Positive Liberty

It’s time for a quick Saturday-morning look at what’s going on in the blog neighborhood.

I hate stereotypes of all kinds, but sometimes I’m tempted to fight fire with fire. The Corpuscle has a suggestion.

Kip Esquire notes that Cookie Monster has capitulated. Kip gets bonus points for predicting it in advance (Top that, Saint Malachy…):

Something must be wrong in the land of Muppets. First PBS announced that “Sesame Street” would kick off its 36th season this week with a multiyear story arc about healthy habits. No problem there; childhood obesity rates are soaring. Then I learned of changes that turned my “Sesame Street” world upside-down.

My beloved blue, furry monster – who sang “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me” – is now advocating eating healthy. There’s even a new song – “A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food,” where Cookie Monster learns there are “anytime” foods and “sometimes” foods.

You know, even when I was a kid I think I understood the point of Cookie Monster, which was that you’re not supposed to be like him.

I know this is pedantic for most of you, but look at the original Sesame Street characters. They all had faults that kids were meant to learn about and avoid: Oscar the Grouch was dirty; Cookie Monster ate junk food; Big Bird could be a bit naive. Kids learned by watching that these traits aren’t always the best ones to have–but that they aren’t the end of the world, either. And we liked the characters anyway.

Dimensionality. Complexity. Literature, or as much as a four-year-old can understand of it. And they’re squashing it flat. Behold the damage that can be done by a momentary phobia passing through the pundit class. (Pundits like to call these “national conversations.” The moment I hear of a national conversation, though, I am apt to find a secluded place and begin muttering to myself.)

On a related note, Timothy Sandefur waxes poetic about the unlikely subject of bureaucracy.

Lastly, this post from Obsidian Wings features the single funniest comment I have ever read in the entire blogosphere. It’s also got a way cool rock sample that’s 4.4 billion years old.

Leitmotif: It’s sad and it’s cold at the bottom of the sea/ But at least I got my blueberries with me — The Fiery Furnaces, “Blueberry Boat”

Scott and I have just discovered the Fiery Furnaces–and we’re completely hooked. Think of the Velvet Underground, then add some influence by Yes, a lyrics collaboration between They Might Be Giants and Leonard Cohen, and a quirky grittiness reminiscent of Bjork.

Then forget all that. The Fiery Furnaces are a fabulous original.

First, Some Seriousness: After this bit, it’s all fun and links, I promise. But first, in the comments to my post on electronic markets and real time strategy games, Caleb writes,

It is rhetorically persuasive to say that free markets do a better job at distributing information and know-how than a “central planner” ever could, but logically this sets up a false dichotomy. Why is a capriciously intuitive central planner the only alternative to markets that are completely free?

People who point out the “failures” of markets are not thereby advocating that they be replaced by centralized control. (And I only make that point because it is a rhetorical move that I frequently see defenders of markets make.)

Rather, people who point out the “failures” of markets may just want us to remember that in free markets, a “successful” application of know-how gained from the market is often enough the ruination of someone without that know-how. It’s well and good to point out that in the [Lord of the Rings] game [which I used to illustrate market principles], you’ll live and learn to fight better another day, but your archers won’t. Remember the poor archers: sometimes that’s all the critics of markets need to say in order to defend moderate planning or more regulation.

I have several answers to these questions, but I will keep all of them short.

Hayek and many other free-market economists object to redistribution schemes, incentives, subsidies, or price guarantees designed to create specific market outcomes. Interestingly, Hayek excluded a basic social safety net from this condemnation.

Let’s first consider an obvious abuse: Farm subsidies seek to produce more American farmers, but in doing so, they hurt farmers in the developing world. This means that we are confronted with angry, starving people abroad–people who require substantial humanitarian aid, and who one day could also become our enemies. Even from the perspective of pure national self-interest, farm subsidies work squarely against us.

Now, I don’t like having to say this, but temporary dislocation is indeed an unavoidable part of the market. But by contrast, farm subsidies create a nearly permanent dislocation, as developing societies must struggle even to produce the agricultural sufficiency that permits industrialization. Say what you will about the American farmer, but he will not starve to death if these programs are eliminated. Meanwhile, his counterparts in Africa are certainly starving right now.

