Partisan Politics is Foolish (I Hate It)

Higgs is awesome and speaks the truth, as always.

Prof. Higgs has skyrocketed to my list of most respected living intellects in recent months. A few years ago, I had never heard of him. What a world where Krugman is practically a household name, and the few laymen who have ever heard of Higgs think he's a boson.

He seems like a whiny, carping dork who specializes in non sequiturs and strawmen. He's herpes on the body politic. I'm surprised the Boo-man prostrates himself in front of such an illogician. Barf. Who needs another self-styled, self-righteous iconoclast?

Man you care way too much. You sound like someone who came up short on a wits-matching contest with Higgs and now carry a personal grudge. What you describe does not remotely resemble him--at least not his academic work.

But while you're at it, why don't you also hurl a similar contentless tirade condemning Michael Jordan's basketball skills, or Feynman for his understanding of physics. It's always amusing to watch midgets vent their Napoleon complexes.

Comparing Higgs to Jordan... Jordan actually got out there and did something. Higgs is clearly on the sideline telling us all how good he is. I'm sure you and Bob will enjoy floating above socialized health care and cap and trade and a VAT when it's crammed down our throats.

I think I see the problem here. You don't know what Higgs has done. He's a prolific writer, but here's a good taste:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzbEkXGd7Ms

To sort of echo something I read in "The Myth of the Rational Voter" - don't blame doctor when the patient refuses to take his/her medicine. There are really a lot of good, fairly well understood ways to reform democracy, but the political class or the public or whomever refuses to do so.

I actually thought the entire article was crap. Too many generalizations, too much ambiguity, too many unsubstantiated claims, and flawed observations crying out for clarification.

This quote, while not my entire objection is an example:

"And the Republicans, while denouncing the welfare mother who makes off with a few hundred undeserved bucks a month, vociferously support the hundreds of billions of dollars in welfare channeled to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Electric, among many other companies, via larcenous “defense” contracts, Export-Import Bank subsidies, and countless other forms of government support for “national security” and service to “the public interest” as Republicans conceive of these nebulous, yet rhetorically useful entities."

I get around pretty well and keep my eyes and ears tuned, and I have no clue as to what Republicans this guy is talking about.

Possibly he is another one of the flawed intellects that think that the rarefied circles he moves in is indeed the sum total of opinion in America.

T'ain't so, I talk to too many republicans and listen to them, and they are as outraged and against corporate welfare as I am. Are they stronger than I on national defense, yes; but definitely outraged and against fraud as I am.

I have to cut this short and take my wife out to dinner to celebrate her 20th birthday, so I'll just close and say that Mr. Higgs strikes me as a pointy head elitist whose observations and opinions are too constrained by what seems to be a limited elitist circle of acquaintances.

Happy Birthday to Mrs Vidyohs!

On her behalf, thank you.

Dang, vid. You robbed the cradle.

Actually Mark I like to have fun. It is the 20th birthday since I met her. At 62 she still looks 42, and makes me feel like the world's oldest 19 year old.

Life is good.

Happy Birthday to the lucky lady!

On her behalf, thanks. But, honestly I am the lucky one.

Vidyohs, you don't get it. In order to rise above it all, his rant requires that he splits the rage right down the center between Republican and Democrat on every issue, no matter the issue; otherwise he falls into the mix. From his ethereal heights he has a vested interest in keeping both parties equally bad. Ironic, isn't it? (Let's just hope that he would otherwise be voting Democrat, in which case his rant shows progress.)

Unfortunately my friend, there is no such thing as natural equality, natural evenness, natural balance, natural fairness (nature does not recognize the word or concept), and that is a natural fact which Mr. Higgs and many others refuse to understand.

No, obviously not natural equality of ability or material outcomes, which is what I presume you mean. But we have natural rights under God as human beings to have a government of popular sovereignty that derives its authority from the consent of the people (in 1860 the American south agreed with pop. sov. when it suited them but never accepted full consent of all the people).

