When arguing against the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act last year, I wrote
If discrimination based on comprehensive genetic screening is legal, we can expect health providers to tailor plans according to our individual risk factors. That might be to the disadvantage of a minority of high-risk individuals, but greater information about risk factors will lower uncertainty, and thus lower rates overall. Furthermore, insurers will offer incentives to people who take proactive steps to discover health risks and take steps to alleviate them. Expensive procedures such as frequent biopsies or preemptive removal of organs might be fully covered for individuals whose genetic profiles uncover a high cancer risk.
Unfortunately, Congress did not heed my arguments, and banned genetic discrimination anyway. It is now illegal for health insurers to take genetic factors into consideration when setting premiums. What effect do you think the law had on the incentive of insurance companies to pay for their customer’s genetic screening?
If the goal of the law was to encourage genetic screening, it clearly had the opposite effect. In response, celebrities are now “fighting for women to have access to MRIs and genetic testing.” Having coerced insurance companies to ignore the results of genetic testing, people now want to coerce them to pay for it.
Do you think that people who find out that they have a higher probability of having an illness with genetic factors would be more likely to purchase more health insurance than individuals with a low probability of genetic illness? As I wrote last year,
It does not take an economist to predict that rates would immediately rise, as healthy people, refusing to pay for their neighbor's health risks, stopped using insurance altogether. As the young and healthy jump ship, insurance companies would have to increase rates, accelerating the trend. Without further government interference, the health insurance business would disappear completely, shortly after millionaires on their deathbeds became the only people able to afford policies.
Are you still wondering why healthcare is so expensive in the U.S.?
Economics is not a complicated science. This may not seem obvious to you if you've following the news from Washington, where a cabal of politicians, financiers and lobbyists have been spent the last several weeks desperately making a series of increasingly complicated, expensive, and ultimately unsuccessful plans to "save the economy." As the costs of their schemes have spiraled from billions and into the trillions of dollars, it has become increasingly urgent for you, the source of Congress' deep pockets, to examine the potential impact of their actions on your taxes, savings, and investments. Even if you have no intention whatsoever of voting this November (which, given the choices, is hardly unreasonable), it would behoove you to take the consequences of the pending federal bailout into consideration for your own benefit.
The key to understanding economic theory is to grasp that the same principles that apply to your personal finances, and perhaps to your interaction with your local grocer apply equally to the world at large, at all levels of economy activity. The key to understanding politics is to grasp that political success requires advocating policies which violate these basic economic principles - and then evading the consequences of their own policies - with the voters’ eager participation in the delusion.
A Potato Farmer Learns About Business Cycles
Suppose, for example, that you grow heirloom potatoes. Each season, you harvest most of the potatoes for consumption or sale, and save a fraction to plant the next season. The saved potatoes are your supply of loanable funds – the consumption you forgo now to invest in future production. The percentage of saved potatoes is your savings rate, and also your interest rate, since the consumption you forgo now is your investment in next season’s production capacity. Suppose that you have reached an equilibrium, so that each year’s saved potatoes are just enough to produce the same sized crop next year. Common sense indicates that you cannot increase your future consumption of potatoes without an increase in savings, and therefore a decrease in present consumption. This is a key point – increasing the rate of economic growth is only possible through increased investment. Increased investment is only possible through increased saving. An increase in saving requires a decrease in current consumption. The same principle applies when you decide to dine out less often this month to afford a new iPod next month.
Imagine that you keep track of your remaining potato stock in a ledger. If your ledger is accurate, each hash mark in the ledger corresponds to a real potato – the potatoes are your “gold standard.” For a while, potatoes are plentiful and life is good. Then, one day, you see a commercial for the latest product from Apple - the iTater, a laptop made from potato starch. You must have it - but your ledger shows that the expense would cut into next year's seed stock. No problem - you just add another zero to the count of remaining stock and proceed to the nearest Apple store. You experience utopia with your iTater - welcome to the boom phase of the business cycle! Your constituents (the wife and kids) are happy, consumer spending is up, and interest rates are down (saving potatoes requires less of a sacrifice in current consumption - according to your ledger.) You have taken your ledger off the “potato standard” and created a fiat currency – but who cares, life is good, right?
