Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Best of Liberty Corner

UPDATED THROUGH 04/24/08

The very best of Liberty Corner:

Atheism, Religion, and Science
Atheism, Religion, and Science Redux
Constitution, A New (Introduction)
Constitution, A New (Text)
Crime, Explained
Defense Spending, How to View
Economics, Commandments of
Economics, More Commandments of
Extreme Libertarianism, A Critique of
Immigration, A Roundup
Income Inequality, Debunking More Myths of
In Search of Consistency
Is There Such a Thing as Society?
Laffer Curve (The), "Fiscal Responsibility," and Economic Growth
Liberty, The Meaning of
Morality and Consequentialism
Modern Presidency, The: A Tour of American History
Objectivism: Tautologies in Search of Reality
Pascal's Wager, Morality, and the State
Political Compass: Locating the United States
Political Correctness (II)
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice (Cosmic Justice)
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part I
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part II
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part III
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part IV
Practical Libertarianism: A Summary
Practical Libertarianism: The Destruction of Wealth and Income by the State
Preemption and the Constitution, Final(?) Words about
Preemption and the Constitution, More Final(?) Words about
Preemptive War, LIbertarianism and: Part I
Preemptive War, Libertarianism and: Part II
Resources
Science, Axioms, and Economics
Society, Is There Such a Thing as?
Things to Come
Warmism: The Myth of Anthropogenic Global Warming

Here is a complete list of favorites. The links are in chronological order under these headings:
Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech
Time to Regulate the Blogosphere?
Aargh, I Hate Being Right All the Time
A Different Perspective on the Ward Churchill Affair
Free Speech and Limited Government
What Is the Point of Academic Freedom?
How to Deal with Left-Wing Academic Blather
Here We Go Again
It's Not Anti-Intellectualism, Stupid
The Case Against Campus Speech Codes
Treasonous Speech?
A Politically Incorrect Democrat
Lefty Profs
Apropos Academic Freedom and Western Values
Why So Few Free-Market Economists?
The Shoe Is on the Other Foot
Affirmative Action for Conservatives and Libertarians?
Academic Bias
A First Amendment Right to Anonymity?
Intellectuals and Capitalism

Affirmative Action, Race, and Immigration
Diversity
Putting Hate Crimes in Perspective
The Cost of Affirmative Action
Why Not Just Use SAT Scores?
The Face of America
Is There Such a Thing as Legal Discrimination?
More on the Legality of Discrimination
Epstein's Freedom
Epstein's Freedom, Revisited
Race and Acceptance
Affirmative Action: A Modest Proposal
Race, Intelligence, and Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action: Two Views from the Academy
Lamm (Soft of) Lays It on the Line
Affirmative Action, One More Time
A Contrarian View of Segregation
Much Food for Thought
A Law Professor to Admire
Guilty Until Proven Innocent
After the Bell Curve
A Footnote . . .
Schelling and Segregation
A Black Bigot Speaks
More Anti-Black Bigotry from the Left
Societal Suicide
A "Taste" for Segregation
Don't Tar My Nationalism with the Racism Brush
Black Terrorists and "White Flight"
An Immigration Roundup (a collection of 13 posts dated March 29 through September 22, 2006)
Illogic from the Pro-Immigration Camp
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part IV (with links to earlier parts of the series)
Timely Material
Affirmative Action: Two Views from the Academy, Revisited
It's the Little Things That Count
A Footnote to a Footnote
Let Me Be Perfectly Clear...
Affirmative Action for Conservatives and Libertarians?
Racism among the Deracinated
"The War": A Second Reaction
The "Southern Strategy"
Conspicuous Consumption and Race
An Honest Woman Speaks Out

The Constitution: Original Meaning, Subversion, and Remedies
The Erosion of the Constitutional Contract
Unintended Irony from a Few Framers
A Timeless Indictment
When Must the Executive Enforce the Law?
More on the Debate about Judicial Supremacy
A Very Politically Incorrect Labor Day Post
Another Look at Judicial Supremacy
Freedom of Contract and the Rise of Judicial Tyranny
Judicial Interpretation
Social Security Is Unconstitutional
The Case for Devolved Government
Delicious Thoughts about Federalism
Is Nullification the Answer to Judicial Supremacy?
The Alternative to Nullification
No Way Out?
A New Constitution
Can the Town Take Your Home?
Unlimited Government
The Constitution in Exile
The Legitimacy of the Constitution
The Wrong Case for Judicial Review
Raich and the Rule of Law
The Last Straw?
An Agenda for the Supreme Court
Judge Roberts and the Defense of America
What Is the Living Constitution?
Senator Specter Abuses the Constitution
Liberals and the Rule of Law
A Challenge to My Senators
The Supreme Court: Our Last, Best Hope for a Semblance of Liberty
The FEC and Bloggers: Stay Tuned
The Legality of Teaching Intelligent Design
The Legality of Teaching Intelligent Design: Part II
Tom DeLay and James Madison
The Case of the (Happily) Missing Supreme Court Nominee(s)
Kelo, Federalism, and Libertarianism
States' Rights and Skunks
A Useful Precedent
Speaking of States' Rights and Judge McConnell
"Equal Protection" and Homosexual Marriage
Law, Liberty, and Abortion
An Answer to Judicial Supremacy?
Oh, *That* Privacy Right
Don't Just Take My Word for It
A New Constitution, Revised
The Original Meaning of the Ninth Amendment
Substantive Due Process, Liberty of Contract, and States' "Police Power"
Privacy, Autonomy, and Responsibility
Amend the Constitution or Amend the Supreme Court?
The Solomon Amendment
Great Minds and the Constitution
The Constitution and Warrantless "Eavesdropping"
NSA "Eavesdropping": The Last Word (from Me)
Final (?) Words about Preemption and the Constitution
Recommended Reading about NSA's Surveillance Program
More Final (?) Words about Preemption and the Constitution
Liberty and Federalism
A Footnote about "Eavesdropping"
Where's Substantive Due Process When You Need It?
True Federalism
Substantive Due Process Redux?
International Law vs. Homeschooling
Hudson v. Michigan and the Constitution
Those UN Gun Grabbers and the Second Amendment
Certain Unalienable Rights . . .
A New Constitution: Revised Again
Advantage: The Constitution
The Bad News about Wal-Mart's Victory in Maryland
Consent of the Governed
Kelo, Revisited
The Constitution: Who Has the Last Word?
Com-Patriotism and Anti-Patriotic Acts
What Is the American Constitution?
Who Are the Parties to the Constitutional Contract?
What the Fourth of July Means to Me
Blame It on the Commerce Clause
The Slippery Slope of Constitutional Revisionism
The Ruinous Despotism of Democracy
The Bill of Rights and Kelo v. City of New London
A First Amendment Right to Anonymity?
How to Think about Secession
The Real Constitution: I
Religious Discrimination or Free Exercise?
In Search of Consistency
The "Thin" Constitution

Economics: Principles and Issues
On the Other Hand, Let's Kill All the Economists
Why It Makes Sense to Privatize Social Security
P.S. on Privatizing Social Security
Labor Unions
Why Outsourcing Is Good: A Simple Lesson for Liberal Yuppies
Fear of the Free Market -- Part I
Fear of the Free Market -- Part II
Fear of the Free Market -- Part III
Curing Debt Hysteria in One Easy Lesson
Trade Deficit Hysteria
Social Injustice
On the One Hand...
The Sentinel: A Tragic Parable of Economic Reality
Let's Just Say He's a Bit Evasive
Why We Deserve What We Earn
Who Decides Who's Deserving?
The Rationality Fallacy
Brains Sans Borders
The Main Causes of Prosperity
A Good Reason to Favor the "Ownership Society"
Why Class Warfare Is Bad for Everyone
Fighting Myths with Facts
That Mythical, Magical Social Security Trust Fund
The Consequences of Drug Reimportation
Straight Thinking about Business Cycles
Debunking More Myths of Income Inequality
Free-Market Healthcare
The Real Social Security Issue
Social Security, Myth and Reality
Nonsense and Sense about Social Security
More about Social Security
A Century of Progress?
Social Security Privatization and the Stock Market
Understanding Economic Growth
The Problem with Voluntary Personal Accounts
Oh, That Mythical Trust Fund!
The Real Meaning of the National Debt
Socialist Calculation and the Turing Test
Social Security: The Permanent Solution
The Population Mystery
The Bankruptcy Bill in Perspective
The Social Welfare Function
Funding the Welfare State
Apropos Bankruptcy Reform
A Mathematician's Insight
Redefining Altruism
Social Security Transition Costs, in a Nutshell
Libertarian Paternalism
Traffic-Congestion Hysteria
The Economy Works, in Spite of Zany Economists
A Libertarian Paternalist's Dream World
What Economics Isn't
Talk Is Cheap
Giving Back to the Community
Computer Technology Will Replace Concrete
The Short Answer to Libertarian Paternalism
Second-Guessing, Paternalism, Parentalism, and Choice
Too "Right" for a Leftist
A Non-Paradox for Libertarians
Another Thought about Libertarian Paternalism
Judge Roberts and Women
Katrina's Aftermath: Who's to Blame?
"The Private Sector Isn't Perfect"
A Modest Proposal for Disaster Preparedness
No Mention of Opportunity Costs
Whose Incompetence Do You Trust?
Enough of Amateur Critics
Debt Hysteria, Revisited
Why Government Spending Is Inherently Inflationary
Thoughts That Liberals Should Be Thinking
More Thoughts That Liberals Should Be Thinking
The Economics of Corporate Fitness Programs
Understanding Outsourcing
Much Ado about Donning
Joe Stiglitz, Ig-Nobelist
How to End the Postal Monopoly
Red vs. Blue Charity
Taxes, Charitable Giving, and Republicanism
Where's the Outrage?
A Simple Fallacy
Ten Commandments of Economics
Professor Buchanan Makes a Slight Mistake
A Little Putdown of Politically Correct Shopping
More Commandments of Economics
Three Truths for Central Planners
Bits of Economic Wisdom
Productivity Growth and Tax Cuts
Zero-Sum Thinking
Capitalism, Liberty, and Christianity
Risk and Regulation
Back-Door Paternalism
Wal-Mart and Jobs
Economist, Heal Thyself
Liberty, General Welfare, and the State
Legalism vs. Liberty
Time on the Cross, Re-revisited
Do Future Generations Pay for Deficits?
Another Voice Against the New Paternalism
Starving the Beast, Updated
Monopoly and the General Welfare
On Income Inequality
Trade, Government Spending, and Economic Growth
Sprawl
There's No Such Thing as a Business Tax
The Causes of Economic Growth
Charles Murray's Grand Plan
Slippery Paternalists
Hillary's Latest Brainstorm
The Romney Plan
The Importance of Deficits
It's the Spending, Stupid!
There's More to Income than Money
The Romney Plan: Part II
Science, Axioms, and Economics
Krugman and Monopoly
Republicanism, Economic Freedom, and Charitable Giving
A Market Solution to the Social Security Mess?
How the Great Depression Ended
Mathematical Economics
The Last(?) Word about Income Inequality
Why "Net Neutrality" Is a Bad Idea
The Feds and "Libertarian Paternalism"
The Anti-Phillips Curve
Democrats: The Anti-People People
You Bet Your Life
Status, Spite, Envy, and Income Redistribution
Economics: The Dismal (Non) Science
A Further Note about "Libertarian" Paternalism
Median Household Income and Bad Government
The Dow and the Stock Market
Apropos Paternalism
Where's My Nobel?
Why So Few Free-Market Economists?
An Immigration Roundup (a collection of 13 posts dated March 29 through September 22, 2006)
Toward a Capital Theory of Value
Things to Come
Illogic from the Pro-Immigration Camp
Prof. Mankiw's "D"
The (Relatively) Rich Get Richer
Students, Beware!
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences for 2007
The Laffer Curve, "Fiscal Responsibility," and Economic Growth
The Way to Look at Inflation
Whither the Stock Market?
How to Manage
Is Inflation Inevitable?
Stability Isn't Everything
How Attractive Is Your State?
Income and Diminishing Marginal Utility
What Happened to Personal Responsibility?
Politicizing Economic Growth

Humor, Satire, and Wry Commentary
Political Parlance
Some Management Tips
Ten-Plus Commandments of Liberalism, er, Progressivism
To Pay or Not to Pay
The Ghost of Impeachments Past Presents "The Trials of William Jefferson Whatsit"
Getting It Perfect
His Life As a Victim
Psychoanalyzing Peace Protestors
Bah, Humbug!
Who Looks Like a Republican?
PC Madness
Why Not Marry Your Pet?
The Seven Faces of Blogging
DWI
An Insensitive Proposal, or Two
How "24" Should Have Ended
Life's Lessons
Wordplay
Trans-Gendered Names
More Names
The U.S. Postal "Service": Inaction
Punctuation
Stuff White (Liberal Yuppie) People Like
What, No Cattle Futures?

Infamous Thinkers: Cass Sunstein and Others of His Ilk
Sunstein at the Volokh Conspiracy
More from Sunstein
Call Me a Constitutional Lawyer
(Sen)seless Economics
Cass Sunstein's Truly Dangerous Mind
An (Imaginary) Interview with Cass Sunstein
Krugman and DeLong, a Prevaricating Pair
Aha!
The Social(ist) Contract
Refuting Rousseau and His Progeny
Professor Krugman Flunks Economics
Paul Krugman, an Inspiration to Us All
That's It, Exactly
Peter Singer's Fallacy
Killing Free Speech in Order to Save It
Slippery Sunstein
I Dare Call It Treason
Brian Leiter Is an Idiot
Nicholas Kristof Is an Idiot
Through the Looking Glass with Leiter
The Illogical Left, via Leiter
An Open Letter to Michael Moore
Like a Fish in Water
Joe Stiglitz, Ig-Nobelist
Peter Singer's Agenda
A Dissonant Vision
Brian Leiter, Exposed
Time on the Cross, Re-revisited
Anarch0-Authoritarianism
Sunstein and Executive Power
Two Heroes and a Blackguard
Krugman and Monopoly
Nock Reconsidered
Conspiracy Theorists' Cousins
Singer Said It
Religion as Beneficial Evolutionary Adaptation
Sobran's Intellectual Decline and Fall
Joseph Sobran: Final Verdict

IQ, Politics, and Personality
IQ and Personality
IQ and Politics
The Right Is Smarter Than the Left
Psychological Profiling
The Psychology of Extremism
Corroboration of a Sort
Drinking and Voting

Justice
I'll Never Understand the Insanity Defense
Does Capital Punishment Deter Homicide?
No One Should Be above the Law -- Not Even a Reporter
Libertarian Twaddle about the Death Penalty
A Crime Is a Crime
Crime and Punishment
Abortion and Crime
Alter's Ego
Saving the Innocent?
Saving the Innocent?: Part II
Guilty Until Proven Innocent
Further Erosion of the Employment Relationship
A Useful Precedent
Oh, *That* Privacy Right
More on Abortion and Crime
More Punishment Means Less Crime
More About Crime and Punishment
More Punishment Means Less Crime: A Footnote
Clear Thinking about the Death Penalty
Office Romance
Something to Ponder
Let the Punishment Fit the Crime
Cell Phones and Driving: Liberty vs. Life
Moussaoui and "White Guilt"
A Precedent for the Demise of the Insanity Defense?
Another Argument for the Death Penalty
Less Punishment Means More Crime
The "Jewell Effect" and Larry Craig
Crime, Explained
Why Legal Ethics Is an Oxymoron (II)
9/11 Plotters and the Death Penalty

Libertarianism and Other Political Philosophies
First Principles
The Inevitability of the Communitarian State, or, What's a Libertarian to Do?
The Roots of Statism in the United States
Libertarian-Conservatives Are from the Earth, Liberals Are from the Moon
The Worriers
More about the Worrying Classes
Modern Utilitarianism
First Principles, for the Second Time
Things a Libertarian Can Believe In
More Things a Libertarian Can Believe In
A Good Summing Up of Libertarianism
Why I Am Not a Conservative
Libertarian Conservative or Conservative Libertarian?
The Party of the "Little People"
Why I'm Not a Democrat or a Liberal
The Trouble with Libertarianism?
More Trouble with Libertarianism
What Kind of Libertarian Am I?
Does the Libertarian-Conservative Fusion Have a Future?
Understanding the Essence of Modern Libertarianism
Distilling the Essence of Modern Libertarianism
A Word or Two for Ideological Purists
Too Pure for My Taste
The Origin of Rights
Left, Right, What's the Difference?
The Origin of Rights and the Essence of Modern Libertarianism
Libertarians and Individualism
Hobbesian Libertarianism
The Liberal Mindset
Flooding the Moral Low Ground
Libertarian Name-Calling
The Greatest Good of the Greatest Number?
Libertarianism Is Evil...
What's a Libertarian to Do?
The State of Nature
Libertarianism and Conservatism
Rights and Obligations
Judeo-Christian Values and Liberty
Treasonous Blogging?
More about the Origin of Rights
Liberty, Democrarcy, and Voting Rights
Absolutism
More about Democracy and Liberty
Yet Another Look at Democracy
Redefining Altruism
A Footnote to My Theory of Rights
Where Conservatism and (Sensible) Libertarianism Come Together
Getting Neolibertarianism Wrong
Fundamentalist Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists, and Self-Defense
Conservatism, Libertarianism, and Public Morality
Another Thought about Anarchy
Where Do You Draw the Line?
The State, a Creature of Love or Fear?
Anarcho-Capitalism vs. the State
Rights and the State
Free Markets, Free People, and Utter Disgust with Government
The Essential Case for Consequentialist Libertarianism
The Principle of Actionable Harm
Three Axioms
Case Dismissed
Moral Issues
A Paradox for Libertarians
Conservatism, Libertarianism, Socialism, and Democracy
The Consequences and Causes of Abstinence
Shall We All Hang Separately?
Foxhole Rats
A Non-Paradox for Libertarians
Another Thought about Libertarian Paternalism
Judge Roberts and Women
Foxhole Rats, Redux
What Is the Living Constitution?
Religion and Liberty
A Values-Free Government?
Science, Evolution, Religion, and Liberty
Katrina's Aftermath: Who's to Blame?
"The Private Sector Isn't Perfect"
Common Ground for Conservatives and Libertarians?
Know Thine Enemy
Whose Incompetence Do You Trust?
Enough of Amateur Critics
Enough of Altruism
The Supreme Court: Our Last, Best Hope for a Semblance of Liberty
Thoughts That Liberals Should Be Thinking
More Thoughts That Liberals Should Be Thinking
Liberty or Self-Indulgence?
Barking Up the Wrong Libertarian
Kelo, Federalism, and Libertarianism
States' Rights and Skunks
The Corporation and The State
Killing Conservatism in Order to Save It
Speaking of States' Rights and Judge McConnell
Conservatism and Capitalism
Some Thoughts about Liberty
Libertarianism and Preemptive War: Part II
A False Dichotomy
The Media's Measurable Bias
Anarchy: An Empty Concept
The Pathology of Academic Leftism
Ethics and the Socialist Agenda
Capitalism, Liberty, and Christianity
The Paradox of Libertarianism
Privacy, Security, and Electronic Surveillance
A Dissonant Vision
Privacy: Variations on the Theme of Liberty
Back-Door Paternalism
The Fatal Naïveté of Anarcho-Libertarianism
Anarcho-Libertarian "Stretching"
Liberty and "Fairness"
Liberty, General Welfare, and the State
Legalism vs. Liberty
Government's Role in Social Decline
Anarcho-Authoritarianism
QandO Saved Me the Trouble
Another Voice Against the New Paternalism
Something to Ponder
Anti-Western Values in the West
Liberty as a Social Compact
Thoughts for the Day
This Is Objectivism?
K-K-Katrina
Social Norms and Liberty
Whiners -- Left and Libertarian
A Footnote about Liberty and the Social Compact
The Adolescent Rebellion Syndrome
Liberty and Federalism
Calling a Nazi a Nazi
A Political Compass
Finding Liberty
More Communitarians
Charles Murray's Grand Plan
Slippery Paternalists
Cell Phones and Driving: Liberty vs. Life
Nock Reconsidered
The Harm Principle
Footnotes to "The Harm Principle"
The Harm Principle, Again
Actionable Harm and the Role of the State
Rights and Cosmic Justice
A Flawed Defense of Anarcho-Capitalism
Thoughts for Father's Day
The Prospects for Liberty and Happiness
Mises on Liberty and the State
Post-Americans and Their Progeny
Varieties of Libertarianism
Liberty, Human Nature, and the State
What to Do about Liberal Error
Idiotarian Libertarians and the Non-Aggression Principle
Consent of the Governed
An Ideal World
Diagnosing the Left
Kelo, Revisited
Slopes, Ratchets, and the Death Spiral of Liberty
Wisdom from Roger Scruton
Com-Patriotism and Anti-Patriotic Acts
Two Views of Liberty
If Liberty Depends on Democracy, We're Doomed to Slavery
The Feds and "Libertarian Paternalism"
What Is the American Constitution?
Utopian Schemes
Is Exit Unrealistic?
The Source of Rights
A Trichotomy of American Conservatism
The Nexus of Conservatism and Libertarianism
A Further Note about "Libertarian" Paternalism
Postive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part I
Apropos Paternalism
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part II
Liberal Claptrap
Consent of the Governed, Revisited
Mindsets
The Case against Genetic Engineering
Metaethical Moral Relativism: Is It Valid?
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part III
A Critique of Extreme Libertarianism
Libertarian Whining about Cell Phones and Driving
The Golden Rule, for Libertarians
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part IV (with links to earlier parts)
The Upside-Down World of Liberalism
Democracy and the Irrational Voter
Anarchistic Balderdash
Corroboration of a Sort
Social Norms, State Action, and Liberty
"Liberalism," as Seen by Liberals
Students, Beware!
The Shoe Is on the Other Foot
Compare and Contrast
Irrationality, Suboptimality, and Voting
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
The Political Case for Traditional Morality
Compare and Contrast, Again
FDR and Fascism
The Ruinous Despotism of Democracy
Pascal's Wager, Morality, and the State
Anarchy, Minarchy, and Liberty
Psychology and Libertarianism
Parents and the State
The Fallacy of Particularism
A Political Compass: Locating the United States
The Fear of Consequentialism
A First Amendment Right to Anonymity?
Paleocons and the Legacy of Sam Francis
The Season of Our Discontent
The Economic Divide on the Right: Distributists vs. Capitalists
Rights and Liberty
An Exercise in Futility
Optimality, Liberty, and the Golden Rule
The F Scale, Revisited
The Future of Tradition
Cell Phones and Driving, Once More
Political Correctness
The People's Romance
Fascism
On Prejudice
It Depends on Where You Stand
Political Correctness (II)
In Search of Consistency
Objectivism: Tautologies in Search of Reality
"Isms"
What Happened to Personal Responsibility?
Morality and Consequentialism
Missing the Point
Why I Am/Am Not a Liberal

