PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES

[JonPorobil]

Agreed, CR. The logical response to a corrupt gov't is not to reduce its size, but rather to reduce its corruption and punish those involved in said corruption.

(And who better to do that than one of the Keating Five? Am I right? Huh?)

[Lord of Oats]

Sir Caravan Ray, with all due respect, the less involvement the corrupt government has in my life, the better off I am. This doesn't seem like too much of a leap. I simply don't think it's there place to tell me what to do if I'm not hurting anyone else. On any level. Ever. A small corrupt government spends less of my money on their corporate agenda than a large corrupt government.

Mr. Eric, you are completely wrong and that will never work. Who's going to enforce laws against corruption? The government? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Right then.

The only sensible answer (reducing the size of government really is a compromise) is, of course, a bloody revolution. But as Mr. Jefferson said, if I remember correctly, that will only work for about 25 years or so before corruption will set in again, which will require the government to be overthrown and the constitution to be rewritten.

[melvin]

Sir Caravan Ray, with all due respect, the less involvement the corrupt government has in my life, the better off I am. This doesn't seem like too much of a leap. I simply don't think it's there place to tell me what to do if I'm not hurting anyone else. On any level. Ever. A small corrupt government spends less of my money on their corporate agenda than a large corrupt government.

Mr. Eric, you are completely wrong and that will never work. Who's going to enforce laws against corruption? The government? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Right then.

The only sensible answer (reducing the size of government really is a compromise) is, of course, a bloody revolution. But as Mr. Jefferson said, if I remember correctly, that will only work for about 25 years or so before corruption will set in again, which will require the government to be overthrown and the constitution to be rewritten.

Amen. Human nature is to vie for your own advantage. In personal relationships and in a free market, people who are being taken advantage of generally have effective recourse (i.e. end the relationship or stop patronizing the business). With government, there is no effective recourse. Even the occasional election does virtually nothing to make a dent in the massive welfare state bureaucracy that dictates much of our behavior, devours roughly half of our money, and holds us (literally) at gunpoint. Ergo, the only ethical solution is to limit government power to its original (at least in America) role: the defense of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We're not smarter than the original framers.

[JonPorobil]

Sir Caravan Ray, with all due respect, the less involvement the corrupt government has in my life, the better off I am. This doesn't seem like too much of a leap. I simply don't think it's there place to tell me what to do if I'm not hurting anyone else. On any level. Ever. A small corrupt government spends less of my money on their corporate agenda than a large corrupt government.

Mr. Eric, you are completely wrong and that will never work. Who's going to enforce laws against corruption? The government? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Right then.

The only sensible answer (reducing the size of government really is a compromise) is, of course, a bloody revolution. But as Mr. Jefferson said, if I remember correctly, that will only work for about 25 years or so before corruption will set in again, which will require the government to be overthrown and the constitution to be rewritten.

Okay, that kind of makes sense. However, I think it's a bit scary that your political theory assumes that corruption will overtake the government, and that your solution is to simply let it. Yes, it does seem kind of stupid to assume that the government will take control of its own corruption... until you take into account that the people who compose the government are almost all elected officials, and until that corruption extends into the voting process (which, I admit, happens from time to time), the people have the right to protest with their votes, and believe it or not, not all politicians are exactly alike. Sometimes, someone will come along who actually does care about reducing corruption, usually by passing legislature that holds people accountable for their mistakes.

Take, for example, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, whose name was tossed around back in July as a possible McCain VP candidate. He took office earlier this year, and his first action was to pass a much stricter package of ethics bills. Jindal was elected governor in 2007 without the need for a run-off election, because even though he was running against 10 other candidates, he still managed to secure over 50% of the vote. This is probably because he had also run for governor in 2003, and lost to Kathleen Blanco, whose corruption was almost-directly responsible for Louisiana not having the resources to prepare for, or recover quickly from, Hurricane Katrina. The people of Louisiana were, FINALLY, sick of all the money-sucking and corruption, and their overwhelming support for Jindal indicates some severe voters' remorse from the previous election.