What happens next season? Since the act of writing down numbers does not actually conjure up potatoes, you will be unpleasantly surprised when your stock of real investment capital suddenly runs out, and is not sufficient to meet planned expenses. You may be forced to liquidate your assets at a large loss (the iTater market is not so hot now that the iTater 2.0 is out), and without a true accounting of available investment capital (the seed stock in your cellar) long term planning becomes impossible. Welcome to the bust phase of the inflationary business cycle!
If you wise up to your economic fallacies, you will cut current consumption (no iTater Lite for the kids) to restore savings rates and pay debts. But suppose that you take a hint from Washington, and decide to implement a “bailout plan” by adding some more zeroes to your ledger, and resuming unsustainable consumption level by getting the tots the iTater Lites. You might even get a loan from your neighbor Mr. Wen.
What happens now? You've "rescued" your personal economy this season at the cost of further depleting your investment capital. You've won the "vote" of your kids this season, but you have even less capital for next season. Rather than allowing your personal economy to recover, you have further distorted your grasp of reality, and now have no idea how many spuds you have to consume, and how many you need to save. You can attempt borrow seed stock from your neighbor Mr. Wen, but unless you can drastically cut consumption to pay interest, he will eventually grow impatient and refuse to lend any more. The more you attempt to extend the illusion, the farther out of touch you become with reality, as the numbers on your ledger show exponential growth upwards while your actual consumption plummets toward zero. You've discovered hyperinflation, the ultimate destiny of all fiat currencies.
The Roots of the Housing Crisis
Let’s now apply the analogy of the potato farmer to the mortgage crisis our economy is now experiencing. The seeds of the crisis were laid during the New Deal, with the federal government’s creation of Fannie May and Freddie Mac for the purpose of allowing mortgages to be issued at below market rates. In other words, they are a form of price control (a price ceiling) on interest rates for home mortgages. As with all price ceilings, the consequence of making goods artificially cheap is a shortage. In this case, the physical supply of building materials, land, architects, and construction workers is not sufficient to meet demand. The existence of coercive government price controls is obscured by a number of elements intended to maintain the myth that every American family has a "right" to a home. The elements include the superficially “private” charters of Freddie and Fannie (and now, the other institutions being bailed out), the extra-legal guarantees provided to those entities (massive lobbying and high-level relationships with both political parties), and the indirect way the costs of shortages are paid (price inflation, rather than an increase in taxation).
Much of the blame for the mortgage lending meltdown has been placed on the "failure of the free market." But is there really any truth to this? The financial industry is the single most regulated industry in the economy. The failing institutions are precisely the ones that New Deal policies were meant to protect us from: the FDIC was supposed to prevent bank runs, the SEC was supposed to be stop shady investments, Fannie May and Freddie Mac were supposed to make sure that loans went to people who deserved them. Opportunistic politicians like John McCain are quick to blame the capture of regulatory institutions on lobbyists and "special interests." He promises to fix the problem by giving yet more money and power to corrupt government agencies, much like a mob boss who blames his enforcers for his protection schemes, and then promises his victims to lay off them if they just give him more guns and money. The only reason that special interests are so involved in government is that the government has ingrained itself so deeply in our lives. Giving more power to the state to regulate markets and redistribute wealth and privileges from one group to another only increases the incentive to strengthen one’s political connections.