I'm curious, do you see anything to disagree with in this great little civics lesson here?

The natural inequality I speak of extends not just to ability but to every facet of natural life. I say again, nature does not create nor recognize equality, fairness, evenness, nor even balance.

Yes we have natural rights, those are the only rights we have. Everything else is privilege.

I am privileged to be stronger than that guy so I can beat the crap out of him and take what he has, and you are not strong enough to stop me. That is privilege, not a right. I am privileged to possess great powers of persuasion and have great audacity in ambition, so I am privileged to gather believers and take even more of what others have, I then extend privileges to my followers so that they may eat from the leavings of my table.

There is no natural right to a government of any nature, you are privileged to find others who agree with you on the framework of cooperation and on that agreement you hang the label government. The government you create through your agreement has no rights, can not create rights, can not take rights away. That government can only dispense or deny privilege.

Now, you and others agree on a framework of cooperation and organization and call it government which derives its authority and power from the consent of the people. What people? Only those who agree could be considered bound by that agreement, otherwise the government is imposed and that is not in accordance with natural rights nor aligned with any concept of freedom. What do you plan on doing with those who don't agree that your framework and organization is beneficial to them? They are born here, natural to this soil as were you, so have as much right to be here, and have a natural right of self determination as do you, yet they reject your government and do not agree. It is your government, does their refusal to recognize it and agree make them criminal in any way? Aren't those who don't agree simply exercising their natural right of self determination?

Self governing does not mean a nation independent of other nations in governing, self governing means I govern myself and see to it that I act in accordance with natural law, and expect you to do the same.

As to the civic lesson in that clip, mostly it was good for what it was attempting, but it was geared for the absolutely ignorant. Therefore it presents assumptions as fact, which in the long run can be just as misleading as pure ignorance. One of those assumptions I addressed above, the assumption that some people can form an organization that becomes the "rightful" authority and jurisdiction for all peoples in a specific area and for all succeeding generations, regardless of individual preference on life, and thus never needs individual affirmation ever again.

I certainly agree with the placement of governments on the scale that was presented, I had that one figured out on my own by the early 1980s.....yeah I know, I am a little slow.

For one thing a monarchy or dictatorship is not necessarily always an oligarchy. Stalin was a dictator who may have seized power, upon the death of Lennin, with the support of other strong men, but he quickly established his word as law, had many of those strong men who supported him killed, and then created enough separation between the men who were left alive that they then became subordinate in every way and did not dare trust anyone for fear that they would turn on them for Stalin's favor. No oligarchy there.

I see no difference between socialism and democracy, to me they are one and the same and have the same sad end results. A nation moving from republicanism to socialism is going to become democratic at least in its facade.

"Without law there can be no freedom", excellent; but it screams out for exploration. What law? Whose law? Who makes the law? Who obeys the law? Is it good law? Is it bad law? What responsibility do we have to recognize and obey bad law? Who decides what is bad law or good law? How is bad law changed in the concepts of the Founding Fathers? Can that law apply justly to everyone in all situations? What is the jurisdiction of the law? Who enforces the law? Are there standards for enforcement or is that enforcement arbitrary?

Yes once we chose or hired men to enforce our laws, and those men were close and manageable by we who hired them. Now with population growth we no longer have close observations of our police forces, much less manage them. Therefore enforcement has become increasingly arbitrary, with injustice the result.

A blind repetition of "respect for the law" or a blind devotion to
"the rule of law" is just another road to hell, unless the above questions are applied every single day to every single law that intrudes into every single human's life.

It's funny, I regard this as a pointless rant, childishly argued. To top it off the "I rise above it all" is just annoying. And yet, I'm sure if Higgs and I were in a room discussing politics, we'd probably mostly agree. This is the bane of libertarians--they feel a need to annoy everyone equally so to support their sensation of being above it all.