Such politicians don't come along often, and they do generally have their own problems, too (for example, Bobby Jindal is a creationist and believes that creationism should be taught in public schools), but to simply sit back and assume that politicians will be corrupt, so we might as well let them? That's dangerous.

[melvin]

but to simply sit back and assume that politicians will be corrupt, so we might as well let them? That's dangerous.

Most politicians and bureaucrats are corruptible because they are human. And nothing provides a more fertile environment for corruption than access to virtually unlimited money and power with little or no accountability. The framers knew this, which is why they designed a governance structure with limited and divided powers and limited revenue. In modern times, politicians have played on another aspect of human nature (in a word, laziness) to let us offload many of our (sometimes onerous) individual rights and responsibilities to a bigger government, with predictable and sad results.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Generic made a good point that "us" naysayers do tend to overlook. There are good politicians that care about the system and those politicians keep things in balance. I'm sure some probably say, yeah, it's called republicans and democrats, lol. There are people that get into politics to make a difference that aren't going to let corruption control their decisions. Unfortunately, if you don't play ball, you can't move up the ladder, in many cases. So corrupt or not, they end up having to learn how to play the game, choose their battles and make the right moves. So basically, they're not going to make all of the people happy all of the time.

I like to use the analogy of a police department. You watch movies where there are good cops that play by the book and bad cops that are always on the take. They all care when they become a cop, but human nature takes over and they split off into three groups. Good, bad and the third are the ones that know how to walk the line, make friends and say the right things. The third group generally are the ones to work their way up the ranks because they've never been involved in anything and they know how to do favors for those at the top. Just politics.

Also, this country is run by corporate America, so again, don't kid yourself for one minute.
Money>Politicians>Voters

edit: Ha! just came across this pic. If it had a dollar sign as a weather vane, it would be perfect.

[JonPorobil]

Generic made a good point that "us" naysayers do tend to overlook. There are good politicians that care about the system and those politicians keep things in balance. I'm sure some probably say, yeah, it's called republicans and democrats, lol. There are people that get into politics to make a difference that aren't going to let corruption control their decisions. Unfortunately, if you don't play ball, you can't move up the ladder, in many cases. So corrupt or not, they end up having to learn how to play the game, choose their battles and make the right moves. So basically, they're not going to make all of the people happy all of the time.

Well-said, BLT. Especially considering you and I seem to not see eye-to-eye politically.

Incidentally, this is one of Obama's selling points: in short, that he hasn't been "playing the game" long enough to owe anyone any favors. To the same end, he's also not accepting any campaign contributions from lobbyists or PACs.

[Caravan Ray]

A small corrupt government spends less of my money on their corporate agenda than a large corrupt government..

I see. So you would find a corrupt totalitarian dictatorship preferable to a corrupt monolithic bureaucracy?

Corruption is corruption. The "smaller" the government being corrupted usually just means less people are benefitting from the corruption. (Google Jean-Claude Duvalier, Congo Free State and Hitler). A "big" Government spreads the corruption around. More people benefit. Committees made up of thousands of public servants rarely make recommendations to start firing up the gas chambers.

[Caravan Ray]

[Ergo, the only ethical solution is to limit government power to its original (at least in America) role: the defense of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We're not smarter than the original framers.

And how would you propose that the government delivers those goals without the necessary bureaucracy in place to provide for health, education, housing, transport and environmental protection?

Your "free market" is not going to do it, I'm afraid.

[melvin]

And how would you propose that the government delivers those goals without the necessary bureaucracy in place to provide for health, education, housing, transport and environmental protection?

Your "free market" is not going to do it, I'm afraid.

The government can deliver its goals through police, courts and the military. I believe that markets, individuals, families, communities, churches, and charities can take care of the rest as well or better than any government, and do it with much less risk of the sorts of Hitlerian outcomes you allude to.