There are two particular stimuli for the present housing “crisis.” First, is the expansion in the money supply by the Federal Reserve, motivated in part by the desire to pay for American overseas commitments without a proportionate increase in taxes, in part as a response to the destructive consequences of the anti-business sentiment that created regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley, and as a response to its own inflationary policy of the late 1990’s, which (much like the case of the unfortunate farmer) resulted in the boom and bust of the Dot Coms. Second, is the 1995 Community Reinvestment Act, which basically forced banks to make unprofitable subprime loans to poor neighborhoods and minorities. In 1999, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act was tied to the CRA rating of banking institutions, again forcing them to make unprofitable mortgages. As the consequences of the loose money policies and the CRA began to come crashing down in 2008, the government responded with HOPE NOW and Project Lifeline, which use a combination of threats and taxpayer-sponsored bribes to prevent the markets from self-correcting. Unfortunately, as our farmer learned, attempting to fix over-consumption by increasing consumption only makes the situation worse.
The vicious pattern of inflationary business cycles is a downward spiral that is not a creation of the unrestrained greed of businessmen. Yes, businesses are complicit to the extent that they have taken part in the state’s redistribution of funds from taxpayers and dollar users. But this is only a minority of politically-connected enterprises. The Community Reinvestment Act is in fact an attempt to force financial institutions to become altruists – that is, act against their own self-interests. The mortgage crisis is primarily the inevitable result of a political-economic ideology that essentially attempts to turn wishes into reality through collective delusion. This ideology is in turn the product of a philosophy that rejects objective reality in favor of a reality created by the collective consensus, rather than the inescapable consequences of cause and effect.
The Philosophy of Make-Believe Economics
The German philosopher Emmanuel Kant famously argued that there are two realities: the noumenal, which is the way the world really is, and the phenomenal, which is the way conscious beings perceive it with their senses. Since the conceptual faculty is an object of distortion, the real world is forever beyond human understanding. Our perception of reality is therefore only an illusion, but it is a collective delusion, shared by all of society. American philosopher John Dewey took Kant’s premises to their natural conclusion: since "ultimate" reality is unknowable, social consensus is the sole determinant of truth and morality. Dewey rejected the notion of truth and of right and wrong as such, and held that pragmatic experimentation should be our sole guide to action, with democratic consensus as the ultimate manifestation of truth, morality, and political change.
Few people act like our potato farmer and deny the objects and events that happen before his very eyes. Yet in economic matters, most people, including most politicians, mainstream economists, and investors unconsciously follow Dewey's philosophical principles: reality is ultimately driven by social consensus, and the success or failure of markets depends only on the optimism or pessimism of consumers and investors. This is more than the belief that wishes and prayers affect reality - this is a belief that one's wishes arereality – if only enough people share the delusion.
The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are faithful followers of Dewey and Kant. By artificially lowering or raising interest rates, the government attempts to turn our perception of reality (the interest rate) into reality – our actual propensity to save. But pretending that there is a sufficient stockpile of spuds in the cellar is not the same thing as having a sufficient stockpile. The artificial manipulation of interest rates leaves investors flush with cash, but short on worthwhile investments (or vice versa) and thus diverts increasingly scarce resources into increasingly inefficient investments. Prudent investors (like the banks notin this week's news stories) stay away, while politically-connected spendthrifts splurge. Markets become increasingly unstable, and sooner or later, things come crashing down. The more you attempt to evade reality, the worse the disaster that you are asking for will become.
This post is inspired by the State of Texas' recent abduction of 416 kids from a
polygamist compound.
One way to measure the degree of freedom in a society is by
looking at the kinds of associations made by its members. A free people can choose
to enter into any association they wish, and are not forced into any associations
against their will. By associations, I include both social associations, such
as friendships, meeting, publications, and marriages, as well as material
associations, such as gifts, trade, business agreements, and common property.
Voluntary associations are those entered into by mutual consent to mutual
benefit. Non-voluntary associations (the
status of minors aside) include taxes, crime, restrictions on trade and
commerce, and any other regulation of consensual behavior that is imposed on
individuals against their own judgment.