Movies, Music, and Musicians
Great Voices of the Past
Tito Schipa
…"The 325 Greatest Movies of All Time"…
Speaking of Modern Art
Time Out for Tenors
Making Sense about Classical Music
An Addendum about Classical Music
Time Out for Beauty
Time Out for Music
A Precious Musical Mystery
My Views on Classical Music, Vindicated
But It's Not Music
On Seeing Dumbo Again
A Hollywood Circle
A Quick Note about Music
Movies
Like a Fish in Water
Rich October Skies
Christmas Movies
All That Jazz
Pride and Prejudice on Film
The Movies: (Not) Better Than Ever
September Songs
"The War": An Initial Reaction
"The War": A Second Reaction
"The War": A Third Reaction
"The War": Final Grade
At the Movies: The Best and Worst Years
My Year at the Movies (2007)

Nature, Nostalgia, Baseball, and Baseball Nostalgia
The Good Old Days
Cars I Have Owned
Speaking of V-8s...
What's a "Doozy"?
Time Out for Baseball
A Profile of the Past
Reveries
Thinking Back
More Blasts from the Past
As Time Goes By
Thoughts of Winter
Baseball Nostalgia
On a Lighter Note . . . (old comic strips)
The Next Winner of the World Series?
Ghosts of Thanksgivings Past
Mister Hockey
Red-Brick Buildings
Bare Ruined Choirs
My Old Sears Home
How Time Flies
Mortality
The Best Revenge
Baseball Realignment
Home Run Kings
Living in the Past
A Sentimental Journey
Century Plant Blogging
Baseball Managers: A Recyclable Commodity?
The Anti-Hall of Fame and Baseball "Immortals"
Can Money Buy Excellence in Baseball?
The Meaning of the World Series
Deer Blogging
Pennant Winner vs. Best Team
Roofs I Have Lived Under
Roofs I Have Worked Under
Overcoming Adversity
Are the Yankees in Meltdown?
Yankees vs. Red Sox: The End Games
Yankees vs. Red Sox: The End Games (2)
Testing for Steroids
As I Was Saying...
Now, It's Over
Has Baseball Become More Competitive?
The Best and Worst of the American League
Baseball's Losers
Do Better Teams Finish First?
World Series Contestants: Not the Best Teams
A Tale of Three Franchises
Hall of Famers?
Did Roger Do It?

Politics in Practice
Polls, Party Preferences, and Polarization
Starving the Beast
A Bigger Beast
It Is the Economy -- And a Few Other Things
Those Who Can, Do...
The True Cost of Government
The Party of Ideas
The Lesser of Two Evils?
The Tricks Time Plays on Us
It's Worth Saying Again
How to Fight Crime
The Great Divide Is a Great Thing
My Advice to the LP
Let 'Em Secede
The True Cost of Government: An Addendum
Ain't Quasi-Federalism Wonderful?
What Realignment?
An Emerging Left-Right Consensus?
Great Minds Agree, More or Less
Base Closure: A Model for Entitlement Reform?
Rich Voter, Poor Voter, and Academic Liberalism
Tolerance and Poverty
The Threat of Anti-Theocracy
Illusory Progress
Class in America
An Alternative to Death and Taxes
Three More Cheers for the Great Political Divide
Judge Roberts and Women
Katrina's Aftermath: Who's to Blame?
Will Congress Buy It?
A Challenge to My U.S. Representative
A Challenge to My Senators
A Concession, of Sorts
The FEC and Bloggers: Stay Tuned
The UN and the Internet
Torture and Morality
A Little Putdown of Politically Correct Shopping
A 32-Year Error
The Media's Measurable Bias
More "McCarthyism"
Time on the Cross, Re-revisited
Riots, Culture, and the Final Showdown
Government's Role in Social Decline
Starving the Beast, Updated
K-K-Katrina
The Adolescent Rebellion Syndrome
Calling a Nazi a Nazi
The Heart of the Matter
Sprawl
The State of the Union . . .
E Pluribus Unum?
"Dangerous Dan" McCain
Don't Tar My Nationalism with the Racism Brush
Good Advice for the Libertarian Party
In Defense of Ann Coulter
Free Market Environmentalism? Not This Time
Starving the Beast: Readings
Parsing the Vote on the "Flag Burning Amendment"
The First Roosevelt
Slopes, Ratchets, and the Death Spiral of Liberty
The Feds and "Libertarian" Paternalism
An Opportunity for Libertarian Relevance
What Is the American Constitution?
Democrats: The Anti-People People
You Bet Your Life
Status, Spite, Envy, and Income Redistribution
Is Exit Unrealistic?
Don't Get Your Hopes Up
A Further Note about "Libertarian" Paternalism
Throw the Rascals In
The (Relatively) Rich Get Richer
Democracy and the Irrational Voter
What a Fine Quandary This Is -- for the Left
Not Enough Boots: The Why of It
The Rational Voter?
FDR and Fascism
The Ruinous Despotism of Democracy
Rich Voter, Poor Voter: Revisited
Political Calculus
Election 2008: Second Forecast
The "Southern Strategy"
Mike Huckabee and the View from Planet Rockwell
John Warner's Exit Strategy
Election 2008: Third Forecast
Ron Paul Roundup
An FDR Reader
A Superficially Sensible Proposal
An Exercise in Futility
Ron Paul, Continued
The "Southern Strategy": A Postscript
Drinking and Voting
Political Correctness
The People's Romance
Politics and Experience
What, No Cattle Futures?
Politicizing Economic Growth

Presidents and the Presidency
Ranking the Presidents
Rating Books, Movies, and Presidents
Presidential Values
Respect for Presidents
The Young Mr. Lincoln
More Old Presidents
Lincoln, the Poet President
Ages of Presidents
Rating the Presidents, Again
Presidential Legacies
The Modern Presidency: A Tour of American History
An FDR Reader

Public Education and Homeschooling
School Vouchers and Teachers' Unions
Whining about Teachers' Pay: Another Lesson about the Evils of Public Education
I Used to Be Too Smart to Understand This
Support Homeschooling
International Law vs. Homeschooling
GIGO
Religion in Public Schools: The Wrong and Right of It

Science, Pseudo-Science, and Economics as Science
About Economic Forecasting
Is Economics a Science?
Economics as Science
Maybe Economics Is a Science
Hemibel Thinking
Climatology
Physics Envy
Global Warming: Realities and Benefits
Words of Caution for the Cautious
Scientists in a Snit
Another Blow to Climatology?
A Telling Truth
Proof That "Smart" Economists Can Be Stupid
Bad News for Politically Correct Science
Another Blow to Chicken-Little Science
Time to Retire the Fair Model
Same Old Story, Same Old Song and Dance
Bad News for Enviro-nuts
Going Too Far with the First Amendment
Atheism, Religion, and Science
The Limits of Science
Three Perspectives on Life: A Parable
Beware of Irrational Atheism
The Hockey Stick Is Broken
Talk about Brainwaves!
The Creation Model
The Thing about Science
Religion and Personal Responsibility
Free Will: A Proof by Example?
Science in Politics, Politics in Science
Baseball and the Constants of the Universe
A Theory of Everything, Occam's Razor, and Baseball
Global Warming and Life
Evolution and Religion
Speaking of Religion...
Words of Caution for Scientific Dogmatists
Science, Evolution, Religion, and Liberty
Hurricanes and Global Warming
The Legality of Teaching Intelligent Design
Global Warming and the Liberal Agenda
Schelling and Segregation
What's Wrong with Game Theory
Science, Logic, and God
Ockham's Razor in the Age of Statistics
The Pathology of Academic Leftism
Capitalism, Liberty, and Christianity
Is "Nothing" Possible?
A Dissonant Vision
Debunking "Scientific Objectivity"
Back-Door Paternalism
Pseudo-Science in the Service of Political Correctness
Hurricanes and Glaciers
What Is Time?
Weather Wisdom
Remember the "Little Ice Age"?
Science's Anti-Scientific Bent
Flow
Science, Axioms, and Economics
Is Freakonomics Hard Up for Topics?
Today's Climate Report
Global Warming in Perspective
Mathematical Economics
The Purpose-Driven Life
You Bet Your Life
Economics: The Dismal (Non) Science
The Tenth Dimension
The Big Bang and Atheism
More Bad News for Global Warming Zealots
The Universe . . . Four Possibilities
Einstein, Science, and God
Atheism, Religion, and Science Redux
Religion as Beneficial Evolutionary Adaptation
Warming, Anyone?
"Warmism": The Myth of Anthropogenic Global Warming
A Reminder
Sets: A Physical Perspective
Re: Climate "Science"
More Evidence against Anthropogenic Global Warming
Yet More Evidence against Anthropogenic Global Warming
Pascal's Wager, Morality, and the State
Achilles and the Tortoise: A False Paradox
The Ultimatum Game and Genes
A Non-Believer Defends Religion
The Fallacy of Particularism
Evolution as God?
The Greatest Mystery
The F Scale, Revisited

Self-Ownership (abortion, euthanasia, marriage, and other aspects of the human condition)
I Missed This One
I've Changed My Mind
Next Stop, Legal Genocide?
Here's Something All Libertarians Can Agree On
It Can Happen Here: Eugenics, Abortion, Euthanasia, and Mental Screening
Here's What a Real Nazi Does
Here's Another Way to Skin the Cat
Creeping Euthanasia
PETA, NARAL, and Roe v. Wade
The Beginning of the End?
The Marriage Contract
Feminist Balderdash
Taking Exception
Protecting Your Civil Liberties
Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values
The Consequences of Roe v. Wade
The Old Eugenics in a New Guise
The Left, Abortion, and Adolescence
Moral Luck
Consider the Children
Same-Sex Marriage
"Equal Protection" and Homosexual Marriage
Law, Liberty, and Abortion
Equal Time: The Sequel
Marriage and Children
Don't Just Take My Word for It
Oh, *That* Slippery Slope
Metaphor du Jour
Abortion and the Slippery Slope
More on Abortion and Crime
The Cynics Debate While Babies Die
Privacy, Autonomy, and Responsibility
Peter Singer's Agenda
Time on the Cross, Re-revisited
The Slippery Slope in Holland
The End of Women's "Liberation" and the Return of Patriarchy?
The Slippery Slope in England
The Residue of Choice
Parenting, Religion, Culture, and Liberty
Thoughts for Father's Day
The Slippery Slope in New Jersey
An Argument Against Abortion
The Purpose-Driven Life
Singer Said It
The Case against Genetic Engineering
A "Person" or a "Life"?
How Much Jail Time?
Psychology and Libertarianism
Ahead of His Time
A Wrong-Headed Take on Abortion
"Family Values," Liberty, and the State
Is There Such a Thing as Society?

War, Self-Defense, and Civil Liberties
9/11 and Pearl Harbor
A Colloquy on War and Terrorism
Never Relent: A Tale of Libertarian Dissent
Vietnam and Iraq as Metaphors
Getting It Wrong: Civil Libertarians and the War on Terror (A Case Study)
What Anonymous Really Meant to Say
P.S. to a Previous Post
More about War and Civil Liberties
Libertarian Nay-Saying on Foreign and Defense Policy
Wisdom about the War on Terrror
Libertarian Nay-Saying on Foreign and Defense Policy, Revisited
Libertarians and the Common Defense
Libertarianism and Pre-emptive War: Part I
An Aside about Libertarianism and the War
This Is a Test
Right On! For Libertarian Hawks Only
Patriotism and Taxes
Conservative Criticism of the War on Terror
Why Sovereignty?
Understanding Libertarian Hawks
More about Libertarian Hawks and Doves
Defense, Anarcho-Capitalist Style
The Illogic of Knee-Jerk Civil Liberties Advocates
War Can Be the Answer
Getting It All Wrong about the Risk of Terrorism
Conservative Revisionism, Conservative Backlash, or Conservative Righteousness?
Does the Constitution Allow This?
Why We Fight
Getting It Almost Right about Iraq
Philosophical Obtuseness
But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over?
Sorting Out the Libertarian Hawks and Doves
Now, Let's Talk About Something Else
Shall We All Hang Separately?
Foxhole Rats
Foxhole Rats, Redux
Know Thine Enemy
September 11: A Remembrance
September 11: A Postscript for "Peace Lovers"
The UN and the Internet
The Faces of Appeasement
Libertarianism and Preemptive War: Part II
Torture and Morality
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Non-Aggression?
We Have Met the Enemy . . .
Prof. Bainbridge Flunks
My View of Warlordism, Seconded
Whose Liberties Are We Fighting For?
Prof. Bainbridge and the War on Terror
The Constitution and Warrantless "Eavesdropping"
NSA "Eavesdropping": The Last Word (from Me)
Privacy, Security, and Electronic Surveillance
Privacy: Variations on the Theme of Liberty
Words for the Unwise
More "McCarthyism"
More Foxhole Rats
The Fatal Naïveté of Anarcho-Libertarianism
Final (?) Words about Preemption and the Constitution
Anarcho-Libertarian "Stretching"
Recommended Reading about NSA's Surveillance Program
Riots, Culture, and the Final Showdown
A Rant about Torture
More Final (?) Words about Preemption and the Constitution
QandO Saved Me the Trouble
Comrade Gorbachev, Sore Loser
What If We Lose?
A Footnote about "Eavesdropping"
Thomas Woods and War
More than Enough Amateur Critics
Moussaoui and "White Guilt"
Jihad in Canada
In Defense of Ann Coulter
In Which I Reply to the Executive Editor of The New York Times
Post-Americans and Their Progeny
Parsing the Vote on the "Flag Burning Amendment"
"Peace for Our Time"
Anti-Bush or Pro-Treason?
"Proportionate Response" in Perspective
Parsing Peace
Com-Patriotism and Anti-Patriotic Acts
Taking on Torture
Conspiracy Theorists' Cousins
Not Enough Boots
Defense as the Ultimate Social Service
I Have an Idea
September 11: Five Years On
How to View Defense Spending
Reaching the Limit?
The Best Defense . . .
A Skewed Perspective on Terrorism
Terrorists' "Rights" and the Military Commissions Act of 2006
More Stupidity from Cato
The Military Commissions Act of 2006
A Critique of Extreme Libertarianism
And Your Point Is?
Anarchistic Balderdash
Not Enough Boots: The Why of It
Blood for Oil
Katie Couric: Post-American
It *Is* the Oil
"The War": An Initial Reaction
Here We Go Again
"The War": A Second Reaction
"The War": A Third Reaction
"The War": Final Grade
Christmas in Iran: Foreign Affairs According to Planet Rockwell
Torture, Revisited
Waterboarding, Torture, and Defense
9/11 Plotters and the Death Penalty
Posted by Thomas at 4:02 PM

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Cell Phones and Driving, Once More: Addendum

This is an addendum to "Cell Phones and Driving, Once More," at Liberty Corner. In that post, I dispense with the attempt by Saurabh Bhargava and Vikram Pathania (B&P) to disprove the well established causal link between cell-phone use and traffic accidents through a poorly specified time-series analysis. (Their paper is "Driving Under the (Cellular) Influence: The Link Between Cell Phone Use and Vehicle Crashes," AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, Working Paper 07-15, July 2007.) The question I address here is whether it is possible to quantify that link through time-series analysis.

Coming directly to the point, a rigorously quantitative time-series analysis is impossible because (a) some of the relevant variables cannot be quantified -- item by item, along a common dimension -- and (b) others are strongly correlated with each other.

The relevant variables that cannot be quantified properly are improvements in the design of automobiles and the streets and highways on which they travel. There simply have been too many different improvements over too long a period of time, during which other significant (and correlated) changes have taken place. There can be no doubt that the design of automobiles has evolved toward greater safety almost since their initial production in the 1890s. What were flimsy, open-bodied carriages with no protection for their occupants are now reinforced, air-bag and shoulder-harness-equipped juggernauts with safety glass, power brakes, and power steering. In parallel, city streets have evolved from unmarked, uncontrolled, unlighted buggy routes to comparatively broad, well-controlled, well-lighted avenues; and highways have evolved from rutted, dirt wagon tracks to comparatively smooth, wide, controlled-access expressways. Thus the combined, long-term effects of design improvements on traffic safety can be seen in aggregate statistics, to which I will come.

Relevant variables that are strongly correlated with each other are traffic fatalities per 100 million vehicle-miles (the dependent variable in this analysis); the proportion of young adults in the population, as measured by the percentage of persons 15-24 years old; the incidence of alcohol consumption, as measured in gallons of ethanol per year; per capita cell-phone use (in average monthly minutes); and the passage of time (measured in years), which is a proxy for improvements in the safety of motor vehicles. Here are the cross-correlations among those variables for the period 1970-2005 (1970 being the earliest year for which I have data on alcohol consumption):

Fatalities

15-24

Alcohol

Cell phone

Year

Fatalities

-

0.884

0.799

-0.466

-0.954

15-24

0.884

-

0.963

-0.429

-0.918

Alcohol

0.799

0.963

-

-0.500

-0.885

Cell phone

-0.466

-0.429

-0.500

-

0.644

Year

-0.954

-0.918

-0.885

0.644

-


(The endnote to this post gives the sources for the various statistics discussed and presented in this analysis.)

