[The following was blogged during a 07-Nov-2008 City Club of Portland program "City Club Post-Election Analysis" -- all typos and errors are mine. The comments attributed to the participants are as best I could capture them at the time, and in some cases I wrote what I thought they meant, not necessarily the exact words they said. -Tom]
Dan Lavey says, the Oregon Republican Party is dead.
The party divisions are on cultural lines, not economic lines as much any more.
The obsessive Sizemore effort to put initiatives up has served to permanently organize the opposition. Each successive election has served to get Democrats ever more organized. From the Bus Project onward, these have served to help their candidates.
Democrats are recruiting better people.
All the GOP has left is ideology, not ideas. That's bad for Oregon because the only remaining debate is between the left and the far left. The political process has become much more polarized. That's driven in part by our campaign finance rules, which in allowing all your money to come from a dozen large donors, breed lazy candidates.
If Obama governs as he ran, he could be very successful.
Tim Hibbits --
The Obama margin will be probably 9 million votes. Oregon is still counting. Why can hillbillies in Kentucky get their votes counted 100% the next day, and Oregon takes two weeks?
The polls were largely right. The belief in hidden GOP support is proved wrong.
Rove has been a long term catastrophe for the party.
There was a Willy Week article two years ago suggesting that Republicans would take over Oregon in a few years. It was clearly wrong, and Hibbits refuted it at the time in Brainstorm Magazine.
The GOP's move from boardrooms to church pews has not helped. Statewide in Oregon, the Dem-GOP record is 24-3. The Washington numbers are 39-3.
Obama will carry Multnomah County by 200,000 votes. He will carry the rest of the state by 100,000. He got 60% of Washington County, the former GOP stronghold. He did well in many counties formerly strong for the GOP.
The voters voted less in realignment than in a throw the bums out fashion. There is no "permanent majority" in US politics, however if Democrats govern well they could have a good ride.
Meanwhile GOP leaders are coming to the conclusion that they aren't conservative enough, even though it's been 50 years since a hard-right candidate won in Oregon.
Mark Wiener --
would love to see the GOP move further right. He would caution Democrats on that.
Now the hard work begins. Education and how we pay for it. Our piece of global warming. How we raise money for public purposes. These changes need to be done smartly and with a lot of inclusion of voters. Dems will have right around 36 in the House, close to being able to raise taxes.
Dems should move carefully. There's an opportunity to make systemic change. It should be done in a way that's inclusive. If you leave the public behind you won't be successful.
Dan Lavey --
Reagan was successful where Bush failed. Reagan always kept the public with him, and Bush didn't do anything like that. It's more than giving a great speech. You have to adjust the content of the cake, not tweak the icing.
Republicans -- let the Dems govern, and work on regaining the majority. Don't delude yourself that you're governing. Dems need to produce. Give them their shot. Pick a few fights that go to the strength of the GOP brand and that people like about the GOP. Don't pick fights on children's health care that divide your own team and unite your opponents.
Tim Hibbits --
Sorry if someone felt bad about my comments about Kentucky. I grew up in southern Ohio and was proud to consider myself a hillbilly. I could literally see Kentucky from my house.
The new Oregon House Dems are in not-very-blue districts. A lurch left by Democrats would put those seats at risk. To stay in the majority the Dems need to avoid policies that drive voters away from them.
Dan Lavey --
The agendas of your party's interest groups is not always aligned with the interests of your party. Watch out regarding primaries that select unelectable candidates.
Questions from members
Marge Kafoury: Dan please elaborate on the Sizemore factor. Voters keep seeing the same defeated initiatives come back. How can Oregon get off this merry-go-round?
Dan Lavey: the backers need to stop funding losing initiatives. I don't understand how someone can fund a consistent and repeated failure. The answer isn't to choke off the initiative process. I think it's helping -- dramatically -- the interests of the liberal groups who have become permanently organized against them.
Wiener: and it's also expensive. The strategy may be to keep liberals on the defensive. And Dan is right. Loren Parks likes to give money because he enjoys it. But why does (some guy from) Jeld Wen fund these things? This is really a Sizemore money maker. Do the donors understand what their money goes to? Do they see how Sizemore spends it? Admittedly the opposition money is spent on people like me, so I may be cutting my own throat.
(Discussion on choking off or reforming the initiative system. Various slaps at Sizemore.)
