When people speak of their religion or "faith" what is it of which they really speak? I don't mean to offer this question as a rhetorical one, but rather to beg inquiry as to the nature of the ethical beliefs one holds. Is it a belief in a god that motivates our sense of ethics, or is it our sense of ethics that motivates our belief in a particular god? I've come to think that most religious people would feign the former and practice the latter.
It's always amazed me when people try to personify god's views (whichever god it may be) through their own subjective lens. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've heard a proclamation that started as "My god would never..." Some of this type of talk can be expected between people of separate sects of a religion. Surely Protestants and Catholics (Roman) disagree with each other quite a bit on the nature of Christianity and even who and what god is to some degree. But we even see this behavior between people of the same sect, with supposedly very similar beliefs about the nature of their own religion.
For instance, take any two Catholics who are ostensibly doctrinaire in their beliefs on the catechism. It's completely likely that one may be against homosexual marriage and the other may be for it. Both may believe themselves to be right, morally, even when viewed from the prism of bible itself. These two people share in common one single bible and one single Catholic doctrine (which does address the issue to a large degree). How is it that these two can both be consumed with the righteousness of their conflicting views on this particular subject?
It seems to me that a realistic answer would be that people are not as religious as they appear to be. Or that, in other words, religion may play a more cultural or traditional role which is less informative in and of itself on one's sense of ethics than we may be inclined to believe at first glance. I believe that confirmation bias may be the bridge between one's own (learned) sense of what's ethically and morally acceptable and what is found to be ethically and morally acceptable under the religious doctrine they may expound upon.
One of these people may have grown up in a household where it wasn't acceptable to honor homosexuality whereas the other may have grown up being taught that it's wrong to discriminate based on sexuality. There is a tendency in each of us to parse information with a bias towards beliefs that we were already previously inclined to. In this way, we can see that two people may read from the same bible passages and draw very different conclusions regarding what stance on any given subject is the correct one. The man who believes homosexuality is wrong may look back through some passages in the bible and find an unforgiving and intolerant god whereas the other may look through other passages and find a loving and hospitable god.
This creates quite a few problems from a practical point of view. Certainly a large portion of what is obtained from the bible, ethically, is somewhat nuanced. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that a god would hold two mutually exclusive viewpoints on a given matter either. So here we should be able to surmise that surely one person is right and the other is wrong...at least in the eyes of the god they share. Is it really the case that people are that uninformed regarding what the bible says or means, or does the phenomenon of confirmation bias play a role?
I believe it not only plays a significant role but is actually the prime motivator behind disagreement. I've come away, in my life-experience, with the contention that people use the bible much like a Ouija board. It simply says and means whatever that person wants it to say or mean most of the time (as is witnessed by the flood of single-passage/quote justifications on religious issues). Confirmation bias, in any other arena, does not surprise me. But in the realm of religion, I have to admit it seems rather counter-intuitive. If your god is presumed to be almighty, and your eternal soul rests with your ability to do as he has asked you to do, then it seems rather silly for people to fold their own predispositions into the matter.
Take the idea of abstinence within the Catholic Church. I can't tell you how many "progressive" Catholics I've heard say something to the effect of, "It's about time that the Church catches up with the rest of the world and accepts contraception!" Now if you have liberal (or in my case classically-liberal) views on sex, it's completely silly for anyone to be against contraception. However, if it is clearly written in the bible that the act of sex is for pro-creation alone, then what sense does it make for progressive Catholics to demand that god's word be changed or ignored? In the most real (or maybe surreal) sense what value does disobeying your perceived god have?
I'm not saying this in an overly-contrived or pedantic way...I'm being very direct and serious. If your cultural and ethical values are found to conflict of the word of your god is it acceptable to simply bend his word and pretend that what he really intended is whatever you happen to believe in? Looking around me, that seems to be the case. One of two pretty deplorable things is happening here. Either people are seeing the word of god and choosing to often ignore it and twist it to meet their own views and predispositions, risking the eternal damnation of their souls in the process, or these people really don't believe in god in any real sense and simply use religion as a tool to gain favor and support for their own system of ethics. Either one is completely believable, and yet either one is also completely frightening.
Religion is always a touchy subject, but it's often offered a good contrast between words and reality with people. For instance, I am close to several "progressive" Christians which have political views I find plainly abhorrent. But worse than that, I find that those beliefs, as well as their lifestyle, are often out of touch with their own proclaimed religious beliefs. I've argued with many a liberal Christian who believes it's perfectly ethical to steal from the rich and give to the poor but few who would believe that Jesus would advocate us walking around making such "ethical" transactions at the point of a gun. If you think Jesus might disapprove of your use of violence and coercion to meet what you might consider to be virtuous ends, then one has to wonder what value that person holds their own Christian religion at. Is it that they think Jesus might be wrong? Maybe they think that if they had the chance to really talk to an omniscient being that they could convince him how wrong-headed his pacifist views were. And even better, I completely understand the call the Christian god makes of us to voluntarily sacrifice for the benefit of others. Yet the same people who demand that I, an agnostic, meet their ethical standards at gunpoint also live much more comfortable lives than not only me but a good portion of people who are starving around the planet. Ensconced in a furnished, air-conditioned house, plush with new electronics, and with plenty of food packed in the fridge, these self-proclaimed Christians demand I make sacrifices to their altruistic ends...all the while seeing none of the irony.
It's a complicated issue to sort out for anyone in entirety, but I think there's quite a bit of confusion that comes out of confirmation bias when it pertains to religion. And while I don't think such biases are at all a damnation of religion itself, I feel it's a very handy device for revealing the damnedability of the ethics of any particular person who is willing to wave their religion about like a banner. It's my supposition that most of these "self-defeating" idealists are either simply misguided or deceptive regarding their true beliefs. IF they are deceptively using religion to mask the acceptance of their own agenda regarding established ethics than I could almost regard them as cunning, but I admit it would be VERY hard for me to reconcile the idea that a good portion of these people believe in a one true god and choose to defy his word at almost every turn.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
To Be or Not to Be...That is the Question
Earlier today I was listening to an old podcast of Penn Jillette's now defunct radio program. A discussion about abortion ensued therein and just listening to some of the callers got me thinking about the issue. Why is it that almost no theory on what is appropriate regarding abortion or the end of life meets my standards?
I've always held the view that life begins at conception. This isn't because of some steadfast adherence to a particular religious creed, the words of wise sages, or some other pedantic nonsense, but rather a default position. Why? To be honest, it's because I've never heard a particular opinion that really swayed me to move my anchor further out at sea. And I've always felt, being unsure about it, that it would be best to uphold the overly cliched mantra of "It's better to err on the side of life." And so far, not one has given me sufficient reason to leave that position. And, without being too holier than thou, I don't really consider it a fault on my part but rather a fault with people who defend abortion with really bad reasoning.
The first defense we always hear is the hypothetical "rape" and/or "incest" story. Now firstly, these account for a minute portion of all abortions...my guess would be less than 0.1%. I think most adults realize that abortions are, more often than not, simply used as some retroactive form of contraception. And while most people who are even against abortion in general, including myself, are willing to consider that hypothetical as a validation for a procedure in those cases, I'm not even really sure it's all that logically consistent. Granted, the idea is that in these cases, it wasn't the mother's choice and therefore not really her responsibility. I'm sympathetic to that.
However, I think the crux of the moral issue isn't really the responsibility of the mother, but rather the quashing of innocent life. For instance, even in the case of rape or incest, if we all (hypothetically) agreed that all post-conception forms of the child were indeed human, then wouldn't it still be wrong to murder an innocent human being? Maybe or maybe not. But regardless, the hypothetical of rape or incest certainly doesn't make it an open and shut case.
Listening to the show, I heard a caller give another too-common-for-comfort opinion that abortion should be fine up until the child is born. And he even specifically made the case by saying that the idea that a child is a human being before it is born is really just a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo and that you'd have to be some right-wing religious zealot to parrot such craziness. As an openly agnostic individualist anarchist, most (sane) people would be hard pressed to call me a right-wing religious zealot, yet I couldn't disagree more with what this caller was saying.
He was sitting here blasting anyone who thinks an unborn child is a human being by labeling them primitive and unscientific, but listen to what he was saying. He's actually saying that right before a woman goes into labor that the child in her womb is not a human being at all. But that maybe within twenty minutes of labor (keep wishing ladies) that this same being is somehow something completely different than what he was twenty minutes prior. Does that really sound like a non-religious scientific argument to you? That when a child is on one side of the vaginal canal he isn't human but as he magically passes through the other side he's somehow more human...like some kind of post-utero baptism? Call me crazy, but I think location, be it inside the womb or two feet outside of it, is bad way to determine the substance of any being from a scientific basis.
A caller later in the show took a stab at an argument that was at least somewhat sophisticated. She claimed that up until the 2nd trimester that the child has brain waves that are only on par with someone like Terri Schiavo. Although I think this is a much more respectable defense, I still think it falls short. The implication here seems to be that as long as someone is "brain dead" (even if they're still alive) that they aren't really human. And I've always had a problem with this line of reasoning, particularly regarding end of life issues. Don't get me wrong, if someone wants to end their OWN LIFE, regardless of what ailments they may or may not have, I'm fine with it. I might favor trying to get them help, but I'm not ultimately going to tell someone else what they can and can't do to themselves.
However, in most of these cases, be it abortion or instances like the Terri Schiavo ordeal, we're not discussing people deciding to terminate their own life. We're talking about other sentient beings making the decision to end the lives of other innocent individuals without their permission. And I can't ethically bring myself to support things done in that vein, even if I'm sympathetic to the pragmatic aims. If the humanity of an individual is determined by their mental capacity, then there are a lot of psychotic people that should be able to have their way with many people in hospitals and mental institutions across the world but I doubt too many people would really be OK with that. I just don't think that brain wave activity is a sophisticated enough factor to be a barometer of humanity.