But what about those people in our own country who genuinely fall through the cracks in the system? To draw on my original extended metaphor, what about the “archers” of Middle-Earth, the ones who fail in market competition though their lack of know-how? Given sufficient opportunity, their plight will often be temporary; ideally, all of them will live to fight again another day, taking with them whatever know-how they’ve won from their failure.

To help ease the transition, even Hayek believed in a simple, market-neutral social safety net, and so do I.

This would certainly not be so extensive as a universal health care; it would not even be so elaborate as the safety net we currently have. But it would not be total inaction, either, and in many respects, the free market economists’ plans might actually provide better for the poor than our current system does.

One example is the negative income tax proposed by Milton Friedman. It suffers an unfortunate name, being nearly the inverse of the title of this blog. But the negative income tax could actually go so far provide a guaranteed income for the very poorest citizens–while avoiding the welfare trap that often poses a disincentive to paid labor:

A negative income tax would replace the current progressive income tax system used throughout most of the western world. This would be replaced by a flat tax of, say, 25%, but each taxpayer would also be given $10,000 by the government. Thus a person earning only $4000 per year would pay $1000 in taxes, but overall would receive a net gain of $9,000 from the government. A person making $40,000 would be at the break-even point and would neither pay taxes nor receive any benefits. A person making $1,000,000 per year would pay close to the full 25% tax, as the $10,000 would count little towards relieving their tax burden.

We can adjust the numbers, of course, but the low-end credit should never be so large that it encourages idleness among a significant share of the public, nor so small that it is useless in a disaster. Note that if a negative income tax were to function as a guaranteed minimum income, it must also replace the minimum wage and should certainly replace several social welfare programs, too–saving the government money on the whole while allowing the poor better control over their own finances.

In any case, the bottom line remains: I’m not suggesting that the poor should simply starve and die off, nor do I think that all charity is unfair or illegitimate. I do think, though, that there is tremendous room for improvement in how both government and private charities provide aid to the needy, and that a good first step would be to eliminate many complicated, bureaucratic aid programs–and to replace them with simpler alternatives.

Admittedly, would-be libertarian reformers should also remember that Hayek urged caution when altering an entrenched complex system; many things within it exist for a reason, even though that reason may be invisible to us. And in a country like the United States, it’s easy to see how things could be much worse than the status quo.

In this sense, Hayek was the direct opposite of Murray Rothbard, a libertarian theorist whose political platform was mostly to destroy the state as fast as possible–consequences be damned. Knowingly or not, Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalist ideology is what the general public usually thinks of when they picture libertarians. Nonetheless, there are many other libertarian views out there, most of which are far saner than his. For an example of just how far Rothbard went, he even rejoiced at the fall of South Vietnam to the communists: Because all states are wrong, we should rejoice when any one of them is destroyed. If you need a convincing takedown of this position, I recommend Tom Palmer’s.

A Little Linky Goodness: For a discussion related to the above, see this brief-but-good recent post by Josh Claybourn at In The Agora. I have a sense that American libertarianism is slowly redefining itself of late in response to the sharp anti-libertarian turn that has lately been seen among conservatives (for the latest outrage, see Kip Esquire).

My hope is that what emerges will be more electorally competitive, more focused on real-world solutions, and more effective as a counterweight to the big-government tendencies of both major parties. Anyone want to break up the G.O.P., perhaps? Imagine a three-way contest between a Liberal Party, a Christian Party, and a Free Market Party… Now that would be an election worth fighting.

In other news, did you know that Maryland still criminalizes flag desecration? It does, and someone was recently arrested–in part–for this dubious non-crime.

Elsewhere, for a completely non-criminal offense, Ampersand offers a scrupulous apology. He and I don’t see eye-to-eye on very many issues, but it’s class like this that keeps me coming back to his posts. You should, too.

Also not criminal at all (so far as I can tell), The Valve is a new online literary organ that happens to have blogrolled yours truly. The difference between online literary organs and their paper counterparts is stark. For one thing, sentences like this one seldom get any real-world ink:

If there’s anything better than seeing academics make fools of themselves, it’s seeing just how industrious they can be in the effort.

Spoken like a tenured professor. The article that it comes from is substantial and provocative, too.

Lastly, my blogfather Dave Jansing has a post about homebrew beer, complete with photos. As it happens, I’m sipping a pint of my own homebrew Irish stout even as I type these lines. Dave and I have sometimes noted how he taught me blogging–while I taught him homebrew. What are friends for, anyway?