Obviously, given the strong correlations between the percentage of persons aged 15-24, per capita alcohol consumption, and year, only one of those three variables can be accounted for meaningfully in a regression on the dependent variable, fatalities per 100 million vehicle-miles. Year is the obvious choice, in that it accounts not only for the percentage of 15-24 year olds and alcohol consumption, but also for improvements in the design of motor vehicles and highways.

That cell-phone use is negatively correlated with the fatality rate is merely an artifact of the general decline in the fatality rate, which began long before cell phones came into use. Similarly, the negative correlation between the percentage of 15-24 year olds and the volume of cell-phone use is an artifact of the trends prevailing during 1970-2005: a general decline in the percentage of 15-24 year olds (after 1977), accompanied by a swelling tide of cell-phone use.

Regression analysis illustrates these points. First, I used year as the sole explanatory variable. Despite the high R-squared of the regression (0.911), it lacks nuance; graphically, it is a straight line that bisects the meandering, downward curve of fatality rate (see below). Introducing 15-24 year olds and/or alcohol consumption into the regression would yield a better fit, but because those variables are so strongly correlated with time (and one another) their signs are either intuitively incorrect or their coefficients are statistically insignificant. (This is true for15-24 year olds, even when the regression covers 1957-2005, the period for which I have data for the percentage of 15-24 year olds.)

Adding cell-phone use to year results in a better fit (R-squared = 0.948), and the coefficient for cell-phone use squares with the results of valid studies (i.e., it is significant and positive). But because of the exclusion of 15-24 year olds and alcohol consumption, cell-phone use carries too much weight. Here is the equation:
Annual traffic fatalities per 100mn vehicle-miles =
211.255
- (0.105 x year)
+ (0.0022 x number of cell-phone minutes/month/capita in a year)

The t-values of the intercept and coefficients are 21.847, -21.565, and 4.886, respectively (all significant at the 0.99 level). The adjusted R-squared of the equation is 0.945. The mean values of the dependent and explanatory variables are 2.52, 1987.5, and 50.602, respectively. The standard error of the estimate (0.232)/the mean of the dependent variable (2.522) = 0.092. The equation is significant at the 0.99 level.
This equation, when viewed graphically, loses its charm:

It is obvious that the variable for cell-phone use carries too much weight; it over-explains the fatality rate. According to the equation, in 2005, when monthly cell-phone use had ballooned to more than 500 minutes per American, almost 80 percent of traffic fatalities were caused by cell-phone use. That's an absurd result: an artifact of the difficulty of statistically analyzing traffic fatalities when key variables (time, 15-24 year olds, and alcohol consumption) are strongly correlated. I have no doubt that cell-phone use contributes much to traffic accidents and fatalities (see main post), but not as much as the equation suggests.

A more meaningful relationship is found in the strong, positive correlation (0.973) between cell-phone use and the portion of traffic fatalities that the passage of time fails to account for after 1998, that is, where the blue line crosses below the black line in the graph above. (Similarly, the "hump" in the black line that occurs around 1980, and the declivities that precede and follow it, can be attributed to the rise and fall of the population of 15-24 year olds and the consumption of alcohol.)

It's time to pull back and look at the big picture. The rate of traffic fatalities has been declining for a long time, owing mainly to improvements in the design of autos and highways. Thus:

Even though a meaningful time-series analysis of traffic fatalities is impossible, it is possible to interpret broadly the history of traffic fatalities since 1900. The first thing to note, of course, is the strong negative relationship between the fatality rate and time, which is a proxy for the kinds of improvements in automobile and highway safety that I mention earlier. Those improvements obviously predate the ascendancy Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), and the ensuing hysteria about automobile safety. Consumers had, for a long time, been demanding -- and getting -- safer (and more reliable) automobiles. The market works, when you allow it to do its job.

The initial decline in the fatality rate, after 1909, marks the transition from open-sided, unenclosed, buggy-like conveyances to cars with closed sides and metal roofs. Improvements in highway design must have helped, too. Ironically, the drop in the fatality rate became more pronounced after the onset of Prohibition in 1920. It leveled off a bit in the late 1920s, when the "reckless youth of the Jazz Age" came to the fore, equipped with cars and bootleg gin. The rate then spiked at the (official) end of Prohibition (1933), suggesting that that ignoble experiment had some effect on Americans' drinking habits. The slight bulge during World War II reflects the increasing unreliability of autos then in use; relatively few Americans could afford new cars during the Depression, and new cars weren't built during the war. The vigorous descent of the fatality rate from 1945 to the early 1960s captures the effects of (a) the resumption of auto production after WWII and (b) continued improvements in auto and highway design. Later bulges and dips in the fatality rate can be traced to the influence of a growing, then declining, population of young adults and the (presumably related) rise and fall in per capita alcohol consumption. Then, along came the cell-phone eruption, with its tidal wave of inattentive drivers, as impaired as if they had been drinking. (The prospect of encountering a cell-phone-using drunk driver is frightening.)

Here are some observations and predictions:
  • In the 48 years from 1909 to 1957 -- when the Interstate Highway System was in its infancy and eight years before Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed -- the fatality rate dropped from 45.33 to 5.73 fatalities per million vehicle-miles. That's 39.6 fewer fatalities per million vehicle-miles, a drop of 87 percent.
  • In the 48 years from 1957 to 2005 -- the era of federalization -- the fatality rate dropped to 1.45 fatalities per million vehicle-miles. That's 4.28 fewer fatalities per million vehicle-miles, a drop of 73 percent. The smaller absolute and relative decline during these 48 years than in the preceding ones can be explained, in part, by the Peltzman effect (discussed below).
  • Traffic fatalities will continue to drop at about the same rate, whether or not cell-phone bans are widely adopted and enforced. Why? Because technology will save the day. Moore's law (a description of the declining cost of computing technology) will lead to cheap, reliable, sensor-controlled warning, steering, and braking systems.
  • But the already low fatality rate can't go much lower, in absolute terms. It may drop another 70 to 80 percent in the next 48 years, from about 1.5 to about 0.3.
I now come to the Peltzman effect: "the hypothesized tendency of people to react to a safety regulation by increasing other risky behavior, offsetting some or all of the benefit of the regulation." The effect is named after Sam Peltzman, a professor economics at the University of Chicago, who in the 1970s originated the theory of offsetting behavior. Peltzman, writing in 2004, had this to say:
A recent article [here] by Alma Cohen and Linan Einav (2003) on the effects of mandatory seatbelt use laws.... shares with most such studies the crucial bottom line: The real-world effect of these laws on highway mortality is substantially less than it should be if there was no offsetting behavior. [Cohen and Einav] conclude that the increased belt usage occasioned by these laws should, in the absence of any behavioral response, have saved more than three times as many lives as were in fact saved.

Equally important, this kind of "regulatory failure" does not arise because the engineers at NHTSA are wrong abou the effectiveness of the devices they prescribe. Most studies show that, if you are involved in a serious accident, you are much better off buckled than not and with an air bag rather than without. The auto safety liberature attributes the shortfall, either implicitly or explicitly, to an offsetting increase in the likelihood of aserious accident.
Imagine the lives that would have been saved without the "help" of the Naderites of this world.
__________
SOURCES

Fatality Rates. These are from the Statistical Abstract of the United States (online version), Table HS-41, Transportation Indicators for Motor Vehicles and Airlines: 1900 to 2001, and Table 1071, Motor Vehicle Accidents--Number and Deaths: 1980 to 2005.

Population aged 15-24. The numbers of persons aged 15-24 are from the Statistical Abstract, Table HS-3, Population by Age: 1900 to 2002, and Table 7, Resident Population by Age and Sex: 1980 to 2006. The same tables give total population, which I used to compute the percentage of the population aged 15-24.

Alcohol consumption. Estimates of annual, per capita consumption for 1970-2005 are from Per capita ethanol consumption for States, census regions, and the United States, 1970–2005 (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism).

Per capital cell-phone use. I derived monthly cell-phone use, by year, from Trends in Telephone Service, February 2007 (Wireline Competition Bureau, Industry Analysis and Technology Division, Federal Communications Commission). I obtained total monthly cell-phone usage by multiplying the December values for the number of subscribers, given in tables 11-1 and 11-3, by the average number of minutes of use per month, given in table 11-3. The values for monthly minutes begin with 1993, so I estimated the values for 1984-92 by ussing the average of the values for 1993-98. To estimate per capita use, I divided total monthly minutes by the population of the U.S. (see above).
Posted by Thomas at 12:00 PM
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Monday, August 06, 2007

Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part IV

The prologue is here, part I is here, part II is here, and part III is here. In this post -- probably the last in the series -- I argue that cosmic justice (a.k.a. redistributionism) is largely futile. Those who are created less-than-equal -- with respect to the attributes that yield material success -- cannot be made equal by handouts, "head starts," or affirmative action. UPDATE: For a long, well-substantiated survey about the validity of intelligence as a concept, the validity of race as a concept, persistent differences in IQ between races, and related matters, go here.

BACKGROUND

I say in Part II that

[l]iberals' arrogant willingness to play at being gods [i.e., meting out cosmic justice through redistributionism]...rests on these deep[] (and usually unacknowledged) assumptions:
  • One person's well-being can be measured against another person's well-being through interpersonal comparisons of utility.
  • There is a kind of cosmic justice -- or social welfare function -- that is advanced by harming some persons for the benefit of other persons. That is, a benefit cancels a harm -- at least when the benefit and harm are decided by liberals.
  • Taking wealth and income from those who have "too much" does not, on balance, harm those who have "too little" by dampening economic growth and voluntary charity....

(The first and second assumptions enable [liberal redistributionists] to assert that "positive freedom entails negative freedom." To [liberal redistributionists], there is one big "welfare pie" in sky, in which we all somehow share -- despite the obvious fact that A is made worse off when some of his wealth or income is confiscated and given to B.)

...Given the foregoing, liberals see it as necessary and desirable to redistribute wealth and income from persons who have "too much" to persons who have "too little" -- or "too little" of the things that wealth and income can buy. Otherwise, those who have "too little" wealth or income (or the things they can buy) would enjoy only "theoretical" freedom. But the use of the word "theoretical" is a rhetorical trick, a bit of verbal sleight-of-hand. It implies, without proof, that anyone who does not enjoy a certain "minimal" state of health, wealth, etc. -- as "minimal" is defined by a liberal -- simply lacks the wherewithal to strive toward ends that he or she values....

The liberal argument for redistribution, therefore, is really a circular argument intended to justify liberals' particular sense of fitting outcomes.

A "liberal" (or "progressive") would be quick to proclaim that most of the poor are not poor simply for lack of wherewithal (i.e., education and training); rather, they are victims of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or gender. That is, they are "trapped by the system," and it is the duty of liberals to rectify the system's wrongs.

TOUGH QUESTIONS, UNPOPULAR ANSWERS

But are the poor (and other groups favored by liberals) really trapped by the system, that is, by prejudicial discrimination? Or are they generally lacking in wherewithal because they are trapped by their genetic and cultural inheritance? If the latter, as I argue here, the quest for cosmic justice through redistribution is counterproductive, largely futile, and unfair. How so?

The quest for cosmic justice through redistribution is counterproductive for three reasons

  • Redistribution is like giving a person a fish instead of teaching him how to fish; if he becomes dependent on the handout he is less likely to better himself, within the scope of his ability.
  • Because redistribution reduces the rewards that accrue to superior achievement it leads to a lower rate of economic growth -- to the detriment of all, including those for whom liberals' hearts bleed. (For more about the counterproductive effects of redistribution, see this, this, and this.)
  • The lowering of rewards for superior achievement (i.e., taxation) reduces voluntary charity. And yet it is voluntary charity that is most likely to help those in need better themselves. Why? Because voluntary donors, operating through truly non-governmental organizations (i.e., not the Red Cross, United Way, and their ilk) are personally committed to -- and vigilant about -- the effective use of their contributions.

The quest is largely futile because -- contrary to liberal rhetoric and political correctness (which are much the same thing) -- all races, ethnic groups, and genders are not equal when it comes to mental and behavioral inheritance. (Races, ethnic groups, and genders differ broadly in their mental and behavioral traits, but each race, ethnic group, and gender is not And it is one's mental and behavioral inheritance that largely determines one's income. homogeneous, even though liberals like to treat them as if they were.) Redistribution -- in any form (e.g., welfare payments, preferential hiring and promotion of "protected" groups) -- does not offset the "barriers" of race, ethnicity, and gender because, in the main, it cannot do so. Because liberals will not admit the futility of redistribution they are bound to redouble and perpetuate it, as they have done for more than 70 years.

As to the unfairness of redistribution, I think Anthony de Jasay hits it on the head in "Risk, Value, and Externality":

Stripped of rhetoric, an act of social justice (a) deliberately increases the relative share....of the worse-off in total income, and (b) in achieving (a) it redresses part or all of an injustice....This implies that some people being worse off than others is an injustice and that it must be redressed. However, redress can only be effected at the expense of the better-off; but it is not evident that they have committed the injustice in the first place. Consequently, nor is it clear why the better-off should be under an obligation to redress it....

For more about the counterproductive and unfair nature of redistribution, see parts II and III (linked above). My focus, from here on, is the essential futility of the redistrutionist urge.

BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING

Hypotheses

The rest of this post summarizes some of the evidence that is available with respect to relationships between genes, intelligence, and behavior. Much of the evidence is controversial not because it is false but because (a) some of its authors are controversial* and (b) it tells a politically incorrect story:

  • There are heritable differences in behavior and intelligence.
  • Those differences show up in education and income.
  • Those differences run (generally) along the lines of race, ethnicity, and gender.

Those who deny such evidence do so, I believe, because their political leanings preclude objectivity. They are committed to the dispensation of cosmic justice in the service of "equality." They are therefore committed to the enforcement of discrimination in favor of certain classes of persons. Their first, loudest, and everlasting reaction to evidence which indicates that races, ethnic groups, and genders are not created equal when it comes to income-producing aptitudes is to cry "racism" and "sexism."

Disclaimer

Thus this anticipatory disclaimer:

I anticipate -- and reject -- accusations that I am a racist and a misogynist. A racist is "a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others." A misogynist hates women. I hew to neither trait.

I am very far from being a woman-hater; women are (among other things) essential to civil society, without which liberty is impossible (e.g., see this). More generally, I do not believe that a particular race, ethnic group, or gender is a superior one -- in the sense of being entitled to a position of power over other races or ethnic groups or another gender. I do believe, based on evidence of the kind I sample below, that there are very real, measurable, and persistent differences in aptitudes across races, ethnic groups, and genders, and that those differences underlie persistent differences in the average incomes earned by various races, ethnic groups, and genders.

My belief is based not on prejudice: "an adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts." I was once a prejudiced (i.e., ignorant) liberal, a believer in cosmic justice. Facts, experience, and reason have led me away from that benighted persuasion.

The careful reader will observe that the evidence I sample here most decidedly does not support any claim of "white supremacy." White supremacy in the United States involves the presumption that whites are superior to blacks. But there is more to it than that. White supremacy also encompasses anti-Semitism and prejudice against such "non-white" groups as Arabs and Asians. Moreover, white supremacists in the United States usually are anti-Catholic, and they consider persons of Eastern and Southern European origin to be of inferior stock. The IQ measures I cite here decidedly favor Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians over the particular kinds "whites" favored by white supremacists (e.g., the "Herrenvolk").

Intelligence, a Central Concept

I should now elaborate on the concept of intelligence -- in particular, IQ or "general intelligence" -- and its importance in the context of this post. I do not deny the possibility of "multiple intelligences." But, for the purpose of this post, the relevant kind of intelligence is

a property of mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn....

Despite the variety of concepts of intelligence, the most influential approach to understanding intelligence (i.e., with the most supporters and the most published research over the longest period of time) is based on psychometric testing. Such intelligence quotient (IQ) tests include the Stanford-Binet, Raven's Progressive Matrices, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler-Bellevue.

All forms of IQ tests correlate highly with one another. The traditional view is that these tests measure g or "general intelligence factor". g can be derived as the principal factor using the mathematical method of factor analysis.

Why is IQ the relevant kind of intelligence? Arnold Kling explains:

[T]he reality is that the intelligences that feed into IQ are what drive economic success. I have an unwritten essay on the meadow and the food court. It's a way of capturing Gregory Clark's economic history in a metaphor.

In a meadow economy, the human race is a grazing herd. The naturalists are the ones who eat the best. This was the economy up until about 1800 everywhere, and it still applies in the underdeveloped world today.

In the West since 1800, we've been moving to the food court economy, where we use complex recipes and convoluted trading mechanisms to translate basic ingredients into fancy consumption goods. Overall, most of the value nowadays is in the recipes, not in the ingredients.

SAMPLES OF THE EVIDENCE

Nature Outweighs Nurture

Anders Bjorklund, Marcus Jantti, and Gary Solon, writing in "Nature and Nurture in the Intergenerational Transmission of Socio-Economic Status" (May 2006), try to minimize the role of heredity. For example, the article's abstract concludes with this: "Our results suggest substantial roles for both pre-birth and post-birth factors." But...the statistical results reported clearly indicate the importance of heredity. The correlation between parents' income and education and the income and education of children is strongest when children are raised by both of their biological parents and weakest when children are raised by two adoptive parents. (See especially tables 1, 2, 3, and 6.)

By contrast, Bruce Sacerdote's "What Happens When We Randomly Assign Children to Families?" (October 2004) directly addresses the issue of nature versus nurture. Wading through the statistics, we come to this key conclusion:

[T]ransmission of education and income for adoptees is much less strong than for non-adoptees. Hence, by definition, either initial endowments [i.e., genetically transmitted traits] or the interaction between family environment and initial endowments must be driving a large portion of the transmission of income and education to children.

In sum, according to "Nature versus nurture" at Wikipedia,

[e]vidence suggests that family environmental factors may have an effect upon childhood IQ, accounting for up to a quarter of the variance. On the other hand, by late adolescence this correlation disappears, such that adoptive siblings are no more similar in IQ than strangers.[5] Moreover, adoption studies indicate that, by adulthood, adoptive siblings are no more similar in IQ than strangers (IQ correlation near zero), while full siblings show an IQ correlation of 0.6. Twin studies reinforce this pattern: monozygotic (identical) twins raised separately are highly similar in IQ (0.86), more so than dizygotic (fraternal) twins raised together (0.6) and much more than adoptive siblings (~0.0). [6] Consequently, in the context of the "nature versus nurture" debate, the "nature" component appears to be much more important than the "nurture" component in explaining IQ variance in the general adult population of the United States.

Cultural Differences That Influence Income Are Heritable

I turn now to Nicholas Wade of The New York Times, whose International Herald Tribune article ("Cultural Differences: A DNA Link?," March 2006) suggests that an

explanation for such long- lasting character traits [as social interdependence] may be emerging from the human genome. Humans have continued to evolve throughout prehistory and perhaps to the present day, according to a new analysis of the genome reported last week by Jonathan Pritchard, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago.

So human nature may have evolved as well.

If so, scientists and historians say, a fresh look at history may be in order. Evolutionary changes in the genome could help explain cultural traits that last over many generations as societies adapted to different local pressures....

In a study of East Asians, Europeans and Africans, Pritchard and his colleagues found 700 regions of the genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection in recent times. In East Asians, the average date of these selection events is 6,600 years ago....

Some of the genes are active in the brain and, although their role is not known, may have affected behavior....

Some geneticists believe the variations they are seeing in the human genome are so recent that they may help explain historical processes.

"Since it looks like there has been significant evolutionary change over historical time, we're going to have to rewrite every history book ever written," said Gregory Cochran, a population geneticist at the University of Utah.