And, of course, I happened to hear the all-too-prevalent notion that a child is just a parasite and that, since they can't live for themselves while they are in the womb, they aren't really human yet. Well, dependency just happens to also be a pretty shoddy measurement of humanity. As far as children are concerned, they don't lose a very real physical dependency on others (adults) for a very very long time. And what about seniors who are arguably even more dependent than children in their last years. Even if we were to be more specific in delimiting it to an issue about being able to breathe on your own, would people on respirators lose their rights as human beings, even if the outlook for them was good? Even more sophisticated arguments like this seem to miss the point entirely.
My beliefs on abortion stem from two things that pass in the night on this issue. The first is my unwavering commitment to the personal sovereignty of human beings and the other is my inability to scientifically pinpoint where life begins. I can't really, ethically, accept the idea that it's OK to kill an innocent human being, and particularly just for the purpose of being able to deny responsibility for your actions. But at the same time, pin-pointing when a being actually becomes human is somewhat troublesome. It would seem that simply assigning a particular passage of time as a guideline would be pretty irrational. If nothing else, for the exact same reason that saying something is human only after birth is ridiculous. To look at a creature at 11:59 and claim it's not any more human than a virus and then at the stroke of midnight to declare that it's a human with inalienable rights seems terribly inadequate. At the same time, simply guaging a being's humanity on physical capacity and personal dependency doesn't seem adequate enough either.
That being said, it's possible that saying that something is human from conception may be inadequate as well. And so here I sit on the scientific and ethical sidelines on this one. I'm willing to be moved but no one seems to be willing to come up with a good enough notion to move me. I'm practically begging you to change my mind here.
Where does life begin?
I've always held the view that life begins at conception. This isn't because of some steadfast adherence to a particular religious creed, the words of wise sages, or some other pedantic nonsense, but rather a default position. Why? To be honest, it's because I've never heard a particular opinion that really swayed me to move my anchor further out at sea. And I've always felt, being unsure about it, that it would be best to uphold the overly cliched mantra of "It's better to err on the side of life." And so far, not one has given me sufficient reason to leave that position. And, without being too holier than thou, I don't really consider it a fault on my part but rather a fault with people who defend abortion with really bad reasoning.
The first defense we always hear is the hypothetical "rape" and/or "incest" story. Now firstly, these account for a minute portion of all abortions...my guess would be less than 0.1%. I think most adults realize that abortions are, more often than not, simply used as some retroactive form of contraception. And while most people who are even against abortion in general, including myself, are willing to consider that hypothetical as a validation for a procedure in those cases, I'm not even really sure it's all that logically consistent. Granted, the idea is that in these cases, it wasn't the mother's choice and therefore not really her responsibility. I'm sympathetic to that.
However, I think the crux of the moral issue isn't really the responsibility of the mother, but rather the quashing of innocent life. For instance, even in the case of rape or incest, if we all (hypothetically) agreed that all post-conception forms of the child were indeed human, then wouldn't it still be wrong to murder an innocent human being? Maybe or maybe not. But regardless, the hypothetical of rape or incest certainly doesn't make it an open and shut case.
Listening to the show, I heard a caller give another too-common-for-comfort opinion that abortion should be fine up until the child is born. And he even specifically made the case by saying that the idea that a child is a human being before it is born is really just a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo and that you'd have to be some right-wing religious zealot to parrot such craziness. As an openly agnostic individualist anarchist, most (sane) people would be hard pressed to call me a right-wing religious zealot, yet I couldn't disagree more with what this caller was saying.
He was sitting here blasting anyone who thinks an unborn child is a human being by labeling them primitive and unscientific, but listen to what he was saying. He's actually saying that right before a woman goes into labor that the child in her womb is not a human being at all. But that maybe within twenty minutes of labor (keep wishing ladies) that this same being is somehow something completely different than what he was twenty minutes prior. Does that really sound like a non-religious scientific argument to you? That when a child is on one side of the vaginal canal he isn't human but as he magically passes through the other side he's somehow more human...like some kind of post-utero baptism? Call me crazy, but I think location, be it inside the womb or two feet outside of it, is bad way to determine the substance of any being from a scientific basis.
A caller later in the show took a stab at an argument that was at least somewhat sophisticated. She claimed that up until the 2nd trimester that the child has brain waves that are only on par with someone like Terri Schiavo. Although I think this is a much more respectable defense, I still think it falls short. The implication here seems to be that as long as someone is "brain dead" (even if they're still alive) that they aren't really human. And I've always had a problem with this line of reasoning, particularly regarding end of life issues. Don't get me wrong, if someone wants to end their OWN LIFE, regardless of what ailments they may or may not have, I'm fine with it. I might favor trying to get them help, but I'm not ultimately going to tell someone else what they can and can't do to themselves.
However, in most of these cases, be it abortion or instances like the Terri Schiavo ordeal, we're not discussing people deciding to terminate their own life. We're talking about other sentient beings making the decision to end the lives of other innocent individuals without their permission. And I can't ethically bring myself to support things done in that vein, even if I'm sympathetic to the pragmatic aims. If the humanity of an individual is determined by their mental capacity, then there are a lot of psychotic people that should be able to have their way with many people in hospitals and mental institutions across the world but I doubt too many people would really be OK with that. I just don't think that brain wave activity is a sophisticated enough factor to be a barometer of humanity.
And, of course, I happened to hear the all-too-prevalent notion that a child is just a parasite and that, since they can't live for themselves while they are in the womb, they aren't really human yet. Well, dependency just happens to also be a pretty shoddy measurement of humanity. As far as children are concerned, they don't lose a very real physical dependency on others (adults) for a very very long time. And what about seniors who are arguably even more dependent than children in their last years. Even if we were to be more specific in delimiting it to an issue about being able to breathe on your own, would people on respirators lose their rights as human beings, even if the outlook for them was good? Even more sophisticated arguments like this seem to miss the point entirely.
My beliefs on abortion stem from two things that pass in the night on this issue. The first is my unwavering commitment to the personal sovereignty of human beings and the other is my inability to scientifically pinpoint where life begins. I can't really, ethically, accept the idea that it's OK to kill an innocent human being, and particularly just for the purpose of being able to deny responsibility for your actions. But at the same time, pin-pointing when a being actually becomes human is somewhat troublesome. It would seem that simply assigning a particular passage of time as a guideline would be pretty irrational. If nothing else, for the exact same reason that saying something is human only after birth is ridiculous. To look at a creature at 11:59 and claim it's not any more human than a virus and then at the stroke of midnight to declare that it's a human with inalienable rights seems terribly inadequate. At the same time, simply guaging a being's humanity on physical capacity and personal dependency doesn't seem adequate enough either.
That being said, it's possible that saying that something is human from conception may be inadequate as well. And so here I sit on the scientific and ethical sidelines on this one. I'm willing to be moved but no one seems to be willing to come up with a good enough notion to move me. I'm practically begging you to change my mind here.
Where does life begin?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Does Conservation Work?
Earlier this morning I read an interesting blog post in which someone tried to explain that conservation, as we normally perceive it, doesn't really work. He relayed his first-hand experience of a cashier essentially asking to double-stuff his bag in order to "help the planet" (by not consuming more plastic bags). She then, supposedly, gave him 25 cents because he obliged.
My initial reaction to stores doing things like this (saving bags, turning off half their lights, etc.) is that it's a wonderful way for them to get business from the "green" crowd while simultaneously saving on overhead. Of course, in this particular instance the giving of a quarter to save a plastic bag seems to null the idea that they would be saving on overhead. Nevertheless it may be a good way to bring in environmentally conscientious customers.
In any case, he argued that conservation would not occur because instead of using the plastic bag, he would simply use that 25 cents to consume another good. In this case, he offers the idea of buying a dinner mint, and instead of consuming a plastic bag he would be consuming a foil wrapper. He then tried to apply this same concept to conservation of various kinds. Although people seemed largely sympathetic with his over-all view, there were several criticisms regarding the specifics. One person offered that the concept was invalid because it only worked when someone rewarded you, financially, for conserving. Another person actually made the argument that the cashier was increasing the money supply by giving him the quarter (how it wasn't considered in the money supply at that point to begin with is beyond me) and that it would effectively actually make all consumables slightly more expensive. I have to admit that explanation was really interesting; don't you hate it when a false premise ruins a perfectly enticing story?
Anyways, these two refutations did spark a point of interest with me. Even in a case where no money was given to this guy for not consuming a bag I think there is actually a strong economic point to be made that market feedback would prevent at least some types of conservation from being effective. Let's look at an example and see how this would play out:
Let's say there is a concerted effort to conserve gas (obviously there is one already but let's say a more effective one). They somehow convince one out of every twenty people in the U.S. to reduce their gas use by two gallons per week. Personal consumption of gasoline drops by thirty-million gallons a week suddenly. What would we expect to happen in a market environment? Well, this would essentially extend the common supply to the rest of market players by precisely thirty-million gallons. With a reduced demand, and an increased supply, we would expect gas prices to drop in order to clear market. And with that drop in price, we would expect aggregate demand to effectively increase (assuming production wasn't initially curtailed) and bid off the excess supply. And so, it seems very plausible that conservation, in some cases, may not result in the conservation of a good or resource but rather a shift in the consumer base.
I actually find that line of reasoning to be fascinating, and it's the direct result of "marginal" economics. The understanding that people buy goods at the margin is something that produces a lot of unexpected consequences, and I think the public's lack of understanding regarding subjective value and ordinal preference is a part of what produces so much mass confusion regarding basic economics. The idea is actually much more simple than it seems. You buy on the margin based on ordinal preferences. When you go to buy something, you buy it in the quantity that you do based on the price and your subjective evaluation of your desire for that item. For instance, if you're buying rolls of paper towels and they are two dollars a piece you may only have a preference for two at that price given your subjective evaluation of that trade-off. However, if the price was 5 cents per roll, you may have a preference for as many as you could carry out of the store.