A free society requires a certain kind of tolerance for other
people's beliefs and associations. Because
the term is unclear, it is necessary to distinguish two kinds of toleration. Political toleration is equal treatment under
the law - the presumption that every human being has the same rights as
everyone else. A violation of this kind of toleration is only possible in
interactions that involve the threat or use of force. Political discrimination includes
preferential or detrimental treatment of any group or individual based on any
criteria other than an individual's respect for the rights of others. Examples of political intolerance include
laws that favor the rich or poor (such any government tax or fee that is not
fixed), racial quotas, or limitations on contracts based on sexual orientation
or the market share of one's business.
In contrast to political toleration, social toleration is
non-judgmentalism. As applied to
cultural distinctions, it is known as multiculturalism. A total commitment to social toleration requires
the presumption that no particular culture, way of life, or value system is
superior to any other. Practically everyone engages in various kinds of social
intolerance when they issue moral praise and condemnation, or choose to
associate or dissociate with various people or groups based on their beliefs or
identities. There are many levels of intolerance
-- we might buy our groceries from someone we would not necessarily want as a
business partner or spouse.
I believe that a free people must be politically tolerant,
but socially intolerant. Political tolerance is necessary because the freedom
of association requires that individuals be able to establish any voluntary
association they choose, including those that the majority disapproves of, such
as polygamous relationships. A society
that does not respect this right will eventually succumb to pressure group warfare
followed by dictatorship, as conflicting moral views battle in the political
arena until one seizes power by force. Social
intolerance on the other hand, is necessary because in a society that does not
use political means to prohibit destructive (but voluntary) behavior and ideas,
people must rely on their own judgment for moral guidance. In order to live successfully in a politically
pluralistic society, individuals need to use their own judgment to decide which
associations are harmful or beneficial within the context of voluntary
associations. (In this context, a
presumption of innocence is equally important in social as well as political
tolerance.)
Politically, freedom means the freedom to disagree - to be
free to make choices regardless of the approval of others. A free people must
be free to create and join religious cults, no matter how absurd their beliefs
or how self-destructive their practices are. Socially, freedom requires an
ethic of self-reliance and independent moral judgment. To survive and thrive in
a free society, we must decide which people and groups to join and which ones
to condemn and avoid.
USA Today:
Vice president [ Cheney] was to push Karzai to take steps to extend Afghanistan's governance beyond Kabul and conduct successful elections next year. The discussion also was to address ways the Afghan government can curb corruption and deal with rising production of poppies, which are used to make narcotic drugs that fund insurgent operations.
Politicians claim that since profits from illegal drug sales fund terrorism, we ought to blame illegal drug use for terrorism. But this is a reversal of causality. It is only because politicians have made certain substances illegal, that the production of those substances in areas beyond the reach of the authorities is highly profitable. If it is true that the drug war funds terrorism, it is yet another demonstration that the destructive consequences of a rights violation ultimately harm everyone, even when the banned activity is legitimately immoral.
The fact that the combined might of the U.S. military is utterly unable to eliminate drug production in a third world country under its control is at the same time laughable and comforting, since I can be assured of an ample supply should politicians declare their next war on a product or service I actually value.
$30 million dollars and countless volunteer hours later, and
what has it achieved? Ron Paul is
done with the election, with barely a mention from the media.
As I wrote earlier, virtually all of the resources and
efforts of a losing campaign are quickly forgotten. To the extent that the
campaign will motivate young people about politics, it will teach them exactly
the wrong lesson, for political campaigns have never been a primary means of intellectual
change. Imagine what all that money and
enthusiasm could have done under the auspices of an organization dedicated to
intellectual activism, such as the Ludwig von Mises or the Ayn Rand Institute. Of course, few people get as excited about the
work of a bunch of economics and philosophy nerds as they do about a political
campaign. But that is exactly the
problem with our anti-intellectual, concrete-bound culture.
The 2008 proposed building standards issued by the California Energy Commission include a requirement that new air-conditioners have a radio-controlled thermostat that cannot be overridden by the owner. This allows the state to override your settings during undefined “emergency events.” The
explicit goal of this “feature” is to prevent blackouts by preventing
people from lowering their thermostat’s temperature during heat waves.
