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Posted at 1:43 am on January 20, 2012, by Wirkman Virkkala
There exist trenchant criticisms of the libertarian idea. Henry Sidgwick, in his The Methods of Ethics (seven editions, 1874-1907), provided a concise set of challenges to the doctrine as he understood it. Each of his points is well worth addressing. And yet when today’s major thinkers muster up their inner dialectician to rail against the freedom philosophy, they usually fall flat, get caught up in inessentials and absurdities. Take Jeffrey Sachs. In “Libertarian Illusions” he attempts to unveil and discredit the ism behind the Ron Paul phenomenon. It’s a pretty lame attempt. Here’s his basic characterization of his target:
A well-educated liberal-leaning friend of mine gave the exact same rap years ago. He also referred to “liberty as a value,” so I’ve long pondered that odd phrasing. I think of liberty as a condition dependent on relationships (with other people). I don’t primarily think of it as “a value.” I value liberty, yes, and will agree with Sachs that it is not my only value; I have many others. Nearly all freedom-lovers do. They have lives. Personal lives, communal lives, careers, hobbies, interests . . . Yet, I do value liberty highest in the political and legal context. (more…) Filed under: Philosophy Comments: None
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Posted at 9:42 pm on December 1, 2011, by Wirkman Virkkala
The good folks at Coca-Cola really want to innovate. They probably admire the late Steve Jobs. They’ve lots of neat ideas. Helping polar bears is one of them. So, to honor the polar bears (or at least ballyhoo their cause and plight), Coke folk changed the color of the can of their main product, Coca-Cola™. They made it white. You know, “polar” color. And then came the uproar. Coke buyers didn’t like it. Many returned the product, thinking that it was either Diet Coke (whose silver can is, actually, very similar to the new white can) or else a modified product. A few Coke drinkers said that the drink tasted different. There was general confusion, as reported in the Wall Street Journal:
Obviously, this is another innovation from Coca-Cola that didn’t take – reminiscent of the infamous “New Coke” of a few decades ago. Coca-Cola’s clientele was so negative that the august Atlanta company switched plans, and is now switching back to the red cans we all know and love, far ahead of schedule. A lesson for us all. Consumers are sovereign. You can innovate up and down your line, but if consumers aren’t buying, you aren’t selling. The doctrine of consumer sovereignty was defended, in the 20th century, by two curmudgeonly economists, W.H. Hutt and Ludwig von Mises. The word choice was spot-on. “Consumers are sovereign” doesn’t mean that producers are meaningless. But the sovereign(s) have the last word, it’s the sovereign who must be pleased. And that’s what capitalism is all about. This lesson is probably hard on the innovators at Coca-Cola. Take the lame ending of that Wall Street Journal article:
Yes. But not distinct enough. And besides, the customer is always right. Well, right in the one way that matters most on the market, right in being sovereign. Note: I’m quite aware that the concept of consumer sovereignty is a metaphor, really, and not a technically pristine term. It was introduced by Hutt and Mises to counteract the nonsense now once again popular, the idea that corporations “push” us to do things against our will. This is patent nonsense, at least when it applies to the trades we make, the things we buy. We are pulled by producers, yes. But not pushed. We have the means to object. We can take our money elsewhere. We can simply not buy the product. As proven, once again, by the folks who drink Coke. Filed under: Economic Theory Comments: None
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Posted at 6:03 pm on January 30, 2011, by Wirkman Virkkala
Social causation cannot be simply drawn on a line, so public policy cannot be conceived in a one-dimensional fashion. See a goal? Find a means. Stick to it. No. It doesn’t work, because each cause has more than one effect, and the selected effect, the end, is not all that must be considered. You will often hear conservatives complain about progressives’ lack of understanding in this department, how those on the left too often have a one-dimensional view (more…) Filed under: Unintended Consequences Comments: None
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Posted at 10:40 pm on October 4, 2010, by Wirkman Virkkala
A writer named Mark Ames has written a profile of a man named Will Wilkinson. He titled it “Anatomy of a Libertard,” and it is very nasty. I encourage you to read it not because it is in any way exemplary or honest or commendable. Instead, it is a great example of base rhetoric and unthinking partisanship. There’s so much hypocrisy and double standard, in evidence — and behind that a vast reservoir of thoughtless hate — that it almost boggles the mind. Indeed, it contains no real argumentation. The business about income inequality, allegedly at the heart of the piece, is all invective and ridicule on Ames’s part. He simply mocks Wilkinson and lets it go at that. Now, I am not a friend of Will Wilkinson, and I defend him not because of any connection that I know about, but simply on the grounds of decency and some sympathy. I haven’t exactly been following his career. From the few Bloggingheads.tv episodes that he participated in, and that I watched, he struck me as an intelligent person who loves liberty but fails to follow any else’s plumbline. So perhaps I identify with him in that sense. I, too, love liberty, hate coercion; I oppose bullies, thieves, and vindictive advocates of mass imprisonment or regimentation, whether such lockstep marching orders hail from the lightning left or the thunderous right. That is, I’m a libertarian. But I have an independent streak, and keep on finding new avenues of thought to explore. Wilkinson seems of similar cast. I vaguely recall his interest in evolutionary psychology. Ames insinuates that libertarians argue what they do and believe what they do because some billionaires have poured money into a bunch of libertarian institutions, one of which is Cato Institute (wrongly identified by Ames as “the first libertarian think tank”). He gives us no reason to believe this. In fact, he gives us reason not to believe that. Wilkinson, he chortles, was fired from Cato (he says) for not being on the Tea Party bandwagon, which the Kochs also fund. I don’t know if that’s true, half-true, or just a large hair ball of falsity. But I do know that you cannot call Wilkinson the Kochs’ “whore” (as Ames does, with that very word) and then deride him for being unemployed for an ideological stance which offended some Mr. Moneybags’s other commitments. Note to Ames: Being paid to do something you love is not tantamount to whoredom. Indeed, I assume that many people on the left (who love complaining about rich people’s spending habits . . . or very existence) get paid out of funds donated by (shock of all shocks) rich people. Indeed, I know that this is precisely the case with nearly every major “liberal” and leftier journal extant. Pot, see the kettle? It, too, steams up over heat. And it, too, sheds little light. Filed under: Rhetoric Comments: 4 Comments