This is marginal economics in a nutshell. It's always about the additional item you don't buy, the indifference curve, the opportunity cost. The argument I brought up above is actually somewhat similar to the arguments that were made a couple of years ago explaining that although tax cuts on things are generally desired, that a tax "holiday" on gas would not result in an actual price decrease. A drop of twenty cents (the per-gallon federal tax rate) on the price of gas would essentially increase the consumption of gas (because people who weren't willing to buy an extra five gallons a week for $4.00 might buy it for $3.80). The increased demand with an unchanging supply would then cause the price of gas to come back up in order to clear market without shortages. In fact, you might have a temporal increase in both prices and consumption.
Now this whole idea is subject to many other factors too. While it's true, generally, that other actors will increase the consumption of any given good when the price drops for whatever reason, it would have it's limits. High-order goods like gasoline would be especially susceptible to to higher consumption as being able to transport more goods would allow producers to increase output (and profits). But obviously that would only hold true to the degree that such consumption was in line with their productive capacity. You're not going to see a small vendor with three trucks consume thousands more gallons of gasoline in a week all of a sudden, even if they could afford it, because use for that quantity would simply exceed their capacity to provide such services given their limited size. Likewise there is the general argument about the elasticity of any given good (how well market-demand responds to prices). For instance, with gasoline, to a certain extent, high prices are not going to significantly diminish at least a portion of the demand for it. There is a floor-level of consumption to some degree because it's essentially needed for transportation, which is at the root of our productive capacity as a society, even from the view of labor itself.
But given these other factors to consider, the essential economic point regarding supply and demand fluctuations still stand. If some people consume less plastic bags, it could ostensibly decrease the price of plastic bags and simply make it more affordable for others to use it less sparingly. It would seem to me, on an odd level, that there is something almost similar to an externality occurring here in the market; albeit a limited one. It seems that the desired result (conservation of plastic bags in this case) really only occurs when very few of the players have a vested interest in consuming plastic bags, or at least that the non-marginal preference for bags by the remaining consumers has already been largely met. It would appear that as long as demand is somewhat elastic for such a good then it's possible for decreased consumption to result in...increased consumption.
I may be a nerd, but being able to tell someone that their environmental push against the usage of plastic bags may be helping to destroy the planet is about priceless.
My initial reaction to stores doing things like this (saving bags, turning off half their lights, etc.) is that it's a wonderful way for them to get business from the "green" crowd while simultaneously saving on overhead. Of course, in this particular instance the giving of a quarter to save a plastic bag seems to null the idea that they would be saving on overhead. Nevertheless it may be a good way to bring in environmentally conscientious customers.
In any case, he argued that conservation would not occur because instead of using the plastic bag, he would simply use that 25 cents to consume another good. In this case, he offers the idea of buying a dinner mint, and instead of consuming a plastic bag he would be consuming a foil wrapper. He then tried to apply this same concept to conservation of various kinds. Although people seemed largely sympathetic with his over-all view, there were several criticisms regarding the specifics. One person offered that the concept was invalid because it only worked when someone rewarded you, financially, for conserving. Another person actually made the argument that the cashier was increasing the money supply by giving him the quarter (how it wasn't considered in the money supply at that point to begin with is beyond me) and that it would effectively actually make all consumables slightly more expensive. I have to admit that explanation was really interesting; don't you hate it when a false premise ruins a perfectly enticing story?
Anyways, these two refutations did spark a point of interest with me. Even in a case where no money was given to this guy for not consuming a bag I think there is actually a strong economic point to be made that market feedback would prevent at least some types of conservation from being effective. Let's look at an example and see how this would play out:
Let's say there is a concerted effort to conserve gas (obviously there is one already but let's say a more effective one). They somehow convince one out of every twenty people in the U.S. to reduce their gas use by two gallons per week. Personal consumption of gasoline drops by thirty-million gallons a week suddenly. What would we expect to happen in a market environment? Well, this would essentially extend the common supply to the rest of market players by precisely thirty-million gallons. With a reduced demand, and an increased supply, we would expect gas prices to drop in order to clear market. And with that drop in price, we would expect aggregate demand to effectively increase (assuming production wasn't initially curtailed) and bid off the excess supply. And so, it seems very plausible that conservation, in some cases, may not result in the conservation of a good or resource but rather a shift in the consumer base.
I actually find that line of reasoning to be fascinating, and it's the direct result of "marginal" economics. The understanding that people buy goods at the margin is something that produces a lot of unexpected consequences, and I think the public's lack of understanding regarding subjective value and ordinal preference is a part of what produces so much mass confusion regarding basic economics. The idea is actually much more simple than it seems. You buy on the margin based on ordinal preferences. When you go to buy something, you buy it in the quantity that you do based on the price and your subjective evaluation of your desire for that item. For instance, if you're buying rolls of paper towels and they are two dollars a piece you may only have a preference for two at that price given your subjective evaluation of that trade-off. However, if the price was 5 cents per roll, you may have a preference for as many as you could carry out of the store.
This is marginal economics in a nutshell. It's always about the additional item you don't buy, the indifference curve, the opportunity cost. The argument I brought up above is actually somewhat similar to the arguments that were made a couple of years ago explaining that although tax cuts on things are generally desired, that a tax "holiday" on gas would not result in an actual price decrease. A drop of twenty cents (the per-gallon federal tax rate) on the price of gas would essentially increase the consumption of gas (because people who weren't willing to buy an extra five gallons a week for $4.00 might buy it for $3.80). The increased demand with an unchanging supply would then cause the price of gas to come back up in order to clear market without shortages. In fact, you might have a temporal increase in both prices and consumption.
Now this whole idea is subject to many other factors too. While it's true, generally, that other actors will increase the consumption of any given good when the price drops for whatever reason, it would have it's limits. High-order goods like gasoline would be especially susceptible to to higher consumption as being able to transport more goods would allow producers to increase output (and profits). But obviously that would only hold true to the degree that such consumption was in line with their productive capacity. You're not going to see a small vendor with three trucks consume thousands more gallons of gasoline in a week all of a sudden, even if they could afford it, because use for that quantity would simply exceed their capacity to provide such services given their limited size. Likewise there is the general argument about the elasticity of any given good (how well market-demand responds to prices). For instance, with gasoline, to a certain extent, high prices are not going to significantly diminish at least a portion of the demand for it. There is a floor-level of consumption to some degree because it's essentially needed for transportation, which is at the root of our productive capacity as a society, even from the view of labor itself.
But given these other factors to consider, the essential economic point regarding supply and demand fluctuations still stand. If some people consume less plastic bags, it could ostensibly decrease the price of plastic bags and simply make it more affordable for others to use it less sparingly. It would seem to me, on an odd level, that there is something almost similar to an externality occurring here in the market; albeit a limited one. It seems that the desired result (conservation of plastic bags in this case) really only occurs when very few of the players have a vested interest in consuming plastic bags, or at least that the non-marginal preference for bags by the remaining consumers has already been largely met. It would appear that as long as demand is somewhat elastic for such a good then it's possible for decreased consumption to result in...increased consumption.
I may be a nerd, but being able to tell someone that their environmental push against the usage of plastic bags may be helping to destroy the planet is about priceless.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dumber
A week or two ago I was reminded by a family member of exactly how "insufferable" my staunch libertarian views are. This came about with the accusation that I always think that I'm right and that I never budge on any issue I've come to a conclusion on. I immediately thought to myself, "Well, that's necessarily true for anyone and everyone!" Generally speaking, everyone who holds an opinion or conviction about any given thing is not willing to concede those ideas until someone changes their mind...by definition. That inevitably also includes this particular accuser as well. I reminded him that I wasn't sure how our disagreement insinuated that somehow I alone was closed-minded or unwilling to compromise when clearly he was making no effort to change his positions either. After all, how could we still be disagreeing if he wasn't just as staunch in his views as I was mine? Have you never heard the aphorism, "It takes two to tango?"
Later on I started thinking about why people had a tendency to think that people like myself are really that closed-minded. It seemed to me pretty obvious that anyone who generally educates himself on political philosophy enough to find his way out of the dogmatic two-party setup that most people find themselves a part of would have to be someone open-minded by definition. You may be able to level the accusation that they are wrong or even crazy, but closed minded? To me that is about as silly as a Christian finding a Zoroastrian in middle-America and telling him he's closed-minded religiously. How can you level the accusation that someone is closed-minded when they've been intellectually curious enough to actually consider and then adopt viewpoints alternative to those that are standard? Again, we can say they are wrong...but it would seem like any labeling of that person regarding their stubbornness may be better fitting for the accuser rather than the accused in these instances.
And then it occurred to me; it's just populism. People have a general tendency to think that moderate politics is "good" politics. If you are too far left-wing or too far right-wing, if you are too authoritarian or too libertarian, people are going to be naturally defensive against your "radical" views not based on the merit of the ideas themselves, but based on your lack of "political moderation." In fact, it would seem that our faith in democracy itself lies heavily in the socio-political theory that we have a lot of nuts on all sides voting along with moderates, and that the nuts seem to cancel each other out and that the "average" moderate selections tend to win the day. And so maybe we have a tendency to believe moderation is correct because moderation tends to be the result of democracy...and we all know how sacred that is. And if you don't believe me, try seeing what happens if you tell someone that some people shouldn't vote. Regardless of their political bent, Republican or Democrat, you will be immediately chastised for your lack of faith in democracy.
And so I think in a weird way, because we rally around the primacy of majority rule, we tend to believe that the result of majority rule (what we perceive to be moderation) is all that is good...and also open-minded apparently. And so anyone in a political minority, whom whether right or wrong may actually have more consistent political views, are seen to be closed-minded or stubborn because they don't espouse the virtues of moderation (even though they are often willing to compromise in practice). And since the libertarian view is certainly a minority today, we get to enjoy that criticism from people who consider themselves more moderate.
