As a mathematician who has never taken a course in political science, I am occasionally impressed by the shallowness of my understanding of fundamental political concepts. Watching the rise of crony capitalism under the Obama administration led me to realize I needed to understand better the concept known as "the rule of law."
In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek frequently returns to the elaboration of the meaning of the simple term: "the rule of law." This broad phrase encompasses many ideas, including the following.
(i) You cannot have committed a crime unless you have violated a previously existing law.
(ii) There can be no ex post facto laws;
(iii) Laws cannot be targeted at individuals. In particular, proscriptive laws must be sufficiently general that any individual can easily avoid violating them.
(iv) Everyone is subject to the same law. Hayek weakens this to allow, for example, different rules to apply, for example, to women. Most important to the preservation of liberty, legislators should be subject to the laws that they create.
(v) The laws should written by a different group of men than those who administer them. This prevents laws being narrowly designed to fit particular cases.
(vi) Laws should be "known and certain." It should be (reasonably) clear whether or not you are complying with the law.
Rules that state, in effect, that you must do what a particular individual commands are a common violation of the spirit of (iii), (v), and (vi). The most common and least objectionable example is probably the ease with which we are punished for violating the commands of a policeman. Nonetheless, the ease with which a corrupt policeman can use such rules to create mischief show how wary we must be about making such exceptions.
Hayek further notes that the limitations on government power inherent in the idea of the rule of law must come from some law superior to the legislative; otherwise legislators could simply legislate the removal of these limitations. In the United States, the Constitution provides precisely such a superior law.
The rule of law has been weakened by both Republicans and Democrats in recent decades. The Congress has crafted ever vaguer laws, delegating the details to administrators in agencies or, in the case of laws like the "honest services" law to the ambition and imagination of district attorneys. This abuse achieved new depths with the passage of Pelosi Care. Even the passage of this law required violations of the democratic process. Sibelius's famous vast list of Obama friendly businesses exempted from various requirements of the law shows how incredibly quickly weakening the rule of law introduces rampant crony capitalism and other corruptions of our society.
Sibelius's infamous list led me to examine Hayek's discussion of the rule of law mentioned above. I was most interested to learn (revealing my political science ignorance) that socialists have long been opposed to the rule of law. In my youth, I had assumed that the Democrats' frequent attempts to avoid the restrictions of the constitution were merely a short sighted impatience with democracy itself, linked to the ubiquitous leftist conceit that their intelligentsia know better than the hoi polloi how society ought to be organized. According to Hayek, the socialists have long been opposed to the rule of law itself, because it restricts the ad hoc and intrusive government power necessary to control the economy. As the Constitution is the principal guarantor of the rule of law, the Democratic Party's long standing attempt to obviate constitutional limitations has much deeper roots than I had previously understood.
Conservatives like to note the similarities between socialist and fascist governments. Less inflammatory, and therefore perhaps more useful an observation when trying to influence educable Democrats, is the (old) observation that the weakening of individual liberties required to usher in the government powers attendant to the "progressive" agenda also weakens our defenses against other pernicious (even to the left) assaults on our liberty. As Hayek and others remind us again and again, despite the ideological differences between the socialists and the Nazi socialists, it was the weakening of the rule of law championed by the German socialists that paved the way for the triumph of the Nazis.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
State Conventions - The Sequel
I have now been involved in my local Republican party long enough to have attended my second state convention. Before each one, I have asked myself, "Does this serve any purpose or is it just a waste of time?" Once again, I have decided that although there is a great deal of time wasted during the convention, it is worthwhile for serious people to attend and to provide their input.
This year is not a national election year; so, instead of hearing candidates' speeches, one of the primary jobs of this year's convention was to choose party officers, including chairman and vice chairman for the state party. Last year I had no idea who these people were. By this year, I had enough data to know who I definitely did not want running my state party and voted accordingly. The vote was so close - a difference of fewer than 10 out of a 1000 - that I felt my vote made a difference. Most amusing to me was the assiduous attention I received before the vote from one of the candidates who had always been rude and abrupt with me in previous dealings.