Q2: wasteful spending and borrowing... will the American people make the necessary sacrifices for the common good?
Hibbits: I do believe the next president will have to ask for some sort of national sacrifice. We are a debtor nation. Obama will have to lay out that there are problems and we are all going to have to sacrifice. The Bush admin was unwilling to say that. Reagan was able to say that tough days today can lead to good days tomorrow.
Lavey: I think leadership finds the sweet spot between therapy and discipline. You can be an Eat Your Peas president like Carter and make everyone feel bad. Bush could have rallied the country after 9/11 -- esp. on energy -- and failed to do so. There is consensus for change.
Wiener: we are at a teachable moment. We want leadership that is honest yet not crabbed. Mondale's "I'm gonna raise your taxes" lacked the purpose of that sacrifice. Tell people, here is what you will get for your sacrifice. Let's hope the opportunity is not squandered.
Q3, Chris Smith: was there any way to avoid both 61 and 57?
Wiener: absolutely not. Without 57 on the ballot, 61 would have passed. Without the rational alternative of 57, 61 would have passed.
Q4: I did a lot of phoning and heard spontaneous complaints about negative advertising.
Wiener: Ask Jefferson -- it is here to stay. It works. The irrelevant nasty stuff does not work. Accurate yet negative ads are relevant and need to be aired.
Hibbits: negative contrast is not bad. McCain tried to scare people. Obama was more fair, that McCain voted w/ Bush 90% of the time.
Wiener: McCain resorted to actual Red Baiting, if you can imagine.
Q5: were you surprised that in tough economic times that people voted in favor of bond measures like PCC?
Lavey: Yes, I was surprised. The zoo passed, PCC passed, parks, public safety.
Wiener: Liz Kaufman has said that in tough times you have to have a tough conversation with the voters about what we want as a community. What do we want to buy? What is important to us as a community? I was not shocked by the result. Honest conversations are good. Demagoguing is bad.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Why monopolies are bad
The reason monopoly is bad in the eyes of libertarians, is because it is inherently coercive -- we as consumers don't have other options, so even if the monopolist is a "good" one, he's still holding all the cards, and we have no choice but to either buy his stuff at his price, or go pound sand.
Competition empowers consumers by giving us choices and thus power, pitting the businesses against each other to our benefit.
Businesses hate that, so they constantly look for ways to "control" competition -- usually using government mandated cartel practices, subverting government oversight agencies, or by illegal price fixing, illegal anti-competitive agreements, etc.
A free market works when it channels greed into socially positive outcomes. Greed doesn't like being channeled and will happily corrupt the government in order to free itself from the hard boundaries of the free market.
Competition empowers consumers by giving us choices and thus power, pitting the businesses against each other to our benefit.
Businesses hate that, so they constantly look for ways to "control" competition -- usually using government mandated cartel practices, subverting government oversight agencies, or by illegal price fixing, illegal anti-competitive agreements, etc.
A free market works when it channels greed into socially positive outcomes. Greed doesn't like being channeled and will happily corrupt the government in order to free itself from the hard boundaries of the free market.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Thomas Frank under-performs yet again
Thomas Frank continues to underserve his readers. This time it's a disjointed rant based loosely on a deliberate mis-reading of a 28-year-old quote.
Wirthlin's point, that people act on their perceptions, is pedestrian, and the same sentiment can be found in the mouths of political operatives (and marketers and newspaper editors) of all political stripes.
If you view Frank's writings with sufficiently jaded eyes, it's amusing to see him waxing indignant about the Republican disconnect with Frank's version of reality -- which of course is really real.
A useful exercise might have been for Frank to engage in some, oh, let's call it reportage, wherein he could prove rather than assert that his reality is more real than the straw-man GOP version he offers.
Frank might have addressed the consistent thread of anti-Americanism that continues to dominate the far left and even the near left, such as the amazing circumstance by which the Democratic Party two years ago was in a conflict of interest -- that the worse America did in Iraq, the better for themselves -- and prominent Democrats still apparently desire American defeat in Iraq.
If you seek to read a fact-free essay that consists of a leftist agreeing with himself, Frank once again delivers. If you seek someone to challenge your thinking, or expose you to new ideas, new facts, what one might call "news" -- seek elsewhere.
Memo to the Wall Street Journal's editors: please raise your expectations of Thomas Frank to the same level you hold other writers on your page. His track record is sub-par.