One of the biggest problems libertarians run into, and probably the first thing you pick up on as a libertarian, is that you're going to largely disagree with one party or the other at least half the time. So as someone "socially liberal" and "economically conservative" (it should actually be "economically liberal" too but you can thank turn-of-the-century progressives for stealing that term) you're certainly not going to be "making nice" politically with many people. But what is even more frustrating, and something I've noticed with increasing frequency lately, is that both major movements are often unknowingly in agreement partially and also wrong on the same subject.
For instance, take the theatrics over the new breast-examination guidelines that came out a few weeks ago. Many liberals took the predictable course of claiming this release (from an independent, government-sponsored health association no less) was part of some conspiracy concocted by insurance companies to save money. OK...not original but consistent. And if you question their consistency, try asking a liberal over the age of 40 about Ford Pintos and see if they have a radically different answer for that. They probably won't. Republicans then retorted, and rightfully so in my opinion, that this illustrates the general danger of having a board or an entity make universal decisions on coverage, as would have to take place under universal health care coverage. But instead of just clearly making the concise point about our freedom to choose, they continued to waylay into the board recommendation, along with their liberal counter-parts, on the grounds that it was despicable to do any cost-benefit analysis when if comes to health care. And eventually I started hearing that dreaded worthless phrase, "If it just saves one life...it's worth it."
Is it really worth it if it just saves one life? If that's the case, why start the exams at thirty? Why not at twenty? Many women get breast cancer in their twenties and go on to die. Why not fifteen? What about checking for heart issues? Sure, after a certain age it's recommended we get various tests. But why don't we have EKGs every year, or every month for that matter? Why don't we start when we're twenty in fact? Lots of people in their twenties die from heart-attacks every single day. Isn't it worth it?
The obvious answer is actually, and maybe (from your perspective) cruelly, no. Whether you realize it or not, you approach NOTHING in life from that perspective. When you get in a car, there is an explicit risk that you're going to die in a car accident. There are any number of things we could do to reduce fatalities that we simply don't because they don't outweight the costs. We could lower speed limits by 10 MPH and drastically reduce the number of deaths. Why don't we? We could bring about a universal speed limit of 5 MPH and it would virtually eliminate fatal accidents. But we don't. As consumers, we could pay tens of thousands of dollars more for our cars to have them reinforced with tons of steel...essentially turning them into tanks. But we don't.
Is it because evil car companies want to save money? Are they paying for the product or are we? Is it possible that the reason we don't drive tanks is not because car companies are in some conspiracy to "keep money" but rather that people don't value that additional utility in parity with additional cost at the margin? As far as I know, there's no law against you making a car with incredible amounts of safety mechanisms built into it. If people desire it so much, and car companies are just out to screw people, why doesn't someone else come along and provide these "safe" cars in the market? It's simple. Because people aren't willing to pay for the additional benefits. They are engaging in cost-benefit analysis.
In the same way, are insurers really just simply greedy if they would subscribe to the idea that maybe a certain exam should start routinely later in life rather than sooner? Where do you think the money comes from to pay for those exams? Do you think it comes directly out of the pockets of the employees or the management? Or is it the premiums paid by customers that finance your medical exams? Whose interest would they be acting in if they were trying to re-evaluate the costs and benefits of such exams? And if customers were willing to pay much higher premiums to have more frequent exams at a younger age, why all the fuss? You could offer such a service and if you are correct in that the market desires this kind of setup, then your market share will increase and firms which propose cutting back such as formerly suggested will lose business. Isn't that what capitalism is all about?
I think what drove me crazy wasn't as much the specific claims that were being made back and forth concerning this specific example. If some people want to have more exams earlier then they can freely purchase insurance plans that offer such at an increased premium whereas others who don't think it's worth it should be free to purchase plans with less coverage for less money. Insurance standards are not universal (insofar as state mandates are not concerned). I don't sit around and worry because I wear a size 13 shoe and the median shoe size for males is size 10. There is still a market for people who wear size 13 and someone will gladly take my money to provide me with that service. The same applies to health coverage. But what really got me going was this silly idea that BOTH SIDES seem to be supporting that felt that life was so precious that we should never engage in cost-benefit analysis when it comes to medical expenditures. Well I have news for those people; resources are limited. Human labor is limited. Even if we were ALL doctors and nurses and medical assistants we wouldn't have the resources or the labor available to do all tests on all people continuously to ensure their well-being. And even worse, we'd be incredibly poor in every other respect, assuming we didn't starve and freeze to death.
Examples like this are why I'm so interested in economics. I don't think these are points that many people really understand. They just tend to hold beliefs, in a similar fashion to religion in many respects, in which their core tenets are awash in tradition, culture, and emotion. And what's funny is that for all the partisan bickering there may be on certain subjects, regardless of who is correct, there are actually several policies which both major political parties endorse which are simply NOT correct (in that by measure of freedom AND macro-utility they don't make sense). Take for instance the steel tariff or farm subsidies. These are things that enjoy great support across major party lines. Something like 80% of people (from various data sets) support these things, even though economists (who are predominantly moderate-democrat by the way) know these are terrible economic policies that actually hurt far more Americans than they help. Yet by political norms, support for these things is the result of moderate open-minded consensus, and is therefore correct...even though it actually is clearly incorrect.
Noticing this American fetish for the primacy of democracy, moderation, and often jointly-held bad policy prescriptions, I ended up ordering Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies." I've read a bit about the book and had already listened to a couple of Caplan's lectures and interviews before. His book walks through and discusses how democracies are often prone to make decisions that are actually mutually un-beneficial; a phenomenon he calls "rational irrationality."
Caplan is an interesting case to me because it seems his political views are informed by his economic knowledge and not the other way around. He's undoubtedly libertarian and holds very libertarian views. But it seems he's arrived at many of those views because he feels their economic views hold up quite well. In fact, he often makes reference to Althaus' work on public opinion which concluded that when looking through the demographics, as one's education level increases they become more socially liberal and economically conservative (that sounds familiar). This was somewhat unexpected since, as far as I know, no one would call Althaus a libertarian by any means.
In any case, Bryan's work aims to point out that people have specific biases that often cause them to endorse bad policies in large numbers. After reading it, maybe I won't feel so maligned regarding the allegations that I'm really "closed-minded." I would still contest that viewpoint as I believe I'm actually very open-minded. But am I going to come off as an elitist being a libertarian? Of course I am. How can you look at the vast majority of people and tell them that they are simply ignorant on a number of subjects and NOT sound like you're being an elitist. And if you're actually right about what you believe, and the people who are wrong are causing harm to themselves and others, then what's wrong with that? The simple fact is that someone with such minority views who is unable to accept the contrary nature of their views in relation to those of the public isn't long for this world. But in the end I'm just fine with it. After all, my detractors are wrong anyways. Why should I care about their protestation? As Caplan says:
"In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right."
- Bryan Caplan
Later on I started thinking about why people had a tendency to think that people like myself are really that closed-minded. It seemed to me pretty obvious that anyone who generally educates himself on political philosophy enough to find his way out of the dogmatic two-party setup that most people find themselves a part of would have to be someone open-minded by definition. You may be able to level the accusation that they are wrong or even crazy, but closed minded? To me that is about as silly as a Christian finding a Zoroastrian in middle-America and telling him he's closed-minded religiously. How can you level the accusation that someone is closed-minded when they've been intellectually curious enough to actually consider and then adopt viewpoints alternative to those that are standard? Again, we can say they are wrong...but it would seem like any labeling of that person regarding their stubbornness may be better fitting for the accuser rather than the accused in these instances.
And then it occurred to me; it's just populism. People have a general tendency to think that moderate politics is "good" politics. If you are too far left-wing or too far right-wing, if you are too authoritarian or too libertarian, people are going to be naturally defensive against your "radical" views not based on the merit of the ideas themselves, but based on your lack of "political moderation." In fact, it would seem that our faith in democracy itself lies heavily in the socio-political theory that we have a lot of nuts on all sides voting along with moderates, and that the nuts seem to cancel each other out and that the "average" moderate selections tend to win the day. And so maybe we have a tendency to believe moderation is correct because moderation tends to be the result of democracy...and we all know how sacred that is. And if you don't believe me, try seeing what happens if you tell someone that some people shouldn't vote. Regardless of their political bent, Republican or Democrat, you will be immediately chastised for your lack of faith in democracy.
And so I think in a weird way, because we rally around the primacy of majority rule, we tend to believe that the result of majority rule (what we perceive to be moderation) is all that is good...and also open-minded apparently. And so anyone in a political minority, whom whether right or wrong may actually have more consistent political views, are seen to be closed-minded or stubborn because they don't espouse the virtues of moderation (even though they are often willing to compromise in practice). And since the libertarian view is certainly a minority today, we get to enjoy that criticism from people who consider themselves more moderate.
One of the biggest problems libertarians run into, and probably the first thing you pick up on as a libertarian, is that you're going to largely disagree with one party or the other at least half the time. So as someone "socially liberal" and "economically conservative" (it should actually be "economically liberal" too but you can thank turn-of-the-century progressives for stealing that term) you're certainly not going to be "making nice" politically with many people. But what is even more frustrating, and something I've noticed with increasing frequency lately, is that both major movements are often unknowingly in agreement partially and also wrong on the same subject.
For instance, take the theatrics over the new breast-examination guidelines that came out a few weeks ago. Many liberals took the predictable course of claiming this release (from an independent, government-sponsored health association no less) was part of some conspiracy concocted by insurance companies to save money. OK...not original but consistent. And if you question their consistency, try asking a liberal over the age of 40 about Ford Pintos and see if they have a radically different answer for that. They probably won't. Republicans then retorted, and rightfully so in my opinion, that this illustrates the general danger of having a board or an entity make universal decisions on coverage, as would have to take place under universal health care coverage. But instead of just clearly making the concise point about our freedom to choose, they continued to waylay into the board recommendation, along with their liberal counter-parts, on the grounds that it was despicable to do any cost-benefit analysis when if comes to health care. And eventually I started hearing that dreaded worthless phrase, "If it just saves one life...it's worth it."