This year I was prepared for the fact that the delegates seem to treat the party platform as a matter of small concern. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to see the handiwork of a Libertarian colleague on the platform committee, removing some of the more noxious sentences from last year's platform. The improved platform passed with little fight. The Convention always (2/2) seems to be much more concerned about resolutions than the platform. Resolution debates always seem to suggest undercurrents of discontent and suspicion in the party. There are always groups who feel their voice is squelched by the leadership. Probably there is some truth in this. When you administer, you generally focus resources (including time) on efforts which you think most likely to succeed, help the group, and which coincide with your goals. Perhaps this seems devious to those who are not heard, but to some extent it is unavoidable. It is obnoxiously amusing, however, how the leadership manages to waste just enough time so that we don't have the time or quorum left at the end of the convention to hear the unsanctioned resolutions.
Even though there were no candidate speeches, there were quite a few newcomers already beginning the long slog toward congressional (and other) nominations, who were eager to chat in the convention halls. Some personal exposure can be quite helpful in deciding whom to support. I met one local congressional candidate who rapidly convinced me to support his opponents (whoever they may be) in the primary.
Outside the election of officers, the bulk of the convention dealt with the same bookkeeping matters we handled in last year's convention, as discussed here; I won't repeat their description.
My personal convention resolution passed unanimously: I resolve that I will attend next year's convention, but I will keep the latest Wall Street Journal handy to read during the most boring parts.
This year is not a national election year; so, instead of hearing candidates' speeches, one of the primary jobs of this year's convention was to choose party officers, including chairman and vice chairman for the state party. Last year I had no idea who these people were. By this year, I had enough data to know who I definitely did not want running my state party and voted accordingly. The vote was so close - a difference of fewer than 10 out of a 1000 - that I felt my vote made a difference. Most amusing to me was the assiduous attention I received before the vote from one of the candidates who had always been rude and abrupt with me in previous dealings.
This year I was prepared for the fact that the delegates seem to treat the party platform as a matter of small concern. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to see the handiwork of a Libertarian colleague on the platform committee, removing some of the more noxious sentences from last year's platform. The improved platform passed with little fight. The Convention always (2/2) seems to be much more concerned about resolutions than the platform. Resolution debates always seem to suggest undercurrents of discontent and suspicion in the party. There are always groups who feel their voice is squelched by the leadership. Probably there is some truth in this. When you administer, you generally focus resources (including time) on efforts which you think most likely to succeed, help the group, and which coincide with your goals. Perhaps this seems devious to those who are not heard, but to some extent it is unavoidable. It is obnoxiously amusing, however, how the leadership manages to waste just enough time so that we don't have the time or quorum left at the end of the convention to hear the unsanctioned resolutions.
Even though there were no candidate speeches, there were quite a few newcomers already beginning the long slog toward congressional (and other) nominations, who were eager to chat in the convention halls. Some personal exposure can be quite helpful in deciding whom to support. I met one local congressional candidate who rapidly convinced me to support his opponents (whoever they may be) in the primary.
Outside the election of officers, the bulk of the convention dealt with the same bookkeeping matters we handled in last year's convention, as discussed here; I won't repeat their description.
My personal convention resolution passed unanimously: I resolve that I will attend next year's convention, but I will keep the latest Wall Street Journal handy to read during the most boring parts.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
University Wars Continue
In recent months the direction of the conservative attack on the nation's universities has shifted its focus. For decades we have heard about the undeniable strong leftward tilt of the faculty and classroom. For the last year or two we have heard about the waste of time and money when college tuition for the academically unprepared is subsidized by the government. Now the blogosphere and newspapers are filled with commentary attacking the dual role of the university professor - part teacher, part researcher. This time the conservative attack misses its mark.