I only wish they could see that the despotism that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Madison, Tocqueville, et. al. so easily identified in their arguments. For a taste of it, read this.

trc,

You posted a reply to me with a video, to which I responded. Now those posts seem to have disappeared. Do you know why?

"This is the bane of libertarians--they feel a need to annoy everyone equally so to support their sensation of being above it all."

Exactly! About 80% of the Libertarian & Lew Rockwell Austrian & Constitution Party types are too self-righteous to be any good to anybody.

A riot is an ugly sink, unt, I think that it is just about time dat ve had vone! [Crowd cheers.] ...

Higgs: "It's stupid, I float above it, I offer no alternatives."

What a dorky, pointless rant.

He admits that he doesn't know what to do about it. Do you know?

I have to agree with Mark here. As for what to do about it, why doesn't he run for office or help those he likes into office? "As if that would make any difference" I can hear him respond as he shakes his head from his lounge chair and sips his scotch. He might not like things like chucking Harriet Miers for John Roberts or ending the Amnesty bill, but those are a couple of grass roots movements that the lowly masses brought about by not rising above it all.

Think about it Sam, what IS the point of this rant? We are supposed to be persuaded to...what?

Maybe he's just ranting. People do that now and then.
It can be considered a form of entertainment.

I think your rants have been much better reasoned and more entertaining than Higgly-Piggly's.

I agree with Mark. I think it's the "float above it" comment that sticks in my craw. Nobody floats above anything. He's right. He's not caught in the middle, he's just allowing others to make all the decisions. That's not floating above anything.

Well, you know, Higgs has done research and written books as his input into the socio-political scene, so you might assume what he means is that when people are caught up in the emotions of partisan politics, he chooses to remain calm, aloof, rather then engage in similar emotional participation. When people are acting crazy, sometimes the best thing you can do is remain a model of calm behavior.

Fair enough, Sam.

I found the link and added it to the previous post.

Well, maybe the first thing is to admit that it is better then all the other things we've tried. And rather then suggest we try something that has never been tried before ... at least successfully... wrk on just improving the current system.

What's better than all the other things we've tried? Democracy?
That's been tried throughout human history.
The systemic flaws have been identified and you don't want to hear them, so I predict that those who share your vision won't make any substantive improvement on the early historical attempts. Expecially given as how so called "progressives" engage in magical economic and political thinking.

"substantive improvement"

Improvement implies a direction. You're assuming you have the same goals as the pirates. They don't care about liberty, only amassing power and loot.

I assume nothing of the kind. By improvement, I mean making the political agency serve the general good. That doesn't happen because general good is kinda fuzzy, while special benefits tend to be pretty clear to those seeking them.

"making the political agency serve the general good"

"General good" in the CotUS sense means that nobody is sacrificed for it. I wish I too could believe that was the intention of the pirates. But I see too little evidence for it. To the pirates, "general good" is at best a collective notion where internal sacrifices are always justified in the pursuit of some net improvement.

I don't suggest that's the intention of the pirates, but I do think that's the reason so many misplace so much hope in democracy

I'm fresh off of read Harry Jaffa on Lincoln, so I can't resist. Yes, Democracy has been tried which is why the founding fathers rejected it for a Republic, which had also been tried, but what was unique to the American experiment was that it was a Republic based on the premise that all men are created equal under God. That was unique in world history. And if you really dig deep into it, that is what separates the Declaration of Independence and the American system from libertarianism.

What 'Democracies' were 'tried' prior the late 1700's? In fact, a democracy - where the majority of the population have the vote only started to appear in the 1800s. Athenian Democracy was much closer to the Republican model of the U.S. where only free men of notable worth had the vote.

I'm well aware of all that.
Even republics have been tried all through history.

They fail because power attracts those who envision themselves as using the power, for good or ill, and even those with good intent fail to recognize the corrupting effect of power on themselves.

Not only does political power corrupt those that wield it, it corrupts those that are subject to it as well.