Wirthlin's point, that people act on their perceptions, is pedestrian, and the same sentiment can be found in the mouths of political operatives (and marketers and newspaper editors) of all political stripes.
If you view Frank's writings with sufficiently jaded eyes, it's amusing to see him waxing indignant about the Republican disconnect with Frank's version of reality -- which of course is really real.
A useful exercise might have been for Frank to engage in some, oh, let's call it reportage, wherein he could prove rather than assert that his reality is more real than the straw-man GOP version he offers.
Frank might have addressed the consistent thread of anti-Americanism that continues to dominate the far left and even the near left, such as the amazing circumstance by which the Democratic Party two years ago was in a conflict of interest -- that the worse America did in Iraq, the better for themselves -- and prominent Democrats still apparently desire American defeat in Iraq.
If you seek to read a fact-free essay that consists of a leftist agreeing with himself, Frank once again delivers. If you seek someone to challenge your thinking, or expose you to new ideas, new facts, what one might call "news" -- seek elsewhere.
Memo to the Wall Street Journal's editors: please raise your expectations of Thomas Frank to the same level you hold other writers on your page. His track record is sub-par.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
A dialogue on global warmism
A slightly redacted email exchange with a leftist friend, after I forwarded this link and pointed out that the "consensus" on global warming isn't a consensus:
These are good questions. Thank you. Part of the joy of knowing you -- aside from looking at you -- is being challenged by your perspective. It's delightful.
A decent standard of living, especially for poorer people. Ask the Mexicans (among many others) who had their cost of food skyrocket because of ethanol mandates. Ask them "what's to lose?" and they'll tell you about their kids going hungry.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6255781.stm )
The cost of global warmism is not zero -- it's quite high, especially if the "answer" is to shut down the economies of the world, or divert food to fuel. Ethanol mandates alone have accelerated the loss of rain forest as the demand for corn and other ethanol feed stocks has gone up, resulting in vast new plantings of marginal and ecologically sensitive lands.
(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=biofuels-bad-for-people-and-climate )
Ask the extinct species "what's to lose?" when it turns out -- Oops! -- it was all a mistake, no warming, but those species are gone forever.
(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html )
This is an excellent point -- the same reason people ignore the looming disasters of Social Security and Medicare -- denial is so much easier than action, if action truly is needed.
Well, for the Watermelons -- the socialists and communists who became politically homeless after the fall of the Soviet Union -- they're just green on the outside, and still red on the inside. For them it's a perfect reason to do what Bush Jr tried to do with the war: stifle dissent, exaggerate dangers, and concentrate power. Global warmism has been the excuse for massive state intrusions into both the private sector and into people's private lives. It's the perfect excuse for totalitarianism.
And for you personally, the payoff is different, as you reveal below.
In other words, you get to do what Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell could only dream of -- the ability to use the power of the government to tell everybody how to live, what values to have, etc. (Beats having to persuade people, like they have to in free countries.)
Your straw man above is pretty grotesque, and typical of the hate projected by leftists onto my side -- the bizarre idea that we skeptics don't value the environment, or that we're all materialists, that we all worship commerce and cheer environmental depredations -- it's loony, yet you put it forward as only half tongue in cheek.
The reality is that the wealth generated by the free market has led to not dirtier but cleaner air, water, and soil, that rich countries protect species much better than poor ones, and that the only way to pay for even some of the interventions you want is to let my side run the economy long enough to generate the wealth to cover the tab.
Look at the ecological disaster areas of the 20th century -- they are the communist countries, not the capitalist ones. Look at the ecological disaster areas of the 21st century -- they are the poorest areas with the weakest property rights, yet global warmism deepens poverty and undermines property rights further.
I'm the worst Christian I know -- and yes, somehow, still a Christian. And if you're a global warmist, then you're religious -- because it's a faith, it's not science.
Well, yes, actually, I think humans are more valuable than non-human animals. And I think humans have a God-given duty to protect the environment. (Hence my opposition to global warmism and its horrific costs to the poor and to the environment.)
Wasted? Nonsense. If nothing else you've given me a wonderfully diverting 20 minutes responding to you, and deepened my affection for you. Now I have to go re-read everything I wrote to see if it makes sense from a perspective OTHER than behind my own eyes -- how could I not be grateful to you for that?