All of the attacks I have read conflate so many different issues that their analysis is essentially meaningless. I will try here to tease out some of the issues. First let's consider money. Research professors are more expensive than teaching faculty. Their job description (in the sciences) usually assumes that at least half of their time is devoted to research. Their promotion is more tightly coupled to the prominence of their research program than to their teaching prowess (although the attention to the latter has dramatically increased since I was an assistant professor). Moreover, there is greater competition for top researchers than for teachers. Consequently the salary for an internationally renowned research professor may double that of nonresearch faculty. Thus, the cost per classroom hour of a research professor may easily be quadruple the cost of teaching faculty. Is it worth it? How do we decide? One way to approach this difficult question is to examine what the market says.
The most prestigious private universities primarily hire research professors. Premium private four year colleges typically hire faculty with a respectable research program but give them less time to pursue their research and offer somewhat lower salaries. Teaching loads are typically 50% to 100% higher than at the top research universities. Which gives the better deal to students? Let's look at two examples, Stanford and Swarthmore. Tuition and board at Stanford currently costs approximately $53,000 per year. Tuition and board at Swarthmore will run you approximately $53,000 per year. So, we see that in name brand schools, increasing the number of faculty hours in the classroom per salary dollar does not lower student expenses. This reflects two facts: (i) faculty salaries are not the main driver of college costs, and (ii) class sizes are flexible. Four year colleges will definitely offer fewer 200 student lectures than state research universities and fewer 100 student lectures than private research universities. Class sizes are more elastic than tuition.
Some students choose to attend 4 year colleges, and others choose to attend research institutions. Putting aside the question of whether all these students are gaining admission into their preferred school, we see that some students (and their parents) value the smaller class size offered by 4 year colleges; others value the opportunity to interact with and possibly work with leading researchers. Moreover, many students at research institutions whose aptitudes and goals make them unlikely to benefit directly from the presence of active scientists still receive a second order benefit: the extremely academically focused students who are attracted to the research environment enrich the university experience for their less academically focused peers. Both types of environments have significant strengths. I find it highly amusing that the conservative commentators opposed to the research university seem opposed to allowing consumers to choose the product most suited to their tastes and needs.
If we focus on taxpayer supported public universities, then the fact that the best students in their states prefer the research university to the research inactive community colleges is not as decisive an argument in favor of supporting the former as it is in the case of private universities. I have discussed this public funding question elsewhere. We must leave that fundamental value judgement to the voters of each state. I, however, will advocate for supporting the research universities in my state.
All of the attacks I have read conflate so many different issues that their analysis is essentially meaningless. I will try here to tease out some of the issues. First let's consider money. Research professors are more expensive than teaching faculty. Their job description (in the sciences) usually assumes that at least half of their time is devoted to research. Their promotion is more tightly coupled to the prominence of their research program than to their teaching prowess (although the attention to the latter has dramatically increased since I was an assistant professor). Moreover, there is greater competition for top researchers than for teachers. Consequently the salary for an internationally renowned research professor may double that of nonresearch faculty. Thus, the cost per classroom hour of a research professor may easily be quadruple the cost of teaching faculty. Is it worth it? How do we decide? One way to approach this difficult question is to examine what the market says.
The most prestigious private universities primarily hire research professors. Premium private four year colleges typically hire faculty with a respectable research program but give them less time to pursue their research and offer somewhat lower salaries. Teaching loads are typically 50% to 100% higher than at the top research universities. Which gives the better deal to students? Let's look at two examples, Stanford and Swarthmore. Tuition and board at Stanford currently costs approximately $53,000 per year. Tuition and board at Swarthmore will run you approximately $53,000 per year. So, we see that in name brand schools, increasing the number of faculty hours in the classroom per salary dollar does not lower student expenses. This reflects two facts: (i) faculty salaries are not the main driver of college costs, and (ii) class sizes are flexible. Four year colleges will definitely offer fewer 200 student lectures than state research universities and fewer 100 student lectures than private research universities. Class sizes are more elastic than tuition.