We could probably survive those who use power for selfish reasons, for they will be opposed by decent folk. It is those with beneficent intent who can do the most damage, for they will gain the support of many others motivated by beneficence.

And so they will yield power to a few, not realizing that even if they begin with "the right" people, others will be attracted to positions of power, and wearing the guise of good shepherds, they will commit great evil.

ALL governments end up as oligarchies. This is inevitable due to the combination of the incentives and human nature.

This is my assessment.

The solution is to move toward individual power and independence. The wealthier and more capable individuals are to live their lives amongst others independent of the support of other powers, the less desire and more contempt there is for anything resembling a state.

Which is why the state always moves to make people powerless and dependent.

Viking,

Help me out here. I'm curious what you think of this video. Thumbs up, thumbs down, or irrelevant to your thinking? I'm trying to figure out the foundation of what Libertarians think (and I'm reading Charles Murray book on this), and where they jump ship with conservatives.

People choose a spectrum corresponding to what variable is important to them. To me it isn't "amount of government" per se, but amount of individual liberty--freedom from the unprovoked willful coercion of others. If individual liberty is one's goal, then democracy is a frightening prospect, and constitutional government is one attempt to restrain democracy from threatening liberty. It is certainly is not unimaginable, however, that one might find more liberty (temporarily) under a monarchy than a democracy. The goal for me is to find a social structure which advances liberty, whatever that structure may be.

The video equates "anarchy" with "chaos". They aren't synonyms, and needn't coincide. That's the Rothbard program.

The video equates a 'hired defense' with a 'state'. By definition, a hired defense is always a choice for those doing the hiring. States have always been characterized by their authority to exact protection money from unwilling participants. And the example of history is that a state does not stay restrained for long.

I'm not the one ranting, Sam.

I would have used the more cumbersome "enormously inefficient allocation of emotion to hatred," to suggest that, emotion is human, but allocating it to hatred is "enormously inefficient."

I doubt muirgeo is here to be dismissed--engage him and, if he is intellectually honest, his eyes may opened to another point of view and he may even be convinced of more sound ideas (likewise, if I am intellectually honest, I will consider his points of view).

For instance, it seems that muirgeo makes that common error of mistaking anarchy with chaos. I will only briefly state that anarchy is, by definition, the absence of government (or a ruler, I believe, from Greek), whereas chaos is the absence of order, and, moreover, order need not arise only from government (i.e., a ruler). Consider the work of the latest Nobel laureates in economics.

No,iamisha,

Oh no no no. muirduck (muirgeo for you novices) is not here to be intellectually honest. He is here to disrupt, lie, distort, fabricate, and practice the finer arts of Village Idiocy.

You can lay totally factual honest information to him and he will simply ignore you and go off on a tangent inspired by one word of your post to him.

Honesty and muirduck have the same aversion to one another as oil and water, they will never merge.

In fact, chaos often arises from political power as it becomes a means to interfere with spontaneous ordering.

The less seriously one takes politicians (not political economy) the better off everyone will be.

Where does Bob, Don & co. suppose "the masses have been conditioned"? Maybe it gives some the hope the masses are genuinely good and there's a chance for change. They couldn't withstand the horrid thought that most people aren't "conditioned" or "brainwashed" or "uneducated to the truth" rather they know fully well what they're doing and merely making ends meet. They don't care if their incomes comes from taxpayers or voluntary payers - they are machiavellian, they don't who gets hurt in the process as long as the people they care about don't get hurt.

A simple proof of this is asking a poor person who plays a lottery if the rich should pay large tax rates on their incomes. After they reply "yes" ask the same person if jackpot lottery winners should pay 50% or more on their winnings . . .

It's tribalism. It's primitive, a throwback to millenia-old group survival tactics, and yes, a disgusting waste of economic energy and human effort. Until that primitive element of human nature changes, we appear to be stuck with it.