Some thoughts:
- The cause of environmentalism is one of the excuses being used to establish an increasingly totalitarian government in California and elsewhere.
- The public perception of “global warming” is that of a permanent
state of imminent catastrophe, which, like the threat of terrorism, is
likely to be used to justify a permanent state of “emergency.”
- The need for nanny-state thermometers is entirely a government creation. Environmental regulations have made it essentially illegal to build a new power plant in California for the last thirty years, and price controls have made it impossible for utilities to respond to changes in supply and demand.
- Shortages are entirely a creation of the interventionist state. Imagine
Dell running ad campaigns asking the public to “stop buying so many
computers!” or Starbucks asking customers to “please reduce your
caffeine intake!”
- This development highlights the sad state of the American energy industry. While
rapid advancement in technology allow amazing innovations such as
remotely controlled thermostats, environmental regulations have made it
all-but-illegal, prohibitively expensive, or legally uncertain to
innovate in the energy sector, outside of a few, politically correct
and subsidized technologies.
- The remote-controlled thermostats are a genuinely useful invention. However, the proper use of the technology would be simply to continually broadcast the current energy rate. The utility could then raise the rate during peak hours and let the customer decide how to automatically limit their usage. If energy prices doubled during heat waves, blackouts would be permanently eliminated. Unfortunately, in California, price controls currently mandate that politicians and government bureaucrats, not energy producers set energy prices.
According to GM, the new federal fuel requirements will costs four to ten thousand dollars per car,
mostly to use more expensive weight savings materials. Some
environmentalists might dispute the numbers or cheer anything that
makes cars more expensive to own, in the hope that fewer people are
able to afford driving. However, that will not be the only impact.
If the amount the average person is willing to pay for a car does
not change, people will respond to higher prices in two ways: they will
keep their existing cars longer and buy smaller, cheaper cars. Keeping existing
cars will delay the introduction of more efficient and luxurious cars
in the future. Switching to cheaper, more efficient cars will increase
efficiency at the cost of both luxury and safety. More families will be
forced to squeeze into Honda Civics rather than Toyota Camry’s. Money
that would have been spent on safety improvements will be diverted to
increasing efficient. Smaller cars are not inherently unsafe, but they
are inherently less safe, and thus the cost of the new fuel efficiency
standards can be measured in both dollars and human lives. The cost in
human lives of traffic accidents is well known - about 42 thousand lives
each year in the U.S. How many people will the warming from the unspent
gasoline kill? Actually, the oil not burned in cars will even not be
“saved.” More efficient cars will simply make that oil available for
other uses, which may or may not be more efficient.
Just how many lives is a billionth of a degree of global warming worth? Can we look forward to a new “no blood for freezing winters” campaign?
Earlier this month, Congress passed a law which will essentially force the public to switch to compact fluorescent lights. (CFLs) Environmentalists and light bulb makers joined forces to boost power and profits, and perhaps sue the competition out of existence.Some people object to the narrow light spectrum and toxic Mercury content
of CFL lights, but I don’t care about those things. I have replaced
most of the incandescent lights in my apartment, and plan to eventually
replace the rest. What I question is not the usefulness of CFLs, but
the premise that switching to them will “save energy.”
As with most goods and services, the price of a utility influences
the quantity I am willing to pay for. When the price of gas doubles, I
reconsider taking road trips, and try to be more efficient with my
driving. Likewise, when the price of electricity falls, I am more
liberal with my power consumption. Compact fluorescent lights lower
the cost of lightning in two ways: they use one quarter of the energy,
and they last ten times as long. These innovations encourage greater usage of lighting.
I have a spiffy IKEA lamp behind my couch, but
because I don’t have a light in my ceiling fan, it needs to be extra
bright. Furthermore, the geometry of my living room makes it annoying
to walk behind the couch every day to turn it on. By switching to a
compact fluorescent light, I was able to get a 100 watt equivalent
light in a 60 watt socket, and thanks to its efficiency and long life,
I just leave the light permanently on. I am enjoying greater
convenience, but I don’t know if I am saving any energy.
