From the AP:
Experts say that anarchists successfully deployed a tactic in Pittsburgh that they have often used at other protests, leading a large group of people toward police, then slipping out of the crowd to commit mayhem elsewhere.
Nice.
TM Lutas
Monkeywrenching Socialism – Disincorporation
I’d been thinking about disincorporation for a bit as a monkeywrenching technique when I came across a WSJ article on the phenomenon (Towns Rethink Self-Reliance as Finances Worsen) as conventionally conceived. Disincorporation has traditionally been adopted when a Town itself realizes that its continued existence doesn’t make sense.
Disincorporation as monkeywrenching is when the State realizes that its incorporated subsidiary (town, county, whatever you call it) is so mismanaged that a portion or even all of it would be better off unincorporated and has an established mechanism to remove territory and resources from the control of the dysfunctional government. As socialism is the major form of differential dysfunction in municipal government in the US today, it creates a firewall that strips out neighborhoods from a dysfunctional city and provides opportunities for more functional arrangements to take hold.
A disincorporation statute would set minimum standards of performance which, if violated, would result in city shrinkage. If you’ve got an urban area that’s returning to woodland (which seems to be happening in Detroit for instance) because nobody’s building on a significant number of lots and wild animals move in, create an unincorporated enclave and you have an instant change in incentives. Add in an obligation by the surrounding urban area to sell basic utilities at a reasonable (non-subsidized) price and you have a powerful stick that can be wielded against a dysfunctional socialist municipality that can no longer let significant chunks of their territory decay in favor of other sections. Under a properly formed disincorporation regime the favorite socialist past time of robbing Peter to pay Paul eventually leads to elimination as the decaying socialist city spawns more realistic capitalist mini-urbs.
Socialism doesn’t work. Experience has proven it. Creating a mechanism to shift back through disincorporation would create a powerful tool to end this sort of foolish socialist empire building.
Monkeywrenching Socialism – Ratchet Smashing II
On reading this article on unsustainable public/private compensation gaps I wondered whether I had any pension funds drawing on my tax dollars that were grossly underfunded and would inevitably be coming after my budgeted retirement savings to save their pensions. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get that information but it’s vital for financial planning for the long haul to a dignified retirement where one can reliably live on your own money.
The cycle of negotiating generous government employee contracts, underfunding pension contributions, and then jacking up taxes to make up shortfalls at the last moment is another way the socialist ratchet effect works. Since so many of these pension funding sources are location based, the real estate industry offers us a way out.
When you buy a house the quality of the local public school district is a large factor influencing prices. Childless couples buying a house with no prospect of children will still take an interest in their local schools because of the influence school quality has on house prices. Most who have gone house hunting knows this.
If I know that taxes will have to double to pay for some lavish government promises within the timeframe of my likely ownership term, I’m going to not be so enthused about buying in that jurisdiction. I certainly would not pay the same price as a neighboring town or county that set up their pension payments as the actuaries say they should be funded.
Were there to be an unfunded liability index attached to every house in the US comprising of a basket of future expenditures traditionally paid by property or other municipal, county, or state taxes, housing prices would react relatively quickly to poor governance and the drop in housing values prior to the future crisis where the pension fund simply ran out of money would lead to a secular trend of homeowners increasing pressure for responsible government and likely smaller government.
Right now such an index doesn’t exist but all the information needed to make such an index are already public record. Any large real estate agent system that created such an index would have a competitive advantage over its rivals, even after those rivals replicated the work. The reputation benefits of being the guys who did it first are likely to last much longer than the exclusivity of the index.
Monkeywrenching Socialism – Ratchet Smashing I
The effort needed to make government bigger is much less than the effort needed to make government smaller. This is the basic principle that underlies the government ratchet effect. The beneficiaries of government action are concentrated and thus both have more at stake and know it than the beneficiaries of shrinking government which are very often the general public who derive at best a diffuse benefit that is often not even noticed or even understood.
But I believe this pro-socialist ratchet dynamic only happens so long as the starting question is “should government (or program x) be cut?” What if we start from a different question? What if the assumption is that there is a lot of bad government out there and that as a matter of course 10% (or 5% or 15%) of the government can and should be turned over each year so that poor past decisions don’t hang around forever. Which part would get cut? The answer becomes obvious, the corrupt, useless, inefficient parts, of course. The corrupt, useless, and inefficient caucus is tiny (at least when it’s identified as such). Nobody supports corrupt, useless, and inefficient government out loud, even self-described socialists. This sort of government is supported by ‘middle of the night’ bill insertions and inertia.
The counter-argument would be to assume that good, efficient, honest programs would be disrupted and now we wouldn’t want that would we? But this assumes that a significant chunk of government programs are incapable of being reformed and improved by termination, privatization, or reform. That’s something that needs to proved, not assumed.
Most everybody right now wants to protect their own ox from getting gored. so there is a fear that ‘my’ programs are going to be disproportionately targeted and ‘your’ programs will be protected by political juice. The trick to avoiding this sort of cynical CYA is to identify the targeted bottom percentage in a fair way. This is where things get sticky because it’s something of a risky proposition to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
What if we simply asked everybody who would have an expert opinion, to simply rate the worthiness of every program, to the extent they can. All members of the legislature, all members of the executive giving their opinions to identify the stinkers. What if we made it a job requirement? Of course the system would be gamed but it would be a massive improvement on current practice and would significantly reduce the ratchet effect.
Right now, there is no generalized expectation that the legislature will periodically review government expenditures, pick out the worst, and either let bad things expire, privatize the solution, or provide a better, more efficient, less expensive way to solve the problem using government action. Cutting government in this system becomes progressive, not reactionary. Getting through less than 10% of the government is a real world assertion of incompetence on the part of incumbent legislators. And all that need change to bring about this happy state of affairs is to change the expectations game. Legislation will follow to eliminate the free riders.
Monkeywrenching socialism – Introduction
I always thought that if we every got within shouting distance of a tipping point where we would become a socialist country somebody would start up an extended discussion on monkeywrenching socialism. Nobody else seems to have done so (feel free to educate me on other efforts in comments) so I thought I’d put in my two bits with a blog post series.
Let me be clear as to what I am talking about. This is not about felonious conduct. It’s not a mirror image of left-wing monkeywrenching. It’s about exploiting a simple fact of life, that socialism doesn’t work and the socialist ideology makes headway only when the long-term effects are hidden or obfuscated. Monkeywrenching socialism is about improving society across the board from politics to economics to culture by introducing moments of clarity and insisting that there is no moral or ethical high ground for a wrong system that has caused as much damage in the world.
Peacefully adopted socialism depends on people feeling a misplaced sense of loyalty to the corpse of the system that socialism is usurping. People know that something is wrong but they ‘play fair’ long after the socialists have started their long march through the institutions and played dirty pool to tear the guts out of the old order before anybody notices.
More soon.