Is it really worth it if it just saves one life? If that's the case, why start the exams at thirty? Why not at twenty? Many women get breast cancer in their twenties and go on to die. Why not fifteen? What about checking for heart issues? Sure, after a certain age it's recommended we get various tests. But why don't we have EKGs every year, or every month for that matter? Why don't we start when we're twenty in fact? Lots of people in their twenties die from heart-attacks every single day. Isn't it worth it?
The obvious answer is actually, and maybe (from your perspective) cruelly, no. Whether you realize it or not, you approach NOTHING in life from that perspective. When you get in a car, there is an explicit risk that you're going to die in a car accident. There are any number of things we could do to reduce fatalities that we simply don't because they don't outweight the costs. We could lower speed limits by 10 MPH and drastically reduce the number of deaths. Why don't we? We could bring about a universal speed limit of 5 MPH and it would virtually eliminate fatal accidents. But we don't. As consumers, we could pay tens of thousands of dollars more for our cars to have them reinforced with tons of steel...essentially turning them into tanks. But we don't.
Is it because evil car companies want to save money? Are they paying for the product or are we? Is it possible that the reason we don't drive tanks is not because car companies are in some conspiracy to "keep money" but rather that people don't value that additional utility in parity with additional cost at the margin? As far as I know, there's no law against you making a car with incredible amounts of safety mechanisms built into it. If people desire it so much, and car companies are just out to screw people, why doesn't someone else come along and provide these "safe" cars in the market? It's simple. Because people aren't willing to pay for the additional benefits. They are engaging in cost-benefit analysis.
In the same way, are insurers really just simply greedy if they would subscribe to the idea that maybe a certain exam should start routinely later in life rather than sooner? Where do you think the money comes from to pay for those exams? Do you think it comes directly out of the pockets of the employees or the management? Or is it the premiums paid by customers that finance your medical exams? Whose interest would they be acting in if they were trying to re-evaluate the costs and benefits of such exams? And if customers were willing to pay much higher premiums to have more frequent exams at a younger age, why all the fuss? You could offer such a service and if you are correct in that the market desires this kind of setup, then your market share will increase and firms which propose cutting back such as formerly suggested will lose business. Isn't that what capitalism is all about?
I think what drove me crazy wasn't as much the specific claims that were being made back and forth concerning this specific example. If some people want to have more exams earlier then they can freely purchase insurance plans that offer such at an increased premium whereas others who don't think it's worth it should be free to purchase plans with less coverage for less money. Insurance standards are not universal (insofar as state mandates are not concerned). I don't sit around and worry because I wear a size 13 shoe and the median shoe size for males is size 10. There is still a market for people who wear size 13 and someone will gladly take my money to provide me with that service. The same applies to health coverage. But what really got me going was this silly idea that BOTH SIDES seem to be supporting that felt that life was so precious that we should never engage in cost-benefit analysis when it comes to medical expenditures. Well I have news for those people; resources are limited. Human labor is limited. Even if we were ALL doctors and nurses and medical assistants we wouldn't have the resources or the labor available to do all tests on all people continuously to ensure their well-being. And even worse, we'd be incredibly poor in every other respect, assuming we didn't starve and freeze to death.
Examples like this are why I'm so interested in economics. I don't think these are points that many people really understand. They just tend to hold beliefs, in a similar fashion to religion in many respects, in which their core tenets are awash in tradition, culture, and emotion. And what's funny is that for all the partisan bickering there may be on certain subjects, regardless of who is correct, there are actually several policies which both major political parties endorse which are simply NOT correct (in that by measure of freedom AND macro-utility they don't make sense). Take for instance the steel tariff or farm subsidies. These are things that enjoy great support across major party lines. Something like 80% of people (from various data sets) support these things, even though economists (who are predominantly moderate-democrat by the way) know these are terrible economic policies that actually hurt far more Americans than they help. Yet by political norms, support for these things is the result of moderate open-minded consensus, and is therefore correct...even though it actually is clearly incorrect.
Noticing this American fetish for the primacy of democracy, moderation, and often jointly-held bad policy prescriptions, I ended up ordering Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies." I've read a bit about the book and had already listened to a couple of Caplan's lectures and interviews before. His book walks through and discusses how democracies are often prone to make decisions that are actually mutually un-beneficial; a phenomenon he calls "rational irrationality."
Caplan is an interesting case to me because it seems his political views are informed by his economic knowledge and not the other way around. He's undoubtedly libertarian and holds very libertarian views. But it seems he's arrived at many of those views because he feels their economic views hold up quite well. In fact, he often makes reference to Althaus' work on public opinion which concluded that when looking through the demographics, as one's education level increases they become more socially liberal and economically conservative (that sounds familiar). This was somewhat unexpected since, as far as I know, no one would call Althaus a libertarian by any means.
In any case, Bryan's work aims to point out that people have specific biases that often cause them to endorse bad policies in large numbers. After reading it, maybe I won't feel so maligned regarding the allegations that I'm really "closed-minded." I would still contest that viewpoint as I believe I'm actually very open-minded. But am I going to come off as an elitist being a libertarian? Of course I am. How can you look at the vast majority of people and tell them that they are simply ignorant on a number of subjects and NOT sound like you're being an elitist. And if you're actually right about what you believe, and the people who are wrong are causing harm to themselves and others, then what's wrong with that? The simple fact is that someone with such minority views who is unable to accept the contrary nature of their views in relation to those of the public isn't long for this world. But in the end I'm just fine with it. After all, my detractors are wrong anyways. Why should I care about their protestation? As Caplan says:
"In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right."
- Bryan Caplan
Monday, November 23, 2009
Rush to Judgment
I don't want to make a huge deal about this one but it's been bugging me since I happened to have heard it earlier. I passed the Rush Limbaugh show on the radio during my lunch break today. He was talking about an email some female associate of his had sent him over the weekend. Apparently she was having dinner with a young soldier (age 24) and he had brought up a disagreeable point during a dinner conversation. The soldier had asked her why forcing people to buy health insurance was so terrible given that we already force people to buy car insurance. The woman, somehow troubled by the question and unable to answer it herself, sent the question via email to Rush and he apparently sent back a lengthy response which he then went over during the program today.
I had been flipping around to different stations but happened to come back to him in the middle of his diatribe. He was making the obvious, yet irrelevant (in my opinion), point that car insurance is there to hedge against injuring others whereas health insurance was a hedge against our own injuries. I'm not going to make this post a tedious discussion about the efficacy of the car insurance versus health insurance argument, but his next point concerning the young man blew me away. He started haranguing about how the federal government had no authority to tell us to buy anything (I'm with him on that point). But he prefaced that argument by claiming that the Constitution was all about telling the government not what it can do, but what it can't do, and that it's a shame that civics isn't taught anymore.
I almost ripped out my XM-radio and threw it out the Goddamn window...
Granted, given the nature of the young soldier's objection, I doubt he was having any serious internal conversation regarding the Constitutional implications of such a proposal. But berating him by claiming that the Constitution is about telling the government what it can't do...that's just baffling. I'm twenty-five years young. Rush Limbaugh is damn near sixty. And I understand the Constitution better than him. And he's a political commentator no less! A part of me wants to not be so surprised but how can anyone with any reasonable amount of intellect even negotiate around the notion that the Constitution is about telling the government what it can't do. He supported it by mockingly pleading that the young man look at the Bill of Rights to discover what the Constitution is all about!
Here's a little history lesson for you, Rush. The Constitution is NOT about what the government CAN'T do. Articles 1-3 of the Constitution clearly outline not only the organization of the three branches of the federal government but their specific responsibilities and powers. This is precisely what the Constitution is and does; defining what constitutes the federal government. Hence the spiffy name; it's not just a bunch of nice looking syllables thrown together. The Bill of Rights, which are the first ten amendments to the Constitution, weren't even added until four years after the Constitution was ratified (1787:1791).
Now, of course, his view of the Constitution as a document that tells government what it can't do is predicated on the idea that these amendments...which were added years later...are somehow the core of the Constitution itself. I can't even begin to explain how frustrating it is to know how many people share that sentiment. Along with it usually comes the implication that our rights are defined by the Bill of Rights as well (I'm surprised I didn't hear this from him today as well). But in fact the Bill of Rights, in the context of the Constitution itself, is largely redundant. This was argued by the Federalists at the time of its adoption and I have to say it may have been one of the few things I would have agreed with them on.
I don't want to belabor any of these points because if you're reading my blog, you're probably already well aware of these realities. But in case you've never really been exposed to it, or maybe you're just feeling a bit rusty on colonial American history, I suggest that everyone pick up a copy of the Constitution (or find it on the internet) and thumb through the entire thing. It shouldn't take you any longer than 10-15 minutes. It's an amazingly short and concise document (especially in light of the tens of thousands of pages of federal regulation on the books today). And even better, most of it is very easy to understand. It lays out exactly what the government can do, and IMPLIES what it can't do conversely. And that obvious implication is the exact reason why the Federalists thought the Bill of Rights was unnecessary. And interestingly enough, it's also the sole reason for the 9th and 10th amendment in the Bill of Rights as well. And for those who are rusty on their understanding regarding the nature of the Bill of Rights as it relates to the Constitution itself, do a little reading on the Massachusetts Compromise. It might be kind of boring to some of you, but at least when you rest your head tonight you can take some solace in the fact that you now know more about the Constitution than the most successful political commentator in the United States. What a dolt!
I had been flipping around to different stations but happened to come back to him in the middle of his diatribe. He was making the obvious, yet irrelevant (in my opinion), point that car insurance is there to hedge against injuring others whereas health insurance was a hedge against our own injuries. I'm not going to make this post a tedious discussion about the efficacy of the car insurance versus health insurance argument, but his next point concerning the young man blew me away. He started haranguing about how the federal government had no authority to tell us to buy anything (I'm with him on that point). But he prefaced that argument by claiming that the Constitution was all about telling the government not what it can do, but what it can't do, and that it's a shame that civics isn't taught anymore.
I almost ripped out my XM-radio and threw it out the Goddamn window...