-Tom
These are good questions. Thank you. Part of the joy of knowing you -- aside from looking at you -- is being challenged by your perspective. It's delightful.
On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 my friend wrote:
The consequences of your side of the debate being wrong are far more catastrophic than those if mine are. Be prudent, darling. What's to lose?
A decent standard of living, especially for poorer people. Ask the Mexicans (among many others) who had their cost of food skyrocket because of ethanol mandates. Ask them "what's to lose?" and they'll tell you about their kids going hungry.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
The cost of global warmism is not zero -- it's quite high, especially if the "answer" is to shut down the economies of the world, or divert food to fuel. Ethanol mandates alone have accelerated the loss of rain forest as the demand for corn and other ethanol feed stocks has gone up, resulting in vast new plantings of marginal and ecologically sensitive lands.
(http://www.sciam.com/article.
Ask the extinct species "what's to lose?" when it turns out -- Oops! -- it was all a mistake, no warming, but those species are gone forever.
(http://www.time.com/time/
I can certainly understand the appeal to continue to live exactly as one wants to and imagine that there aren't any costs to pay whatsoever. Who wouldn't want to buy into that fairy tale?
This is an excellent point -- the same reason people ignore the looming disasters of Social Security and Medicare -- denial is so much easier than action, if action truly is needed.
What I don't understand is what "your" side imagines the appeal is to those of us who believe that behaviors must change for the planet to survive. What precisely do you think we "get" out of this? An orgasmic satisfaction for being busy-bodies?
Well, for the Watermelons -- the socialists and communists who became politically homeless after the fall of the Soviet Union -- they're just green on the outside, and still red on the inside. For them it's a perfect reason to do what Bush Jr tried to do with the war: stifle dissent, exaggerate dangers, and concentrate power. Global warmism has been the excuse for massive state intrusions into both the private sector and into people's private lives. It's the perfect excuse for totalitarianism.
And for you personally, the payoff is different, as you reveal below.
Between the high resource input demands of over-indulgent self-entitled Hummer owners and families with 7 children, and the slightly less high inputs of smug self-righteous Prius drivers with compost piles and two cats, lie people like me -- who think it's wrong to blindly deplete fisheries, dump phosphates in the water supply, pretend that oil supplies will never run out (never being a pretty ridiculous concept), that super mega-ton carbon emissions come at no cost whatsoever, or that the World will be just fine, in fact better, without all those pesky bears, condors, elephants, forests and other annoying and inconvenient flora and fauna that just get in the way of commerce.We just don't happen to like this obsessively human-centric point of view, because we believe it's destructive, sense that the planet is telling us that, and think that (really) minor lifestyle adjustments could reverse a dangerous and perhaps life-extinguishing trajectory. If we're wrong what has actually been lost or forgone that has any real significance? If we're right, you and your offspring get to be here. Seems a fair gamble.
In other words, you get to do what Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell could only dream of -- the ability to use the power of the government to tell everybody how to live, what values to have, etc. (Beats having to persuade people, like they have to in free countries.)
Your straw man above is pretty grotesque, and typical of the hate projected by leftists onto my side -- the bizarre idea that we skeptics don't value the environment, or that we're all materialists, that we all worship commerce and cheer environmental depredations -- it's loony, yet you put it forward as only half tongue in cheek.
The reality is that the wealth generated by the free market has led to not dirtier but cleaner air, water, and soil, that rich countries protect species much better than poor ones, and that the only way to pay for even some of the interventions you want is to let my side run the economy long enough to generate the wealth to cover the tab.
Look at the ecological disaster areas of the 20th century -- they are the communist countries, not the capitalist ones. Look at the ecological disaster areas of the 21st century -- they are the poorest areas with the weakest property rights, yet global warmism deepens poverty and undermines property rights further.
I'm not the slightest religious and I don't know whether you are or not,
I'm the worst Christian I know -- and yes, somehow, still a Christian. And if you're a global warmist, then you're religious -- because it's a faith, it's not science.
but if 'god' created everything, how come most of what was created appears to be expendable, because humans seem to trump everything else? Are you more precious than a manatee in 'god's' eye?
Well, yes, actually, I think humans are more valuable than non-human animals. And I think humans have a God-given duty to protect the environment. (Hence my opposition to global warmism and its horrific costs to the poor and to the environment.)