If the average consumer’s monthly lightning budget is fixed, they
might compensate for the higher efficiency and lifespan of CFLs by
increasing their lightning usage to completely offset any energy
reduction.
This would be especially true if consumers are
forced to switch to CFLs by legislators rather than a desire to save
energy costs.
Much as auto safety regulations can lead to
reckless behavior, forcing consumers to switch to more efficient lights might actually increase their energy usage.
(Crossposted)
I have a business plan for a short-term profit:
- Invent an improved version of a popular commodity product and protect it with patents
- Lobby politicians to ban the cheap commodity version in the name of environmentalism
- Force consumers to upgrade to your exclusive product
- Profit!
Dear Ron Paul Supporter,
Do you honestly believe that your candidate
has a chance in hell of winning the primaries, much less the general elections?
I could cite results from every
reputable polling organization that show Ron Paul with less than 3% of the vote,
but I have a feeling that you will find some reason for their bias, and point
to the online polls that Ron Paul forums enthusiastically and systematically
flood as evidence of his imminent triumph. Dr Paul
himself has repeatedly stated that his campaign is about the message - a
message that most news commentators cannot understand, much less inform the
public about. Online communities make for good news quips, but the
"archaic" gold standard, or the question of whether Ron Paul
is an isolationist is far beyond what news commentators can be expected to
understand.
Despite this, it is undeniable that
the success of Ron
Paul's campaign has been a
surprise to just about everyone, and tapped into some hidden resource that few
suspected of existing. Perhaps it really is the power of the Internet,
coupled with public discontent with the presidential administration and
congressional incompetence. Perhaps people are really uniting around a
leader who offers radical new ideas rather than yet another personality
cult. Even if his current support base is just a fraction of what is to
come, does it really amount to anything?
When the election is over a little
less than a year from now, will any of it matter? Ron Paul
will probably face defeat in the first few primaries, and if he chooses to run
on the Libertarian ticket, he will get the usual 1-3% of the vote. What
will all the millions he raised and all the hours his volunteers spent mean
then? Even if by some miracle, he were to win, it would be of little
practical consequence. Like all politicians, presidents wield their power
by cutting deals and compromising left and right. Without willingness to
compromise on all his principles, President Paul
will be lucky if he is not impeached in the first week.
I am not saying that Ron Paul
is the wrong candidate to support. I am questioning the premise that
radical political ideologies can or should be advocated through political
campaigns. This fact has been aptly demonstrated by the pathetic failure of the Libertarian Party over the last 30+ years. The Left has been much better at recognizing
the failure of explicitly Marxist political movements early in the 20th
century, and successfully shifted the focus of American politics by
establishing a firm foundation in academia and then infiltrating both major
parties.
Whatever your particular political
philosophy, it is not even that likely that Ron Paul
is a great match for it. Whether it is his anti-immigration views, his
promise of saving social security, his blame-America foreign policy, his
borderline theocratic positions, or his support for the state as such, he is
unlikely to be a perfect fit for anyone. Much of his success is in fact
due to moderating or hiding the most radical aspects of his libertarianism, such
as masking his support for free trade by his opposition to free-trade
agreements, or his scapegoating of "illegal aliens seeking the fruits of your
labor" as part of his plan to save Social Security.
An educational movement does not
need to hide its radical views. Sure,
you might not raise five or six million dollars in a day, but the resources you
do have will be spent on spreading ideas, rather than a name and a number in
the polls. Even an extra million votes
is not going to make a bit of difference in the general election, but a
thousand more students motivated to spread rational ideas on liberty can change
the world.
I am not telling you to remove that Ron Paul
bumper sticker. Just recognize the inherent
limitations of radical political candidates in a two party democracy, and
consider supporting educational organizations that will never have to compromise
or hide their principles in order to spread their message.
