Over at Political Animal, Ed Kilgore wrote a very interesting article, Presuming Extremism Right Out of Existence. It’s about how the media ignores right-wing extremist beliefs of politicians like Joni Ernst and Cory Gardner. He quoted a couple of people about why the media does this, but his own theory sounds the closest to the truth. The vast majority of the journalists who cover politics simply don’t believe that people like Ernst and Gardner hold the kind of extreme positions they claim to. They think that support for “personhood” amendments are just pandering to the base.

This dismissal of extremism always reminds me of the journalistic reaction to the Nazis in Germany. Many journalists (including Jewish ones) dismissed Hitler’s rhetoric — claiming that it was just used for the purpose of firing up the base. Since many of the things that Hitler said were so beyond the pale, many respectable establishment types just couldn’t see that Hitler really meant it. I’m not suggesting that people pushing “personhood” amendments are the same as Nazis. I’m just noting that there is a history of dismissing truly radical policy ideas as “just politics.”

This is a very bad idea for a couple of reasons. Just on its face, politicians are not in complete control of their environments. A politician may not actually believe his own rhetoric. But once he whips up people’s emotions about the issue, he may have no power to stop it or even tone it down. So it is still extremely dangerous even if the reporters are right that Ernst was just, as Kilgore put it, “cynically shoveling out to the yahoos.” And this is the best case scenario.

In general, I think politicians believe what they claim. There is no doubt Hitler was actually antisemitic. And there is no doubt in my mind Joni Ernst is very much in favor of “personhood.” Republicans get into trouble because what they actually believe is incredibly unpopular. Consider one of the slimiest politicians ever: Mitt Romney. Like me, all he really cares about are economic issues. That’s why he was pro-choice when he needed to be and anti-choice when he needed to be. What he believed in was that people like him deserved a five trillion dollar tax cut. And even at that time, a lot of journalists apologized for this, claiming that the fiscal situation would have made him change that policy if he became president. Not true. The one thing you could absolutely depend upon in a Mitt Romney presidency was that he was going to get his tax cut.

More than just this, however, there is the incredibly lazy journalistic practice of simply taking the parties as the poles of the debate. I noted this during the Todd Akin dust-up. What he was arguing was a hair’s breadth away from Republican orthodoxy. The official (and uncontroversial) position is that there should be no abortion right except in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. The truth is that Akin’s “no exception” position is far more defensible. Either the fetus has rights or it doesn’t. The establishment position is basically, “Women who enjoyed the sex should have to pay for it.” From a policy standpoint, there really is no difference. But to mainstream journalists, there is every difference in the world.

What this means is that Republicans could come up with literally any policy position, and as long as they got to it gradually, the media would never counter them. This doesn’t work, by the way, with the left. Apparently because most reporters think of themselves as being on the left, they tend to treat any idea more liberal than their own as far outside the Overton Window.

All of this makes the media incredibly dangerous. It normalizes what is not normal and makes even more extreme policy acceptable. It also, of course, allows wackjobs like Joni Ernst and Cory Gardner to get elected.

Matt Bruenig wrote a very interesting article a few years ago, Two Different Kinds of Libertarians. The two kinds of libertarians are “procedural justice” and “consequentialist.” It is easier to just call them “theoretical” and “practical,” and so I will. Supposedly, the practical libertarians are just looking to maximize utility and they just look out at the big bad world of ideas and find that libertarian ideas are the ones that make everyone best off. The theoretical ones start from the theory that no one has the right to take another’s property, and work out from there.

I think this is a false dichotomy. No one reading this blog can question but that I think that people decide and then rationalize. It doesn’t work the other way around in most cases. There is lots of science to back me up on this. In fact, this is why I believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I greatly value my reasoning ability. I hate the idea that my beliefs just bubble up from deep in my brain and then my higher brain functions set about justifying why they are right.