And, as the Tappet Brothers say, I've just wasted the last hour. It's like sending an email to my brother-in-law about why he should abandon Ralph Nader -- the result will be the same.(signed)
Wasted? Nonsense. If nothing else you've given me a wonderfully diverting 20 minutes responding to you, and deepened my affection for you. Now I have to go re-read everything I wrote to see if it makes sense from a perspective OTHER than behind my own eyes -- how could I not be grateful to you for that?
-Tom
Friday, October 17, 2008
Merkeley vs. Merkeley
Watching today's single-chair US Senate debate with Jeff Merkeley vs. the empty podium where Gordon Smith should have been, I have to call it a narrow Merkeley victory.
Victory because the world gets run by the people who show up, and Smith didn't. And narrow because Merkeley came across as a mildly clever man with a hat full of memorized sound bites.
Note to future debate prep staff: remind the candidate that a sound bite is like a spice -- use sparingly to accent the main course. Rely on them too much, and it burns the tongue and insults the palate. So too with Merkeley, who said "giveaways to the richest Americans" perhaps a dozen too many times.
Working the sound bite into one answer is good. Two can be better if they're far enough apart. Three or more answers in quick succession, all containing that same sound bite, and you sound like a performer repeating memorized lines. (Oh, and it sounds even lamer if you then stumble over it.)
Yes the room was filled with upper middle class liberals who might not have been terribly open to Smith anyway. Nevertheless Smith owed it to all the voters to show up and make his case. Had he handled himself well, Smith could have raised doubts about Merkeley's intellect (actually Merkeley managed to raise them himself, in my mind at least) and shown off the bipartisanship that has so distanced him from his own reluctant Jesus-loving base.
Victory because the world gets run by the people who show up, and Smith didn't. And narrow because Merkeley came across as a mildly clever man with a hat full of memorized sound bites.
Note to future debate prep staff: remind the candidate that a sound bite is like a spice -- use sparingly to accent the main course. Rely on them too much, and it burns the tongue and insults the palate. So too with Merkeley, who said "giveaways to the richest Americans" perhaps a dozen too many times.
Working the sound bite into one answer is good. Two can be better if they're far enough apart. Three or more answers in quick succession, all containing that same sound bite, and you sound like a performer repeating memorized lines. (Oh, and it sounds even lamer if you then stumble over it.)
Yes the room was filled with upper middle class liberals who might not have been terribly open to Smith anyway. Nevertheless Smith owed it to all the voters to show up and make his case. Had he handled himself well, Smith could have raised doubts about Merkeley's intellect (actually Merkeley managed to raise them himself, in my mind at least) and shown off the bipartisanship that has so distanced him from his own reluctant Jesus-loving base.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Grover Norquist and "StopACORN.org"
Grover Norquist enters the blogger room to give interviews to the assembled electron-stained wretches. His "Americans for Tax Reform" (www.atr.org) argues for pro-growth tax policies. See also their Tax Policy widget, here.
One concern he mentions (that many of us share) regarding the Congressional bailout of the financial markets is transparency.
Perhaps groups like ACORN should also be invited -- or forced -- to be made transparent. Right now donations and contracts are published on the web, however grants are another matter -- ACORN affiliates love to suck up taxpayer dollars to fund their efforts to move the country leftward, and doesn't want to have public scrutiny.
Transparency in government spending could help eliminate abuses.
There is a group in Maine that got government info on spending from friendly legislators and then published it on the web, exposing some irregularities. It was criticized for "inaccurate" data -- it turns out the government released bad data on its own spending. Oops.
One concern he mentions (that many of us share) regarding the Congressional bailout of the financial markets is transparency.
Perhaps groups like ACORN should also be invited -- or forced -- to be made transparent. Right now donations and contracts are published on the web, however grants are another matter -- ACORN affiliates love to suck up taxpayer dollars to fund their efforts to move the country leftward, and doesn't want to have public scrutiny.
Transparency in government spending could help eliminate abuses.
There is a group in Maine that got government info on spending from friendly legislators and then published it on the web, exposing some irregularities. It was criticized for "inaccurate" data -- it turns out the government released bad data on its own spending. Oops.
Defending Free Markets, one rally at a time
I'm in Washington DC for a rally of free market defenders. Good energy, and a heartening mix of younger activists -- an especially positive sign.
I'd still like to hear a positive vision for government's role in protecting and defending free markets. It exists, and needs to be set out in detail.