"The distribution of genes influencing relevant psychological traits must have been different in Rome than it is today," he added. "The past is not just another country but an entirely different kind of people."

John McNeill, a historian at Georgetown University in Washington, said "it should be no surprise to anyone that human nature is not a constant" and that selective pressures have probably been stronger in the last 10,000 years than at any other epoch in human evolution....

The political scientist Francis Fukuyama has distinguished between high-trust and low-trust societies, arguing that trust is a basis for prosperity. Since his 1995 book on the subject, researchers have found that oxytocin, a chemical active in the brain, increases the level of trust, at least in psychological experiments.

Oxytocin levels are known to be under genetic control in other mammals.

It is easy to imagine that in societies where trust pays off, generation after generation, the more trusting individuals would have more progeny and the oxytocin-promoting genes would become more common in the population.

If conditions should then change, and the society be engulfed by strife and civil warfare for generations, oxytocin levels might fall as the paranoid produced more progeny.

Napoleon Chagnon for many decades studied the Yanomamo, a warlike people who live in the forests of Brazil and Venezuela. He found that men who had killed in battle had three times as many children as those who had not. Since personality is heritable, this would be a mechanism for Yanomamo nature to evolve and become fiercer than usual.

Since the agricultural revolution, humans have to a large extent created their own environment. But that does not mean the genome has ceased to evolve. The genome can respond to cultural practices as well as to any other kind of change.

Northern Europeans, for instance, are known to have responded genetically to the drinking of cow's milk, a practice that began in the Funnel Beaker Culture that thrived 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. They developed lactose tolerance, the unusual ability to digest lactose in adulthood....

The most recent example of a society's possible genetic response to its circumstances is one advanced by Cochran and Henry Harpending, an anthropologist at the University of Utah.

In an article last year they argued that the unusual pattern of genetic diseases found among Ashkenazi Jews (those of Central and Eastern Europe) was a response to the demands for increased intelligence imposed when Jews were largely confined to the intellectually demanding professions of money lending and tax collection.

Though this period lasted only from A.D. 900 to about 1700, it was long enough, the two scientists argue, for natural selection to favor any variant gene that enhanced cognitive ability....

But the variant genes common among the Ashkenazi do not protect against any known disease. In the Cochran and Harpending thesis, the genes were a response to the demanding social niche into which Ashkenazi Jews were forced and the nimbleness required to be useful to their unpredictable hosts.

No one has yet tested the Cochran-Harpending thesis, which remains just an interesting, though well worked out, conjecture. But one of its predictions is that the same genes should be targets of selection in any other population where there is a demand for greater cognitive skills. That demand might have well have arisen among the first settled societies where people had to deal with the quite novel concepts of surpluses, property, value and quantification.

And indeed Pritchard's team detected strong selection among East Asians in the region of the gene that causes Gaucher's disease, one of the variant genes common among Ashkenazim.

Intelligence and Race

To this point I have reviewed evidence that nature (i.e., genetic inheritance) generally outweighs nurture (i.e., environmental factors) in determining intelligence and income. Also, I have reviewed evidence that suggests the heritability of certain cultural traits (e.g., the kind of group solidarity that leads to economic betterment). Consider, now, some evidence about intelligence as it relates directly to race.

From "Race and Intelligence" at Wikipedia:
The modern controversy surrounding intelligence and race focuses on the results of IQ studies conducted during the 20th century, mainly in the United States and some other industrialized nations. In almost every testing situation where tests were administered and evaluated correctly, the mean IQ of Blacks was approximately one standard deviation below that of Whites. [That is, the average white person has an IQ higher than about two-thirds of all black persons: ED.]....

It is a matter of debate whether IQ differences between races in the U.S. are...entirely environmental or...partly genetic. Several published consensus statements agree that the large differences between the average IQ scores of Blacks and Whites in the U.S. cannot be attributed to biases in test construction, nor can they be explained just by simple differences in socio-economic status, however they are still well with in the range that may be attributed to other environmental factors....
But are inter-racial IQ differences "well within the range that may be attributed to...environmental factors"? Charles Murray, writing in Commentary about two years ago (article now behind paywall), reviews what had been learned about gender, race, and IQ since the publication of his (and the late Richard Herrnstein's) The Bell Curve (1994). As for race, Murray reviews the evidence at length and concludes
that we know two facts beyond much doubt. First, the conventional environmental explanation of the black-white difference [in IQ] is inadequate. Poverty, bad schools, and racism, which seem such obvious culprits, do not explain it. Insofar as the environment is the cause, it is not the sort of environment we know how to change, and we have tried every practical remedy that anyone has been able to think of. Second, regardless of one’s reading of the competing arguments, we are left with an IQ difference that has, at best, narrowed by only a few points over the last century. I can find nothing in the history of this difference, or in what we have learned about its causes over the last ten years, to suggest that any faster change is in our future.
John J. Ray, an Australian psychometrician, observes that
[McElwain and Kearney] constructed a test that WAS biased -- but biased towards blacks rather than towards whites. They included in their test (the Queensland Test or QT) only those items that blacks responded well to and which actually could be shown to be valid predictors of problem solving performance among blacks. In effect, blacks constructed the test themselves -- by providing the responses used to select the individual questions within the test.

But you know what happened, don't you? On a test intrinsically biased against them, whites still greatly outperformed blacks. So there really is an underlying difference between blacks and whites. The difference is not just the result of naively constructed tests.
Some (e.g., Thomas Sowell) have argued that the persistence of the inter-racial IQ gap is owed to black culture -- "black redneck" culture, in Sowell's words. But, as I say here,
[i]f "black redneck" culture is the cause of the inter-racial gap in IQ, and if blacks choose to perpetuate the "black redneck" culture, then the perpetuation of the IQ gap might as well be genetic. For, it will be the result of blacks' self-imposed servitude to the forces of ignorance.
And it well may be that the "black redneck" culture has become a genetically heritable trait.

Finally, on this topic, let us hear again from Rushton. In a review of Lynn's book, Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis (2006), he says:
Lynn’s book represents the culmination of more than a quarter of a century’s work on race differences in intelligence. It was in 1977 that he first ventured into this field – some would say minefield – with the publication of two papers on the IQ in Japan and Singapore. Both showed that the East Asians obtained higher means than white Europeans in the United States and Britain....

His conclusions are that the East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) have the highest mean IQ at 105. These are followed by the Europeans (IQ 100). Some way below these are the Inuit (Eskimos) (IQ 91), South East Asians (IQ 87), Native American Indians (IQ 87), Pacific Islanders (IQ 85), South Asians and North Africans (IQ 84). Well below these come the sub-Saharan Africans (IQ 67) followed by the Australian Aborigines (IQ 62). The least intelligent races are the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert together with the Pygmies of the Congo rain forests (IQ 54).

After the ten chapters setting out the evidence for each of the ten races there follows a chapter on the reliability and validity of the measures. These show that the studies have high reliability in the sense that different studies of racial IQs give closely similar results. For instance, East Asians invariably obtain high IQs, not only in their own native homelands but in Singapore, Malaysia, Hawaii and North America. To establish the validity of the racial IQs he shows that they have high correlations with performance in the international studies of achievement in mathematics and science. Racial IQs also have high correlations with national economic development, providing a major contribution to the problem of why the peoples of some nations are rich and others poor. He argues further that the IQ differences between the races explain the differences in achievement in making the Neolithic transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, the building of early civilizations, and the development of mature civilizations during the last two thousand years.

Lynn tackles the problem of the environmental and genetic determinants of race differences in intelligence and concludes that these contribute about equally to the phenotypic differences. He argues that the consistency of racial IQs in many different locations can only be explained by powerful genetic factors....

He elaborates the argument he has advanced over the last fifteen years that the race differences in intelligence have evolved as adaptations to colder environments as early humans migrated out of Africa. In North Africa and South Asia, and even more in Europe and Northeast Asia, these early humans encountered the problems of having to survive during cold winters when there were no plant foods and they had to hunt big game to survive. They also had to solve the problems of keeping warm. These required greater intelligence than was needed in tropical and semi-tropical equatorial Africa where plant foods are plentiful throughout the year....His analysis relating race differences in intelligence to exposure to low winter temperatures has recently been independently corroborated by Templer and Arikawa (2005)....

To the arguments presented by Jensen (1998) for a substantial genetic determination of the difference in intelligence between blacks and whites in the United States, Lynn adds a more general one. He advances the general principle of evolutionary biology that wherever subspecies, strains or races have evolved in different environments they invariably develop differences in all characteristics for which there is genetic variation as a result of mutations occurring in some subspecies and of adaptations to different environments, and asserts that intelligence cannot be an exception. He concludes witheringly that:

“The position of environmentalists that over the course of some 100,000 years peoples separated by geographical barriers in different parts of the world evolved into ten different races with pronounced genetic differences in morphology, blood groups and the incidence of genetic diseases, and yet have identical genotypes for intelligence, is so improbable that those who advance it must either be totally ignorant of the basic principles of evolutionary biology or else have a political agenda to deny the importance of race. Or both."
Intelligence and Gender

On to the gender gap in IQ. There is a male-female gap, in favor of males, but it is much smaller than the black-white gap. In "Sex differences on the progressive matrices: A meta-analysis," Intelligence, September-October 2004) Richard Lynn and Paul Irwing report this:
A meta-analysis...of 57 studies of sex differences in general population samples on [Raven's] Progressive Matrices....showed that there is no difference among children aged 6–14 years, but that males obtain higher means from the age of 15 through to old age. Among adults, the male advantage is...equivalent to 5 IQ points. These results disconfirm the frequent assertion than there are no sex differences on the progressive matrices and support a developmental theory that a male advantage appears from the age of 15 years....

Given that [an] increasing female advantage in educational achievement coexists with somewhat lower scores among adult women on the progressive matrices, it can be inferred that there are other factors predominantly possessed by women that facilitate this achievement. Possibly, this may be stronger work motivation. Thus, it has been found in the United States that women obtain lower mean scores on the SAT-M [Scholastic Aptitude Test for Mathematics] but they did not obtain lower math grades (Wainer & Steinberg, 1992). The most probable explanation is that women’s stronger work motivation compensates for their lower test scores.
Rushton and Douglas N. Jackson confirm the male-female IQ gap in "Males have greater g: Sex differences in general mental ability from 100,000 17- to 18-year olds on the Scholastic Assessment Test" (Intelligence, September-October 2006). This is from the abstract:
In this study we found that 17- to 18-year old males averaged 3.63 IQ points higher than did their female counterparts on the 1991 Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). We analysed 145 item responses from 46,509 males and 56,007 females (total N=102,516) using a principal components procedure. We found (1) the g factor [general intelligence] underlies both the SAT Verbal (SAT-V) and the SAT Mathematics (SAT-M) scales with the congruence between these components greater than 0.90; (2) the g components predict undergraduate grades better than do the traditionally used SAT-V and SAT-M scales; (3) the male and the female g factors are congruent in excess of .99; (4) male–female differences in g have a point-biserial effect size of 0.12 favoring males (equivalent to 3.63 IQ points); (5) male–female differences in g are present throughout the entire distribution of scores; (6) male–female differences in g are found at every socioeconomic level; and (7) male–female differences in g are found across several ethnic groups. We conclude that while the magnitude of the male–female difference in g is not large, it is real and non-trivial.
Jennifer Roback Morse, writing at Townhall.com on the concept of male-female equality, adds this:

Cambridge professor of Psychology and Psychiatrist Simon Baron-Cohen [who] reports on numerous studies that have found differences in skill levels between men and women. In his book, The Essential Difference: the Truth about the Male and Female Brain, Dr. Baron-Cohen explains that sex differences in math have been documented in children as young as seven years old. And when you look at the different aspects of math, an even more interesting fact emerges. There is no difference in the ability to calculate, or the "primary mathematical abilities." The difference shows up in the "secondary abilities," such as geometry, spatial relationships and problem-solving.

For instance, boys tend to perform better than girls at a test called the Mental Rotation Test. The examiner shows someone two shapes and asks whether they are mirror images of each other. This ability to visualize a shape even when rotated in space helps in a whole variety of other skills, including building things from plans, interpreting schematic drawings, tying knots or reading maps.

That is to say, males generally outperform females in key dimensions of intelligence, such as the capacity to reason, solve problems, and think abstractly. Why? Because male and female brains differ in fundamental ways. To put it another way, the female genome produces a somewhat different brain structure than that of the male genome.

Intelligence and Income: Intra-National Differences

Intelligence correlates with income and race on two levels: intra-nationally (within the U.S.) and internationally. Looking at the U.S., let us begin here:

Relation between IQ and earnings in the U.S.
IQ <75 75–90 90–110 110–125 >125
Age 18 2,000 5,000 8,000 8,000 21,000
Age 26 3,000 10,000 16,000 20,000 42,000
Age 32 5,000 12,400 20,000 27,000 48,000
Values are the average earnings (1993 US Dollars) of each IQ sub-population.

Next, consider this, from La Griffe du Lion, writing in March 2000:

Figure 3 shows how math SAT scores increase with family income for both whites and blacks....However, black students from families earning more than $70,000 (1995 dollars) score lower than white students whose families earned less than $10,000. Figure 4 shows more of the same for the verbal SAT. Here too, the wealthiest blacks score below the poorest whites. (Complete data can be found in Appendix B.)

For more, we go to the abstract of Anne Case and Christine Paxson's NBER Working Paper No. 12466 ("Stature and Status: Height, Ability, and Labor Market Outcomes," August 2006):

On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter. As early as age 3 — before schooling has had a chance to play a role — and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests. The correlation between height in childhood and adulthood is approximately 0.7 for both men and women, so that tall children are much more likely to become tall adults. As adults, taller individuals are more likely to select into higher paying occupations that require more advanced verbal and numerical skills and greater intelligence, for which they earn handsome returns. Using four data sets from the US and the UK, we find that the height premium in adult earnings can be explained by childhood scores on cognitive tests. Furthermore, we show that taller adults select into occupations that have higher cognitive skill requirements and lower physical skill demands.

Finally, on the intra-national level, there is Jay L. Zagorsky's paper, "Do you have to be smart to be rich? The impact of IQ on income, wealth, and financial distress." (The paper, which has received much publicity, is still "in press" at the journal, Intelligence.) Zagorsky confirms the positive relationship between IQ and income but then, anomalously, posits no relationship between IQ and wealth (i.e., net worth):
How important is intelligence to financial success? Using the NLSY79, which tracks a large group of young U.S. baby boomers, this research shows that each point increase in IQ test scores raises income by between $234 and $616 per year after holding a variety of factors constant. Regression results suggest no statistically distinguishable relationship between IQ scores and wealth. Financial distress, such as problems paying bills, going bankrupt or reaching credit card limits, is related to IQ scores not linearly but instead in a quadratic relationship. This means higher IQ scores sometimes increase the probability of being in financial difficulty.
How could IQ positively affect income but not wealth, given that (for most of us) wealth is derived from income? Zagorsky doesn't know, and admits as much; all he offers are non-quantitative guesses. Many others have made much of Zagorsky's "findings" (envious Leftists, for the most part), but I have not yet found a critique of it by an academic economist. (It may be too soon for that; the paper was published only a few months ago.)

Here are some of my reactions to the paper. To begin with, IQ, wealth, and income are highly correlated, as you might expect. This is from Zagorsky's paper:

The correlations at the bottom of the table are Zagorsky's stated correlations between between IQ and net worth and IQ and income, respectively. Those correlations are for the entire data set (N=7403). But the correlations for the data given in table are as follows:
IQ and net worth -- 0.981
IQ and income -- 0.984
Net worth and income -- 0.970
The point is that the low correlations reported by Zagorsky are, in fact, significant. There is a lot of "noise" in the data, but the underlying trends are what you would expect. That leads me to suspect that Zagorsky set out to find what he found. Here are some of my concerns and objections about what he found and how he found it:
  • There is the obvious anomaly in table 2, at the cell represented by IQ 110, where (a) net worth is lower than at IQ 105 and (b) income is barely higher than at IQ 105. How could that be if there are about 700 for that IQ cell, as one would expect given 11 IQ cells and a sample size >700?
  • For married persons, Zagorsky divided family income and wealth by two, so as to avoid a "bias" toward married persons. What that does, of course, is bias the results toward single persons, who generally earn less and have less wealth than married persons. (See, for example, the correlations for "ever married" and "divorced" in table 1 of the paper.) The income and wealth of a married person is his or her income and wealth, legal fictions aside. Family income and wealth is higher but not fully accounted for because the income and wealth contributed by a "non-working" spouse generally goes unrecognized. Dividing the income and wealth of married persons in half is a shady trick and/or an indication of Zagorsky's incompetence.
  • In any event, Zagorsky wasn't satisfied with the obviously strong relationships between IQ, income and wealth, so he used regression analysis to "control" for other factors other than income that might determine wealth. In the end, Zagorsky simply runs regression after regression, most of them meaningless because he uses the "kitchen sink" style of analysis: throwing in every variable at hand (e.g., siblings, ever married, ever divorced, heavy smoker, light smoker, and self-esteem(?)). It is regression analysis at its worst: a data-mining fishing expedition, pure and simple.
  • Where Zagorsky reports the results of regressions on a limited number of (mostly) relevant variables (table 3), the regression that best fits the data (highest r-squared) yields a positive coefficient on IQ.
  • Zagorsky draws largely on self-reported survey data (a major weakness, in itself) for persons aged 40 to 47 years. That is, Zagorsky's sample represents persons who, for the most part, are a decade or three from their peak earnings and wealth. And persons with higher IQs will tend to accumulate wealth more rapidly than those with lower IQs because (a) they will have learned more from their past mistakes and (b) over a decade or three wealth usually grows at a rate that is closer to exponential than linear (compound interest, stocks for the long run, and all that).
  • Finally, it is clear that Zagorsky is in over his head. He is not an economist or statistician but, rather, some kind of sociologist. His home base is Ohio State's Center for Human Resource Research. Some of his other research (if you can call it that) undermines the so-called findings that I have summarized here.
In sum, Zagorsky's paper is junk. I felt obliged to acknowledge it because the "finding" about IQ and wealth garnered a lot of attention when the paper was published earlier this year.

Intelligence and Income: International Differences

I return to Rushton's review of Lynn's Race Differences: An Evolutionary Analysis:

Lynn’s book...tak[es] a global perspective and consists of a review more than 500 studies published world wide from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the present. He devotes a chapter to each of ten races, differentiated by Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza (1994) into “genetic clusters”, which he regards as a transparent euphemism for races.

His conclusions are that the East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) have the highest mean IQ at 105. These are followed by the Europeans (IQ 100). Some way below these are the Inuit (Eskimos) (IQ 91), South East Asians (IQ 87), Native American Indians (IQ 87), Pacific Islanders (IQ 85), South Asians and North Africans (IQ 84). Well below these come the sub-Saharan Africans (IQ 67) followed by the Australian Aborigines (IQ 62). The least intelligent races are the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert together with the Pygmies of the Congo rain forests (IQ 54).

After the ten chapters setting out the evidence for each of the ten races there follows a chapter on the reliability and validity of the measures. These show that the studies have high reliability in the sense that different studies of racial IQs give closely similar results. For instance, East Asians invariably obtain high IQs, not only in their own native homelands but in Singapore, Malaysia, Hawaii and North America. To establish the validity of the racial IQs he shows that they have high correlations with performance in the international studies of achievement in mathematics and science. Racial IQs also have high correlations with national economic development, providing a major contribution to the problem of why the peoples of some nations are rich and others poor. He argues further that the IQ differences between the races explain the differences in achievement in making the Neolithic transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, the building of early civilizations, and the development of mature civilizations during the last two thousand years.