Some students choose to attend 4 year colleges, and others choose to attend research institutions. Putting aside the question of whether all these students are gaining admission into their preferred school, we see that some students (and their parents) value the smaller class size offered by 4 year colleges; others value the opportunity to interact with and possibly work with leading researchers. Moreover, many students at research institutions whose aptitudes and goals make them unlikely to benefit directly from the presence of active scientists still receive a second order benefit: the extremely academically focused students who are attracted to the research environment enrich the university experience for their less academically focused peers. Both types of environments have significant strengths. I find it highly amusing that the conservative commentators opposed to the research university seem opposed to allowing consumers to choose the product most suited to their tastes and needs.
If we focus on taxpayer supported public universities, then the fact that the best students in their states prefer the research university to the research inactive community colleges is not as decisive an argument in favor of supporting the former as it is in the case of private universities. I have discussed this public funding question elsewhere. We must leave that fundamental value judgement to the voters of each state. I, however, will advocate for supporting the research universities in my state.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Too Much Information
Most people are, I hope, familiar with the incredible universality of mathematics. At the most primitive level, they learn this in first grade when they learn that the observation that three apples plus two apples gives them 5 apples is a special case of the arithmetic result 3+2=5. Less well known is a common beautiful mathematical phenomenon: many problems are hard to solve until they are generalized. In other words, it may be easier to simultaneously solve infinitely many different but related problems than to solve a single one alone. The reason for this varies. Sometimes the salient features of a problem only become visible when viewed from a sufficient distance.
In government the same phenomenon holds. It is often impossible to decide rationally whether to support or oppose particular legislation unless one has a governing rule guiding one's support or opposition to large classes of legislation. There are simply too many plausible ways to spend taxes, too many unintended consequences, too many opportunities to feed sweets to a diabetic, and too many "slippery slopes" for a rational legislator to decide issues in isolation. A rational theoretic framework for deciding issues is often called an ideology. For some reason, many view this term negatively, with the subscribers to an ideology called ideologues, and the latter term synonymous with unreasoning dogmatism and inflexibility. Hayek, in The Constitution of Liberty observes,
" A government that claims to be committed to no principles and to judge every problem on its own merits usually finds itself obeying principles not of its own choosing and being led into action it had never contemplated."
This statement applies equally to individual legislators, and by extension, to individual voters.
In my canvassing work, I have encountered many unaffiliated voters who proclaim proudly that they adhere to no party; they always "vote for the man - not the party." Invariably, these voters are dramatically less informed about the issues and candidates than their partisan colleagues on both the left and the right. It seems their position is simply an excuse for intellectual laziness.
Life is too messy to fit into any axiomatic framework (which is another way of saying again that I am not a Libertarian), but in politics as in mathematics, the attempt to frame all issues within broader theoretical/philosophical contexts is an essential exercise for informing our views on the issues and conversely for testing and developing our ideology.
In government the same phenomenon holds. It is often impossible to decide rationally whether to support or oppose particular legislation unless one has a governing rule guiding one's support or opposition to large classes of legislation. There are simply too many plausible ways to spend taxes, too many unintended consequences, too many opportunities to feed sweets to a diabetic, and too many "slippery slopes" for a rational legislator to decide issues in isolation. A rational theoretic framework for deciding issues is often called an ideology. For some reason, many view this term negatively, with the subscribers to an ideology called ideologues, and the latter term synonymous with unreasoning dogmatism and inflexibility. Hayek, in The Constitution of Liberty observes,
" A government that claims to be committed to no principles and to judge every problem on its own merits usually finds itself obeying principles not of its own choosing and being led into action it had never contemplated."
This statement applies equally to individual legislators, and by extension, to individual voters.
In my canvassing work, I have encountered many unaffiliated voters who proclaim proudly that they adhere to no party; they always "vote for the man - not the party." Invariably, these voters are dramatically less informed about the issues and candidates than their partisan colleagues on both the left and the right. It seems their position is simply an excuse for intellectual laziness.
Life is too messy to fit into any axiomatic framework (which is another way of saying again that I am not a Libertarian), but in politics as in mathematics, the attempt to frame all issues within broader theoretical/philosophical contexts is an essential exercise for informing our views on the issues and conversely for testing and developing our ideology.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Inane Mathematical Metaphors
I haven't abused any mathematical metaphors on this blog for some time. To atone for this deficiency, today I will introduce some mathematical concepts that beg to be misapplied to political discourse.