[Caravan Ray]

And how would you propose that the government delivers those goals without the necessary bureaucracy in place to provide for health, education, housing, transport and environmental protection?

Your "free market" is not going to do it, I'm afraid.

The government can deliver its goals through police, courts and the military. I believe that markets, individuals, families, communities, churches, and charities can take care of the rest as well or better than any government, and do it with much less risk of the sorts of Hitlerian outcomes you allude to.

Social welfare and environmental protection is "Hitlerian"?!?

Sorry - but I'd rather see doctors and teachers trained and paid for by properly funded and administed government organisations.

Not a church.

[melvin]

Social welfare and environmental protection is "Hitlerian"?!?

Sorry - but I'd rather see doctors and teachers trained and paid for by properly funded and administed government organisations.

Not a church.

No, no. I thought you were saying in an earlier post that Hitler was the product of "small government". Anyway...

Your comment about what you'd "rather see" really makes my point. I think everyone should be entitled to what they'd "rather see", instead of forcing everybody into the confines of a mediocre government program.

[Caravan Ray]

Social welfare and environmental protection is "Hitlerian"?!?

Sorry - but I'd rather see doctors and teachers trained and paid for by properly funded and administed government organisations.

Not a church.

No, no. I thought you were saying in an earlier post that Hitler was the product of "small government". Anyway...

Your comment about what you'd "rather see" really makes my point. I think everyone should be entitled to what they'd "rather see", instead of forcing everybody into the confines of a mediocre government program.

Well, by definition - totalitarian dictatorships are "small government" taken to an extreme.

BTW - you would not be necessarily wrong if you did describe social welfare and environmental protection as "Hitlerian". Nazi Germany was quite advanced in it's social welfare programmes and especially in environmental protection, such as the Reich Nature Protection Act 1935.

It is just the racist, militant nationalism and human rights abuses they came with were a bit unpleasant. And racist, militant nationalism and human rights abuses are sort of we are hoping Americans will vote against this time.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Well-said, BLT. Especially considering you and I seem to not see eye-to-eye politically.

Actually, you might be surprised at how much you and I agree on.

[Lord of Oats]

Sir Ray, we may have a bit of a miscommunication at hand?

I'm defining a government's "size" in terms of its budget and it's influence, not the total quantity of government officials. I wouldn't necessarily call a direct democracy a massive government, nor a totalitarian state a small government.

Hitler was a proponent of what we in the US might call "big government," e.g., using public funds to sponsor genocide. Looking at that from a purely economic perspective, don't you think he was being a little generous with the taxpayers' money? This is the sort of thing I'm opposed to. Spending a private citizen's money without first asking his permission. Whether it's executed by a lone head of a state or a large bureaucracy isn't really part of the issue. Though as you've alluded to, there may indeed be an inverse proportion! The larger the percentage of the population involved in government, the more likely government funds are to serve the people, instead of whatever else. So yeah. I'm for a "big government" made up of a bunch of people splitting the power pie evenly. And ideally, for me and Melvin, at least, the pie is a rather small one to begin with.

[Sober]

In modern times, politicians have played on another aspect of human nature (in a word, laziness) to let us offload many of our (sometimes onerous) individual rights and responsibilities to a bigger government, with predictable and sad results.

But... you're advocating the party that has carried this standard for 8 years, right?

Warn me before you try to argue that Republicans are the small government party, so I don't spit any food/drink on my desk from laughing.

[JonPorobil]

And how would you propose that the government delivers those goals without the necessary bureaucracy in place to provide for health, education, housing, transport and environmental protection?

Your "free market" is not going to do it, I'm afraid.

The government can deliver its goals through police, courts and the military. I believe that markets, individuals, families, communities, churches, and charities can take care of the rest as well or better than any government, and do it with much less risk of the sorts of Hitlerian outcomes you allude to.

Hey! Godwin's law, guys.

