Flight from Trantor

Reading Tocqueville

There are  challenges reading Alexis de Tocqueville today:  To what extent were his observations of America and Americans in the 1830's accurate and how much have we changed since then.  The corollary is, to the extent that Americans have changed are the changes positive or negative.

I have read excerpts from "Democracy in America" over the years, and now I am plowing through the whole thing.  In the early chapters Tocqueville talks about municipal governments in the early United States, something that we all take for granted now and to which we generally ascribe a lower level of importance compared to State and Federal actions.  It is the context of discussing the advantages of America's decentralized "provincial institutions" that Tocqueville makes the following observations.

How much does this describe Americans today:

"In the United States, the interests of the country are everywhere kept in view; they are an object of solicitude to the people of the whole Union, and every citizen is as warmly attached to them as if they were his own.  He takes pride in the glory of his nation; he boasts of its success, to which he conceives himself to have contributed; and he rejoices in the general prosperity  by which he profits.  The feeling he entertains towards the state is analogous to that which unites him to his family, and it is by a kind of selfishness that he interests himself in the welfare of his country."(emphasis mine)

As important, how has the government changed since:

"As the administrative authority [of the government] is within the reach of the citizen, whom in some degree it represents, it excites neither their jealousy nor hatred; as its resources are limited, everyone feels that he must not rely solely on its aid."

We now have a political class that seeks to rule rather than govern.  They have amassed a state which depends more upon obedience than participation.  Does the state seem like part of your family?  Do we have a state that invites the contributions of its citizens, or a state that confiscates the bounty of its subjects?

"What resistance can be offered to tyranny in a country where each individual is weak and where the citizens are not united by any common interest?"

Those who seek to deprive us of our liberty must convince us that we have nothing in common.  Sound like anyone you know?

[Excerpts from Democracy in America (Knopf, NY 1994), pp. 94-5]

The Road to Hell and "the limits of imposed efficiency"

Yuval Levin writes:

"The health care debate reveals an underlying difference between most liberals and most conservatives about the significance and consequences of the fact that modern life is very complicated. Democratic leaders and many health experts on the left look to centralized decision-making as a means of improving efficiency and so reducing costs. Implicitly, and in many cases also explicitly, they believe that the reason our health care system is inefficient is that it is disorganized, and that the reason it is disorganized is that no one has taken up the task of organizing it. If we study the patterns of efficiency and inefficiency that emerge from current practice, discern those that work best, and then apply those patterns as rules onto practice, we will vastly improve the efficiency of American health care, they suggest. They point to the now-famous Dartmouth studies of regional disparities in health care provision and outcomes—which are certainly wonderful examples of social science at its best—and take the complicated picture that emerges from those studies to show that we need to centralize coverage decisions and run the system from one place so that best practices are universalized. A panel of health care professionals and statistics experts need to set rules for everyone to follow.

To me, this all looks like a demonstration of how much of what you conclude about public policy from social science really depends on the implicit assumptions you bring to the table about human behavior and human fallibility. When I look at the immensely complicated picture of American health care decision-making that emerges from those Dartmouth studies, I don’t think “we need to centralize this,” I think “this can’t possibly be centralized.” I take it not as an indictment of local variability but as proof of the limits of imposed efficiency. Those limits, if we take them seriously, argue for rules that set general incentives and then give individual players the freedom to find their own ways of responding to them, because we cannot know in advance the peculiar pressures that will drive behaviors in different parts of the system, and we cannot hope to eliminate those pressures. There has to be room for local and individual decision makers to find what works for them. That certainly means that the system won’t be optimized for efficiency, but optimal efficiency is not in fact the alternative to this kind of messy market approach. The alternative is artificial shortages"

RTWT

Republican smackdown

If it's not "Peggy Noonan syndrome" entertaining us, it is the strained attempts of self-identified moderate Republicans to scold the conservative majority in the party.