Lynn tackles the problem of the environmental and genetic determinants of race differences in intelligence and concludes that these contribute about equally to the phenotypic differences. He argues that the consistency of racial IQs in many different locations can only be explained by powerful genetic factors. He works out the genetic contribution in most detail for the sub-Saharan Africans. His argument is that sub-Saharan Africans in the United States experience the same environment as whites, as regards determinants of intelligence. He argues that they have as good nutrition as whites, as shown by their having the same average height in studies going back to World War 1, and they have approximately the same education as whites. He presents evidence that blacks in the southern states have very little white ancestry and have an IQ of about 80, and that proposes that this can be adopted as the genotypic IQ of blacks, i.e. the IQ that blacks attain when they are reared in the same environment as whites. The IQ of blacks in sub-Saharan Africa is a good deal lower at 67. Hence, the adverse environment in sub-Saharan Africa, which he regards as consisting principally of poor nutrition and health, contributes about 13 IQ points to the low IQ in sub-Saharan Africa. Lynn’s estimate is not too different from that advanced in 1969 by Jensen to the effect that about two thirds of the low IQ of blacks in the United States is attributable to genetic factors, and the more recent estimate of Rushton and Jensen (2005) that the figure is around 80 percent. Lynn has (unsurprisingly for those familiar with his work) put a bit more weight on the genetic factor.

Lynn (with Tatu Vanhannen) had earlier (2002) written IQ and the Wealth of Nations (summary and criticisms, here). That book seems to be an outgrowth of a Lynn-Vanhannen article in The Mankind Quarterly ("National IQ and Economic Development: A Study of Eighty-One Developing Nations," Summer 2001). (For corroboration of Lynn and Vanhannen's findings about the positive influence of IQ on national output, see Garrett Jones and W. Joel Schneider's "Intelligence, Human Capital, and Economic Growth: A Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE) Approach," June 2005.)

Gerhard Meisenberg, writing in "IQ Population Genetics: It's Not as Simple as You Think" (The Mankind Quarterly, Winter 2003), offers a comprehensive view of the evolutionary causes of IQ differences across geographic regions and the effects of those differences on GDP. Meisenberg draws on the Lynn-Vanhannen data and many other sources. Meisenberg says that

[s]ome scholars, most notably Richard Lynn and Philippe Rushton, propose climate and ecology as selective forces. According to Lynn, the dependence on big-game hunting in northern climates necessitated complex social organization with efficient cooperation and intelligent planning, while tropical populations could always fall back on cognitively undemanding food gathering (Lynn, 1991).

Rushton emphasizes the need for close family ties and high parental investment in harsh climates. While most childhood mortality in the tropics was caused by uncontrollable endemic diseases, most childhood mortality in the arctic was due to the predictable challenges of seasonal food shortages and the rigors of the climate. These challenges demanded intelligent planning in addition to stable families (Rushton, 1995).

These theories postulate that physical and cognitive race differences evolved at roughly the same time, starting about 100,000 years ago when modern humans first ventured out of the tropics and into the inhospitable wastelands of central and northern Asia. Thus both Lynn and Rushton predict that intelligence genes cluster with climate-selected physical traits such as skin color. Both make the specific prediction that intelligence is highest in Mongoloids, lowest in Negroids, and intermediate in Caucasoids.

This prediction is borne out by the data in Table 1. The average IQ is 97.1 for Mongoloids, 93.9 for Caucasoids, and 69.6 for Negroids. IQ also correlates with latitude (Pearson’s r = 0.7559) and per-capita GDP (r = 0.7348). However, in multiple regression models with either latitude or GDP or both as copredictors of IQ, race remains a statistically significant predictor at the P <0.0001>

La Griffe du Lion has solved the puzzle. First, some background. La Griffe's analysis of March 2002, highlights the "puzzle":

In Figure 2, the [Lynn-Vanhannen] data [table here] is [sic] divided into contributions from four groups: blacks, (European) whites, East Asians and "others." I did not include the outliers: South Africa, Barbados, Qatar and China.


Figure 2. Per capita GDP by racial group. "White" here means European white; "East Asian" means the racially homogenous polities: Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan.

La Griffe, in a later post (May 2004) addresses the seeming anomaly in the relationship between IQ and GDP. As shown in the figure directly above, four East Asian (or Northeast Asian) countries (Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan), which have the highest average IQs, do not have the highest per capita GDPs. The short of it is this: GDP is best explained by verbal IQ, as opposed to a measure of IQ that encompasses both verbal and quantitative skills. Thus figure 7:

La Griffe observes that the IQ of (North)east Asians
is bifurcated. NE Asians have the highest IQ of all peoples other than Ashkenazim. They owe that superior IQ, however, to extraordinary visuospatial ability, which, despite verbal shortcomings, lifts their IQ above that of Europeans....

Among the races, only NE Asians and Amerindians exhibit this particular kind of verbal-nonverbal cognitive split. For other races verbal and general IQ averages have similar values, making the distinction between the two transparent to smart fraction theory. In the 12 studies reporting both general and verbal IQ for NE Asians, the general-verbal gap averaged 6.5 IQ points....

[T]he spectacular visuospatial ability of NE Asians, while accounting for their high [overall] IQ scores, does not necessarily make them good capitalists. Hunting strategies have little to do with wealth production. And a new tool, irrespective of point of origin, is now soon available worldwide. The structure of NE Asian intelligence did not come about in response to pressures to be attorneys or editors or production managers or copywriters or salesmen or programmers or systems analysts or insurance adjusters or purchasing agents or account executives.
In sum, IQ strongly determines both personal income and, therefore, per capita GDP. Verbal IQ turns out to be an important (negative) determinant of income in those (few) cases where it is a relatively weak component of overall IQ.

But what about the influence of income on IQ? Let's return to Meisenberg's article:
The massive rise of IQ that took place in many countries over the past century shows conclusively that environmental effects can have a powerful effect on the average intellectual level of large populations. Presumably one or another aspect of “standard of living” is responsible for this secular trend: education, nutrition, health care, mass media, or, most likely, a combination of all of these.

Gross domestic product adjusted for purchasing power (GDP in Table 1) is an indicator for the population’s “standard of living”. If a high standard of living does indeed raise IQ test performance, then GDP should be an independent predictor of national IQ even when the effects of race and latitude are partialled out.

When race, latitude and GDP are used as co-predictors, GDP does indeed have an independent effect in predicting national IQ (P = 0.0007). In this model, race and latitude remain powerful independent predictors, each with P <0.0001. href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect">Flynn effect [link added: ED] these results suggest that the causal arrow points both ways. High intelligence produces a high standard of living, which in turn raises intelligence even more. Thus intelligence and economic development are mutually reinforcing in a positive feedback loop....

This feedback loop explains...the rise in mental test performance that has become known as the Flynn effect.

This feedback loop between intelligence and standard of living can explain the great magnitude of the IQ differences between nations. It predicts that even in cases where genetic differences affecting mental ability are small, the observed phenotypic differences become amplified because the slightly more gifted populations achieve a higher standard of living which raises their measured intelligence even more, which in turn raises their standard of living yet further. Similar “amplifier effects” have previously been proposed as explanations for the Flynn effect (Dickens and Flynn, 2001).
There you have it: The smarter get richer and the richer get smarter, not at the expense of the poorer and not-as-smart but by virtue of their genes and the material advantages afforded by those genes. Forceful transfers of income and wealth from the smarter and richer to the not-so-mart and poorer might be helpful to the latter -- but more likely not, as I argue earlier. But such transfers definitely diminish the ability of the smarter and richer to help the not-so-smart in more lastingly productive ways: through technological advancement, job creation, mutually beneficial trade, and well-targeted charity.

CONCLUSION

Redistribution in an effort to make us "more equal" is not only counterproductive and unfair, it is futile. Or if not entirely futile, largely wasteful. All human beings (or at least those who are citizens and lawful residents of the U.S.) deserve equal rights. But the equal rights they deserve are the negative rights of the original Constitution, not the positive rights sought by generations of so-called liberals and progressives. There is nothing "liberal" or "progressive" (in the root meanings of those words) about redistribution.

Some related posts:
The Cost of Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action: A Modest Proposal
Race, Intelligence, and Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action: Two Views from the Academy
Affirmative Action, One More Time
Much Food for Thought
After the Bell Curve
A Footnote . . .
The Main Causes of Prosperity
Why Class Warfare Is Bad for Everyone
Fighting Myths with Facts
Debunking More Myths about Income Inequality
A Century of Progress?
Socialist Calculation and the Turing Test
Taxes, Charitable Giving, and Republicanism
Productivity Growth and Tax Cuts
Zero-Sum Thinking
Liberty, General Welfare, and the State
The Causes of Economic Growth
Republicanism, Economic Freedom, and Charitable Giving
The Last(?) Word about Income Inequality
Status, Spite, Envy, and Income Redistribution
Things to Come
__________
* The more controversial scientists whose work I sample here are Charles Murray, J. Phillipe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and Napoleon Chagnon.

Murray is controversial mainly for The Bell Curve, which brought to a wide audience the large body of long-standing evidence of persistent inter-racial differences in IQ. Rushton and Lynn are controversial because of their findings on race, gender, and intelligence, and because of their affiliation with the Pioneer Fund. The Fund's roots and some of its current connections are tainted with the label "white supremacist." The Fund (website here) has responded to those allegations. Whether Rushton, Lynn, and others who produce similar research are white supremacists is beside the question of the validity of their research. Judge for yourself.

Chagnon is controversial for other reasons, namely the ethics (or purported lack thereof) in his field work. (For Chagnon's statements about the controversy, go here.) In the "small world" department, I note that Chagnon hails from the village where my maternal grandparents raised ten children. The doctor who delivered many of those children bore the name Napoleon Chagnon. The sketchy biographical information about the anthropologist (p. 6, here) indicates that he was not the son of the medical doctor, but given the village's small population (perhaps 500 when the anthropologist was born), it seems likely that he was related to and named for the medical doctor (a grandson, perhaps). And it was in honor of "old Doc Chagnon" that my maternal grandparents chose Napoleon as the middle name of the tenth and last of their children.

Posted by Thomas at 12:50 PM
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Sunday, November 26, 2006

An Immigration Roundup

This post consolidates and replaces several posts that I have written about immigration.

March 29, 2006 -- IT'S TIME FOR PLAIN TALK ABOUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Steve Antler (EconoPundit) has a neat graphic in this post, which illustrates a key point. The point? The minimum wage -- to the extent that it is actually paid by employers of illegal immigrants -- raises the unemployment rate. That, in turn, gives pandering politicians yet another opportunity to buy votes by expanding welfare benefits for illegal immigrants (and other low-income groups).

Minimum wage laws and welfare programs are especially favored on the Left (though large corporations have no objection to taxpayer-funded welfare programs that subsidize labor). An article by Ben Johnson at FrontPageMag.com details the Leftist connections to the massive protests of proposals to curb illegal immigration; for example:
As events spanned from California to Detroit, Phoenix to Washington, D.C., the media kept up its anti-enforcement drumbeat. Although some have credited Latino DJs for the 500,000-strong illegal immigrant turnout in Los Angeles alone – and some credit is deserved – the real legwork was done by a more eclectic group of organizations: leftist labor unions, George Soros-funded agitators, Open Borders lobbyists, Roman Catholic clergy, and teachers unions. . . .

Andres Jiminez, director of the University of California's California Policy Research Center, told the media, “It's not only Latinos who are marching in the streets, its unions too: firefighters, farm workers and Hispanic students who had thought of U.S. law as protecting them and are now starting to see it as a threat to their future.”

He was right about this much: Latino organizations did not act alone. The media has failed to report that organized labor directed the illegals and minors. The L.A. Times revealed the rally’s “security” was handled by a union identified only as “Local 1877.” That would be local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the far-Left union founded by New Left radical Andrew Stern, which called for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq in June 2004 and worked in concert with Ted Kennedy to roll back anti-terrorist Homeland Security measures. According to the L.A. Times, the SEIU’s goons kindly helped “herd marchers along the route.” That was not the extent of SEIU’s help, though. The union also “coordinated the more than 100 buses that dropped off marchers from throughout California, Las Vegas and a few Southwestern cities.”

In other words, the massive rally against Homeland Security – since that is what gaining control of America’s borders would promote – was staged by a leftist labor union and staffed primarily with illegal immigrants.

SEIU did not work alone in this. It was aided by other radical or left-wing political pressure groups [which Johnson details].
Pandering to illegals is, of course, an exercise in building political power. The pandering curries favor with those legals who want the company of their "brothers and sisters" from south of the border. And many of the illegals will become voters themselves -- sooner rather than later if the Left has its way. (U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) analyzes the Left's strategy in an article at Human Events Online: "Democrats Will Use Immigration to Divide and Conquer.") President Bush seems to believe that he can corral some of those voters into the GOP, but I have no doubt that the GOP will come up with the short end of the stick.

Which leads me to Thomas Sowell, who makes sense, as usual, in "Guests or gate crashers" at townhall.com:
The Bush administration is pushing a program to legalize "guest workers." But what is a guest? Someone you have invited. People who force their way into your home without your permission are called gate crashers.

If truth-in-packaging laws applied to politics, the Bush guest worker program would have to be called a "gate-crasher worker" program. The President's proposal would solve the problem of illegal immigration by legalizing it after the fact. . . .

None of the rhetoric and sophistry that we hear about immigration deals with the plain and ugly reality: Politicians are afraid of losing the Hispanic vote and businesses want cheap labor.

What millions of other Americans want has been brushed aside, as if they don't count, and they have been soothed with pious words. But now the voters are getting fed up, which is why there are immigration bills in Congress.

The old inevitability ploy is often trotted out in immigration debates: It is not possible to either keep out illegal immigrants or to expel the ones already here.

If you mean stopping every single illegal immigrant from getting in or expelling every single illegal immigrant who is already here, that may well be true. But does the fact that we cannot prevent every single murder cause us to stop enforcing the laws against murder? . . .

Let's hope the immigration bills before Congress can at least get an honest debate, instead of the word games we have been hearing for too long.

I fully understand and agree with the economic arguments for "open borders" -- and I do favor free trade and outsourcing (e.g., read this post and follow the links at the bottom). But the immigration issue is really about political power. The cause of illegal immigration is mainly (though not entirely) a Leftist play for power and the expansion of the welfare state.

March 30, 2006 -- AS I WAS SAYING ABOUT IMMIGRATION

Immigration, legal or not, is more than an economic issue. Most economists -- even economists I respect -- just don't get it. It is stupid to let people enter the U.S. if the result of doing so is an expansion of the regulatory-welfare state, both directly -- for the benefit of immigrants -- and indirectly -- as a result of the votes those immigrants cast (eventually) for politicians who seek to expand the regulatory-welfare state.

It's time to seal the borders and admit immigrants based strictly on their demonstrated ability to make an immediate, positive economic contribution. That prescription might seem to run against my interest, inasmuch as I live in Texas, which is a first stop for immigrants who work for low wages. Given the cost of the regulatory-welfare state of Texas, however, I believe that I would be better off with fewer immigrants. In any event, the long-run economic vitality of the United States requires a citizenry that has a stake in, and is more likely to support, limited government and free markets.

An immigrant to the U.S. makes a positive contribution to economic growth only if he or she can be more productive here than in his or her homeland. That's true of Mexican construction workers who are harnessed to America's economic-growth engine, but it's even more true of scientists and engineers from Europe and Asia, who can advance the technology that enables economic growth. Furthermore, those scientists and engineers are not going to demand welfare benefits, and they are less likely (on the whole) to vote for politicians who seek to expand the regulatory-welfare state.

Immigration is an economic issue, but a far more complex issue than the one depicted by most economists, who omit the economic implications of the politics of immigration.

UPDATE: The Conservative Philosopher says
. . . if we could kick out one leftist for every immigrant, I'd favor it.
Roger that.

Recommended reading:

Answering 13 Frequently Asked Questions About Illegal Immigration, at Right Wing News.

The 1965 Immigration Act, at WizBang! A related note: constant-dollar (real) GDP per capita grew at an annualized rate of 2.1% in the 39 years from 1965 through 2004, compared with a rate of 2.3% for the 39 years from 1926 through 1965. The higher rate for 1926-65 was accomplished in spite of the Great Depression; for the 10 years from 1929 through 1939, real GDP per capita grew at an annual rate of 0.2%.

April 1, 2006 -- SOCIETAL SUICIDE

Eternity Road has an excellent post about societal suicide in the West. Relatedly, this op-ed at OpinionJournal suggests that the Supreme Court is about to help the U.S. slide a bit further down the slippery slope of defenselessness.

April 3, 2006 -- MORE ABOUT IMMIGRATION

Noted economist Greg Mankiw (who now has a blog) seconds one of my key points. Here's Mankiw:
The hard issues tend to revolve around the immigration of unskilled workers, who are more likely to drain resources from the social safety net and increase U.S. income inequality by pushing down wages at the bottom of the wage distribution.

Immigration of skilled workers is another matter. A skilled worker coming into the United States will likely pay more in taxes than he or she gets in social benefits. Moreover, an increased supply of skilled labor will tend to reduce income inequality. A strong case can be made that any worker with significant skills (such as a college degree) should be admitted without restriction.
Meanwhile, over at EconLog, Arnold Kling quotes himself:
What should you call someone who wants government to provide for our education, competitiveness, and health care but whose concern about "us" stops at the border? The obvious label would be national socialist. But George Bush and Paul Krugman are not Nazis...

The alternative ideology that I would propose might be called transnational libertarianism. The ideal libertarian world would have no economic borders. There would be no problem of illegal immigration, because all forms of immigration would be legal.
My comment:
The ideal libertarian world would be governed by a unified rule of law. That rule of law would protect citizens from predators -- including government-sponsored predation (e.g., welfare programs). To the extent that immigrants come to the U.S. because it offers "better" welfare programs, those immigrants are engaging in predation and enabling the election of politicians who would multiply the predation. Your prescription works in the ideal world, but not in the real one that we inhabit.
Mankiw is that rare economist who sees the real world.

April 3, 2006 -- MY DIAGNOSIS AND PROGNOSIS

This message is prompted by the attempt to hijack the "melting pot" concept for the advancement of the regulatory-welfare state. The "melting pot" -- properly understood -- refers to the assimilation of immigrants to the prevailing culture and rule of law, not to the subversion of that culture and rule of law by a wave of illegal immigrants and their Leftist proponents.

Not all cultures and legal systems are beneficial, and none is perfect. But one culture and legal system -- the Anglospheric culture that shaped the Founding Generation of Americans and the Constitution they bequeathed us -- comes as close to perfection as one might reasonably expect in this imperfect world. It is no longer de rigeur to say that. And therein lies the tale.

Americans -- whether or not they know it -- are in a last-ditch fight to save the already much-diluted culture and rule of law that made possible our now-vanishing liberty and pursuit of happiness. And yet, many Americans and American institutions persist in enabling efforts to further dilute that culture and rule of law. This dilution, which is essentially anti-American and anti-liberty, arises from the Left -- as represented by Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, and Hollywood -- and is abetted by the parrot-like political correctness that passes for thought among public "educators," academicians, the media, much of the legal profession, and most government officials and employees. At the rate we are going, I give the U.S. another ten years before it becomes a listless, socialist "paradise" on a par with Canada and Great Britain.

I can only hope that the Supreme Court will prove me wrong.

UPDATE: See this post by the Maverick Philosopher and follow his link to a column by Cal Thomas. Steve Burton (Right Reason) makes an excellent offering in a similar vein. Burton ends his post with this:
W$J conservatives and libertarians . . . will point out that we've done it before, back when we absorbed wave after wave of Europe's huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, and turned them in short order into unhyphenated Americans.

To which I reply: the great waves of American immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries swept ashore in a harsh, sink-or-swim society where you either fit in and made your own way or died trying. The Latin American immigrants of today, on the other hand, show up in an advanced welfare state under the seemingly ineradicable spell of officially imposed multiculturalist dogma. So the first generation will be as hard-working and family-oriented as anyone could wish. But just wait until our educational system gets ahold of their children. Just wait. In the blink of an historical eye, their work ethic and family values will be replaced with a sense of aggrieved victimhood and entitlement to state compensation, with all the appalling panoply of ills that follow in their wake. After that, it will be ethnic separatism and socio-economic dysfunction as far as the eye can see.