Let's start with geometry. The first three geometries one usually encounters are
Euclidean, Spherical, and Hyperbolic. Euclidean is the geometry we all learn in grade school. It is the geometry of flat space. Spherical geometry is the geometry of the surface of a ball. We learn a few aspects of spherical geometry in grade school. Given the reasonable approximation of the surface of the Earth as a sphere, spherical geometry enters into many planetary scale computations. Unless you major in mathematics or physics, you are unlikely to encounter the third classical geometry: hyperbolic space. One feature of hyperbolic space which makes it useful for metaphor abuse is the fact that in hyperbolic n-space, the volume of a ball of radius R grows like e^{(n-1)R} instead of like R^n as in Euclidean space. (Volume growth of balls in spheres for R greater than half the circumference of the sphere is obviously not particularly interesting.) Equivalently, the volume of a sphere of radius R grows like e^{(n-1)R} in hyperbolic space as opposed to growing like R^{n-1} in Euclidean space. As we often do, we turn to Hayek to develop our metaphors.
In Hayek's Road to Serfdom, Hayek discusses at great length the undirected emergence of complex economic organizations from the individual actions of billions of people. In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek extends his reflections on the spontaneous emergence of complex phenomena from the realm of economic organization to social. He notes that complex social conventions, like complex economic arrangements, arise undirected; they are the product of the experiences and the experiments - both successful and failed - of all our predecessors. He implies that we should therefore be wary of challenging established custom because we are not simply opposing our reason and experience to that of our neighbors, but also to the accumulated knowledge and experience of all of our predecessors. On the other hand, his analysis contains the implicit assumption that people will continue to experiment and modify social conventions, contributing incremental improvements.
Hayek's fundamentally conservative viewpoint on challenging social norms is based on the assumption that the accumulated experience of our predecessors is greater in magnitude than the new experience of the current generation. So, for Hayek, a Euclidean ball of radius T is a better model for the accumulation of experience in time T than a hyperbolic ball. In Euclidean space, the sphere contains only a small fraction (1/T) of the total knowledge of the ball; in hyperbolic space the sphere and the ball contain comparable data. Therefore, those who believe the experience of their generation outweighs that of all their predecessors might prefer a hyperbolic model of accumulation of experience. I suppose the more extreme conservative position would be one from spherical geometry: after a fixed finite time (presumably already passed) no new knowledge is gained.
So, on social issues, then, we can divide people into spherical, flat, and hyperbolic. We will have to work harder, however, to tie these models to Hayek's more fundamental concern - the spontaneous rise of structure from the independent actions of millions of people (as opposed to the directing hand of government). Actually that seems to be too tall an order, if we wish these structures to differentiate scenarios supporting or opposing the spontaneous rise of structure. In geometry, almost all interesting natural structures arise from optimizing some local energy condition. In two dimensions, spherical, Euclidean, and hyperbolic geometries can all be created from uglier geometries by allowing the geometric structure to flow locally, subject to the instruction to minimize some locally defined energy. So the spontaneous rise of order is hardwired into much of geometry, as I have discussed elsewhere.
There is a subtler (and even sillier) link between these geometric structures and the political spectrum. If you traverse a small circle counterclockwise while holding a small ruler pointing in a fixed direction as you travel (modelled by a covariant constant vectorfield along the curve, for those of you who want precision), then in Euclidean geometry, when you have returned to your starting point, the ruler will be in its original position. In hyperbolic geometry it will have shifted to the left. In spherical, it will have shifted to the right. On these grounds, we will award hyperbolic geometry to the liberal side of the political spectrum and spherical to the conservative side.
If this assignment does not match your politics with your preferred geometry, simply replace counterclockwise travel with clockwise travel to reverse the political spectrum.