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Posted at 9:12 pm on September 7, 2010, by Wirkman Virkkala
A rising tide of legal saber-rattling against Craigslist for its “Adult Services” listings has finally achieved something: The good people at Craigslist took down the listings. In their place, the company put up a stark, white-on-black CENSORED sign. So I have to ask: Is making the U.S. less free (or even seem less free) a victory of some kind? The prosecuting attorneys who pushed this — most importantly “Connecticut’s insufferably self-righteous” Richard Blumenthal — say they want to curb prostitution (and of course bring up “child prostitution”). That they’re willing to do this by attacking an online classified listing service rather than the services themselves is interesting. But are they really getting anywhere? The offensive listings are quickly migrating to other services, many of them on the Web but hosted in other countries. So, a Pyrrhic victory, at best. More likely, though, it’s a definite loss, not only of the liberty of the press, but for polite society’s continual fight against crime. You see, there are other crimes associated with prostitution, other than the proscribed contractual activity itself. Johns sometimes beat up hookers; pimps sometimes beat up johns. Such acts of extreme violence are far worse than prostitution as such, and must be fought. By forcing the Internet listings for “Adult Services” off-shore, police and prosecutors now have less access to the means of actually fighting very violent crimes. Getting personal information (by warrant) from the ISP? Now not possible. The ability to “drill down” through server information to get at real criminals has been undermined. By our public servants. I fail to see the logic of this, unless all it ever really amounted to was a publicity operation for up-and-coming prosecutors. Even at best, it’s an example of the kind of narrow-bandwidth thinking that politicians habitually apply to markets: Concentrate on one element of a problem, and forget about the more dispersed secondary and tertiary effects. Indeed, the biggest hurdle to preventing child exploitation and slave-based prostitution is the continued illegality of prostitution as such. The best way to protect children and weak folk is to make “capitalist acts between consenting adults” legal even in cases of sexual interaction — that is, recognize the inherent peaceful and contractual nature of prostitution — allowing police to work with prostitutes against abusive pimps and clients, enabling police to side with the adults in the sex-worker community to patrol the market for the horrendous abuses against children prosecutors say they are against. Cross-posted at Wirkman Netizen. Filed under: Child Policy Comments: None
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Posted at 8:22 pm on June 18, 2010, by Wirkman Virkkala
As billions of gallons of “Texas Tea” bubble up into the Gulf of Mexico, I understand the rising tide of ill will directed against BP. The company’s smarmy, eco-friendly logo seems radically dissonant with the catastrophe they caused. And yet, demanding that the company pay for every dime of recovery, every opportunity squelched, every harm to life and property (as Rosie O’Donnell did, as many on the left are wont to do), this is a bit disingenuous, no? Filed under: Environment, Regulation Comments: 2 Comments
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Posted at 7:14 pm on June 9, 2010, by Wirkman Virkkala
From personal experience with self-styled “progressives,” I define Progressivism as the belief in no sort of progress, whatsoever, that is not tied to the growth of the state. Historically, that’s not a bad definition, either. The Progressive Movement changed the Constitution of the United States with a series of amendments to the Constitution: The income tax, the direct election of senators, prohibition of sale and transportation of alcohol, and women’s suffrage. Each of these amendments grew government. (more…) Filed under: Drug Policy, Nanny State Comments: None
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Posted at 1:37 pm on April 22, 2010, by Wirkman Virkkala
Attempts to summarize all morality into a simple principle are ancient. Long before Kant’s categorical imperative we were blessed with the Silver and Golden Rules. Indeed, there is a sort of progress in the development of these rules:
But the progress may be illusory. (more…) Filed under: Economic Theory Comments: 1 Comment
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Posted at 8:51 pm on April 16, 2010, by Wirkman Virkkala
A number of writers from across the political spectrum have been writing about the word “capitalism” recently. What does it mean? Do we have what it signifies? Does talking about such a seemingly vague thing increase our understanding? John Stossel argues that we don’t live under capitalism, unless you modify the word to mean “crony capitalism.” His essay “Let’s Take the ‘Crony’ Out of ‘Crony Capitalism’” makes a very familiar case:
This is all very well and good. Accurate in its own way. But I am not sure we should give in to either libertarians who want to defend free markets or statists who want to bury them in red tape. “Capitalism” isn’t a word that means just one thing, just as “democracy” isn’t a word that means just one thing. One usage isn’t obviously better than another. Thackeray’s coinage serves more than one master. I support laissez-faire. It’s a great and noble — and ultra-civilized — policy. But laissez-faire isn’t the only form of capitalism. (more…) Filed under: Economic Theory, Regulation Comments: 3 Comments
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Posted at 3:25 am on April 5, 2010, by Wirkman Virkkala
I may disapprove of what you take, but I’ll defend till your death your right to take it. The same sort of values and reasoning that support the right of free speech supports, also, the right of self-medication. Because we have had free speech rights, but have lacked the right to self-medicate, the two rights seem (to many) the most distant of cousins, if not warring foes. To most folk, the idea of self-medication? Heaven (or the state) forbid: We must always be guided by doctors, who know better! Filed under: Drug Policy, Nanny State Comments: None
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"[T]he whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."