As a result of this, I know that libertarians are generally libertarians because it feels right. So I think the libertarians who justify their beliefs on theoretical arguments are no different than libertarians who justify them on practical arguments. And it just so happens that I have experience with this. If you can talk seriously with a practical libertarian and convince him that, for example, the minimum wage does not cost jobs and will actually stimulate economic growth, he will not stop being a libertarian. He will just change his arguments from practical to theoretical.

Bruenig says that he has seen a shift from practical to theoretical libertarianism. But this is just because he hangs out with far smarter people than most of us do. I mean — Good God! — he mentioned Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. I assure you that people are not standing around at Libertarian Party conventions discussing Democracy: The God That Failed. All you really have to do is listen to Majority Report, where libertarians call in all the time. And they always make practical arguments, although when losing, they will sometimes back up into theoretical arguments.

So really, all that has happened is that the high end thinkers of libertarianism have had to retreat into theory. That alone speaks incredibly poorly of libertarianism. The truth is that most people are not theory-based when it comes to governance. They aren’t going to pick a political ideology on the basis that it has a good theoretical foundation. They what practical results. So the fact that the best thinkers in the movement have abandoned it as a means of enriching everyone means it will never be adopted in a free country. This may be why Hoppe has argued so strongly against democracy.

But as Bruenig has pointed out in a different article, even the theory of libertarianism is filled with holes, Non-Aggression Never Does Any Argumentative Work at Any Time. This is a response to what is by far the most common theoretical libertarian argument. The non-aggression principle (NAP) holds that it is always wrong to commit aggression against another. Libertarians use this as an excuse for saying no one should have the right to their person or property. There are very many problems with this, but here is Bruenig’s take:

In other words: the argument is about our approach to property rights. It has nothing to do with “aggression.” The truth is that the government uses aggression to enforce property rights. Of course, it is also true that all land currently owned was, at some point, stolen either from the commons or from other individuals. So it is hard to make the argument from non-aggression when the current state of property rights depends upon aggression. Libertarians, therefore, must argue in favor of property rights. I think most don’t do this because it doesn’t even occur to them that property rights are anything but God given. And those who get beyond that find that the issue gets incredibly murky.

Take, for example, Ayn Rand and her ignorant and racist claim that the founders of the United States were justified in stealing land from the native peoples. As I discussed in Ayn Rand and Indians, this is simply the claim that “might makes right.” She decided that what the native peoples were doing with their land was not valid and so that justified the European settlers taking it. This is very much like my arguing that I ought to be able to use a gun to steal cars from old people, because I drive better and can make better use of their cars.

The bottom line of all of this is that libertarians are hung up on an infantile notion that no one has a right to take their stuff. And then they justify it based upon whatever kind of arguments make sense to them. For most people, those would be the practical arguments. Very few people find the theoretical arguments very compelling. But libertarians will use whatever arguments are needed. And if even the theoretical arguments fail them, they can fall back on the real argument that animates all the higher level nonsense, “Mine!”

As a micro-businessman, I can tell you: I hate a lot of government regulation and taxes. In particular, I hate certain zoning requirements and I hate inventory taxes. Maybe it is just that I am selfish, but I think the society has a vested interest in not making the bureaucracy too much of a burden on very small businesses. On the other hand, it isn’t people like me who are out there complaining. It is always quite large and wealthy companies who can not only afford to pay their taxes, but who can hire accountants and lawyers to deal with regulatory requirements.

What really burns me is how the “largest bookstore in the world” has managed for years not to pay taxes that I have always had to pay. Why them? Well, there are some historical reasons for this, but mostly it is because Amazon is so large. (Please buy your Amazon Stuff from the links of my pages; it goes a very small way to pay for the hosting of his site.) But big companies getting sweetheart deals from the government isn’t anything new. We need to do something about it, but I don’t think I need to tell you about it.