It is a bitter cup that we are preparing for ourselves, and nothing in history teaches us how to drink it and live.
Dale Franks of QandO weighs in with this:
Allowing a large group of foreign persons into the country, and making no effort to assimilate them, will culminate in a disaster. Look at what is happening in Europe as a result of unbridled Muslim immigration. We're on a very similar path.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who comes here and makes the effort to become an American, and to subscribe to our ideals and values, is welcome. Those who prefer to maintain their primary allegiance to another country need to go back to that country, rather than trying to make mine a mirror image of the Third World hellhole they hated so much that they risked their lives to flee it.
Given the difficulty of knowing ahead of time who will try to assimilate and who will not, the most effective immigration policy is one that discriminates on the basis of skills. As I wrote here,
It's time to seal the borders and admit immigrants based strictly on their demonstrated ability to make an immediate, positive economic contribution. That prescription might seem to run against my interest, inasmuch as I live in Texas, which is a first stop for immigrants who work for low wages. Given the cost of the regulatory-welfare state of Texas, however, I believe that I would be better off with fewer immigrants. In any event, the long-run economic vitality of the United States requires a citizenry that has a stake in, and is more likely to support, limited government and free markets.

An immigrant to the U.S. makes a positive contribution to economic growth only if he or she can be more productive here than in his or her homeland. That's true of Mexican construction workers who are harnessed to America's economic-growth engine, but it's even more true of scientists and engineers from Europe and Asia, who can advance the technology that enables economic growth. Furthermore, those scientists and engineers are not going to demand welfare benefits, and they are less likely (on the whole) to vote for politicians who seek to expand the regulatory-welfare state.

April 4, 2006 -- MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND UPDATES

See "Immigrating Terror," published today at FrontPageMag.com.

UPDATE (9:50 pm): There's more from the Maverick Philosopher. (Be sure to follow his links to posts by Victor Davis Hanson.)

UPDATE (04/06/06, 6:35 pm): The Senate's apparent "compromise" on the immigration issue is a surrender. It doesn't increase border security and includes unenforceable provisions for illegals who are already here, or who arrive in the future. As reported by the NYT,

the compromise would place illegal immigrants in three categories:

¶Those who have lived in the country at least five years would be put on a path toward guaranteed citizenship, provided that they remained employed, paid fines and back taxes, and learned English, a senior Republican aide said. The aide said this group accounted for about 7 million of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants believed to be living here.

¶Those who have lived here for two to five years, said to number about three million, would have to leave the country briefly before reporting to an American port of entry, where they would be classified as temporary workers. They would be allowed to apply for citizenship but would have no guarantee of obtaining it. Those who did not would have to leave after participating in the temporary worker program for six years.

¶The remaining one million or so, those who have lived in the country less than two years, would be required to leave. They could apply for temporary worker status but would not be guaranteed it.

"Required" to leave? Who's going to make them leave, the Border Patrol, which can't even keep them out in the first place? The Immigration and Naturalization Service? Hah! Republicans are selling out for the false hope of attracting Latino votes. Democrats are posturing for even more concessions, though they'll gladly take what Republicans have handed them. But let the Times tell it:

Republicans said the compromise, whose prominent backers include Mr. McCain and Senators Mel Martinez of Florida and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, would attract votes from their members who are uncomfortable with broader legalization. But the compromise cannot pass without the support of Democrats, who said they were still weighing their options.

"Aren't we entitled to at least a chance to have a vote on a comprehensive approach?" Mr. Kennedy said.

There were signs, though, that some of Mr. Kennedy's allies among business and immigrant advocacy groups were throwing their support behind the compromise proposal.

The leaders of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, which represents hotels, restaurants and other service industries, said a limited legalization would be better than a bill that focused solely on tightening border security.

In sum: If the proposed "compromise" becomes law, illegals will continue to stream in, they won't be evicted, and most of them will become citizens who vote for expansion of the regulatory-welfare state.

UPDATE (04/07/06, 12:11 pm): Well, the "compromise" fell apart. A critic nails it:

"Today is a good day for America. The Senate -- in a rare moment of clarity -- rejected its amnesty-now, enforcement-later approach to immigration," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. "Amnesty is a non-starter. If the Senate is serious about sending real security legislation to the President's desk this year, it must take a different approach."

UPDATE (04/10/06, 4:14 pm): Michelle Malkin points out the congruence between illegal immigration and the Leftist agenda.

UPDATE (04/11/06, 9:23 pm): Thomas Sowell waxes eloquent, as always; for example:

Both liberals and free-market libertarians often see this [immigration] as an abstract issue about poor people being hindered from moving to jobs by an arbitrary border drawn across the southwest desert.

Intellectuals' ability to think of people in the abstract is a dangerous talent in a world where people differ in all the ways that make them people. The cultures and surrounding circumstances of those people are crucial for understanding what they are likely to do and what the consequences are likely to be.

Some free-market advocates argue that the same principle which justifies free international trade in commodities should justify the free movement of people as well. But this ignores the fact that people have consequences that go far beyond the consequences of commodities. . . .

Unlike commodities, people in a welfare state have legal claims on other people's tax dollars and expensive services in schools and hospitals, not to mention the high cost of imprisoning many of them who commit crimes.

Immigrants in past centuries came here to become Americans, not to remain foreigners, much less to proclaim the rights of their homelands to reclaim American soil, as some of the Mexican activist groups have done. . . .

Today, immigrant spokesmen promote grievances, not gratitude, much less patriotism. Moreover, many native-born Americans also promote a sense of separatism and grievance and, through "multi-culturalism," strive to keep immigrants foreign and disaffected. . . .

Hispanic activists themselves recognize that many of the immigrants from Mexico -- legal or illegal -- would assimilate into American society in the absence of these activists' efforts to keep them a separate constituency. But these efforts are widespread and unrelenting, a fact that cannot be ignored.

Whatever is said or done in the immigration debate, no one should insult the American people's intelligence by talking or acting as if this is a question about the movement of abstract people across an abstract line.

April 10, 2006 -- LEFTISM, RACISM, AND SEXISM

Leftists often deploy blatantly muddled logic in support of their statist agenda. But they can, at times, be subtle. Consider the following passage, by one Barbara Katz Rothman (from an exchange at the Debate Club of legalaffairs):

Racism takes whatever differences are biological—skin color, hair texture, eye shape—and goes on to make assumptions about personality, values, abilities, interests. Sexism does the same, taking genitalia and reproductive potential as the biologic and then making assumptions about personality, values, abilities and interests.

Here's what Katz Rothman evidently believes, and would like others to believe:

  • Biological differences have no bearing on such attributes as personality, values, abilities, and interests. (Here, she hews to a flat-wrong axiom, beloved of the Left.)
  • If differentiation on the basis of personality, values, abilities, and interests results in differential treatment of races and sexes, such differentiation is, therefore, racism or sexism.

The immature and unsuspecting (e.g., school children and naive college students) will, of course, swallow such "logic." Thus does political correctness take root.

But biologically identifiable groups do exhibit different distributions of personality, values, abilities, and interests (e.g., this article, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one). It is valid to differentiate on those dimensions (by discriminating in favor of highly skilled immigrants or more intelligent job applicants, for example), and to let the chips fall where they may -- even if they do not fall equally on all races or both sexes.

Those who do let the chips fall where they may -- or who advocate doing so -- are not racists or sexists. The racists and sexists are those who persist in focusing on race and gender to the exclusion of socially and economically relevant differences in personality, values, abilities, and interests.

April 17, 2006 -- A REALLY TOUGH STANCE ON IMMIGRATION

Keith Burgess-Jackson (AnalPhilosopher) is tougher than I am when it comes to immigration. He offers a 6-point program:

(1) deport everyone who is here illegally; (2) confiscate the property of everyone who is here illegally; (3) build a wall between the United States and Mexico; (4) stop all immigration from all countries for 20 years; (5) require that only English be spoken in public schools and courts; and (6) punish anyone who employs an illegal immigrant.

I agree with #s 1, 2, 3 (taking "wall" to mean a physical-surveillance barrier), and 5. But as for #4, I wouldn't rule out all immigration. Instead, as I wrote above, I would

seal the borders and admit immigrants based strictly on their demonstrated ability to make an immediate, positive economic contribution.

That is, I would keep out low-wage workers who are likely to attach themselves to the welfare system, but admit scientists, engineers, and the like.

Number 6 is problematic only because it may be economically sound -- and humane -- to hire an illegal immigrant who already is in the country. But I understand KBJ's point. If employers aren't deterred from hiring illegals, illegals will have a greater incentive to find a way into the country.

May 2, 2006 -- LET 'EM LEAVE

During yesterday's "Day Without Immigrants" an estimated 1 million illegal immigrants and their supporters didn't shop (or so they say), go to work, or attend classes. Instead, they spent the day protesting legislation that would criminalize illegal immigration. The idea was to show Americans what life would be like without illegal immigrants.

An obvious effect of not having illegal immigrants in our midst would be fewer protest marches that result in street closings and detours. Less obviously:

  • The welfare system (and our taxes) would be much reduced.
  • Fewer schools would be needed, so that property owners would face lower tax bills.
  • The extra costs incurred by governments and businesses to operate in two languages could be avoided. (There is no need to cater to persons who learn English as a prerequisite of citizenship.)
  • Democrats -- with their big-spending ways -- wouldn't control as many local and State governments, and they would be less of a force at the national level. Republicans would be able to revert to something like fiscal conservatism.

I say, let's have a permanent "Day Without Illegal Immigrants" -- for real.

May 19, 2006 -- ECONOMISTS OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY

Steve Burton, writing at Right Reason, has much to say about a survey by the Pew Hispanic Center of the beliefs and attitudes of Hispanic Americans. Here's a sample:

Those surveyed overwhelmingly prefer "higher taxes to support a larger government that provides more services" - by contrast to American whites, who, by an equally overwhelming margin, prefer "lower taxes and...a smaller government that provides fewer services."

But I already knew that, as did most persons who are attuned to reality. As I wrote above,

It is stupid to let people enter the U.S. if the result of doing so is an expansion of the regulatory-welfare state, both directly -- for the benefit of immigrants -- and indirectly -- as a result of the votes those immigrants cast (eventually) for politicians who seek to expand the regulatory-welfare state. . . .

Immigration is an economic issue, but a far more complex issue than the one depicted by most economists, who omit the economic implications of the politics of immigration.

Most academic economists -- that is to say, "intellectuals" -- nevertheless ignore the economic implications of unfettered immigration. Over-educated idiots!

May 21, 2006 -- THE ECONOMICS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

On March 31, I pointed to a post about immigration which includes these informative segments:

8) But, aren't these illegal aliens doing jobs Americans won't do? To begin with, in many of the industries most associated with illegal immigrant labor, you find that the majority of workers in those fields are not illegals. As Rich Lowry pointed out in National Review:

"According to a new survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, illegals make up 24 percent of workers in agriculture, 17 percent in cleaning, 14 percent in construction, and 12 percent in food production. So 86 percent of construction workers, for instance, are either legal immigrants or Americans, despite the fact that this is one of the alleged categories of untouchable jobs."

Moreover, it needs to be pointed out that there's no such thing as a job, "Americans won't do." There are only jobs Americans won't do at a certain price. Consider your job. Would you still do it if the pay were 50% less? For most people, the answer to that question is, "no."

Well, since illegal immigrants generally come from poor countries with mediocre economies, they're willing to work for much lower wages than the going market rate because they're still making substantially more than what they can make at home. So, if there's a large influx of illegal aliens into an America industry, it depresses wages so much that Americans simply won't do those jobs any more for the going pay rate.

This harms poor Americans the most, because they're the group that generally ends up competing with illegal aliens for jobs on the low end of the pay scale.

9) If these illegal aliens were to leave the United States, wouldn't there be a major impact on the American economy? There's disagreement about that, but it's highly doubtful. As Rich Lowry at National Review has pointed out:

"Phillip Martin, an economist at the University of California, Davis, has demolished the argument that a crackdown on illegals would ruin it, or be a hardship to consumers. Most farming — livestock, grains, etc. — doesn't heavily rely on hired workers. Only about 20 percent of the farm sector does, chiefly those areas involving fresh fruit and vegetables.

The average "consumer unit" in the U.S. spends $7 a week on fresh fruit and vegetables, less than is spent on alcohol, according to Martin. On a $1 head of lettuce, the farm worker gets about 6 or 7 cents, roughly 1/15th of the retail price. Even a big run-up in the cost of labor can't hit the consumer very hard.

Martin recalls that the end of the bracero guest-worker program in the mid-1960s caused a one-year 40 percent wage increase for the United Farm Workers Union. A similar wage increase for legal farm workers today would work out to about a 10-dollar-a-year increase in the average family's bill for fruit and vegetables. Another thing happened with the end of the bracero program: The processed-tomato industry, which was heavily dependent on guest workers and was supposed to be devastated by their absence, learned how to mechanize and became more productive."

If every illegal alien here today currently left America, the immediate economic impact would be insignificant and over the long haul, the impact would likely be negligible.

10) What about other costs to society? On the whole, are illegals a net benefit or net liability to the American economy?

The answer to this question can vary wildly depending on what's included as an asset and what's not included as a liability. For example, liberal economist and popular New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that overall, illegals are an insignificant, positive asset to the economy, although their presence harms poor Americans:

"First, the net benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to the immigrants themselves, are small. Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent.

Second, while immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration - especially immigration from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst- paid Americans.

The most authoritative recent study of this effect, by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, estimates that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration."

On the other hand, according to a conservative group, the Center for Immigration Studies:

"Based on Census Bureau data, this study finds that, when all taxes paid (direct and indirect) and all costs are considered, illegal households created a net fiscal deficit at the federal level of more than $10 billion in 2002. We also estimate that, if there was an amnesty for illegal aliens, the net fiscal deficit would grow to nearly $29 billion."

Again, estimates vary on how much of an impact illegals have on the economy, but most of the credible ones show the benefits are insignificant or even in the negative range.

A few days ago, thanks to a post at Politics of Prudence, I found a study by two Columbia University economists, who find that factor (e.g., labor) immigration from less technologically advanced countries costs U.S. citizens about "$72 billion dollars per year or 0.8 percent of GDP." (That's $360 billion over five years, the relevance of which I explain below.) The same Politics of Prudence post also points to an article in The Washington Post, which conveys this bit of information:

A new study by a liberal Washington think tank puts the cost of forcibly removing most of the nation's estimated 10 million illegal immigrants at $41 billion a year, a sum that exceeds the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security.

The study, "Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment," scheduled for release today by the Center for American Progress, is billed by its authors as the first-ever estimate of costs associated with arresting, detaining, prosecuting and removing immigrants who have entered the United States illegally or overstayed their visas. The total cost would be $206 billion to $230 billion over five years, depending on how many of the immigrants leave voluntarily, according to the study.

So, the net, five-year benefit to U.S. citizens of rounding up and deporting illegal aliens would be about $100 billion, even if the presence of illegal aliens were otherwise costless to U.S. citizens (an unlikely proposition). And after five years, it would be all gravy. That's not to mention the inestimable benefits that would accrue with the shrinkage of the potential pool of socialist-leaning voters.

May 25, 2006 -- A CATALLARCH SAYS IT STRAIGHT

Patri Friedman, who writes at Catallarchy, has two excellent posts about the consequences of unfettered immigration. He, like I, rejects the simplistic "open borders" rhetoric of most economists. He then goes on to discuss generally how the preservation of liberty sometimes requires the performance of acts that (superficially) seem anti-libertarian.

UPDATE (05/26/06 @ 7:30 pm): And a non-Catallarch (Steve Antler of EconoPundit) says it straighter:

Hey, these two experts [Brad DeLong and Greg Mankiw] are smarter than you. They agree that immigration's no problem, so you should just shut up.

Listen to the experts.

UPDATE: For anyone who's interested, I've finally come around to the position the symbolics of the issue are more important than the actual economics.

Two basic facts define a nation: contol of its currency and its borders. To me, those who loudly whine we simply can't hope to control the border are gloating over what they see as an implicit victory -- that of international liberal multiculturalism over a traditional and conventional American patriotism they privately despise. . . .

That sums it up, for a host of issues. If the "man in the street" is agin' it, they're for it, because they're Cosmopolitans, not Americans. I guess they expect the Cosmopolitan army to defend them.

June 20, 2006 -- CAN 500 ECONOMISTS ALL BE WRONG?

That's the question asked and answered in the negative by Greg Mankiw. He links to a letter signed by 500 economists -- many of them eminent in their profession and beyond -- in which they claim that "immigration has been a net gain for American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our 13 trillion-dollar economy."

One problem with the letter -- aside from the arrogance of economists who say that only "a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration" -- is that it says nothing about the propensity of immigrants from Latin America to draw on social services and, when they become citizens, to vote for the expansion of those services.

Yes, 500 economists can be wrong -- and are wrong -- when they fail to take into account all the costs of unfettered immigration (illegal and otherwise).

September 22, 2006 -- ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH IMMIGRATION

I've written many times about the high cost of low-skilled immigrants, but I haven't touched on this aspect of the issue (from Greg Mankiw):

Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment, and Incarceration to Labor Supply Shocks
by George J. Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, Gordon H. Hanson

The employment rate of black men, and particularly of low-skill black men, fell precipitously from 1960 to 2000. At the same time, the incarceration rate of black men rose markedly. This paper examines the relation between immigration and these trends in black employment and incarceration. Using data drawn from the 1960-2000 U.S. Censuses, we find a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates. As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, the wage of black workers in that group fell, the employment rate declined, and the incarceration rate rose. Our analysis suggests that a 10-percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the black wage by 3.6 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 2.4 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by almost a full percentage point.

A reasonable inference is that the influx of low-skilled immigrants from Central America has pushed black Americans out of jobs and caused more of them to turn to crime. The higher incarceration rate of black males imposes a direct cost on society -- the cost of incarceration -- and indirect (but very real) costs: the breakup of more black families and the greater alienation of black males from the norms of civility.

Addendum: See this, by Roger Scruton at The New Criterion. Scruton, writing from a British perspective, observes that as a result of

[t]he liberal view of rights, as universal possessions which make no reference to history, community, or obedience, . . . [i]ndigenous people can claim no precedence, not even in this matter in which they have sacrificed a lifetime of income for the sake of their own future security. Immigrants are given welfare benefits as of right, and on the basis of their need, whether or not they have paid or ever will pay taxes. And since their need is invariably great—why else have they come here?—they take precedence over existing residents in the grant of housing and income support. . . .

It is not “racist” to draw attention to this kind of fact. Nor is it racist to argue that indigenous people must take precedence over newcomers, who have to earn their right of residence and cannot be allowed to appropriate the savings of their hosts.


Posted by Thomas at 4:26 PM

Saturday, March 25, 2006

The Meaning of Liberty

This is a compilation of six related posts at Liberty Corner: "The Paradox of Libertarianism," "Liberty as a Social Compact," "Social Norms and Liberty," "A Footnote about Liberty and the Social Compact," "Liberty and Federalism," and "Finding Liberty." It complements an earlier series of posts, "Practical Libertarianism for Americans," which should be read first. "The earlier series makes the case for consequentialist libertarianism; the present series considers more deeply the meaning of liberty in the real world of real people.

INTRODUCTION

It is easy to invoke "liberty" -- I do it often, as do most bloggers with a political agenda: libertarians of all kinds; Burkeans and neoconservatives; and, most perversely, big-government liberals and ardent Leftists. But to invoke liberty as a bloodless abstraction is to skirt the essential fact that liberty and its concomitant, the pursuit of happiness, are intensely personal concepts. There is no one-size-fits-all liberty; there are as many kinds of liberty as there are groups of consenting adults who subcribe voluntarily to common sets of social norms.