Seriously, moving away from the questionable Hitler allusions, I would like one of the Libertarians in this conversation (Melvin, perhaps?) to clarify the question CR posed: How will the free market ensure that people have access to the health care, education, housing, transport, and environmental protection that I think we can all agree they need? There's very little financial incentive for anyone other than a tax-funded government to fund health care, pave roads, or research environmental preservation and alternative energy sources.

[jb]

oh my god, Godwin's law in action. We are become cliche, destroyer of threads.

[melvin]

Sober: I certainly do not believe the GOP has been anything close to a "small government" party in the past 8 years. But that doesn't mean the alternative is any more attractive.

Generic: To understand my worldview, you first have to accept that things like health care, education, housing, and transport are privileges, not rights. There is no cosmic law that says an entity called the government owes you these things. With that out of the way, you can move on to asking what is the best way to create and deliver these goods and services. I believe the best way is one that does not trample our real rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) and one that does the best job of delivering the highest possible quality to the largest possible number of people.

The solution that meets both of these tests is simply allowing people to use their own free and voluntary devices, without central planning or government control. In many cases, the answer is trade. In others, it's the "original social safety net", also known as family and friends. Now, I could try to analyze how humans would fulfill their every need line by line, but it would take at least the rest of this decade, and I'd probably be wrong about most of it. So let's pick health care as one relevant and timely example where I can make a few educated guesses.

A government health care monopoly, as we have in Canada and as the U.S. may soon adopt, has no competition, which means there is no mechanism to set prices, no mechanism to modulate supply, no incentive for innovation, no consequences for poor performance, and no penalty for waste or corruption, except on its patients. In Canada, the results are out-of-control costs, a lack of doctors, waiting times that kill people, limited access to technology, endless budget mismanagement, and the stark immorality of denying people urgent care, even if they can afford to pay a doctor and the doctor is willing. Unless people like the idea of an 83% income tax, it's going to get worse, because the incentives (as well as the demographics) are all pointing in the wrong direction. What are you going to do? Vote? Blog about it?

In a system with less government intervention, I believe health care would do what almost everything else does: get better and better, yet cheaper and cheaper. Take a look at your own studio gear, and marvel at the awesome innovation and computing power you can buy today for pennies on the dollar of, say, 10 years ago. That's the market at work. I know health care is more "serious" than an iMac, but that doesn't change the economic laws of nature: the market rewards those who best meet the needs of others at the lowest cost.

Applied to health care, I can only speculate how the ingenuity of man would play out. We'd probably see while-u-wait MRIs and CT scans at Sam's Club for $28.88. We'd probably see a proliferation of inexpensive home diagnostic tools. Some genius would probably come up with a really sophisticated online self-diagnosis engine. With less regulation, we could have more people trained at community colleges to perform simple procedures. Homeopathic remedies would probably become even more mainstream. And, in the spirit of charity, I'm sure we'd see a lot of medical professionals willing to work for free on alternating Tuesdays.

I don't know what all would happen, but I don't really need to know either. I just need to look at the world around me and see how free people always manage to come up with satisfying solutions at mass market prices. Will there still be gaps and injustices and tragedies and failures? Of course there will. But that's a straw man, because we have more than enough of that stuff now.

The important thing is that the market, by its very nature, keeps us constantly moving in the right direction as providers of goods and services battle it out to better meet our needs, and we vote on the results with every dollar we spend. It's the antithesis of almost everything that makes government bureaucracy an inevitably dismal, yet frustratingly unpunishable, failure.

PS. On the topic of alternative energy, is there currently any economic opportunity on Earth greater than developing a solution? I guarantee many of the world's best and brightest are working on this problem right now - for profit. The corporate conspiracists are too absorbed with believing that GM killed the electric car to notice that GM is dying and the pot is getting sweeter every day for someone else to step up and offer something better. Meanwhile, governments will still be debating how much carbon tax is enough when Toyota sells its two-millionth Prius.

[roymond]

All this paranoia about a Hilterian government when the current Republican administration is the closest we've ever had to that in regards to executive power, personal rights, etc. Sure you can own a gun, but in many other respects it's insane. Do you really think the next Republican administration will be much different? Talk about a machine!