As for the two party system, I agree on the problems with it but I at least have potential solutions. But they don't involve floating above it. They involve activism. One solution involves overturning the idea that corporations are persons and going to publically financed election. The other more libertarian non-legislative route would be to try to get everyone to NOT vote for either of the the major parties. Orr to never vote for the guy who has raised the most money.

There are things we could do if we awere organized. Floating above in an Ivory Tower making bold proclamations is more then useless.

"One solution involves overturning the idea that corporations are persons"

Everytime I see this vapid trope parroted by a leftist I have to laugh. First, corporations are not persons, they are legal entities. Secondly, the whole point of the legal entity is to protect investors from liabilities. If you made it so that firms are merely partnerships with no legal protection for the investors, you kill the capital markets . Good job!

This one of course is even better.

"going to publically financed election"

yeah! Let's have the government control who gets to run for office! That worked out great for every other government that has done this. Publicly financed elections are a mechanism for shutting down dissent. You have to be deluded not to see that.

Orr to never vote for the guy who has raised the most money.

And who did you vote for in the last election, you dumbass? How is that chapter by chapter critique of AGD coming along?

Well I didn't read Rothbard... I might but when I found he is basically an anarchist I pretty much lost interest. Maybe someday I'll read it but the position is so childish I'm not sure it will be time well spent. I have Das Capital and the Theory of Moral Sentiment way ahead of RothBart.

Well I didn't read Rothbard...

I knew that already!

I might but when I found he is basically an anarchist I pretty much lost interest.

It is called stereotyping.

Maybe someday I'll read it but the position is so childish I'm not sure it will be time well spent.

It is called talking through your rear end. To take a position against someone without spending time to understand that position.

I have Das Capital and the Theory of Moral Sentiment way ahead of RothBart.

That's fair. Your prerogative. What is not fair is to criticize the Austrian story of the depression without spending the time to learn, arguably, the best/detailed account of it. It is an easy book to read and is available as a free PDF document.

I understand why you would read the communist manifesto before everything else - because you are already one without spending the time learn what it really means.

I also know that you voted for the most well funded candidate in the last election.

He voted for Wall Street.

Hey,

I AM having my doubts. I am admitting YOU may be right and I may be wrong. I still believe if there are any decent politicians they are found mostly in the Democratic party but I am thinking for more Democrats are more corrupt then I suspected. Every-time I get request for donations to the DCCC and DNC I write them a nasty letter telling them how I think they are also owned by the corporations. I tell them all my money nows goes to ACTBLUE or directly to individual candidates.

I may go to a third party if the Democratic party doesn't start supporting the progressives who got them a 60 seat senate.

I still haven't given up on democracy and representative government. I'm hopeful it will still evolve to a much greater and more efficient degree. I simply can not imagine a better alternative as difficult as democracy can be.

I'm not so much opposed to democracy as I am to political management of society and economy. To hold democracy as a be all end all in social affairs is to subjugate all other values to ever changing fads and opinions with a tendency to accrue more and more power in the "management" team.

If you want to have democracy function, then it must be greatly limited in scope and power. To elect those who oversee the management of police and courts to assume the delegation of the right of self defense should not provide incentives to use that power to transfer wealth from the powerless to the powerful.

Such governance should never be permitted to subsidize economic activity, protect market share, replace charity, regulate personal behaviors that cause no harm to others, or engage in foreign military adventures.

For democracy to function, the people need to realize its dangers and limitations so that they will keep it in its place.

"I may go to a third party if the Democratic party doesn't start supporting the progressives who got them a 60 seat senate. "

Translation: I may jump out of the car if those that drive it don't continue heading toward the cliff.

So your solution is to keep voting for people who want to be in office and have power? The problem is that people can make a career in politics and a career out of having power over other people's lives. My solution is simpler: one term limit for all offices and neither you, nor anyone else can spend any money on behalf of your campaign. Completely deincentivize politics so that no one has any desire to do and we'll just stop having politicians. Voting for the guy or gal who raised the lease money is a lesser of two evils: that person is still a power hungry narcissist who likely has little intelligence and no real world skills. They're just maybe slightly less power hungry than the guy who got the most money.