The purposes of this essay, therefore, are to explore the deeper, personal meaning of liberty; to explain what liberty means in the real world of real people; and to explain why federalism -- in something like its original form -- is the surest route to liberty.

What do I mean by the real world of real people? I mean the mundane world in which most people live their lives: working alongside people from a wide variety of backgrounds, making a home, raising children, having friends, taking care of elderly parents, practicing a religion, paying taxes, seeking entertainment, being a neighbor, belonging to social organizations, and on and on. That is the world in which liberty must be found, not the imaginary world of ideas where liberty seems as simple as leaving other people alone as they wish to be left alone.

Liberty cannot be that simple because humans, as social creatures, must "go along to get along" -- as the saying goes. What one person may find harmless, many others may not. The "odd person" out may have to acquiesce in the group's norms in order to derive the benefits that come from socialization: love, friendship, mutual help, mutual defense, and the like. The pursuit of happiness, in other words, is multi-dimensional and replete with trade-offs. That is the real world of real people. Now let us explore the meaning of liberty in such a world.

This essay is, in part, an extended critique of simplistic libertarianism. That brand of libertarianism, which is rampant on the Web, simply bears almost no relation to human nature. It seems to flow from a kind of introverted intellectualism that conflates autonomy and liberty, but which takes no account of the inescapable complexities of human nature. Autonomy and liberty are not the same, and therein lies the paradox of libertarianism.

THE PARADOX OF LIBERTARIANISM

Chris Matthew Sciabarra touts his entry about libertarianism in the International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology. The entry leads off with this:
Libertarianism is the political ideology of voluntarism, a commitment to voluntary action in a social context, where no individual or group of individuals can initiate the use of force against others.
Sciabarra's rendition emphasizes the non-aggression principle and has nothing to say about government, as one would expect of a person who blogs at an anarcho-capitalist site. My version has a somewhat different emphasis and allows for a minimal state:
If you are doing no harm to anyone, no one should harm you physically, coerce you, defraud or deceive you, steal from you, or tell you how to live your life. "No one" includes government, except to the extent that government is empowered -- by the people -- to defend life, liberty, and property through the circumscribed use of police, courts, and armed forces.
The first sentence of my version is operationally equivalent to the quotation I pulled from Sciabarra's entry. To put it more simply:
The core of libertarianism is liberty: briefly, the negative right to be left alone -- in one's person, pursuits, and property -- as long as one leaves others alone.
The problem with all such formulations, however, is that they gloss over two important questions:
  1. What is harm and who defines it?

  2. How does one ensure that one is "left alone" in a world where there are predators and parasites who will not subscribe voluntarily to a pact of mutual restraint?
The paradox of libertarianism lies in the answers to those two questions, which I'll answer in reverse order.

Here is how one ensure that one is "left alone":
  1. All members of a group agree as to what specifically constitutes harm.

  2. All members of the group agree to honor the obligation to leave other members alone, as long as those other members do not commit acts that are recognized as harmful.

  3. By the same token, all members of the honor the obligation to defend a fellow member or members against predators (renegades within the group, or outsiders).
The "catch" is point 1, which requires an answer to the question "What is harm and who defines it?"

To be a member of the group and to merit its protection (through mutual restraint and mutual defense) requires acceptance of a common, specific definition of harm. Various members might prefer different definitions. (For example, some might view abortion as harmless; some might view it as the murder of a prospective member of the group; and others might view it as an act that will inevitably lead to harm because it invites, say, euthanasia.) But unless each member subscribes to the same, specific definition of harm there can be no basis for mutual restraint -- or for mutual defense. Where some see harm -- from other members of the group or from outsiders -- others may see no harm.

In summary: Liberty rests on an agreed definition of harm, and on an accompanying agreement to act with mutual restraint and in mutual defense. Given the variety of human wants and preferences, the price of mutual restraint and mutual defense is necessarily some loss of liberty. That is, each person must accept, and abide by, a definition of harm that is not the definition by which he would abide were he able to do so. But, in return for mutual restraint and mutual defense, he must abide by that compromise definition.

That insight carries important implications for anarchists and pseudo-anarchists. Real liberty is necessarily ordered liberty. It is not "anything goes" or "do your own thing." It is not even the more respectable variant of those things, a variant known as anarchism. For anarchism is based on self-governance by a voluntary group. Self-governance implies the acceptance of and adherence to a compromise definition of harm, in return for mutual restraint and mutual defense. Therefore, as I wrote here, anarchy is an empty concept.

LIBERTY AS A SOCIAL COMPACT

There are two main views of the source of liberty:
  • Liberty is innate in humans.
  • Liberty arises from a social compact.
I am of the second view: Liberty arises from a social compact, it is not in our genes and does not flow from heaven like manna. The social compact -- in its simplest terms -- is this: Each of us may do as he or she pleases as long as what we do does not bring harm to others. But that formula (essentially John Stuart Mill's "harm principle") is misleadingly simple.

Liberty requires a consensus about harms and the boundaries of mutual restraint -- the one being the complement of the other. Agreed harms are to be avoided mainly through self-restraint. Societal consensus and mutual restraint must, therefore, go hand in hand.

Looked at in that way, it becomes obvious that liberty is embedded in society and preserved through order. There may be societally forbidden acts that, to an outsider, would seem not to cause harm but which, if permitted within a society, would unravel the mutual restraint upon which ordered liberty depends.

The inculcation of mutual restraint depends mainly on the existence of viable families -- families in which the parents are present and at least one of them (traditionally the mother) spends a great deal of time inculcating in children the value of self-restraint (also known as the Golden Rule).

Honesty is a corollary of self-restraint, and is implicit in the Golden Rule. Honesty is essential to liberty because the security of one's livelihood and property depends primarily on voluntary adherence to contracts, formal and informal.

A third familial value essential to liberty is mutual aid -- the practice of mutual assistance and defense. The teaching of mutual aid at home spills over into the community. As I wrote here,
the willingness of humans to come to each other's defense has emotional and practical roots:

1. An individual is most willing to defend those who are emotionally closest to him because of love and empathy. (Obvious examples are the parent who risks life in an effort to save a child, and the soldier who throws himself on a grenade to protect his comrades.)

2. An individual is next most willing to defend those who are geographically closest to him because those persons, in turn, are the individual's nearest allies. (This proposition is illustrated by the Union and the Confederacy in the American Civil War, and by the spirit of "we're all in this together" that prevailed in the U.S. during World War I and World War II. This proposition is related to but does not depend on the notion that patriotism has evolutionary origins.)

3. If an individual is not willing to defend those who are emotionally or geographically closest to him, he cannot count on their willingness to defend him. In fact, he may be able to count on their enmity. (A case in point is Southerners' antagonism toward the North for many decades after the Civil War, which arose from Southerners' resentment toward the "War of Northern Aggresssion" and Reconstruction.)
What happens to self-restraint, honesty, and mutual aid outside the emotional and social bonds of family, friendship, community, church, and club can be seen quite readily in the ways in which we treat one another when we are nameless or faceless to each other. Thus we become rude (and worse) as drivers, e-mailers, bloggers, spectators, movie-goers, mass-transit commuters, shoppers, diners-out, and so on. Which is why, in a society much larger than a clan, we must resort to the empowerment of governmental agencies to enforce mutual restraint, mutual defense, and honesty within the society -- as well as to protect society from external enemies.

But liberty begins at home. Without the civilizing influence of traditional families, friendships, and social organizations, police and courts would be overwhelmed by chaos. Liberty would be a hollower word than it has become, largely because of the existence of other governmental units that have come to specialize in the imposition of harms on the general public in the pursuit of power and in the service of special interests (which enables the pursuit of power). Those harms have been accomplished in large part by the intrusion of government into matters that had been the province of families, voluntary social organizations, and close-knit communities. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe writes in "The Rise and Fall of the City,"
[a]fter the race and the class cards have been played and done their devastating work, the government turns to the sex and gender card, and "racial justice" and "social justice" are complemented by "gender justice." The establishment of a government — a judicial monopoly — not only implies that formerly separated jurisdictions (as within ethnically or racially segregated districts, for instance) are forcibly integrated; it implies at the same time that formerly fully integrated jurisdictions (as within households and families) will be forcibly broken down or even dissolved.

Rather than regarding intra-family or -household matters . . . as no one else's business to be judged and arbitrated within the family by the head of the household or family members, once a judicial monopoly has been established, its agents — the government — also become and will naturally strive to expand their role as judge and arbitrator of last resort in all family matters. To gain popular support for its role the government (besides playing one tribe, race, or social class against another) will likewise promote divisiveness within the family: between the sexes — husbands and wives — and the generations — parents and children. Once again, this will be particularly noticeable in the big cities.

Every form of government welfare — the compulsory wealth or income transfer from "haves" to "have nots" lowers the value of a person's membership in an extended family-household system as a social system of mutual cooperation and help and assistance. Marriage loses value. For parents the value and importance of a "good" upbringing (education) of their own children is reduced. Correspondingly, for children less value will be attached and less respect paid to their own parents. Owing to the high concentration of welfare recipients, in the big cities family disintegration is already well advanced. In appealing to gender and generation (age) as a source of political support and promoting and enacting sex (gender) and family legislation, invariably the authority of heads of families and households and the "natural" intergenerational hierarchy within families is weakened and the value of a multi-generational family as the basic unit of human society diminished.

Indeed, as should be clear, as soon as the government's law and legislation supersedes family law and legislation (including interfamily arrangements in conjunction with marriages, joint-family offspring, inheritance, etc.), the value and importance of the institution of a family can only be systematically eroded. For what is a family if it cannot even find and provide for its own internal law and order! At the same time, as should be clear as well but has not been sufficiently noted, from the point of view of the government's rulers, their ability to interfere in internal family matters must be regarded as the ultimate prize and the pinnacle of their own power.

To exploit tribal or racial resentments or class envy to one's personal advantage is one thing. It is quite another accomplishment to use the quarrels arising within families to break up the entire — generally harmonious — system of autonomous families: to uproot individuals from their families to isolate and atomize them, thereby increasing the state's power over them. Accordingly, as the government's family policy is implemented, divorce, singledom, single parenting, and illegitimacy, incidents of parent-, spouse-, and child-neglect or -abuse, and the variety and frequency of "nontraditional" lifestyles increase as well. . . .

It is [in the big cities] that the dissolution of families is most advanced, that the greatest concentration of welfare recipients exists, that the process of genetic pauperization has progressed furthest, and that tribal and racial tensions as the outcome of forced integration are most virulent. Rather than centers of civilization, cities have become centers of social disintegration, corruption, brutishness, and crime.

To be sure, history is ultimately determined by ideas, and ideas can, at least in principle, change almost instantly. But in order for ideas to change it is not sufficient for people to see that something is wrong. At least a significant number must also be intelligent enough to recognize what it is that is wrong. That is, they must understand the basic principles upon which society — human cooperation — rests: the very principles explained here. And they must have sufficient will power to act according to this insight.

The state — a judicial monopoly — must be recognized as the source of de-civilization: states do not create law and order; they destroy it. Families and households must be recognized as the source of civilization. It is essential that the heads of families and households reassert their ultimate authority as judge in all internal family affairs. Households must be declared extraterritorial territory, like foreign embassies. Free association and spatial exclusion must be recognized as not bad but good things that facilitate peaceful cooperation between different ethnic and racial groups. Welfare must be recognized as a matter exclusively of families and voluntary charity and state welfare as nothing but the subsidization of irresponsibility.
In sum, liberty is not an abstract ideal. Liberty cannot be sustained without the benefit of widely accepted -- and enforced -- social norms. A society that revolves around norms established within families and close-knit social groups is most likely to serve liberty.

Related posts:

The State of Nature
Some Thoughts about Liberty

SOCIAL NORMS AND LIBERTY

The Wisdom Embedded in Social Norms

Social norms can and do evolve. Moreover, in a society with voice and exit they will evolve toward greater liberty, rather than less, if exit is not mooted by legislative and judicial imposition of common norms across all segments of society. I will discuss, in a future post, how liberty is thwarted by governmentally imposed norms. Here I want to expand on the concept of socially evolved norms and their critical importance to ordered liberty. I begin by quoting from a post by John Kekes at Right Reason:

Traditions do not stand alone: they overlap, and the problems of one are often resolved in terms of another. Most traditions have legal, moral, political, aesthetic, stylistic, managerial, and multitude of other aspects. Furthermore, people participating in a tradition bring with them beliefs, values, and practices from other traditions in which they also participate. Changes in one tradition, therefore, are likely to produce changes in others; they are like waves that reverberate throughout the other traditions of a society. Since many of these changes are complex and have consequences that grow more unpredictable the more distant they are, conservatives are cautious about changes. They want them to be incremental and no greater than necessary for correcting some specific defect. They are opposed to experimental, general, or large changes because of their uncertain effects on good lives.

Traditions, of course, may be defective. Conservatives need a way of distinguishing between defective and non-defective traditions. A non-defective tradition has stood the test of time. It has endured for a long period, measured in decades, rather than months; people adhere to it voluntarily; and it forms part of their conception of a good life. It may happen that a tradition has endured because of coercion, that people have adhered to it because of indoctrination, or that the lives of which it formed a part were bad rather than good. Those who suspect a tradition of these defects must provide a reason for it, and defenders of the tradition must consider this reason. If the reason is good, the tradition should be changed. But if there is no reason to change, then there is reason not to change. That reason is that the tradition has stood the test of time. Conservatism, therefore, is not the mindless and indiscriminate defense of all traditions, but only of those that have passed this test.

Social norms may evolve beneficially, but they are overthrown by legislators and judges to the detriment of society. As Edward Feser explains in "Hayek and Tradition,"
[t]radition, being nothing other than the distillation of centuries of human experience, itself provides the surest guide to determining the most rational course of action. Far from being opposed to reason, reason is inseparable from tradition, and blind without it. The so-called enlightened mind thrusts tradition aside, hoping to find something more solid on which to make its stand, but there is nothing else, no alternative to the hard earth of human experience, and the enlightened thinker soon finds himself in mid-air. . . . But then, was it ever truly a love of reason that was in the driver’s seat in the first place? Or was it, rather, a hatred of tradition? Might the latter have been the cause of the former, rather than, as the enlightened pose would have it, the other way around?)

The rationality of tradition and the irrationality of hostility to it were themes of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. But it is possible that the work of F.A. Hayek (which was largely inspired by Burke [see here: ED]) presents the most fully developed and compelling account of these matters, an account presented in terms the post-Darwin enlightened modernist must find difficult to dismiss out of hand, viz., a theory of cultural evolution by means of a kind of natural selection. The aim of the present essay is to articulate and defend Hayek’s position—defend it against the objections of Hayek’s detractors, of course, but also against the misunderstandings of many of his admirers. Some of these admirers are keen indeed on the “evolution” part of his views, but, being less keen on the “tradition” part, make him out to be an advocate of constant change, of “dynamism” over “stasis.”

But he was not that at all, at least, not in the sense these would-be Hayekians imagine. Technological advance, market innovation, and the like were things of which he was a great defender, but those are not the things at issue here. Where fundamental moral institutions are concerned, Hayek was very much in line with the Burkean conservative tradition, a tradition wary of tampering with those institutions (including the specific moral institutions underlying the free market order rightly valued by libertarians). Of course, Hayek did not rule out all change to these institutions in an absolute way, but then, neither do conservatives. At issue is where the default position lies, with who gets the benefit of the doubt in the debate between the traditionalist and the moral innovator. And in this dispute, Hayek is indisputably on the side of the conservative. . . .

Hayek’s view is that the specific content of a traditional practice is indeed often important. It isn’t just a matter of its happening to be traditional; rather, its being traditional is taken by Hayek to be evidence that it has some independent intrinsic value. It is vital to keep this in mind, for Hayek’s position is sometimes mistakenly taken to entail a kind of relativism—as if the traditional practices prevailing in one society must be the best for that society, and the ones prevailing in another are the best for it, with there being no fact of the matter about which society’s traditions are superior. But Hayek believes nothing of the sort; indeed, he insists on the objective superiority of some traditions over others. This sort of relativism could be defended only with regard to traditions (like traveling specifically to grandmother’s house every Christmas) the value of which lies solely in the fact that they are traditional. Hayek is not primarily interested in that sort of tradition.

Hayek’s work clearly expresses ideas that resonate with this conception of tradition as the gradual, internal working out of the implications of a system of thought or practice. This is most evident in Rules and Order, wherein he examines the evolution of rules of practice—as embodied in systems of morality, and especially within the common law—as a process whereby often inexplicit or tacit rules gradually become articulated and their implications drawn out as new situations arise. Law and morality, in his conception, form an organic and evolving structure rather than an artificial closed system created by fiat—a spontaneous order which, in the nature of the case, cannot be fully articulated all at once, but only progressively, and even then not in any finalized way, for there is no limit in principle either to new circumstances or to the system’s inherent but unknown implications. This is part of the reason socialism is impossible, in Hayek’s view: Systems of law—including the laws by which a scheme of “just distribution” of wealth would have to be implemented—are simply too complex for human beings consciously to design, for the circumstances the law has to cover are, like the economic information a socialist planner would need in order to do his job, complex, fragmented, and dispersed, unknowable to any single mind. A workable system of law must, at the most basic level anyway, evolve spontaneously, with conscious human design involved at most in refining it, tinkering around its edges.
Liberty in the Real World

Social norms may be consistent with the abstract idea of liberty -- that one may be left alone if one leaves others alone -- but they necessarily go beyond that generality to set specific limits on acceptable behavior. Behavior that strays beyond those limits is that which may lead to the subversion of liberty, either through the direct harms it may cause or through its subversive effects on social cohesion. (Such prospects underlie much of the opposition to legislatively or judicially imposed abortion rights and same-sex marriage, for example.*)

Think of life in a small town where "eveyone knows everyone else's business." The sense of being "watched" actually tends to foster liberty, in that it discourages crime. As a result, one's life and property generally are safer in small towns than in large cities. By the same token, the sense of being "watched" can seem oppressive; one feels less free to do things that might draw social opprobrium, even if those things do no more than offend others' sensibilities.

Why should everyone in a small town have to put up with small-town mores for the sake of a safer, saner life, you may ask? Well, if you don't like small-town mores, fine, pack up and go to the big city, but don't forget to take your handgun (if you're allowed to have one in the big city), and keep your life and homeowner's insurance paid up. (Alternatively, you can stay in the small town and try, through example and persuasion, to change its mores so that there is greater tolerance of social diversity.)

The point is that liberty and happiness cannot be found in the abstract; they must be found in the real world, among real people (or totally apart from them, if you're inclined to reclusiveness). Finding an acceptable degree of liberty and happiness in the real world means contending with many subsets of humankind, each with different sets of social norms.** It is unlikely that any of those sets of social norms affords perfect liberty for any one person. So, in the end, one picks the place that suits one best, imperfect as it may be, and makes the most of it. Sometimes one even tries to change it, but change doesn't always go in the direction one might prefer.

Think of the constrasting visions of liberty and happiness represented in a hippie commune and a monastic order. The adherents of each -- to the extent that they are free to leave -- can be happy, each in his and her own way. The adherents of each are bound to, and liberated by, the norms of the community, which set the bounds of permissible interaction among the adherents. Happiness is not found in the simplistic "harm principle" of John Stuart Mill; happiness is not found in a particular way of life; happiness is found in the ability to choose (and exit) a way of life that, on balance, serves a person's conception of happiness.

In sum, there is no escaping the fact that the attainment of something like liberty and happiness requires the acceptance of -- and compliance with -- some social norms that one may find personally distasteful if not oppressive. But it is possible -- in a large and diverse nation where each social group is free to establish and enforce its own norms -- to find a place that comes closest to suiting one's conception of liberty and happiness. The critical qualfication is that each social group must free to establish and enforce its own norms, as long as those norms include voice and exit.
__________
* The knee-jerk libertarian (and "liberal") will say, for example, that abortion and same-sex marriage are consistent with and required by liberty. But they are not, as I have argued in the several posts linked here. They are steps down a slippery slope toward the further loss of liberty, just as the "progressivism" of the Roosevelts nudged and pushed us down a slippery slope toward the regulatory-welfare state in which we are now enmeshed.