Let's start with geometry. The first three geometries one usually encounters are
Euclidean, Spherical, and Hyperbolic. Euclidean is the geometry we all learn in grade school. It is the geometry of flat space. Spherical geometry is the geometry of the surface of a ball. We learn a few aspects of spherical geometry in grade school. Given the reasonable approximation of the surface of the Earth as a sphere, spherical geometry enters into many planetary scale computations. Unless you major in mathematics or physics, you are unlikely to encounter the third classical geometry: hyperbolic space. One feature of hyperbolic space which makes it useful for metaphor abuse is the fact that in hyperbolic n-space, the volume of a ball of radius R grows like e^{(n-1)R} instead of like R^n as in Euclidean space. (Volume growth of balls in spheres for R greater than half the circumference of the sphere is obviously not particularly interesting.) Equivalently, the volume of a sphere of radius R grows like e^{(n-1)R} in hyperbolic space as opposed to growing like R^{n-1} in Euclidean space. As we often do, we turn to Hayek to develop our metaphors.
In Hayek's Road to Serfdom, Hayek discusses at great length the undirected emergence of complex economic organizations from the individual actions of billions of people. In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek extends his reflections on the spontaneous emergence of complex phenomena from the realm of economic organization to social. He notes that complex social conventions, like complex economic arrangements, arise undirected; they are the product of the experiences and the experiments - both successful and failed - of all our predecessors. He implies that we should therefore be wary of challenging established custom because we are not simply opposing our reason and experience to that of our neighbors, but also to the accumulated knowledge and experience of all of our predecessors. On the other hand, his analysis contains the implicit assumption that people will continue to experiment and modify social conventions, contributing incremental improvements.
Hayek's fundamentally conservative viewpoint on challenging social norms is based on the assumption that the accumulated experience of our predecessors is greater in magnitude than the new experience of the current generation. So, for Hayek, a Euclidean ball of radius T is a better model for the accumulation of experience in time T than a hyperbolic ball. In Euclidean space, the sphere contains only a small fraction (1/T) of the total knowledge of the ball; in hyperbolic space the sphere and the ball contain comparable data. Therefore, those who believe the experience of their generation outweighs that of all their predecessors might prefer a hyperbolic model of accumulation of experience. I suppose the more extreme conservative position would be one from spherical geometry: after a fixed finite time (presumably already passed) no new knowledge is gained.
So, on social issues, then, we can divide people into spherical, flat, and hyperbolic. We will have to work harder, however, to tie these models to Hayek's more fundamental concern - the spontaneous rise of structure from the independent actions of millions of people (as opposed to the directing hand of government). Actually that seems to be too tall an order, if we wish these structures to differentiate scenarios supporting or opposing the spontaneous rise of structure. In geometry, almost all interesting natural structures arise from optimizing some local energy condition. In two dimensions, spherical, Euclidean, and hyperbolic geometries can all be created from uglier geometries by allowing the geometric structure to flow locally, subject to the instruction to minimize some locally defined energy. So the spontaneous rise of order is hardwired into much of geometry, as I have discussed elsewhere.
There is a subtler (and even sillier) link between these geometric structures and the political spectrum. If you traverse a small circle counterclockwise while holding a small ruler pointing in a fixed direction as you travel (modelled by a covariant constant vectorfield along the curve, for those of you who want precision), then in Euclidean geometry, when you have returned to your starting point, the ruler will be in its original position. In hyperbolic geometry it will have shifted to the left. In spherical, it will have shifted to the right. On these grounds, we will award hyperbolic geometry to the liberal side of the political spectrum and spherical to the conservative side.
If this assignment does not match your politics with your preferred geometry, simply replace counterclockwise travel with clockwise travel to reverse the political spectrum.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Frogs, Cigarettes, and Libertarians
I often ask my friends of the Libertarian persuasion,
Question: 'What do you call a Libertarian who wants to get elected?'
Answer: 'A Republican.'