The only real and worthwhile solutions are those that neuter the beast. Your solution is more partisan politics, but just for a different sort of candidate or party. But you're still playing the same game. The fact is that politics and government is, to borrow the phrase from above, an enormously inefficient allocation of resources. So yes, we can "float above it" because we can't actually do a damn thing to stop it and government, in the US anyway, is on a crash course with reality regardless. I kind of like the whole letting them spend themselves into oblivion strategy.

It's government or anarchy. Those are the only choices. Anarchy is even less effective then communism. So your best bet is a representative government.

A constructive argument involves how best to do government. Hating government is silly. It'd be like hating blood.

A single term election does not seem to do much. Your goal would be to get in there then hand out everything to the wealthy so you could be with them when you get out.

The idea that just because you want to be in government makes you depraved is unsound. Wouldn't that apply to some one who desires to be a CEO of a large corporation?

We need to figure out how to get people who care about their children's future into office. Whatever system does that best is likely the one we should use. But I don't know what it is but I do know it does not involve a system that is run by corporations and their lobbyist.

I noticed how you changed the terms of the discussion.

We need to figure out how to get people who care about their children's future into office.

If they really care about their children, they a likely too busy to bother with political campaigns.

Speaking as a parent.

This is muirpid's solution



"Finally American progressives can have a G.O.D. they can believe in. Banking on a wildly successful media coverage of its efforts to transform the backward, individualistic America into a nation of enlightened state-worshippers ruled by unelected czars, the administrative branch is preparing for a next radical reform that will further streamline the system and dispel the accusations of oligarchic rule by concentrating all the powers enumerated, extrapolated, and imagined under the constitution in the hands of only one man.

Said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, "We must urgently streamline the decision-making process because the time for talk is over. The outdated 19th century idea of reading and debating bills must end. Face it, not only does debate delay immediate action, so does voting."
~

The new legislation proposes the President of the United States appointing himself to the new position of Governmental Overall Director, or G.O.D. for short. "We believe in an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful G.O.D. to create order out of the chaos that is the unfortunate result of too many people making too many decisions for themselves. Hope and change require unity. Unity requires oneness of purpose. As you may know, Obama is The One."

The rest of the article is here:
http://thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=3946

You are describing the last President not this one. The actions of the two are in clear contrast.

They are in contrast....just not to each other.

It's so easy to complain but real men offer solutions that are viable in the real world.

Anyway this was my reply on his blog;

Winston Churchill once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."

You "float above" it all? No in fact you benefit from one of the best forms of governments in spite of all the problems. It's like a teenager who complains about their parents unknowing of all they really do for her. They only focus on the parental restrictions assuming the benefits would just be there otherwise. You offer no alternative but I could give you one. Go try out anarchy in one of the African states or maybe even Haiti... it's a little closer.

I guess somehow you expect getting 300 million people to agree on something should be much easier then it is.

Jokers? Clowns? Abusive politicians? Float above them? I don't think so. And regarding the privileged position of an economist... that doesn't exist in an anarchy.

Augusto Pinochet offered a viable solution in 1973 in Chile.

It's so easy to complain but real men offer solutions that are viable in the real world.

Any time anyone says this about any subject one should ignore the poster from that point forward. I heard the same stupid argument out of the Bush administration apologists.

In a free market capitalist system, the purpose of government is to protect life, liberty, and property. That is [b]not[/b] anarchy. You can have a democratic system of government without having the government intrude on the liberties of individuals.

That's what the founding fathers thought and look where it got us Dave. Democracy is the problem.

:) I like "enormously inefficient allocation of hatred"

Here, here! I strongly concur with Washington - we'd be better off without them, and with administrations of mixed persuasions.