Granted, given the nature of the young soldier's objection, I doubt he was having any serious internal conversation regarding the Constitutional implications of such a proposal. But berating him by claiming that the Constitution is about telling the government what it can't do...that's just baffling. I'm twenty-five years young. Rush Limbaugh is damn near sixty. And I understand the Constitution better than him. And he's a political commentator no less! A part of me wants to not be so surprised but how can anyone with any reasonable amount of intellect even negotiate around the notion that the Constitution is about telling the government what it can't do. He supported it by mockingly pleading that the young man look at the Bill of Rights to discover what the Constitution is all about!
Here's a little history lesson for you, Rush. The Constitution is NOT about what the government CAN'T do. Articles 1-3 of the Constitution clearly outline not only the organization of the three branches of the federal government but their specific responsibilities and powers. This is precisely what the Constitution is and does; defining what constitutes the federal government. Hence the spiffy name; it's not just a bunch of nice looking syllables thrown together. The Bill of Rights, which are the first ten amendments to the Constitution, weren't even added until four years after the Constitution was ratified (1787:1791).
Now, of course, his view of the Constitution as a document that tells government what it can't do is predicated on the idea that these amendments...which were added years later...are somehow the core of the Constitution itself. I can't even begin to explain how frustrating it is to know how many people share that sentiment. Along with it usually comes the implication that our rights are defined by the Bill of Rights as well (I'm surprised I didn't hear this from him today as well). But in fact the Bill of Rights, in the context of the Constitution itself, is largely redundant. This was argued by the Federalists at the time of its adoption and I have to say it may have been one of the few things I would have agreed with them on.
I don't want to belabor any of these points because if you're reading my blog, you're probably already well aware of these realities. But in case you've never really been exposed to it, or maybe you're just feeling a bit rusty on colonial American history, I suggest that everyone pick up a copy of the Constitution (or find it on the internet) and thumb through the entire thing. It shouldn't take you any longer than 10-15 minutes. It's an amazingly short and concise document (especially in light of the tens of thousands of pages of federal regulation on the books today). And even better, most of it is very easy to understand. It lays out exactly what the government can do, and IMPLIES what it can't do conversely. And that obvious implication is the exact reason why the Federalists thought the Bill of Rights was unnecessary. And interestingly enough, it's also the sole reason for the 9th and 10th amendment in the Bill of Rights as well. And for those who are rusty on their understanding regarding the nature of the Bill of Rights as it relates to the Constitution itself, do a little reading on the Massachusetts Compromise. It might be kind of boring to some of you, but at least when you rest your head tonight you can take some solace in the fact that you now know more about the Constitution than the most successful political commentator in the United States. What a dolt!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Back in Black
A funny thing occurred to me earlier this week when I was listening to some give and take on a radio talk-show. The host, whom I admire more for his candor and presentation than for his actual views, was arguing with a few callers about the efficacy of capitalism as a socio-economic system. A couple of the frustrated callers were insisting that the host was being too stubborn in his defense of capitalism. They claimed that although capitalism seemed to be a decent system, that we, as we seem to do in so many fields, will devise something more perfect in the future. The host, in retaliatory fashion, then made the blanket claim that capitalism is the end-all-be-all system and that no system could or should replace it. It may shock anyone who reads my blog to know that I actually don't particularly agree with him.
My views are generally Austro-libertarian. But to that extent, I would also consider myself what people refer to as an "anarcho-capitalist" or "free-market anarchist." Both terms, of course, seem to imply a very real advocacy of capitalism. And I similarly wouldn't deny my very real advocacy of capitalism in that regard. But I believe the nature of my advocacy is a bit more subtle than that of many of my fellow travelers. By that I mean I don't believe that my "support" of the free market even has the same implication as the support that others seem to offer. When I say that I support free markets economically, I'm generally not engaging in a point about greater social utility or even general pragmatism. What I mean is that I think classical free-market economics accurately explains how people behave and how value and price is affected by the free actions of individuals. This is why I feel a strong affinity for the Austrian view of economics: a view not adopted by self-proclaimed portents of economic trends, but rather those who wish to understand human interaction and its consequences.
In that way, my economic position is not a reflection of what I think should be but what I feel actually happens. But what's more interesting is that I don't feel that belief is really the corner-stone of the anarcho-capitalist movement although it's certainly at the fore-front in conversation. I believe anarcho-capitalism is actually about ethics and a more complete socio-political view of justice. The whole core of that particular belief system is the insistence that freedom is the only appropriate condition for individuals. All other beliefs, even the prominent economic ones, are largely tangential when it comes down to it. At the end of the day, most anarcho-capitalists, even the most dire defenders, will tell you that their support of capitalism has nothing to do with how well capitalism works or to what purpose it serves but rather that their support of that system is a pure reflection of their belief in freedom. We support free markets because it represents the economic dimension of freedom to many of us. Ah, but what makes this point interesting is that it only holds true in the context of the state and imposed economic systems.
For instance, if you asked one of us what we felt about a group of people starting up a commune and living in their own self-proclaimed communistic society, we would gladly tell you how happy we would be to oblige them. Even though we so often get caught up in touting the virtues of capitalism, our belief, and the free-market system itself, allows for any kind of dissent and the presence of any kind of system, so long as said individuals do not keep others from being able to make similar decisions for themselves. And I think that points to something I find really interesting about free-market ideologies. The system of "capitalism", in that sense, really isn't a system at all. The "system" we are really talking about is freedom, and capitalism is simply the economic realization of what typically happens when people are left to be free: they develop specialized trades, barter, borrow, and invest. And in that sense, my support for capitalism is really simply my support for freedom, coupled with an understanding of how humans interact. And I think in that way, "capitalism" stands alone in that it's the only economic system that is talked about as if it is just that; an economic system...even though clearly it really isn't.
Any real socio-political system, economic or otherwise, implies an imposed structure. Take any system a government may endorse, from socialism to communism to fascism. In order for any of these systems to exist, government must subtract from your personal freedoms. You are told either what you can make, what you can sell, what you can sell it for, whom you can sell it to, or in what way you can conduct such business at all. And that only begins to touch the scope of any given system's implications to personal liberty. But in all of those systems, what is constant is that you are robbed of choice. If that government, whether through a dictator or a democratic majority, decides to adopt a system, it applies to all. You can't opt out of such systems; they are forced coercively upon you. But what's interesting is that "capitalism", or rather true free markets, aren't forced upon anyone.
Now, some people who are more left-leaning will dispute the idea that capitalism is not forced. They will claim that you really have no "choice" when you have to eat and have no education; if you have to flip burgers you will. But even that is a choice and an exertion of your free will. It's only a lack of choice in so much as you have no "real choice" as to whether you would pick up a hundred dollar bill off the ground as opposed to leaving it. You're not talking about the abolition of actual choice in that case, you're talking about the compelling quality of certain options. You are certainly free, in the most pure sense, to not pick up that hundred dollars, but it will make your life harder. In the same way, you are certainly free to not flip burgers, but you might starve if that's the extent of your productive capacity and you choose not to engage in it.
Does that negate the idea of choice though? Absolutely not. Your circumstantial needs do not circumvent free will. And if you were obliged to conclude that it did, then you can take that complaint to God himself. You were born a creature of this earth, with the biological need for food, water, and shelter. You may arrive at the conclusion that you have few ways to obtain such needs and you may also conclude that others obtain those needs much easier than you seem to be able to, but that has little to do with the presence of force and coercion on the part of other human beings. It's a shame that we carry biological processes that are beyond our control, but its not realistic to go around talking about slavery and coercion in the context of how short our legs or arms might be. The attempt to carry the discussion of freedom outside of the context of free will has become on embarrassing trend taken up by some of my political counterparts. Then again, shame and humility has never been their brightest star.
In any case, I feel that capitalism stands out in that no government structure is really required for it. In fact, capitalism is simply what happens when there is NO SYSTEM IN PLACE. I took Michael Moore to task on this as well when his movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, came out and he had been making the rounds of TV talk shows. He claimed that capitalism was invented in the 16th century. Well, no, actually capitalism wasn't invented. If so, who invented it? What did government force people to do? The answers, oddly enough, are "no one" and "nothing." Capitalism happened when feudal governments started falling apart in Europe and people began to live without a governing structure. No one has to force people to specialize in a field or to trade or barter. People do it of their own volition. They actually decide, freely, that the best way to improve their lot in life is to make something that other people want and trade it away for what they want in return. Isn't that amazing? Not that people can figure that out but that it is simply what tends to happen in the absence of force and coercion?
All of these thoughts came to mind when I was listening to the callers on this particular talk show. And it just made me think of an odd analogy concerning a general misunderstanding about colors (oddly enough). If you've ever heard people ask what different peoples' favorite colors are, you'll often hear an interesting response when someone offers black as their favorite. People will sometimes retort, "Black isn't a color." Some people understand it but a lot of people are confused by it. Disregarding pigmentation, which is kind of a different conversation altogether, black, in terms of the light spectrum, really isn't a color. All true colors derive from white, the color of pure light, as anyone who has played around with a prism can attest to. Every single color in every imaginable variation is simply some part of that spectrum of light...all except black. Black, by definition, is actually the absence of light. People often have the same misconception about "cold" which is really just an absence of heat, but that is for another conversation perhaps.
My point is that in the same way that black is really just an absence of light, free markets are really just an absence of an imposed economic system. All colors on a pinwheel share the fact that they are derived from light, with the exception of black. In that same way, all imposed economic systems are derived from some form of authoritarianism, with the exception of free markets which are simply an absence of any authoritarianism at all. Maybe that analogy really isn't as clever I thought it was when it occurred to me. But I wish that, in the same way that people so often make the "witty" retort that black isn't a color, maybe free-marketers should get in the habit of retorting that "capitalism" really isn't an economic system in the context of state imposition either. I don't think it's a point that many people have pondered.