This defense of "Libery and Tyranny" by its author, Mark Levin, at American Thinker caught my eye.  He was respnding to a review of the book by a Peter Berkowitz ,a Hoover Fellow, in The Weekly Standard.  From the Berkowitz review, the following stuck out:

"...[R]eversing and ultimately eliminating the New Deal would require the dismissal of society's accumulated experience, knowledge, and traditions over the course of 80 years, during which the federal government, at least partly in response to profound 20th century changes in social and commercial life (and with the persistent support of substantial majorities) assumed substantially greater responsibilities for caring for the vulnerable and regulating an increasingly complex economy.[...] Like it or not, the New Deal is here to stay. It has been incorporated into constitutional law and woven into the fabric of the American sensibility and American society."

That seems like an odd position for a conservative to take.  About a year or so ago I attended a lecture by George Will in Philadelphia.  Will's remarks were based in large part on the premise that the question of whether or not America will have a welfare state was largely settled 60 years ago. The questions that we grapple with today are how to pay for it.  I thought the remarks made a lot of sense.

So here we are today discovering that in fact we cannot pay for our made-in-America utopia without grinding our Constitution and founding principles into dust.  If we cannot pay for it, then how can it be sustained short of tyranny?  And if it cannot be sustained or will not peacably be sustained, how in any way is it inevitable?  These are the questions that the moderates never reach, because they assume that the State will continue to grow and individual liberty will necessarliy continue to recede.

Levin responded to the Berkowitz text quoted above as follows:

"My, this is quite a jumble. And it reflects the confusion that is so prevalent among the neo-Statists. Unconstitutional statism is not an American tradition (it is actually more European). Indeed, it rejects American tradition and has as its aim to destroy the civil society.[...] Moreover, for starters, the "abstract appeals" to which Berkowitz refers are found in the Declaration of Independence (I have said many times that the Statist rejects the Declaration for he must in order to advance his agenda; perhaps the neo-Statist does as well), and the United States Constitution (which is hardly abstract, but which Berkowitz ignores as he must to make his own abstract arguments about "moderation"). Nonetheless, despite having just argued that the New Deal is now part of American tradition, it is constitutional, and woven into the fabric of the nation, Berkowitz wants to slow it, contain it, keep it within reasonable boundaries, and reduce its reach.

Why? If it is desired, why oppose it? If it is un-Burkean to challenge it, why reject it? If American tradition began with the New Deal and the people want more of it, why slow it and contain it? From what principles does Berkowitz operate? We don't know from his review. He doesn't tell us. If they are not discoverable in the Declaration, the Constitution, or our founding generally, if they are too abstract to bring to this fight, then what exactly does Berkowitz stand for other than an undefined, reactionary "moderation" which may be known to him but which cannot be set forth in a coherent or comprehensive way in his review? Besides, how can you effectively contain Statism when you fundamentally embrace it as inevitable? Berkowitz does not tell us."

There seems to be much wishful thinking on the part of cocktail circuit Republicans like Berkowitz, Powell, McCain, Brooks and Noonan that conservatives will split off and form their own party.  For the life of me I don't understand why they don't all become Democrats and enjoy the limelight as so-called "Blue Dogs"

When is a tax not a tax?

There was this exchange at Sen. Cardin's (D-Md.)  recent town hall meeting:

"...I want to know are you going to tell me an individual...that I have to buy health care or else you're going to fine me $2,500 every year I don't get it?"

When the State takes your money by force (at the point of a gun, as Ayn Rand put it in "Atlas Shrugged"), it is a tax.  Obamacare isn't just raising taxes on employers and millionaires to pay for this boondoggle.  They are taking money from everyone who isn't already paying for insurance, or insurance that isn't "approved". 

That is a tax, dammit, and I am frustrated that there isn't more notice of this.

Healthcare reform is easy

Except when it is used as a pretext for taking over a large segment of the American economy. 

Look, the problem isn't care:  It is cost and delivery.  Here is what needs to be done:

1.  Put health care consumers in control of what they spend and how they spend it for routine/minor problems.  Tax free Medical Care Savings accounts for all, funded through a sliding refundable tax credit when necessary.  It wouldn't be hard to work out the details.  For certain ailments, we can experiment with "means-tested and illness-tested vouchers".