Of course most Republicans are not Libertarians, but the GOP is far and away the natural home for any rational Libertarian. The Republican Liberty Caucus is the home of one subgroup of self identified libertarian Republicans. I have detailed aspects of both my philosophical differences and my agreements with the Libertarians in numerous posts such as Libertarians vs Conservatives, Steepest Descent, Vouchers, Libertarians, and Our Failing Public Schools. Despite my differences with my libertarian colleagues, I am probably viewed by them as a fellow traveler or an ally and am occasionally invited to Libertarian functions. Last week, I attended a state Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) function and left the event with a burning question: are Libertarians disproportionately smokers? In (American!) Mathematics circles, I do not encounter many smokers and was under the impression that the habit was dying among professionals and, perhaps even more generally, among the college educated. In fact, a quick Googling asserts that smoking has dropped to around 9% of college grads (vs. 27% for high school grads). Yet, at the state RLC function, interesting conversations were frequently interrupted by the departure of one or more participants, heading outside to smoke. (No. They were not simply fleeing me.) At the one district GOP convention I have attended, RLC delegates pushed resolutions attacking smoking bans. The erosion of our liberties at the hands of the nanny state, although upsetting, is still somewhat abstract to me. This week I finally realized the obvious: the erosion of liberty is very real to smokers. Laws have been passed greatly restricting their rights. I greatly enjoy the consequences of these laws, no longer encountering smoking in public places, but here, I use the term public loosely, including privately owned restaurants which are not allowed to permit smoking on their premises (and which I am free to avoid should smoking be permitted there).
Seeing how strongly smokers feel the curtailment of their freedom, I wondered what abridgement of liberty would pinch me similarly. What current painful abridgements can I identify? According to another quick Google, I work from 1/3 to 1/2 or more of the year for the federal government. Since I love my work (and often work through vacations if I am not careful), I don't resent this loss of my time. If I translate this loss of time into a loss of income, the loss remains abstract unless I think about how I might have spent money lost to excessive taxes. The first thought that came to mind was how nice it would have been to send my children to excellent private schools with the taxes spent to maintain bad public schools. This example is not compelling, however, because (i) I could have always sacrificed some other good in order to send my children to a good private school, and (ii) there were not any obviously excellent private schools available. The first weakness illustrates the fact that infringement of liberty by means of taxation is the optimal means of infringement because it allows the victim/taxpayer to forfeit what he values least rather than having the government decide what material good (can a good education be called a material good since it costs money?) he must forfeit. The impending loss of my freedom to allocate as much of my income as I desire to pay for healthcare for my family will likely be my first exposure to a loss of liberty sharp enough to cause strong discomfort. I imagine small business owners have no end of more immediate examples.
Republican speakers endlessly repeat the metaphor of boiling a live frog in a pot to describe the gradual erosion of our liberties. They assert that if you put a frog in a pot of warm water and gradually turn up the heat, the frog will not jump out, whereas he will jump immediately if thrown into a pot of hot water. This sounds unlikely to me, and I don't know why Republican speakers spend so much time boiling live frogs (having steadfastly declined my French hosts' occasional offers of frog legs). Nonetheless, it is clear that if erosion of liberty occurs through taxation, the taxpayer will always eliminate his least valued good first, and is thus more easily lured into accepting ever increasing encroachments on his sphere of activity.
Question: 'What do you call a Libertarian who wants to get elected?'
Answer: 'A Republican.'