[melvin]

Life is funny. A friend just sent me a book review from two days ago that illustrates my points above more eloquently than I did.

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 1:30 PM ET Sep 13, 2008

Improbable as it might seem, perhaps the most important fact for a voter or politician to know is: No one can make a pencil. That truth is the essence of a novella that is, remarkably, both didactic and romantic. Even more remarkable, its author is an economist. If you read Russell Roberts's "The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity" you will see the world afresh—unless you already understand Friedrich Hayek's idea of spontaneous order.

Roberts, an economist at George Mason University and Stanford's Hoover Institution, sets his story in the Bay Area, where some Stanford students are indignant because a Big Box store doubled its prices after an earthquake. A student leader plans to protest Stanford's acceptance of a large gift from Big Box. The student's economics professor, Ruth, rather than attempting to dissuade him, begins leading him and his classmates to an understanding of prices, markets and the marvel of social cooperation. Holding up a Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2, she says: "No one can make a pencil."

Nonsense, her students think—someone made that one. Not really, says Ruth. Loggers felled the cedar trees, truckers hauled them, manufacturers built the machines that cut the wood into five-sided portions to hold graphite mined in Sri Lanka, Mexico, China and Brazil. Miners and smelters produced the aluminum that holds the rubber eraser, produced far away, as were the machines that stamp TICONDEROGA in green paint, made somewhere else, on the finished pencil.

Producing this simple, mundane device is, Ruth says, "an achievement on the order of a jazz quartet improvising a tune when the band members are in separate cities." An unimpressed student says, "So a lot of people work on a pencil. What's the big deal?" Ruth responds: Who commands the millions of people involved in making a pencil? Who is in charge? Where is the pencil czar?

Her point is that markets allow order to emerge without anyone imposing it. The "poetry of the possible" is that things are organized without an organizer. "The graphite miner in Sri Lanka doesn't realize he's cooperating with the cedar farmer in California to serve the pencil customer in Maine." The boss of the pencil factory does not boss very much: He does not decide the prices of the elements of his product—or of his product. No one decides. Everyone buying and selling things does so as prices steer resources hither and yon, harmonizing supplies and demands.

Goods and services, like languages, result from innumerable human actions—but not from any human design. "We," says Ruth, "create them with our actions, but not intentionally. They are tapestries we weave unknowingly." They are "emergent phenomena," the results of human action but not of human design.

When a student asks about the exploitation of housecleaners, Ruth responds that if they are exploited making between $10—above the minimum wage—and $20 an hour, why are they not exploited even more? The answer is that the market makes people pay maids more than the law requires because maids have alternatives.

But back to Big Box doubling prices after the earthquake. The indignant student, who had first gone to Home Depot for a flashlight, says it "didn't try to rip us off." It was, however, out of flashlights. Ruth suggests that the reason Big Box had flashlights was that its prices were high. If prices were left at regular levels, the people who would have got the flashlights would have been those who got to the store first. With the higher prices, "someone who had candles at home decided to do without the flashlight and left it there for you on the shelf." Neither Home Depot nor the student who was angry at Big Box had benefited from Home Depot's price restraint.

Capitalism, Ruth reminds him, is a profit and loss system. Corfam—Du Pont's fake leather that made awful shoes in the 1960s—and the Edsel quickly vanished. But, Ruth notes, "the post office and ethanol subsidies and agricultural price supports and mediocre public schools live forever." They are insulated from market forces; they are created, in defiance of those forces, by government, which can disregard prices, which means disregarding the rational allocation of resources. To disrupt markets is to tamper with the unseen source of the harmony that is all around us.

The spontaneous emergence of social cooperation—the emergence of a system vastly more complex, responsive and efficient than any government could organize—is not universally acknowledged or appreciated. It discomforts a certain political sensibility, the one that exaggerates the importance of government and the competence of the political class.