My views are generally Austro-libertarian. But to that extent, I would also consider myself what people refer to as an "anarcho-capitalist" or "free-market anarchist." Both terms, of course, seem to imply a very real advocacy of capitalism. And I similarly wouldn't deny my very real advocacy of capitalism in that regard. But I believe the nature of my advocacy is a bit more subtle than that of many of my fellow travelers. By that I mean I don't believe that my "support" of the free market even has the same implication as the support that others seem to offer. When I say that I support free markets economically, I'm generally not engaging in a point about greater social utility or even general pragmatism. What I mean is that I think classical free-market economics accurately explains how people behave and how value and price is affected by the free actions of individuals. This is why I feel a strong affinity for the Austrian view of economics: a view not adopted by self-proclaimed portents of economic trends, but rather those who wish to understand human interaction and its consequences.
In that way, my economic position is not a reflection of what I think should be but what I feel actually happens. But what's more interesting is that I don't feel that belief is really the corner-stone of the anarcho-capitalist movement although it's certainly at the fore-front in conversation. I believe anarcho-capitalism is actually about ethics and a more complete socio-political view of justice. The whole core of that particular belief system is the insistence that freedom is the only appropriate condition for individuals. All other beliefs, even the prominent economic ones, are largely tangential when it comes down to it. At the end of the day, most anarcho-capitalists, even the most dire defenders, will tell you that their support of capitalism has nothing to do with how well capitalism works or to what purpose it serves but rather that their support of that system is a pure reflection of their belief in freedom. We support free markets because it represents the economic dimension of freedom to many of us. Ah, but what makes this point interesting is that it only holds true in the context of the state and imposed economic systems.
For instance, if you asked one of us what we felt about a group of people starting up a commune and living in their own self-proclaimed communistic society, we would gladly tell you how happy we would be to oblige them. Even though we so often get caught up in touting the virtues of capitalism, our belief, and the free-market system itself, allows for any kind of dissent and the presence of any kind of system, so long as said individuals do not keep others from being able to make similar decisions for themselves. And I think that points to something I find really interesting about free-market ideologies. The system of "capitalism", in that sense, really isn't a system at all. The "system" we are really talking about is freedom, and capitalism is simply the economic realization of what typically happens when people are left to be free: they develop specialized trades, barter, borrow, and invest. And in that sense, my support for capitalism is really simply my support for freedom, coupled with an understanding of how humans interact. And I think in that way, "capitalism" stands alone in that it's the only economic system that is talked about as if it is just that; an economic system...even though clearly it really isn't.
Any real socio-political system, economic or otherwise, implies an imposed structure. Take any system a government may endorse, from socialism to communism to fascism. In order for any of these systems to exist, government must subtract from your personal freedoms. You are told either what you can make, what you can sell, what you can sell it for, whom you can sell it to, or in what way you can conduct such business at all. And that only begins to touch the scope of any given system's implications to personal liberty. But in all of those systems, what is constant is that you are robbed of choice. If that government, whether through a dictator or a democratic majority, decides to adopt a system, it applies to all. You can't opt out of such systems; they are forced coercively upon you. But what's interesting is that "capitalism", or rather true free markets, aren't forced upon anyone.
Now, some people who are more left-leaning will dispute the idea that capitalism is not forced. They will claim that you really have no "choice" when you have to eat and have no education; if you have to flip burgers you will. But even that is a choice and an exertion of your free will. It's only a lack of choice in so much as you have no "real choice" as to whether you would pick up a hundred dollar bill off the ground as opposed to leaving it. You're not talking about the abolition of actual choice in that case, you're talking about the compelling quality of certain options. You are certainly free, in the most pure sense, to not pick up that hundred dollars, but it will make your life harder. In the same way, you are certainly free to not flip burgers, but you might starve if that's the extent of your productive capacity and you choose not to engage in it.
Does that negate the idea of choice though? Absolutely not. Your circumstantial needs do not circumvent free will. And if you were obliged to conclude that it did, then you can take that complaint to God himself. You were born a creature of this earth, with the biological need for food, water, and shelter. You may arrive at the conclusion that you have few ways to obtain such needs and you may also conclude that others obtain those needs much easier than you seem to be able to, but that has little to do with the presence of force and coercion on the part of other human beings. It's a shame that we carry biological processes that are beyond our control, but its not realistic to go around talking about slavery and coercion in the context of how short our legs or arms might be. The attempt to carry the discussion of freedom outside of the context of free will has become on embarrassing trend taken up by some of my political counterparts. Then again, shame and humility has never been their brightest star.
In any case, I feel that capitalism stands out in that no government structure is really required for it. In fact, capitalism is simply what happens when there is NO SYSTEM IN PLACE. I took Michael Moore to task on this as well when his movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, came out and he had been making the rounds of TV talk shows. He claimed that capitalism was invented in the 16th century. Well, no, actually capitalism wasn't invented. If so, who invented it? What did government force people to do? The answers, oddly enough, are "no one" and "nothing." Capitalism happened when feudal governments started falling apart in Europe and people began to live without a governing structure. No one has to force people to specialize in a field or to trade or barter. People do it of their own volition. They actually decide, freely, that the best way to improve their lot in life is to make something that other people want and trade it away for what they want in return. Isn't that amazing? Not that people can figure that out but that it is simply what tends to happen in the absence of force and coercion?
All of these thoughts came to mind when I was listening to the callers on this particular talk show. And it just made me think of an odd analogy concerning a general misunderstanding about colors (oddly enough). If you've ever heard people ask what different peoples' favorite colors are, you'll often hear an interesting response when someone offers black as their favorite. People will sometimes retort, "Black isn't a color." Some people understand it but a lot of people are confused by it. Disregarding pigmentation, which is kind of a different conversation altogether, black, in terms of the light spectrum, really isn't a color. All true colors derive from white, the color of pure light, as anyone who has played around with a prism can attest to. Every single color in every imaginable variation is simply some part of that spectrum of light...all except black. Black, by definition, is actually the absence of light. People often have the same misconception about "cold" which is really just an absence of heat, but that is for another conversation perhaps.
My point is that in the same way that black is really just an absence of light, free markets are really just an absence of an imposed economic system. All colors on a pinwheel share the fact that they are derived from light, with the exception of black. In that same way, all imposed economic systems are derived from some form of authoritarianism, with the exception of free markets which are simply an absence of any authoritarianism at all. Maybe that analogy really isn't as clever I thought it was when it occurred to me. But I wish that, in the same way that people so often make the "witty" retort that black isn't a color, maybe free-marketers should get in the habit of retorting that "capitalism" really isn't an economic system in the context of state imposition either. I don't think it's a point that many people have pondered.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
My Maine Objection
I was perusing through some of the returns regarding the "off-year" elections that took place last night, and there was something in particular that caught my eye. That little something was the repeal of Maine's gay marriage legislation which came about via a referendum in the previous election cycle (Fall - 2008). Of course, at the time, this was heralded by New England progressives as a huge win for the gay movement. I remember shaking my head about it and wondering if they (progressives in general) have ever really concerned themselves with the nature of the supposed victories and concessions they'd made over the years. And as many people of that movement woke up today, most likely with a sense of vitriol and disgust, I wonder if this repeal will give any of them pause.
Let me be clear here. I very strongly support the act of, or more specifically the contracting of, gay marriage. Both during times in my life when I'd considered myself liberal and conservative, I'd never had an issue with anyone's sexual preferences regardless. So it's probably not surprising to anyone that I still don't take issue with it today either. However, I find myself in the odd position of not being able to endorse the conservative approach nor the liberal approach to handling this issue. As such, I've found myself in many verbal exchanges with both gay progressives and straight conservatives about the issue. If there's anything I've learned about adopting the libertarian mantle, it's that you're going to find yourself at odds with damn near everyone. It's part of the reason why people will constantly use the handle of their opposition to describe your views, no matter how inaccurate it may be. I can't even begin to count how many times conservatives have tried to malign me by calling me liberal or how many times liberals have tried to malign me by calling me conservative. I think that's just part of the reflexive mantra you can expect from people who haven't thought about politics enough to be able to couch anyone's views outside their own as being something other than that of the opposing major party.
That being said, i disagree with both parties very strongly on their stances regarding gay marriage. Not on the act itself, but rather the ridiculous ways in which they believe it's appropriate to handle it. I had stated previously, in my comments regarding an article I posted, that it often seems like the two major political parties just seem to be fighting over who has control of the guns anymore. I proffered that maybe, just maybe, there should be a discussion regarding the scope and role of government...that maybe we should return to some of our roots as Americans and begin to question the purpose of our government in all its monopolistic glory. And what took place in Maine last night is the perfect example of why we need to stop engaging in this push-pull leveraging of our fellow man.
Of all the people who woke up ashamed of their neighbors in Maine, how many of them, at any point in their political evolution, had ever thought to consider that the best way of approaching the marriage issue wasn't through democratic legislation, but rather through the dissolution of state control regarding marriage? And I don't mean a relinquishing of marriage law to the federal government. I mean the abolition of the marriage-interface in the government apparatus. I'm going to make a crazy assumption (based on my life-long experience) and say that very few of them thought to consider this as an appropriate approach. Let's not be coy here. The conservatives, who have come to pride themselves (somehow) as being the arbiters of freedom and liberty, should be ashamed and disgusted at their own propensity to try to tell others that they can or cannot conjoin. The fact that they support the state suppressing such voluntary contracts (marriages) should be reprehensible to any proponent of individual liberty. There is no excuse for people of that ilk in my honest opinion. But for all that I may agree on, ethically, with my liberal brethren on this particular issue, I have to take them to task as well here.