For example, a transaction is a free market transaction only when it is a voluntary exchange, freely entered into by two parties who have roughly equal information, and each has other alternatives he could have chosen.
To quote one authority, with liberties taken in formatting:
...[T]he organization of economic activity through voluntary exchange presumes that we have provided, through government [emphasis added throughout], for:(Source: Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, U of Chicago Press, 1962.)
- the maintenance of law and order to prevent coercion of one individual by another,
- the enforcement of contracts voluntarily entered into,
- the definition of the meaning of property rights,
- the interpretation and enforcement of such rights, and
- the provision of a monetary framework.
The current market turmoil has, at its heart, the
As I wrote recently,
Monday, September 29, 2008
Shameful news posturing
I'm listening to television idiots call today's stock market selloff "the worst in history" when it demonstrably is not.
When news becomes nothing but a form of entertainment and revenue, perhaps we should expect no better.
So, here is the Dow down 777 points, or 6.98%.
The Great Depression included multiple one-day drops of 12% and 14% and the overall slide was 89%.
And here are the talking heads saying today's drop is the worst in history. History as in stuff that happened after the talking head started high school, maybe. History as in actual history, not so much.
This is not to say that everything is over or that all is well. Quite the contrary -- we may yet see much larger market drops. When the market falls 25% I'll start to worry about systemic problems.
What I see right now is a much delayed correction to the over-inflated financial markets. We have a lot to blame the US government for.
When news becomes nothing but a form of entertainment and revenue, perhaps we should expect no better.
So, here is the Dow down 777 points, or 6.98%.
The Great Depression included multiple one-day drops of 12% and 14% and the overall slide was 89%.
And here are the talking heads saying today's drop is the worst in history. History as in stuff that happened after the talking head started high school, maybe. History as in actual history, not so much.
This is not to say that everything is over or that all is well. Quite the contrary -- we may yet see much larger market drops. When the market falls 25% I'll start to worry about systemic problems.
What I see right now is a much delayed correction to the over-inflated financial markets. We have a lot to blame the US government for.
A Defense of Free Markets
This has been submitted to the Forest Grove News Times as a column to be published during the week of 29-Sep-2008.
I provide it here as I submitted it, with a link to the published version. (This will be put online only after the News Times comes out, so they'll have first use of the material.)
-----
Your true friends are those people who -- when you're suddenly unpopular -- still stand by you. I'm a long time friend of the Free Market, and I'm willing to rise now publicly to defend my friend, and to set the record a little straighter. The Free Market is being blamed for all that is wrong with America's financial institutions. Alas, a lot of the criticism is off-base, self-serving, or flat wrong.
Free markets are the ones that exclude force and fraud, and rely on purely voluntary exchanges. Every honest exchange between a willing buyer and a willing seller is a free market transaction. When you hire your neighbor's kid to mow the lawn or babysit, the two of you are engaging in a free market transaction. When they function well, free markets channel greed into acceptable forms that bring about social good. Those who take on risk get to keep any rewards and must shoulder their losses.
Free markets are the result of -- are the sum of -- all these voluntary transactions. But greed itself is not good. Greed unrestrained by law, greed unchannelled, can lead to crimes like fraud and coercion.
Fraud is a crime. When an Enron or Worldcom or Fannie Mae lies and commits fraud, that's not "Darwinian capitalism" -- it's a crime and an attack on the market. That's why it's wrong to say that government is at odds with the market -- in reality government's police powers (and private anti-fraud measures) are what enable markets to exist and function.
Fraud is not only the enemy of free markets -- it's the enemy of good government as well.
Not every market is free. Prisons are rife with black markets, characterized by both fraud and violence. Black market drugs contain dodgy and ofttimes poisonous ingredients; black market disputes are settled with fists, knives and guns. The black market for sex -- prostitution -- is a litany of abuse, disease, violence and misery.
Government plays a vital role in keeping free markets free -- through courts, cops, regulations and transparency rules. Unfortunately, government agencies can sometimes be seduced into acts that don't protect but rather distort markets, harming the many to benefit the few.
These seductions include, for example, a government using taxpayer money to fund a pressure group to coerce banks into lending money to borrowers who can't afford to repay the loans. Then either the bank or the taxpayer takes the loss when the borrowers default. Such lending under pressure may be understandable, but it's not a free market transaction -- remember the ban on force and fraud -- and occurs because the government has abandoned its proper role as guardian of the rule of law.