But the issue of Uber and Lyft are rather different. In case you don’t know, these are basically freelance taxicab companies. There is much nice to say about them. In most cities, the taxicab system is terribly corrupt and unjust. But are these companies really the answer? A couple of weeks ago, Dean Baker brought up a few questions, Economists and Uber. He wondered if these firms were really competing on an equal footing with the traditional cab services. Do they really have the same safety and insurance requirements? Do they provide handicapped service the way that traditional series do according to federal law?

More important to me is what this does to workers. In the old days, “freelance” was just another word for, “Pay me three times what you pay your salaried workers.” But that isn’t true anymore. Our economy has become so messed up the last three decades that “freelance” is now another word for, “A better way for companies to screw the worker.” Baker noted:

There is another aspect of this. It is the old “creative destruction” aspect of it all. The “pure” economic take on the situation is that the extra taxis on the road will drive down prices, that extra money saved by consumers will go into other areas of the economy, and everyone will end up richer. But if the last thirty years have taught us anything it is that this “free market” narrative is nonsense. Most of the savings will go to the richest people and they will just sit on it.

I’m not against Uber and Lyft. But I think any enthusiasm for these companies should be moderated with our understanding of how these things go. I’m sure a lot of what is making these companies successful is that they have managed to push off a lot of the costs of the business onto their freelancers. And what we will see in the long run is that customers get a slightly better system with slightly lower prices, the drivers see their already poor paying jobs pay even less, and the owners make more money than ever. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong.

But my biggest concern is the way that Uber and Lyft create yet more micro-businessmen. They must have their own late model car of a specific level of attractiveness, “Car needs to be free of body damage and dents… Air conditioning and heat need to be fully functional.” They must have their own insurance. (Lyft, at least, adds extra liability to this, although that doesn’t cost much to add to the mandated base.) So the major start-up costs of these companies are all placed on the freelancers. And there is basically no way Uber or Lyft can lose money, unlike their drivers.

Again, and for the last time, these companies may work out great. But I’m not expecting great things from them. They are just another step in our journey to turn all workers into freelancers who have no stability, no benefits, and ultimately, no rights. This has been and continues to be the wrong direction for our society to go. But there can be marginal improvements in our current bad status quo. Maybe Uber and Lyft will provide that. But they aren’t some great new approach to capitalism; they are just another step in the path we’ve taken for the last four decades.

There are a lot of people on the left who are very silly. In fact, I have to work very hard in conversations with liberals not to constantly correct them about things they have wrong. But I understand that being a liberal or a conservative is mostly a tribal thing. And their votes in elections are mostly a matter of their approach to governance, not specific policies. This drives me a bit crazy, but what am I gonna do? People are the way they are and they aren’t going to read a dozen economics blogs each day.

But far more annoying than the vast expanse of low-information liberals are the Very Serious Progressives. I run into them all the time on comment threads. They say that they believe in progressive policy, but the people just don’t want it. The Democratic Party has to pitch a message that will resonate with the moderate voter. We can leave aside the hubris these people show in their claims to know what such moderates think. The truth is, these moderates don’t seem to think much of anything at all — they bounce around with the larger political landscape. The vast majority of people are reliably partisan.

There are more fundamental things that go on in elections. In 1980, most liberals were thrilled that the Republicans had nominated Ronald Reagan for president. He had so much baggage and was so extreme that they thought he would lose. But he didn’t. And he didn’t for the reason that has determined every presidential for the last four decade: it’s the economy, stupid! (The only exception is Ford-Carter, where Ford had the slightest of economic advantages, and undoubtedly Nixon made the difference.)

I bring this up because a couple of weeks ago, Peter Fegan wrote, What’s Really Wrong with America’s Political System. He made some excellent points. For example, Ralph Nader lost Gore the 2000 election. But it is important to note (for the purposes of my model), that Gore won anyway and the Supreme Court simply gave Bush the presidency. But without Nader, it wouldn’t have been close enough to be an issue. What’s more, he’s right about Ben Nelson in Nebraska: Democrats in conservative areas have to be more conservative. It was never fair to compare Nelson, who was an excellent part of the Democratic Party, to Joe Lieberman, a conservative Democrat from a liberal state, who seemed to delight in disloyalty.