The problem that I have with the approach of progressives is the same problem our founding fathers had when they wrestled with the same idea in their time; people put an innocuously (from their perspective) dangerous confidence in democracy. It seems like from the time we are born in this country we are led to the stream of democracy. And drinking from that stream is about as American as apple pie or baseball. "Democracy and freedom" have become a cliche, although they honestly have little to do with each other. There is nothing mutually exclusive about totalitarianism and democracy. Both can exist simultaneously. Think of it this way, we rightfully decry monarchies, historically, because of the structure of overwhelming power exerted against the individual. A monarchical power structure would look, typographically, like a pyramid; with the absolute ruler on top, his appointed subjects underneath him, and the masses at the bottom. So when we decry monarchy, is it the fact that we dislike the shape of such a structure, or is it the quashing of individual liberty that such a structure implies that bothers us? In a pure democracy, such a pyramid would be inverted; with everyone as a collective appearing at the top, and the lowly individual at the bottom. From an individual's perspective, in terms of true freedom, these two structures aren't entirely different. In both cases, my liberty is subject to others. This is why our founding fathers fought to actually stifle pure democracy and obfuscate its capacity...which is a point that has been dearly lost on most of us.
This brings me to my liberal friends, who often mock the concept of democracy (particularly in the last eight years). But they don't typically mock it because they believe it to be problematic, but rather because they feel that it's asinine for certain parties and/or administrations to use it as bantor when we don't even have a true democracy here. In other words, they mock it to the extent that they actually want a democracy but that they believe one doesn't exist in our country right now. On the contrary, they very much believe that democracy is not only applicable but necessary to bring about various social reforms. And yet, even on mornings like this, when they inevitably fall upon their own proverbial sword, they move not to strip such power from the purview of government but rather to expand the scope of their fight. Fraught with the early morning headlines, leader of various progressive movements have already realigned their focus towards national legislation to control marriage; to subsequently allow it in all states in the Union. But setting aside the many constitutional issues that would bring up, what would make a democratic referendum at the national level any better to you than one at the state level? Even if you achieve such legislation, and you are temporarily elated by the prospect of such a victory, how will you feel with the reigns are in the hands of your opposition, and they use the very legislation you crafted as a framework to BAN GAY MARRIAGE in every state in the Union? They've already tried it at least once. Do you really think this would be out of their reach?
As a casual observer, it seems to me that the rational approach to such an issue wouldn't be to keep trying to place your individual liberties within the perpetual tug of war within politics. The real solution to such a problem is to get government out of licensing marriage altogether! I wouldn't want to leave my right to make voluntary marriage contracts up to the whim of my fellow citizens any more than I'd want them to decide what church I went to on Sunday. It's simply NO ONE ELSE'S FUCKING BUSINESS. It's not their place to make such decisions for you and it never should be. And as has been painfully witnessed today, as long as such decisions are within the scope of your government, and you continue to frame it that way in your quest for social change, you can't be surprised when your opposition gets a hand up on you every once in a while. And when you start to realize exactly how silly the tug of war is over your individual liberties is, you may start to also realize how trying to enact federal legislation regarding marriage licensing may just put you in the hot-seat for even more regressive setbacks.
I don't intend to be too hard on some of these people. I realize the road they are walking is long and frustrating. And perhaps harder to handle than various laws and legislation is the social prejudice they have endured and must overcome on their journey. I certainly do not envy such burdens and I'm in no place to question the kind of overwhelming pressure that is exerted on them from day to day. In fact, in many ways this, often single, small sliver of sentiment that we share for the abolition of control over the individual would make us fellow travelers on some level. But that compassion is hard to reconcile when I stride for absolute liberty from afar, and often see their proposals for more government control to hold up their one-dimensional view of liberty. If it's liberty you want my friends, then I will gladly share your burden and take up arms beside you. But if you continue to only proffer the strength of the state and an extension of its role in our personal lives, even if you erroneously believe that is the path to social acceptance, then I can only stand back and shake my head in disappointment.
"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right."
- H.L. MENCKEN
Let me be clear here. I very strongly support the act of, or more specifically the contracting of, gay marriage. Both during times in my life when I'd considered myself liberal and conservative, I'd never had an issue with anyone's sexual preferences regardless. So it's probably not surprising to anyone that I still don't take issue with it today either. However, I find myself in the odd position of not being able to endorse the conservative approach nor the liberal approach to handling this issue. As such, I've found myself in many verbal exchanges with both gay progressives and straight conservatives about the issue. If there's anything I've learned about adopting the libertarian mantle, it's that you're going to find yourself at odds with damn near everyone. It's part of the reason why people will constantly use the handle of their opposition to describe your views, no matter how inaccurate it may be. I can't even begin to count how many times conservatives have tried to malign me by calling me liberal or how many times liberals have tried to malign me by calling me conservative. I think that's just part of the reflexive mantra you can expect from people who haven't thought about politics enough to be able to couch anyone's views outside their own as being something other than that of the opposing major party.
That being said, i disagree with both parties very strongly on their stances regarding gay marriage. Not on the act itself, but rather the ridiculous ways in which they believe it's appropriate to handle it. I had stated previously, in my comments regarding an article I posted, that it often seems like the two major political parties just seem to be fighting over who has control of the guns anymore. I proffered that maybe, just maybe, there should be a discussion regarding the scope and role of government...that maybe we should return to some of our roots as Americans and begin to question the purpose of our government in all its monopolistic glory. And what took place in Maine last night is the perfect example of why we need to stop engaging in this push-pull leveraging of our fellow man.
Of all the people who woke up ashamed of their neighbors in Maine, how many of them, at any point in their political evolution, had ever thought to consider that the best way of approaching the marriage issue wasn't through democratic legislation, but rather through the dissolution of state control regarding marriage? And I don't mean a relinquishing of marriage law to the federal government. I mean the abolition of the marriage-interface in the government apparatus. I'm going to make a crazy assumption (based on my life-long experience) and say that very few of them thought to consider this as an appropriate approach. Let's not be coy here. The conservatives, who have come to pride themselves (somehow) as being the arbiters of freedom and liberty, should be ashamed and disgusted at their own propensity to try to tell others that they can or cannot conjoin. The fact that they support the state suppressing such voluntary contracts (marriages) should be reprehensible to any proponent of individual liberty. There is no excuse for people of that ilk in my honest opinion. But for all that I may agree on, ethically, with my liberal brethren on this particular issue, I have to take them to task as well here.
The problem that I have with the approach of progressives is the same problem our founding fathers had when they wrestled with the same idea in their time; people put an innocuously (from their perspective) dangerous confidence in democracy. It seems like from the time we are born in this country we are led to the stream of democracy. And drinking from that stream is about as American as apple pie or baseball. "Democracy and freedom" have become a cliche, although they honestly have little to do with each other. There is nothing mutually exclusive about totalitarianism and democracy. Both can exist simultaneously. Think of it this way, we rightfully decry monarchies, historically, because of the structure of overwhelming power exerted against the individual. A monarchical power structure would look, typographically, like a pyramid; with the absolute ruler on top, his appointed subjects underneath him, and the masses at the bottom. So when we decry monarchy, is it the fact that we dislike the shape of such a structure, or is it the quashing of individual liberty that such a structure implies that bothers us? In a pure democracy, such a pyramid would be inverted; with everyone as a collective appearing at the top, and the lowly individual at the bottom. From an individual's perspective, in terms of true freedom, these two structures aren't entirely different. In both cases, my liberty is subject to others. This is why our founding fathers fought to actually stifle pure democracy and obfuscate its capacity...which is a point that has been dearly lost on most of us.
This brings me to my liberal friends, who often mock the concept of democracy (particularly in the last eight years). But they don't typically mock it because they believe it to be problematic, but rather because they feel that it's asinine for certain parties and/or administrations to use it as bantor when we don't even have a true democracy here. In other words, they mock it to the extent that they actually want a democracy but that they believe one doesn't exist in our country right now. On the contrary, they very much believe that democracy is not only applicable but necessary to bring about various social reforms. And yet, even on mornings like this, when they inevitably fall upon their own proverbial sword, they move not to strip such power from the purview of government but rather to expand the scope of their fight. Fraught with the early morning headlines, leader of various progressive movements have already realigned their focus towards national legislation to control marriage; to subsequently allow it in all states in the Union. But setting aside the many constitutional issues that would bring up, what would make a democratic referendum at the national level any better to you than one at the state level? Even if you achieve such legislation, and you are temporarily elated by the prospect of such a victory, how will you feel with the reigns are in the hands of your opposition, and they use the very legislation you crafted as a framework to BAN GAY MARRIAGE in every state in the Union? They've already tried it at least once. Do you really think this would be out of their reach?
As a casual observer, it seems to me that the rational approach to such an issue wouldn't be to keep trying to place your individual liberties within the perpetual tug of war within politics. The real solution to such a problem is to get government out of licensing marriage altogether! I wouldn't want to leave my right to make voluntary marriage contracts up to the whim of my fellow citizens any more than I'd want them to decide what church I went to on Sunday. It's simply NO ONE ELSE'S FUCKING BUSINESS. It's not their place to make such decisions for you and it never should be. And as has been painfully witnessed today, as long as such decisions are within the scope of your government, and you continue to frame it that way in your quest for social change, you can't be surprised when your opposition gets a hand up on you every once in a while. And when you start to realize exactly how silly the tug of war is over your individual liberties is, you may start to also realize how trying to enact federal legislation regarding marriage licensing may just put you in the hot-seat for even more regressive setbacks.
I don't intend to be too hard on some of these people. I realize the road they are walking is long and frustrating. And perhaps harder to handle than various laws and legislation is the social prejudice they have endured and must overcome on their journey. I certainly do not envy such burdens and I'm in no place to question the kind of overwhelming pressure that is exerted on them from day to day. In fact, in many ways this, often single, small sliver of sentiment that we share for the abolition of control over the individual would make us fellow travelers on some level. But that compassion is hard to reconcile when I stride for absolute liberty from afar, and often see their proposals for more government control to hold up their one-dimensional view of liberty. If it's liberty you want my friends, then I will gladly share your burden and take up arms beside you. But if you continue to only proffer the strength of the state and an extension of its role in our personal lives, even if you erroneously believe that is the path to social acceptance, then I can only stand back and shake my head in disappointment.
"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right."
- H.L. MENCKEN
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