Name That Principle

Anti-Statism
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It’s not merely important to have principles, it’s important to name them.

Name them well.

One of the central insights of the French Liberal School of economics — and, since that school’s heyday, all of free-market economics — has not, to my knowledge, been given a technical name. Or, at least, a technical term that’s good enough. The principle in question is that of overlooking the unseen effects of an event or a policy in favor of the immediate, positive effects on the chief beneficiary. Bastiat wrote about it in “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen.” Classic essay.

The basic notion has been recently described in a fairly rigorous way as the problem of dispersed costs and concentrated benefits. Surely someone has called this The Principle of Dispersed Costs and Concentrated Benefits, or somesuch. But I’m not aware of a pithier academic formulation that sticks. In my head, anyway.

And, getting it to stick is important. People forget, otherwise. And what’s the use of a principle that people forget?

So I’ve reformulated the problem as a cognitive bias …

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Statist The-daism

Anti-Statism, Political Correctness, Statism
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Political correctness is not the only source of damage to language. Indeed, outright implicit statism has been around much longer than PC. Take, for example, a common question asked when people move: “How are the schools in your area?” By this they of course mean government schools. Then there is the space program (NASA primarily), the post office, the police, the roads. These endless the-daisms are the not unexpected result of the monopolization of goods and services by the state.

The vast majority of people take these the-daisms for granted. One would suspect, however, that unless you lived in a heavily statist society, the majority of the population would reject the idea of having a single provider of homes, food, media or news. “How is the housing in your district?” or maybe “How is the grocery store?” In some states that’s already the case for liquor stores.

Even in industries where there is some competition, such as media distribution companies, we see the-daisms: the phone company or the cable company. Due to government intervention, these providers often obtain the monopolistic, legislative right to operate in a certain area, shutting out potential competitors.

It would sound ridiculous to ask about “the pencil system” or “the restaurant system.” Yet it is somehow perfectly fine to have, or to want to have, a uniform, government health system — the health care system. How unfortunate.

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Re: Rekindling my hatred for Republicans

Anti-Statism, Drug Policy, The Left, The Right
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"Excellent..."

The War on Drugs is one of the most  insidious, racist policies I can imagine, Rob. It’s the allegedly “unintended” consequences which create the kind of havoc in the black community that the staunchest racists could never have accomplished with a free hand to terrorize blacks. The only other policy nearly as destructive to blacks is the government “school” system. And consider that taken together, these policies create a brutal one-two punch on black males. By operating a “school” system which makes it virtually impossible for urban black males to become educated, the most entrepreneurial of that demographic are wiped out in the drug war, either via murder at the hands of fellow black entrepreneurs, murder at the hands of state agents enforcing the prohibition on drugs, or imprisonment in the state’s torture-and-rape institutions. These are the guys who, in a world without the nanny-police state, would be the risk-takers, starting businesses and peacefully satisfying consumers’ wants. Racists must love seeing them killed or imprisoned! I suppose those urban black males with a spectacular talent in sports or the arts, as well as those who can rap well, have a shot of escaping the reservations called “housing projects” blacks have been gathered into by government over the last few generations, but for the average urban black male, joining the military and going to war is probably less stressful than just trying to survive.

Really, I can visualize the long-dead Southern slave-masters  looking up from Hell, tapping their fingers together in glee a la Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons.

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Rekindling my hatred for Republicans

Anti-Statism, Drug Policy, The Left, The Right
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I’d let go of the hatred of Republicans for a while. I’d transferred most of the acrimony to Democrats, since Democratic policies have had the most devastating effects on my friends and family. Welfare has been incredibly destructive to blacks in America. The steady erosion of the family, the obsolescence of men within many black communities, and the reliance on government solutions to problems are things which I specifically associate with the programs supported by Democrats, and the popular support of the Democratic Party by blacks.

But just when I think I can forget about the Republicans, a reminder came to me, courtesy of The History Channel. During a discussion on cocaine, Nixon’s initiation of the war on drugs, and Reagan’s escalation of that policy were particularly highlighted. Looking at the ruin visited upon black communities, especially ones in urban areas, across the country, I found the old hatreds easy to resurrect. In my opinion, the war on drugs is the most destructive set of laws since slavery. Worse, in fact, than Jim Crow, since at least with Jim Crow laws, a black person could escape within the United States by going north. It is difficult to escape the war on drugs, even outside of the US.

Of course, the war on drugs cannot be blamed purely on Republicans. Democrats have waged the war on drugs very fiercely in their own right, yet few, if any, of the so-called black leaders who are commonly trotted out on various television programs bother to ever say anything negative about these policies. Those “leaders” are swift to take offense for all blacks for the smallest perceived slight or appearance of unfairness, yet they rarely attack the most savagely unfair laws on the books, drug laws. Indeed, looking at the issue without bias should lead any reasonable person to the conclusion that Barack Obama, due to his continued prosecution of the drug war, is the latest in a long line of racist presidents.

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The Hartford Capitol Flag Brouhaha

Anti-Statism, Vulgar Politics
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Tea Party protestors in Hartford, Connecticut, wanted to fly the Gadsden Flag over the capitol, as part of a protest. From the ensuing coverage, it seems that Connecticut’s capitol building flies a number of flags, upon request. Odd things, that.

The police who draw flag duty at the state’s capitol initially assented to the request. But a politician protested and the police withdrew permission.

At first blush, the idea that a state capitol would co-operate with protestors to hoist a specialty flag up the state’s sacred pole seems nuts.

Gadsden Flag
Gadsden Flag

But the Gadsden Flag — a golden field featuring the figure of a coiled snake captioned with the simple command “Don’t Tread On Me” — has a respectable history . . . at least it does if you consider the founding of the United States of America respectable. Droll to think of one of the original 13 states as repudiating one of the union’s first real flags.

It was a Democratic pol who objected. He said it was a “partisan” flag. Tea-Partyers are partisan? This is not completely obvious to me, considering that I know registered Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats in the movement. But, hey: The Democrat almost certainly knows what he’s talking about. If he feels threatened by the sentiment, I think we should take him at his word.

…

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