But national elections are different. Fegan scoffed at the idea of Elizabeth Warren being the Democratic presidential nominee. He wrote, “Republicans would instantly become the prohibitive favorites to win the White House.” Uh, no. The 2016 election is going to come down to the economy — just like always. The only way it won’t is if one of the parties nominates someone who is really unqualified. If the Republicans nominated Sarah Palin, they would almost certainly lose. (Note: almost certainly.) But would they lose if Ted Cruz were nominated? I’m not at all certain of that. It wouldn’t take much of a recession to assure his win.

Fegan makes the same mistake on this front that he accuses other progressives of: he thinks that policies and “messages” are what determine elections. Many progressives think, “If only people had a real progressive, then they’d vote for the candidate.” Fegan is saying, “If only people had a moderate who didn’t scare the center, then they’d vote for the candidate.” In a hypothetical race between Warren and Cruz, he wrote, “Maybe Warren would be able to articulate her vision for the country better than Cruz and win, or maybe she would be seen as the flip side of the same rotten coin and lose.” Again: no. The voters already have their “vision” of the country. It isn’t fair, but most people vote the same way every time. What swings the mood of the country is the economy.

But then, Fegan complained about Zephyr Teachout’s primary campaign against Andrew Cuomo. According to him, “[T]he fact that progressives would actually run the risk of possibly losing an otherwise safe state house, speaks volumes about their lack of judgment.” No, it really doesn’t. It speaks volumes about how unsatisfied New York Democrats are with Cuomo. And they made the reasonable calculation that the minor chance of Rob Astorino beating Teachout in a general election in a liberal state was worth it to get rid of Cuomo.

What Fegan should have taken away from the Cuomo-Teachout primary is that the New York Democratic Party should have generated more qualified candidates to take on Cuomo in a primary. But Fegan’s idea that sticking with Cuomo just because he’s a sure thing is madness. This is what has allowed the Republicans to now run against establishment Democrats who are more conservative than Republicans were four decades ago. That’s got to feel good for Republicans: knowing that even when a Republican loses, they’ll still get conservative economic policy.

Fegan seems to think it will simply be obvious that Clinton is the best candidate, “If Hillary Clinton is the best the Dems put up in 2016, progressives best play will be to bite down hard and swallow.” What does that even mean? Isn’t that what primaries are for? If we did what Fegan seems to be suggesting, Clinton would have been the nominee in 2008. After all, no one knew if North Carolina would vote for a black man. So Fegan can’t actually mean there shouldn’t be a primary — that Clinton should just be anointed.

That means Fegan’s article is really only saying that the Democratic Party should rally around Clinton when she wins the nomination in 2016. I’m not sure who Fegan is arguing against. I don’t doubt that there are a smattering of liberals around who claim they will not vote for Clinton in a general election. They are lying. In the end, everyone will get behind Clinton. I know a lot of progressives who are still kicking themselves for voting for Nader in 2000. That won’t happen again any time soon.

In the end, I think that Fegan is quite confused about what he wants to say. Some of his statements are shockingly illiberal — even authoritarian. But I think what he’s really getting at is that he is the Very Serious Progressive. And just like all Very Serious Whatevers, he wants to command the world to do the “pragmatic” thing. And who determines that? Why the Very Serious Progressive, of course! He will know who the best candidate will be by — What? — the South Carolina primary? And then the rest of us best get behind the “electable” candidate. (BTW: isn’t that what we did with Kerry?) All this means is that the world is more to Fegan’s liking than it is to, say, mine. It isn’t unreasonable to risk moving two steps backwards when the “pragmatic” choice is to move one step backwards. But regardless, I will completely support whatever Democrat is nominated.

