have my concerns heard and responded to.
I don’t always get my wish, which is appropriate, but my wishes are always heard and accounted for. And, since very few people actually bother to do anything, my call makes a large impact relative to my personal importance and resources (which are negligible), especially at the more local levels.
In my direct, personal experience, and my observation of the experience of others, government is generally far more responsive and accountable to normal people than corporations are. I therefore find government, even with it’s option of force, less of a threat than corporations. That’s all I’m saying.
Regarding Andrew’s original issue — the relative threat of government force vs. corporate malfeasance — here is an observation.
The people who I think have gotten this closest to right, at least until very recently, are the Swiss. Traditionally, they have had, at most, a very minimal standing army. The military is pretty close to a true citizen militia.
All males are eligible for service from age 18 to their early 30’s, and most serve. Officers serve longer. Everyone gets military training, and is issued a weapon.
Women are not required to serve, but can do so, in any branch, if they wish.
It would be more or less impossible to imagine the state oppressing the citizens by force in that environment. The citizens are the force, literally.
I think that is close to what the founders of this country intended, although it’s not what we have now.
Thanks –