Government is important in establishing the legal framework for markets to function. The most competent political class allows markets to work wonders that government cannot replicate. Hayek, a 1974 Nobel laureate in economics, said, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." People, and especially political people, are rarely grateful to be taught their limits. That is why economics is called the dismal science.

[JonPorobil]

Generic: To understand my worldview, you first have to accept that things like health care, education, housing, and transport are privileges, not rights. There is no cosmic law that says an entity called the government owes you these things.

Well, at least I understand exactly why you and I disagree on these things. Tell me though, do you seriously think that if someone is poor and contracts a potentially deadly illness, they don't deserve treatment?

A government health care monopoly, as we have in Canada and as the U.S. may soon adopt, has no competition, which means there is no mechanism to set prices, no mechanism to modulate supply, no incentive for innovation, no consequences for poor performance, and no penalty for waste or corruption, except on its patients. In Canada, the results are out-of-control costs, a lack of doctors, waiting times that kill people, limited access to technology, endless budget mismanagement, and the stark immorality of denying people urgent care, even if they can afford to pay a doctor and the doctor is willing. Unless people like the idea of an 83% income tax, it's going to get worse, because the incentives (as well as the demographics) are all pointing in the wrong direction. What are you going to do? Vote? Blog about it?

You're not wrong about the problems of socialized health care. But the U.S. isn't going to adopt anything like that anytime soon. I assume you've got Obama in mind, but check out his actual health care plan. U.S. doctors will continue to work for the private interests who have always employed them. But Obama's new plan sets up an infrastructure where more people will be able to afford health insurance.

In a system with less government intervention, I believe health care would do what almost everything else does: get better and better, yet cheaper and cheaper. Take a look at your own studio gear, and marvel at the awesome innovation and computing power you can buy today for pennies on the dollar of, say, 10 years ago. That's the market at work. I know health care is more "serious" than an iMac, but that doesn't change the economic laws of nature: the market rewards those who best meet the needs of others at the lowest cost.

The free market, by its nature, seeks profits. That means that if you can't afford health care, the free market has no interest in helping you. Unfortunately, the demand for quality health care never goes away, or even reduces, because people are always getting in accidents and contracting diseases. That means, if current trends continue, health care will not get cheaper, it'll get more expensive.

In my opinion, people have a right to not die from curable illnesses, especially when we live in a country where we're surrounded by pharmacies and hospitals.

Point is, in the health care system currently in place in the U.S., if you're not super-wealthy, then you simply can't afford to get sick with anything worse than, say, the flu. I've got a friend who barely makes enough to get by, and her company just switched health insurance plans. Now her bi-polar medication is off the plan, and she's on the hook for close to an extra $1000 a month. If she doesn't take these pills, she gets highly unstable, and, when it comes down to it, unemployable. Vicious cycle. Do you think that this person belongs in the gutter just because she can't afford the medications that keep her functioning?

PS. On the topic of alternative energy, is there currently any economic opportunity on Earth greater than developing a solution? I guarantee many of the world's best and brightest are working on this problem right now - for profit. The corporate conspiracists are too absorbed with believing that GM killed the electric car to notice that GM is dying and the pot is getting sweeter every day for someone else to step up and offer something better. Meanwhile, governments will still be debating how much carbon tax is enough when Toyota sells its two-millionth Prius.

Your logic is almost right, but the Prius still uses fossil fuels. No private company out there has been willing to put in the research to develop a vehicle completely independent of fossil fuels, because the input is too costly. And when will the return come on that investment? Ten years? Twenty? Ever? No private business wants to sacrifice that amount of money for that kind of risk.

Plus, you're talking about cars. Toyota and Honda make a bunch of hybrid cars because people don't like paying too much for gasoline. The fact that these fuel-efficient cars are better for the environment is, if anything, just a side benefit; it's pretty easy to convince an automobile company that cars that use less gas will sell well. How do you convince our nation's electricity providers to invest in cleaner energy? Where's the bottom line for them?