Of course most Republicans are not Libertarians, but the GOP is far and away the natural home for any rational Libertarian. The Republican Liberty Caucus is the home of one subgroup of self identified libertarian Republicans. I have detailed aspects of both my philosophical differences and my agreements with the Libertarians in numerous posts such as Libertarians vs Conservatives, Steepest Descent, Vouchers, Libertarians, and Our Failing Public Schools. Despite my differences with my libertarian colleagues, I am probably viewed by them as a fellow traveler or an ally and am occasionally invited to Libertarian functions. Last week, I attended a state Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) function and left the event with a burning question: are Libertarians disproportionately smokers? In (American!) Mathematics circles, I do not encounter many smokers and was under the impression that the habit was dying among professionals and, perhaps even more generally, among the college educated. In fact, a quick Googling asserts that smoking has dropped to around 9% of college grads (vs. 27% for high school grads). Yet, at the state RLC function, interesting conversations were frequently interrupted by the departure of one or more participants, heading outside to smoke. (No. They were not simply fleeing me.) At the one district GOP convention I have attended, RLC delegates pushed resolutions attacking smoking bans. The erosion of our liberties at the hands of the nanny state, although upsetting, is still somewhat abstract to me. This week I finally realized the obvious: the erosion of liberty is very real to smokers. Laws have been passed greatly restricting their rights. I greatly enjoy the consequences of these laws, no longer encountering smoking in public places, but here, I use the term public loosely, including privately owned restaurants which are not allowed to permit smoking on their premises (and which I am free to avoid should smoking be permitted there).
Seeing how strongly smokers feel the curtailment of their freedom, I wondered what abridgement of liberty would pinch me similarly. What current painful abridgements can I identify? According to another quick Google, I work from 1/3 to 1/2 or more of the year for the federal government. Since I love my work (and often work through vacations if I am not careful), I don't resent this loss of my time. If I translate this loss of time into a loss of income, the loss remains abstract unless I think about how I might have spent money lost to excessive taxes. The first thought that came to mind was how nice it would have been to send my children to excellent private schools with the taxes spent to maintain bad public schools. This example is not compelling, however, because (i) I could have always sacrificed some other good in order to send my children to a good private school, and (ii) there were not any obviously excellent private schools available. The first weakness illustrates the fact that infringement of liberty by means of taxation is the optimal means of infringement because it allows the victim/taxpayer to forfeit what he values least rather than having the government decide what material good (can a good education be called a material good since it costs money?) he must forfeit. The impending loss of my freedom to allocate as much of my income as I desire to pay for healthcare for my family will likely be my first exposure to a loss of liberty sharp enough to cause strong discomfort. I imagine small business owners have no end of more immediate examples.
Republican speakers endlessly repeat the metaphor of boiling a live frog in a pot to describe the gradual erosion of our liberties. They assert that if you put a frog in a pot of warm water and gradually turn up the heat, the frog will not jump out, whereas he will jump immediately if thrown into a pot of hot water. This sounds unlikely to me, and I don't know why Republican speakers spend so much time boiling live frogs (having steadfastly declined my French hosts' occasional offers of frog legs). Nonetheless, it is clear that if erosion of liberty occurs through taxation, the taxpayer will always eliminate his least valued good first, and is thus more easily lured into accepting ever increasing encroachments on his sphere of activity.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Conservative Marxists?
I have very limited exposure to research in the Humanities. From a distance, I have simply heard some of the words describing popular theoretical perspectives: Marxism, Structuralism, Ethnic Studies, Postcolonial Criticism, Gender Studies, Queer Theory, etc. I have always assumed that these terms mean what they appear to mean to the uninitiated. A colleague of mine from the social sciences, however, recently told me that she suspected that, with respect to Marxism, this is no longer completely true. I have been told that Marxist analysis is somewhat old fashioned. So, who does Marxist analysis now? My social science colleague told me that in addition to being the home of a gaggle of ancient Marxists, Marxism seems to have become a refuge for the politically conservative in the Humanities. If you are a politically conservative Humanities prof, then you can label any economic analysis as Marxist, no matter how far removed from the class struggle. The Marxist label protects you from being outed as politically conservative, and you may pursue your studies unmolested.
This is outside my expertise; so, I may be guilty of posting an inaccurate, third hand report. Perhaps I will not be the first blogger to be guilty of this sin. Nonetheless, the possibility that Marxism has become the conservatives' refuge in the Humanities is a joke too amusing to keep locked in the ivory tower.
This is outside my expertise; so, I may be guilty of posting an inaccurate, third hand report. Perhaps I will not be the first blogger to be guilty of this sin. Nonetheless, the possibility that Marxism has become the conservatives' refuge in the Humanities is a joke too amusing to keep locked in the ivory tower.
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