Political Philosophy

New Frontiers in Irresponsibility

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A week ago today, the House of Representatives passed the very long and complex Waxman-Markey energy bill. This bill included 300 pages of amendments which were added by the Democratic leadership at 3:00 AM Friday morning. It is impossible that any of those voting on the bill could have read and understood this complete bill as amended. (Many of the amendments were apparently of the “subparagraph (c) of paragraph XXII is amended to replace AAAA by BBBB” type, which require careful and undisturbed thought to comprehend.)

This bill, should it become law, will have enormous impact on the lives of all Americans and on future generations. There was no particular reason why it had to be voted on last Friday, except possibly for Nancy Pelosi’s vacation plans. It says much about the character of the majority of members of this House that they passed it without reading and understanding it.

What would we think of a financial manager/advisor who invested all of a family’s money into a particular investment without doing serious due diligence–who, for example, put all the money into purchasing a fast-food franchise without bothering to read either the prospectus or the franchise agreement? How about “violation of fiduciary responsibility?” What this House has done is similar in principle, though obviously much further-reaching in its implications.

Dear liberal and “progressive” friends: When you talk about drastically expanding the role of government in American society, remember that “government” is not some abstract and benign entity. Are you really comfortable having every detail of your life planned for you by people who take their responsibilities with as little seriousness as that demonstrated by the House last week?

If government by the people is “democracy,” and government by an elite is “aristocracy”…I wonder what the proper Greek would be for “government by clowns”?

Obama, Liberty, and Iran

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Joshua Muravchik, writing in Commentary:

The most surprising thing about the first half-year of Barack Obama’s presidency, at least in the realm of foreign policy, has been its indifference to the issues of human rights and democracy. No administration has ever made these its primary, much less its exclusive, goals overseas. But ever since Jimmy Carter spoke about human rights in his 1977 inaugural address and created a new infrastructure to give bureaucratic meaning to his words, the advancement of human rights has been one of the consistent objectives of America’s diplomats and an occasional one of its soldiers.

This tradition has been ruptured by the Obama administration. The new president signaled his intent on the eve of his inauguration, when he told editors of the Washington Post that democracy was less important than “freedom from want and freedom from fear. If people aren’t secure, if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are not a perfect overlay.”

There is, of course, some truth in Obama’s point. If people are starving, they are likely to care more about their next meal than about what may seem to them as the relatively abstract rights to voting, free speech, etc. But what Obama is missing here is that the cause-and-effect flows in both directions. Societies that have economic and political freedom are far more likely to develop economically–up to a point where people can think about things other than basic survival–than those that do not.

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The Illusion of Government Competence

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Here’s three posts from Instapundit this morning:

ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTION  becomes environmental problem.  D’oh!  — Chemicals used to replace CFCs due to CFCs’ theoretical  degradation of the ozone layer now seen as a significant greenhouse gas.  

IF THIS HAPPENED IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, WE’D BE HEARING ABOUT “GREED:”  DC subway crash: Regulators had warned to replace aging fleet. — The DC Metro system fails to take unsafe cars out of service.  

SACRAMENTO BEE:  Dan Walters: Pension hike of a decade ago backfires.  — Government-managed pension investment implodes.

What do these stories all have in common? They all demonstrate that government organizations do not systematically make better  decisions in the same circumstance than do private organizations.  

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There are More Ways to Go Wrong Than to Go Right.

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Megan McArdle makes a very good general point in her post on the illusion that socialism will reduce health-care costs:

We have been trying to control health care costs since the 1970s made it clear that Medicare was going to get really, really expensive.   And any idea that you care to name, from comparative effectiveness research to healthcare IT to preventive medicine . . . these have all been on the table for more than thirty years, under one name or another.   They haven’t happened.
 
The answer that those promising magical cost reductions need to ask is “Why haven’t they happened?” and “What has changed to make them feasible now?”   But when I ask this question, I get angry demands that I put forward my plan for cost control, rather than merely critiquing everyone else’s.   This seems rather like demanding that I put forward my design for a perpetual motion machine before I am allowed to point out problems in the US energy market.

I was reminded of this style of argumentation by  Harry Angstrom’s comments in my previous post, where he makes this exact argument. In thinking about it, I realized that a lot of debates with leftists often come down to this type of, “I have an idea and you don’t, therefore I must have the best plan,” argument.  

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More Micromanagement

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Investors Business Daily (6/15) has an item on proposed legislation which would force the reduction of the interchange/discount fees which are charged by credit card companies to retailers. The legislation would “let merchants collectively negotiate take-it-or-leave-it fees with issuers”–something that would surely be a violation of the antitrust laws if not specifically enabled by legislation.

The proposal would be harmful to banks which are MasterCard and Visa issuers, but would be particularly harmful to American Express because of the way in which its business is structured. (Disclosure: I’m both an Amex shareholder and an Amex bondholder, although these positions do not represent a very substantial portion of my overall portfolio.)

What this legislation will do, if passed, is to transfer wealth/income from the investors, executives, and employees of American Express to the investors, executives, and employees of retail companies. If passed, if would reinforce again the growing impression that the most important single factor in the success or failure of an American business lies in the strength of its relationship with the politicians.

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