2.  True insurance for major med/hospitalization that kicks in when the medical account is tapped, not the pre-paid plans we all pay into now.  It is much cheaper.  If anything, the government could assume the role of a "re-insurer" in cases of catastrophic illness to keep the already low cost of major med insurance even lower.

Medical expenses are "nobody's money" because consumers are simply too insulated from payment of the expenses to be motivated to have any input into cost.

But this wouldn't be the occasion for yet another system of political patronage, so it would not appeal to anyone in Congress.

We need a new Congress.  That is the very first step in "healthcare reform".

While you were sleeping....

I was excited to get a Kindle.  It is a tremendous boon for quickly purchasing thick, heavy technical manuals, and the portablilty of those formerly heavy tomes can't be beat.  The Kindle is also a great way to read books that you don't think you will ever look at after reading, like most novels and pot-boilers.

But the revelation recently that Amazon has the ability to remotely delete content without any intervention on the part of the Kindle owner is alarming and creepy.  And the potential for abuse goes beyond deleting books:  What if content was surreptitiously edited, replacing the original text?  

Just one word:  Creepy. 

Can we start with the price of a cup of coffee?

Deflation looming?: 

"As I’ve said on numerous occasions in the past six months, the bond markets are still undecided whether the next large move will be inflationary or deflationary. This has been a singularly difficult question to answer because the tea leaves keep rearranging themselves. We’ve seen several multi-week cycles this year in which the prevailing view shifts from one side to the other.

In my opinion, the signs are now pointing more strongly toward deflation. Or in other words, to the next leg downward in the collapse of the housing bubble. The heroic efforts of government policymakers to deny reality and act as if they can forestall a necessary readjustment appear to be fizzling out. "

Palin continues to illuminate...

... the deep cultural divide in this country between urban elites and "the rubes". The divisions that interest me the most right now are the one on the Right.

On the one hand, Mark Tapscott:

"The key fact about Palin is that she is not a conventional politician. She actually means what she says, which is why her statement must be read in light of that fact, not with the assumption that she must have unstated motives."

And then there is Ross Douthat in the NYT:

"...last Friday’s bizarre, rambling resignation speech should take her off the political map for the duration of the Obama era.  ...[H]er 10 months on the national stage have been a dispiriting period for American democracy."

This part I find particularly interesting:

"Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard."

There is a world outside the Ivy League.  That simple fact seems to escape quite a few. What do we call those who differentiate on the basis of cultural pedigree as opposed to bed-rock principle?  Is there really no merit to Palin's success thus far because she is not a product of an elite school(s)?

The comments on the Left are as predictable as the rain, and as unremarkable.

Another governor goes Galt?

Since Sarah Palin was first announced as the GOP VP candidate last year, my thought was that she was far too nice and far too normal to really do well.  I hoped I was wrong, even as she was savaged by the despicable low-lifes that style themselves respectable journalists.  Now a sudden and seemingly last-minute announcement that she is quitting her governorship. 

Pundits are falling all over themselvess trying to figure out how this move works into Palin's plans to run for president.  Everyone assumes that is what she wants to do.  But maybe she has just said "enough". What seems so hard for pols and pundits alike to comprehend is that there are more important things than, well, politics and punditry.  She may have finally reached the point where too many other more important things were slipping away from her because of her political involvement, the same kind of things that keep most of us out of politics in the first place. 

I like her.  I think she would have made a good president, let alone VP.  Her candidacy last Fall was a real bell-weather in terms of individual reactions to her and her politics and how I thereafter viewed and re-evaluated relationships with a number of friends.  Her departure from politics, whatever the circumstances or duration, just confirms for me what a sewer our political life and culture has become.

The Law of Unintended Consequences, part LXXI

Timothy Carney:

In the name of “clean energy,” Washington is subsidizing a switch from gasoline-powered cars to cars powered mostly by coal. In pursuit of “energy independence,” the feds may foster addiction to a fuel concentrated in a socialist-run South American country.