[Follow up post.]
The next time you hear someone going on about the "right to
vote," remind them than voting is not a right - it's a coercive power wielded by
the voting minority over a society. Rights
denote the extent of action men may take without initiating force against
others. Voting is force, the power to compel others at the point of a gun. Media campaigns that attempt to "rock the
vote," are advocating putting guns in the hands of more people, usually those
least motivated to make informed decisions about whom their ballots target. The ultimate purpose of the democratic process is to redistribute the moral responsibility of the group with the most guns to the entire electorate.
Most economists agree that from a cost-benefit perspective,
the cost of voting far outweighs any material benefit. For example, in a
presidential election, your vote is one out of 120+ million. Your chance of
casting a tie-breaking vote is infinitesimally small, so small that
you could
win million-dollar lottery jackpots thousands of times before casting a
tie-breaker. This is especially true in states dominated by a single party,
such as Texas, New York, or California. Even in the 2000 Presidential election,
your Florida vote would only have changed Bush's 537 vote margin to 536 or 538. Politicians do care about their margin of
victory, but from the perspective of the individual deciding how to best invest
his limited resources, his impact is so infinitesimal that it does not have any
practical value.
Furthermore, even if your candidate does win, all you "win" is a bag of mixed promises
which are not always likely to be kept, and even less likely to be actually
achieved. In the 2006 general elections, the Democrats were sworn into power
due to public discontent with Bush's policy in Iraq. Despite Democratic
promises and their congressional majority, they have not enacted any of their
promises. Whatever the reason, it is clear that electoral victory alone cannot
guarantee the achievement of campaign promises, and certainly not from their
power as individual politicians. Even the president has relatively limited
power in a democratic system.
Some might argue that if everyone else evaluated voting in this manner, things
might be different. But the fact is that
people do continue to vote by the tens of millions.
None of this is to say that electoral victories are meaningless
or inconsequential, or that political activism is not important or practical. Interventionist governments have a tremendous
impact on our lives, and thanks to technologies like the Internet, we have more
opportunities than ever to engage in intellectual and political activism. However, of all the means we have to
influence the political process, voting is one of the least effective, second perhaps,
to swearing under your breath as you give away half your income to the state.
As a form of political activism, voting is not only ineffective,
but is in fact a form of apathy. The value of any single vote is so
infinitesimal that the sense of self-importance and influence in the political
process that people get from participating in the electoral process is entirely
illusory. Yet the illusion of participation excuses many people from taking
real steps to influence policy by arguing for their ideas, writing letters, or supporting
advocacy organizations. The people who really
make a difference are those who take far more intellectually challenging and
uncertain measures than punching one of two buttons - they attempt to change
the intellectual and philosophical climate of their society.
If you vote because of the psychological benefit it
provides, such as a feeling of having met one's patriotic duty, there is
nothing I can say to you. But if you
actually want to influence the political state of the country (and given that
sad state, that is more crucial now than ever) it would be far more productive
of your time to donate the resources you would have spent researching
candidates, going to the polls, and even donating to candidates in more
efficient ways.
Washington lobbyists are very expensive, yet they can be
more influential than the votes of millions of individuals, and they will argue
for your cause regardless of which candidate is victorious. Ultimately however, the fate of any society
is shaped by the fundamental ideas of its intellectuals. All the votes in the world are meaningless
next to the fundamental ideas about society that shape policymakers actions.
If you are concerned with the threat of theocracy, your
enemy is not George W. Bush, but the aspiring theocrats teaching the next
generation of policymakers, cashing in on the void left by the destruction of
reason and science by modern philosophy.
If you are concerned with the threat of the welfare state, your enemy is
not Ted Kennedy, but the intellectuals teaching the next generation of leaders
that they do not have a right to their own life.
Politicians are rarely capable of coming up with original
ideas - they depend on the intellectual elite of a society for their
initiatives. As intellectual elite changes,
so do the ideas they feed to politicians.