Update (13 October 2014 12:50 pm)

I don’t want to be too down on Peter Fegan. The fact is, I don’t know his work that well. But it did just occur to me that in his article, he defended Thomas Friedman and David Frum. These are both men who are economically conservative and socially liberal. I don’t actually see this in Fegan’s writing. But I think Fegan probably is the flip side of me. I’m both socially and economically liberal. But I would jettison the social side of this for gains on the economic side. (Sadly, things are so bad in this country that many social issues have huge economic aspects, but let’s leave that.) I think Fegan simply cares about social issues more than I do. I would accept much expanded gun rights in exchange for the Federal Reserve increasing its inflation target to 4%. But it is important that we realize we are all on the same team, even when we don’t agree on everything. And that includes tactics. Fegan clearly thinks that a sure thing “better than a Republican” is a clear winner over an uncertain “better than a New Democrat.” That doesn’t mean that either is wrong. Regardless, supporting Warren in a primary is not the same as voting for Nader in a general.

H/T: Infidel753

You may have noticed that I haven’t talked much about Ebola. There’s a reason for this: I focus on domestic issues. That’s not to say that I don’t care about the people of sub-Saharan Africa. I do. I think we should do more for the people there generally, but especially for disease control. Although let’s face it: malaria is a far bigger deal. But here in America? Ebola is a very typical joke: the national version of freaking out about a hangnail while you bleed to death from a gunshot wound to your stomach.

Do you know how many pedestrians will be killed in the United States today? It is roughly ten times as many as the total number of people who have ever died of Ebola in this country. Think of it this way, the most likely way that Ebola will kill you is if you are so worried about it that you get distracted crossing the street and get hit by a car. On an individual basis, Americans who are worried about Ebola are nitwits. I’ve even come up with an acronym: TNT-BAN. It stands for, “Try Not To Be A Nitwit.” I think it is good advice, but I don’t expect many Americans to follow it.

And before someone accuses me of constructing a straw man, last week a Gallup poll found, One-Fifth of Americans Worry About Getting Ebola. And among Fox News viewers, I’ll bet the numbers are vastly higher. Be afraid; be very afraid!

But there is a sense in which we should be worried about Ebola. We should be worried about the spread of all disease. In our ever more interconnected world, the spread of disease is a bigger and bigger threat. But this is America! We don’t think strategically about anything. We just freak out when we are told to. So lots of people are in favor of doing something about Ebola right now. But after the ranters on television stop talking about it, everyone will forget about it and go back to thinking about what really matters: who is next to be voted off their favorite reality show and whether Michelle Duggar’s uterus can manage to produce one more viable Stepford Child.

Sarah Kliff wrote a very interesting article over at Vox today, The Stunning Cuts to America’s Budget to Fight Disease Outbreaks. Remember when Ronald Reagan said, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Well, Democrats have never really countered that. The two Democratic presidents since him have pretty much gone along with the idea. So it is always easy to cut the Centers for Disease Control. I mean, it is the problem. Am I right?!

Over the last seven years, the funding for the CDC’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness Cooperative Agreement Funding has been cut almost in half. As Kliff noted, it “is one of the federal government’s main ways of helping local areas prepare for unexpected outbreaks.” Yet it is “an easy budget to cut when there aren’t any emergencies happening.” But not to worry, even if an emergency were happening during budget negotiations, it wouldn’t matter. There will just be another continuing resolution. The Republicans are not going to allow a new budget to become law. And they certainly aren’t going to do it with increased funding for anything other than military spending.

Ebola is not a problem. But the idea of the CDC is to make sure that it and so many other things we don’t normally think about don’t become problems. Americans generally accept the aphorism, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” But when it comes to government policy, Americans think, “Meh.” Any day now, I expect to hear Ted Cruz say, “The CDC is not the solution to contagious disease; the CDC is contagious disease.” Go team!

The image below is the current leadership of The John Birch Society. Notice anything about it? The top three leaders (CEO, President, Chairman of the Board) are all white men. Of the regular council members, 23 are white men and one is a white woman. I’m not saying that this alone means the group is racist. The truth is race is an invented construct. And I’m sure even all these nominally white people have lots of mixed genes from all over the world.