Such is the case today. Since 1995 the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has been used -- along with lawsuits by left-wing pressure groups -- to force banks to lend to low-income, high-risk borrowers. Any bank that resisted was subject to huge fines. That's coercion. If any private person had tried to do this, he'd have been arrested.
To answer concerns by banks that these loans were too risky, the government-sponsored entity called Fannie Mae offered to buy up all riskier loans. By 2007, Fannie Mae and CRA had resulted in an extra $1 Trillion of home loans to people who couldn't pay them back.
Fannie Mae then -- with government approval -- created "securitized" bundles of loans and sold them off to everyone under the sun. Today we're told that nobody, even the creators of these derivatives, really understands them. Selling something you don't understand, and guaranteeing something without the means to guarantee it, are both fraud. Yet the heavily regulated, government-sponsored Fannie Mae did exactly that.
Today the same people who created CRA and were supposed to oversee Fannie Mae -- our US Congress -- are telling us that the financial market's woes are caused by "the market" and by a "lack of regulation". The facts say otherwise.
It's understandable why the architects of today's disaster want to distract public attention from their role. Maybe some of them even believe it. We should not buy it.
The public should look closely at the root causes of the disaster and agree on a fix that makes things better, not worse. The root causes involve massive government meddling in the markets and rampant dishonesty. The cure being proposed involves even more government meddling in the markets and is being sold through dishonesty. The public should demand an independent investigation of Congress' role in creating the current financial disaster.
And those who took on risk with the expectation of keeping any rewards, must shoulder their own losses and not be bailed out by taxpayers.
I provide it here as I submitted it, with a link to the published version. (This will be put online only after the News Times comes out, so they'll have first use of the material.)
-----
Your true friends are those people who -- when you're suddenly unpopular -- still stand by you. I'm a long time friend of the Free Market, and I'm willing to rise now publicly to defend my friend, and to set the record a little straighter. The Free Market is being blamed for all that is wrong with America's financial institutions. Alas, a lot of the criticism is off-base, self-serving, or flat wrong.
Free markets are the ones that exclude force and fraud, and rely on purely voluntary exchanges. Every honest exchange between a willing buyer and a willing seller is a free market transaction. When you hire your neighbor's kid to mow the lawn or babysit, the two of you are engaging in a free market transaction. When they function well, free markets channel greed into acceptable forms that bring about social good. Those who take on risk get to keep any rewards and must shoulder their losses.
Free markets are the result of -- are the sum of -- all these voluntary transactions. But greed itself is not good. Greed unrestrained by law, greed unchannelled, can lead to crimes like fraud and coercion.
Fraud is a crime. When an Enron or Worldcom or Fannie Mae lies and commits fraud, that's not "Darwinian capitalism" -- it's a crime and an attack on the market. That's why it's wrong to say that government is at odds with the market -- in reality government's police powers (and private anti-fraud measures) are what enable markets to exist and function.
Fraud is not only the enemy of free markets -- it's the enemy of good government as well.
Not every market is free. Prisons are rife with black markets, characterized by both fraud and violence. Black market drugs contain dodgy and ofttimes poisonous ingredients; black market disputes are settled with fists, knives and guns. The black market for sex -- prostitution -- is a litany of abuse, disease, violence and misery.
Government plays a vital role in keeping free markets free -- through courts, cops, regulations and transparency rules. Unfortunately, government agencies can sometimes be seduced into acts that don't protect but rather distort markets, harming the many to benefit the few.
These seductions include, for example, a government using taxpayer money to fund a pressure group to coerce banks into lending money to borrowers who can't afford to repay the loans. Then either the bank or the taxpayer takes the loss when the borrowers default. Such lending under pressure may be understandable, but it's not a free market transaction -- remember the ban on force and fraud -- and occurs because the government has abandoned its proper role as guardian of the rule of law.
Such is the case today. Since 1995 the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has been used -- along with lawsuits by left-wing pressure groups -- to force banks to lend to low-income, high-risk borrowers. Any bank that resisted was subject to huge fines. That's coercion. If any private person had tried to do this, he'd have been arrested.
To answer concerns by banks that these loans were too risky, the government-sponsored entity called Fannie Mae offered to buy up all riskier loans. By 2007, Fannie Mae and CRA had resulted in an extra $1 Trillion of home loans to people who couldn't pay them back.