The Israeli government is trying to lure back some of the hundreds of thousands of Israeli expatriates with “tax breaks, employment and small business loans.” The campaign is set to cost $36 million a year. Israeli
politicians must realize on some level that their best and brightest
citizens are leaving in growing numbers because their grant experiment in utopian socialism has turned out to be a total failure. What
they failed to consider however, is that to the extent that the
campaign is successful, it is will bring back the wrong kind of people:
those who value a short-term bribe over freedom and entrepreneurship
unhindered by the interventionist state.
Have you seen the AARP’s latest ad campaign?
It shows a series of children who urge us to take action on the “five
core needs” of AARP: “the need for health; the need for financial
security; the need to contribute or give back to society; the need for
community and to stay connected to family, friends and social networks;
and the need to play and enjoy life.” The children imply that the
policies advocated by the AARP will benefit future generations. The
reality is that the policies the AARP advocates are not just wrong, but
are viciously dishonest in harming the very people they claim to
champion.
The AARP started out as a program for selling insurance
to retirees. After the government investigated its non-profit status in
the 1990’s, it changed its focus to political advocacy. Rather than
sell insurance to seniors, it now advocates policies which force everyone else to
pay for their member’s expenses. Our government will not allow AARP to
sell products to members and still call itself non-profit, but it has
no problem with AARP’s advocacy of policies which provide “benefits”
directly to AARP’s members. These “benefits” can only come at the
expense of working people and claims on the future income of children –
the very groups the current ad campaign claims to champion.
Contrary to the claims of better ties between older people and the
community, the welfare policies the AARP advocates create division and
bitterness. Working young people hold no delusions about the “benefits”
that programs like Social Security and Medicare promise. Even if these ponzi schemes pay out, they return a pittance compared
to voluntary investments and waste a huge portion of the confiscated
funds on bureaucratic waste and unrelated projects.
The AARP’s lobbyists know that our welfare system will go bankrupt
as baby boomers retire – but they staunchly oppose efforts to reform
it. They want to milk as much as possible from working people for as
long as possible – regardless of the hostility and division it will
create when today’s children and young adults are forced to pay for the
living and healthcare expenses of a growing retired population.
The alienation experienced by many retired people is a real problem
– but its cause is the very policies that organizations like the AARP
advocate. Instead of fostering responsible investing, financial
independence, long-term planning, and mutual support of family members,
the welfare state replaces individual decision making with central
planning, family members with an intrusive nanny state, and individual
responsibility with faith in the omnipotent state to provide for all
needs.
The policies the AARP advocates to solve the “needs” of its members
are a claim of ownership over the lives of the very people its
commercials claim to champion. Contrast the socialist policies pushed by the AARP to the capitalist model in the ads of financial
companies: instead of stealing your future from working people, they offer to help you turn the fruit of your own productivity into wealth.
[Crossposted:] Watching a segment about the U.S. Coast Guard today, I heard an
agent describe the immigrant smugglers who bring people from Cube as
“ruthless” men who “care nothing for human life.” That may well be true. Yet
moments before saying those words, the agent intercepted a Cuban family
moments before their attempt to seek a life of freedom would have been
successful. They likely paid their life savings to the smuggler – and will probably be sent back to prison – or worse.
The smugglers risk their life to bring desperate people to a free society. The
border agents casually condemn people to a life of persecution and
oppression and force them to undergo a perilous and financially ruinous
journey. If it were not for their persecution, the trip from Cuba, Mexico, and China would certainly be far safer and cheaper for the immigrants. Yet the border agents are supposed to be celebrated as the moral heroes? The agents are well aware
of their atrocities: "They hear the stories. But they need work. They
need to eat. They're desperate." Why isn't everyone else?
(By the way, as much as their are vilified, the smugglers have a
strong incentive to keep their cargo alive and out of jail - so much
that they provide free legal aid if they are caught. If they sometimes get too aggressive about making a profit, the migrants have only an uncaring and hostile immigration policy to blame.)
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