But it is certain that everyone in this image thinks of themselves as white. And The John Birch Society has long been closely tied with neo-confederates and Posse Comitatus. What’s more, one of their big complaints is that the government tries to chip away the privilege of whites, even while maintaining that no such privilege exists.

There is no doubt to me that The John Birch Society is a racist group. What’s really sad is that this fact is one of the less frightening aspects of the group. Although it is doubtless true that its racism is a big reason that the group gets people to join where their minds can be further poisoned by anti-government propaganda and the fear that a Communist America is just a couple of years away — just like it has been ever since 1958 when the group was formed.

Afterword

I’ll be writing more about The John Birch Society in the coming days. It is important because it is the prime early example of the combination of rage, ignorance, and conspiracy theorizing that fuels the Tea Party. In fact, during the glory days of the Tea Party, The John Birch Society was right there at events signing people up. Different name; same philosophy; same people.

Ever since I responded to Martin Wolf, Impulse Control and Economic Inequality, I’ve been obsessing about the idea that the cure for income inequality is education. It isn’t that I ever bought this idea. It has always been obvious that it was just a way to minimize concerns about inequality. It is the non-racist’s version of “cultural dysfunction.” But what bugs is that it doesn’t even make sense. How exactly does a college education give one marketable skills except in the sense that employers think it does?

Most recently, I was talking to my partner about our little high tech company. I told him I look forward to the day when we have some money and I can hire “real” programmers to do work that I find interesting, but certainly not the best use of my skills. In other words, as I have had in the past, I want a group of programmers I use to do the detailed work so I can focus on managing the project and moving it in the right direction. Since I have been in the position of hiring such help, I know how I would do it.

When I say “real” programmers, what I mean are people who love programming for its own sake. My approach to programming is very similar to that of most scientists. I just make things work. The code is not well designed and it is rarely even close to being as efficient as it ought to be. So I have a great admiration for people who know how to code right. Of course, I also tend to find them kind of boring — wrapped up in details. But that’s why they are of so much use to me!

I have absolutely no interest in whether such people have a college education. They might, of course. But it doesn’t mean anything to me as an employer. In fact, in my experience, people with computer science degrees are not the best programmers. That’s because computer science isn’t really about programming. It’s about data structures and algorithms and other more theoretical stuff. You know: interesting stuff, but not practical skills. If I had ten programmers, it would probably be good to have one with a computer science degree — but only if he was also an exceptional programmer.

Dean Baker wrote an interesting article that touches on this, David Leonhardt Wonders Why Its Cold In the Winter and Wages Aren’t Rising. Leonhardt wrote another one of those “Why aren’t wages rising?!” articles and, as usual, he rushes to the typical brainless answer: education! Baker fired back that the unemployment rate for college educated workers is 50% higher now than it was before the 2008 financial crisis. But it would seem that people like Leonhardt always look at the unemployment rate of people with college educations and see that they are lower than for people without college education. And this causes them to think that if everyone had college degrees, overall unemployment would be lower. It makes no sense.

Baker noted something that I talk about a lot, but is usually missing from the debate, “Believers in supply and demand would know that more college grads should put even further downward pressure on the wages of college grads.” Yes, the more people have college degrees, the less they mean; they lose the “right kind of people” sheen. But what I think is really going on is that the business community wants to use “education” as an excuse for why it is they sit on piles of case and do stock buybacks rather than hiring people.

So the education excuse for why companies aren’t hiring is just an apologia. The idea of a college education was never about giving people specific skills. In as much as it was ever about employment, it was about giving workers a base of knowledge on top of which a company could provide necessary skills. The idea that someone is going to go to college and get the exact right “skills” that a company wants is laughable. That doesn’t even happen with vocational colleges. So if companies don’t want to hire people, that’s their right. But we don’t have to accept the excuse that it is all about the fact that more people aren’t graduating college.