Fannie Mae then -- with government approval -- created "securitized" bundles of loans and sold them off to everyone under the sun. Today we're told that nobody, even the creators of these derivatives, really understands them. Selling something you don't understand, and guaranteeing something without the means to guarantee it, are both fraud. Yet the heavily regulated, government-sponsored Fannie Mae did exactly that.
Today the same people who created CRA and were supposed to oversee Fannie Mae -- our US Congress -- are telling us that the financial market's woes are caused by "the market" and by a "lack of regulation". The facts say otherwise.
It's understandable why the architects of today's disaster want to distract public attention from their role. Maybe some of them even believe it. We should not buy it.
The public should look closely at the root causes of the disaster and agree on a fix that makes things better, not worse. The root causes involve massive government meddling in the markets and rampant dishonesty. The cure being proposed involves even more government meddling in the markets and is being sold through dishonesty. The public should demand an independent investigation of Congress' role in creating the current financial disaster.
And those who took on risk with the expectation of keeping any rewards, must shoulder their own losses and not be bailed out by taxpayers.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Feminism succeeds, and Leftists cop out
I'm watching the left-wing feminists (as opposed to all the other feminists) get wigged out over Sarah Palin. It's sad for feminism when its earliest adopters, definers and defenders now pitch it over the railing in their haste to crush a powerful woman whom they disagree with on policy issues.
Feminism doesn't win by having the early adopters go further and further away from the middle (as happens today with some other socially progressive trends) -- feminism wins when the middle moves toward the formerly progressive position.
As I tell my Republican friends, you don't win the political and policy contest by just getting someone from your party elected -- you could find yourself electing a sellout who really is pushing the other side's agenda. Then your policies get even further away from adoption.
You truly win when the other side starts adopting or stealing your ideas and they become mainstream.
In this case with Palin, we're seeing both of these things: first, evidence of the wholesale adoption by the Republican base of the basic tenets of old style feminism -- that women should have the same opportunities as men, that workers should be judged on results not on their reproductive organs -- and second, the sellout of the far left from anything to do with that sort of feminism.
For example, Ellen Goodman criticizes Palin for being, in essence, a bad feminist -- because she isn't lobbying for government programs to nationalize motherhood (federal child care, federal handouts to mothers, additional federal entitlements, additional federal mandates on employers, etc.)
At this point it's no longer really feminism that Goodman (and so many others, like Katherine Marsh and Judith Warner) are defending -- it's the old Democratic agenda of ever larger government and ever more citizens, in one form or another, on the dole.
The real test of your belief in your stated position is when you have to defend someone you dislike or disagree with. The ACLU proved itself to me when it defended the American Nazi Party's right to free speech -- clearly the ACLU really does (or did) believe in free speech, even for vile speech. Leftist feminists have proved something very different: they don't care about women's rights; they only care about the big-government agenda of the left.
Feminism doesn't win by having the early adopters go further and further away from the middle (as happens today with some other socially progressive trends) -- feminism wins when the middle moves toward the formerly progressive position.
As I tell my Republican friends, you don't win the political and policy contest by just getting someone from your party elected -- you could find yourself electing a sellout who really is pushing the other side's agenda. Then your policies get even further away from adoption.
You truly win when the other side starts adopting or stealing your ideas and they become mainstream.
In this case with Palin, we're seeing both of these things: first, evidence of the wholesale adoption by the Republican base of the basic tenets of old style feminism -- that women should have the same opportunities as men, that workers should be judged on results not on their reproductive organs -- and second, the sellout of the far left from anything to do with that sort of feminism.
For example, Ellen Goodman criticizes Palin for being, in essence, a bad feminist -- because she isn't lobbying for government programs to nationalize motherhood (federal child care, federal handouts to mothers, additional federal entitlements, additional federal mandates on employers, etc.)
At this point it's no longer really feminism that Goodman (and so many others, like Katherine Marsh and Judith Warner) are defending -- it's the old Democratic agenda of ever larger government and ever more citizens, in one form or another, on the dole.
The real test of your belief in your stated position is when you have to defend someone you dislike or disagree with. The ACLU proved itself to me when it defended the American Nazi Party's right to free speech -- clearly the ACLU really does (or did) believe in free speech, even for vile speech. Leftist feminists have proved something very different: they don't care about women's rights; they only care about the big-government agenda of the left.
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