What few libertarians seem willing to credit is the possibility that abortion is of a piece with selective breeding and involuntary euthanasia, wherein the state fosters eugenic practices that aren’t far removed from those of the Third Reich. And when those practices become the norm, what and who will be next? Libertarians, of all people, should be alert to such possibilities. Instead of reflexively embracing “choice” they should be asking whether “choice” will end with fetuses.

The same principle applies to same-sex marriage; it will have consequences that most libertarians are unwilling to consider. Although it's true that traditional, heterosexual unions have their problems, those problems have been made worse, not better, by the intercession of the state. (The loosening of divorce laws, for example, signaled that marriage was to be taken less seriously, and so it has been.) Nevertheless, the state -- in its usual perverse wisdom -- may create new problems for society by legitimating same-sex marriage, thus signaling that traditional marriage is just another contractual arrangement in which any combination of persons may participate. Heterosexual marriage -- as Jennifer Roback Morse explains -- is a primary and irreplicable civilizing force. The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state will undermine that civilizing force. The state will be saying, in effect, "Anything goes. Do your thing. The courts, the welfare system, and the taxpayer -- above all -- will "pick up the pieces." And so it will go.

** There is a kind of pseudo-anarcho-libertarian who asserts that he can pick and choose his associates, so that his interactions with others need consist only of voluntary transactions. Very few people can do that, and to the extent they can do it, they are able to do it because they live in a polity that is made orderly by the existence of the state (like it or not). In other words, anarcho-libertarian attitudes are bought on the cheap, at the expense of one's fellow citizens. But most people cannot and do not wish to escape the influence of groups. Think of the many kinds of groups to which we belong -- even fleetingly -- because our membership in them yields net benefits, even though we must sometimes make compromises in order to meet the expectations of the other members of the group. For example, most of us reside in a neighborhood where there usually are minimal expectations about how one keeps up one's property, even if one avoids the neighbors. Working in a factory, office, or store is certainly a matter of group membership that requires one to make all sorts of compromises. Then, there are athletic activities (sports teams, gym workouts) which usually involve the observance of certain niceties. The list could go on for a long time.

A FOOTNOTE ABOUT LIBERTY AND THE SOCIAL COMPACT

This is an appendix to the two preceding sections, where I first made the case that
liberty is not an abstract ideal. Liberty cannot be sustained without the benefit of widely accepted -- and enforced -- social norms. A society that revolves around norms established within families and close-knit social groups is most likely to serve liberty.
From which it follows that
the attainment of something like liberty and happiness requires the acceptance of -- and compliance with -- some social norms that one may find personally distasteful if not oppressive. But it is possible -- in a large and diverse nation where each social group is free to establish and enforce its own norms -- to find a place that comes closest to suiting one's conception of liberty and happiness. The critical qualfication is that each social group must free to establish and enforce its own norms, as long as those norms include voice and exit.
The validity of these observations depends critically on the source of rights. As I have argued at length,
[r]ights -- though they can exist without the sanction of government and the protection of a state -- are political. That is, although rights may arise from human nature, they have no essence until they are recognized through interpersonal bargaining (politics), in the service of self-interest. It is bargaining that determines whether we recognize only the negative right of liberty, or the positive right of privilege as well. The preference of human beings -- revealed over eons of coexistence -- is to recognize both liberty (usually constrained to some degree) and privilege (which necessitates constraints on liberty).
The liberty I alluded to there was the "pure" liberty of John Stuart Mill's "harm principle" (see footnote), which can be summarized as the negative right to be left alone -- in one's person, pursuits, and property -- as long as one leaves others alone. "Pure" liberty is a mere abstraction. Actual liberty must necessarily involve compromises (constraints), which are inevitable in a society of varied personalities that exists in a particular time and place.

In support of the argument that rights are political, I quoted from Denis Dutton's review of Paul H. Rubin's Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom; Alan Fiske's essay, "The Inherent Sociability of Homo Sapiens"; David Stephens's "Impulsive behavior may be relict of hunter-gatherer past"; and a summary of J. Philippe Rushton's article, "Genetic and environmental contributions to prosocial attitudes: A twin study of social responsibility."

The full implication of those studies is that what we call "rights" -- the kinds of behaviors in which we may engage with impunity -- must be consistent with morality -- the kinds of behaviors that society recognizes as "right." The kinds of behaviors that society recognizes as "right" must, in turn, foster the survival and success of society. Robin Allott explains, in "Objective Morality":
No society is healthy or creative or strong unless that society has a set of common values that give meaning and purpose to group life. . . . Empathy is seen both as the foundation of the unity of feeling which forms an aggregation of individuals into a coherent group and as the source of the effectiveness of the group's code of behavior, the group morality. . . .

One can list various types of motivation which do, or may, lead individuals to accept and seek to observe the morality of their group. There may be childhood imprinting of the moral rules of the family or group, leading to a prerational application of the code, operating rather like post-hypnotic suggestion -- automatic moral responses to predetermined situations. A variant or support of this takes the form of religious endorsement of moral principles -- religious sanctions reinforcing introjected moral reflexes. Or morality may be rationalized as the pursuit of happiness, pleasure or utility -- high level ethical theories perhaps, rather than practical motivations. Or moral behavior may result from prudence or superstition -- following the rules for fear of something worse. . . . More generally, moral behavior may flow from a desire for a worthwhile, productive life, a rational desire of the individual to survive and avoid bodily or mental damage. This may be associated with empathetic identification with the group, its survival and prosperity. . . .

The objective necessity of morality has been demonstrated by life over many generations. However it is not open to immediate rational demonstration. Morality is concerned with remote consequences. The problem is that we have no easy way of seeing the long-term or otherwise distant consequences of following or not following moral rules or showing the consequences for ourselves, for our family or for the group to which we belong. What can we say to the immoralist who claims total moral freedom, who asks: Why not lies? Why not intemperance? Why not promiscuity? Why not theft or fraud? Why not murder? Why not cruelty?

One answer may be: In the absence of morality, you are in a world of powerful, clever, unpredictable animals. Only by understanding others can you protect yourself. Others in the group will only be predictable to the extent that they follow the same moral rules and are moved by the same emotions. A group's morality is concerned not only with how an individual should judge his own action but with how other members of the group, and the group collectively will judge the individual's actions and respond to them. Judge your own action so that you are not judged by others. Others will do unto you what you do unto them. So do not do unto them what you would not want them to do unto you. An individual who rejects the morality of the group rejects empathetic membership of the group and empathetic recognition by others of his membership of the group. The individual becomes a moral parasite living on the morality of the group which he does not observe. To him a different level of morality will apply -- the more primitive kind of morality applied to those not members of the group, to outlaws and outcasts. By asserting your unlimited moral freedom, you risk losing your own freedom.
We ignore, at our peril, the lessons of the ages. Contrary to libertarian purists, the path to liberty is not found in Mill's simplistic "harm principle," which is a formula for atomism. The path to liberty winds tortuously through the complexity of human nature, which shapes -- and is shaped by -- a society's mutual striving to survive and prosper. To give a stark but apt example: If you will kill an unborn child for your convenience, why should I trust you not to kill me for your convenience when I am old? And if I cannot trust you, why should I subscribe to the defense of your life, property, and pursuits?
__________
The "harm principle," from Chapter 1 of On Liberty:
That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
LIBERTY AND FEDERALISM

The Centralization of Social Norms Undermines Liberty

Liberty can never be perfect in the real world of emotions, prejudices, stupidity, and ignorance. But liberty is most attainable when societies and polities must compete with one another for the allegiance of members and prospective members.

Legislation and judge-made laws are especially destructive of liberty when they emanate from a central government because they dilute the effectiveness of "exit" -- the ability to vote with one's feet. Local and regional differences become hard to detect when the central government encroaches into issues ranging from elementary education to working hours to speed limits, not to mention abortion. When all places become subject to the same set of imposed norms they tend to become almost uniformly unattractive. The forceful imposition of norms compounds the risk to liberty, for people are less likely to value and defend that which is not of their own making.

There is a "race to the top" -- toward liberty, that is -- when societies or polities must compete for adherents, based on the attractiveness of the norms of those societies and polities. For example, the Freedom Forum offers this relevant bit of history:
Although early Americans built on their English heritage when developing rights in the new land, many colonies before 1689 had laws that far exceeded the scope of the English Bill of Rights. Rhode Island, established in 1636, was the first American colony to recognize freedom of conscience. In 1641, Massachusetts Bay enacted the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the first detailed protection of rights in America. Maryland was founded as a haven for Catholics, but its citizens extended the right of religious toleration (1649) to other Christians as well.

In June 1776, Virginia adopted a new constitution, prefaced by a declaration of rights including many that would later appear in the U.S. Bill of Rights. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, served as a model for eight of the 12 other states that adopted new constitutions during the revolutionary period.

While the new state governments protected individual rights, the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States, did not. The weak national government under the Articles of Confederation created many problems. In 1787, these problems finally led to a convention to draft a new charter for the national government, the Constitution of the United States. Lack of a bill of rights became the main reason many people opposed the Constitution.
The Framers understood that the decentralization of governmental power is essential to liberty. They wanted to leave the bulk of governmental power in the hands of the States. (A reasonable prospect at the time; the average population of a State in 1790 was about 1/25 the average population of a State today.) And the Framers saw the multiplicity of States as a bulwark against tyranny in the nation as a whole. Here, for example, are excerpts of James Madison's entries in The Federalist Papers:
The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State. (Federalist No. 10)

* * *

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.

The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States. If the new Constitution be examined with accuracy and candor, it will be found that the change which it proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the Union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS. The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained. . . . (Federalist No. 45)

* * *
. . . If an act of a particular State, though unfriendly to the national government, be generally popular in that State and should not too grossly violate the oaths of the State officers, it is executed immediately and, of course, by means on the spot and depending on the State alone. The opposition of the federal government, or the interposition of federal officers, would but inflame the zeal of all parties on the side of the State, and the evil could not be prevented or repaired, if at all, without the employment of means which must always be resorted to with reluctance and difficulty.

On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter. (Federalist No. 46)
Ironically -- and tragically -- the Commerce Clause, touted by Madison in Federalist No. 45, has been the foundation for much of the undoing of the Framers' plan. In fact, it is hard to imagine a facet of social and economic life that is no longer touched by the central government, as the Supreme Court and Congress have acted, especially since the 1930s, to nationalize and homogenize Americans' mores. David F. Forte offers a leading example of this in his article about the Commerce Clause in The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (pp. 101-7):
. . . By 1941, in United States v. Darby, it was clear that the new majority [of the Supreme Court] had embraced a very expansive [view of the Commerce Clause] and, as events were to show, these Justices were able to find that any local activity, taken either separately or in the aggregate, Wichard v. Filburn (1942), always had a sufficiently substantial effect on interstate commerce to justify congressional legislation. By these means, the Court turned the commerce power into the equivalent of a general regulatory power and undid the Framers' original structure of limited and delegated powers . . . .
The Framers' Fatal Error

The Framers underestimated the will to power that animates office-holders. The Constitution's wonderful design -- horizontal and vertical separation of powers -- which worked rather well until the late 1800s, cracked under the strain of populism, as the central government began to impose national economic regulation at the behest of muckrakers and do-gooders. The Framers' design then broke under the burden of the Great Depression, as the Supreme Court of the 1930s (and since) has enabled the central government to impose its will at will. The Framers' fundamental error can be found in Madison's Federalist No. 51. Madison was correct in this:
. . . It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. . . .
But Madison then made the error of assuming that, under a central government, liberty is guarded by a diversity of interests:
[One method] of providing against this evil [is] . . . by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. . . . [This] method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.

In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased. . . .
Madison then went on to contradict what he said in Federalist No. 46 about the States being a bulwark of liberty:
It can be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular form of government within such narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it. In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good; whilst there being thus less danger to a minor from the will of a major party, there must be less pretext, also, to provide for the security of the former, by introducing into the government a will not dependent on the latter, or, in other words, a will independent of the society itself. It is no less certain than it is important, notwithstanding the contrary opinions which have been entertained, that the larger the society, provided it lie within a practical sphere, the more duly capable it will be of self-government. And happily for the REPUBLICAN CAUSE, the practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and mixture of the FEDERAL PRINCIPLE.
Madison understood that a majority can tyrranize a minority. He understood that the States are better able to prevent the rise of tyranny if the powers of the central government are circumscribed. But he then assumed -- in spite of the race to the top that I noted above -- that the States themselves could not resist tyranny within their own borders. Madison overlooked the importance of exit as the ultimate check on tyranny. He assumed (or asserted) that, in creating a new central government with powers greatly exceeding those of the Confederacy, a majority of States would not tyrannize the minority and that minorities with overlapping interests would not concert to tyrannize the majority. Madison was so anxious to see the Constitution ratified that he oversold himself (possibly) and the States' ratifiying conventions (certainly) on the ability of the central government to hold itself in check. Thus the Constitution was lamentably silent on nullification and secession.

What has been done by presidents, Congresses, and courts will be very hard to undo. Too many interests are vested in the regulatory-welfare state that has usurped the Framers' noble vision. Democracy (that is, vote-selling) and log-rolling are more powerful than words on paper. Even a Supreme Court majority of "strict constructionists" probably would decline to roll back the New Deal and most of what has come in its wake.

FINDING LIBERTY

Exit Is the Key

Exit -- the ability to flee a highly taxed and regulated State (that is, one of the United States) for a somewhat less taxed and regulated State -- remains an option, and those who avail themselves of it are sending a message that is lost in the tumult and shouting of electoral politics. Despite the erosion of local and regional differences in governance -- owing to the centralization of power in Washington and the general expansion of government power at all subordinate levels -- there is net migration from the Northeast and Midwest toward the "sun belt" States of the South and West (excluding California), which generally have lower tax rates and less unionism than the Northeast and Midwest. (Summary statistics on internal migration are here, at Table H on page 14. An index of economic freedom, by State, is here.)

It is therefore no coincidence that the mean population center of the U.S. has since 1940 moved smartly southwestward, from southern Illinois into south central Missouri. Incentives matter; that which enhances economic liberty also enhances personal liberty, for the two are indivisible. The urge for liberty drives people out of high-tax States and toward (relatively) low-tax States, as illustrated by this graphic from "Revolution on Wheels" (Barron's Online, February 13, 2006):



The lesson here is simple: As long as there is meaningful exit there can be a race to the top. Exit serves liberty because it enables each person to find that place whose values come closest to his or her preferred way of life. Places deemed among the most attractive will grow in numbers and prosper; places deemed less attractive will wither, economically if not in terms of population. Under the right conditions (to which I will come), the balance will tilt toward liberty, that is, toward a modus vivendi that seems, for most people, to offer happiness. That is the essence of federalism, as it was envisioned by the Framers.

But, today, the 50 States (and their constituent municipalities) are incompatible with the kind of federalism envisioned by the Framers. Today's State and municipal governments are too bureaucratic and too beholden to special interests; they have become smaller versions of the federal government. A devolution of power to the States would advance liberty in some States, but it would fall well short of reversing the depradations of liberty that began in earnest with the New Deal. For, in today's populous States and municipalities, coalitions of minority interests are able to tyrannize the populace. (The average State today controls the destinies of 25 times as many persons as did the average State of 1790.) Those Americans who "vote with their feet" do not escape to regimes of liberty so much as they escape to regimes that are less tyrannical than the ones in which they had been living.

The kind of federalism envisioned by the Framers -- and the kind of federalism necessary to liberty -- would require the devolution to small communities and neighborhoods of all but a few powers: war-making, the conduct of foreign affairs, and the regulation of inter-community commerce for the sole purpose of ensuring against the erection of barriers to trade. With that kind of federalism, the free markets of ideas and commerce would enable individuals to live in those communities and neighborhoods that best serve their particular conceptions of liberty. (To grasp this critical point, please read or re-read the preceding installments of this series: here, here, here, and here.)

A "Modest" Proposal for an Experiment in Liberty

Unfortunately, most proponents of federalism remain fixated on the State as the common denominator. Consider the Free State Project,
an agreement among 20,000 pro-liberty activists to move to New Hampshire, where they will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property. The success of the Project would likely entail reductions in taxation and regulation, reforms at all levels of government to expand individual rights and free markets, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world.
Why New Hampshire?
After obtaining 5,000 committed members, the FSP membership voted and chose New Hampshire. The vote was conducted in accordance with the Participation Guidelines; detailed results of the vote may be found here. The FSP membership selected New Hampshire because of its many political, economic, and cultural advantages, which can be seen in our NH Info page. In addition, New Hampshire's low population ensures that each individual can have an effect on the political system.
Why not Missouri, which has an excellent index of economic freedom, celebrates an early tax freedom day, and generally has better weather than New Hampshire (except for skiing). Better yet, why not a county or city in a State like Missouri? Best yet, why not convince the federal government and a State to perform an experiment by allowing the establishment of a "zone of liberty" within a State -- an experiment in liberty, if you will. If it succeeds, others will flock to it or demand the establishment of similar zones of liberty. If it fails . . . well, that seems unlikely.

What do I have in mind? A zone of liberty would be something like a "new city" -- with a big difference. Uninhabited land would be acquired by a wealthy lover (or lovers) of liberty (call him or them the "developer"). The zone would be populated initially by immigrants, who would buy parcels of land from the developer, and who would be allowed to build the home or business of their choosing on the land that they buy. Sub-developers would be allowed to acquire large parcels, subdivide those parcels, and attach perpetual covenants to the use of the subdivided parcels -- covenants that initial and subsequent buyers would knowingly accept. Absentee ownership would be prohibited.

Infrastructure would be provided by competing vendors of telecommunications and transportation services. Rights-of-way would be created through negotiations between vendors and property owners. Any resident homeowner or businessperson could import or export any article from or to any place, including another country; there would be no import controls, duties, or tarrifs; the only restrictions on commerce would be those that are imposed by outside governments.

A zone's government would comprise an elected council, a police force, and a court (all paid for by assessments based on the last sale price of each property in the zone). The police force would be empowered to keep the peace among the residents of the zone, and to protect the residents from outsiders who come into the zone without permission from a resident and/or who breach the peace. Breaches of the peace would be defined by the development of a common law through the court. The elected council (whose members would serve single, four-year terms) would oversee the police force and court, and would impose the assessments necessary to defray the costs of government. The council would have no other powers, and it would be able to exercise its limited powers only by agreement among three-fourths of the members of the council. The members, who would not be salaried, would annually submit a proposed budget to the electorate, which would have to approve the budget by a three-fourths majority. The electorate would consist of every resident who is an owner or joint owner of a residence or business (not undeveloped land), and who has attained the age of 30.

A zone of liberty would not be bound by federal, State, or local statutes, except that the federal government could impose a per-capita tax on residents of the zone that is sufficient to defray the zone's per-capita share of the national budget for defense and foreign affairs. The actions of the zone's government would be reviewable only by the U.S. Supreme Court, and then only following the passage of a bill of particulars by two-thirds of the number of U.S. Senators and Representatives, which must be signed by the President. (A zone could be abolished only with the approval of four-fifths of both houses of Congress and the President.)

Absent such an experiment, I fear that organized minorities will continue to constrain liberty, mooting even the modest degree of inter-State migration that now prevails. Our only hope for liberty -- albeit a slim one -- would then rest in the hands of the Supreme Court.

I am being realistic in my assessment of what it would take to attain something like liberty in the United States: either an upheaval of the Supreme Court or the creation of something like zones of liberty. Politics as usual will only take us further down the road to serfdom. Frankly, I see little chance of averting serfdom. All I can do is propose an alternative -- unlikely as it is -- and pray.

The Moral of the Story

The bottom line of this series:
  • Liberty suffers when a central government does more than make war, conduct of foreign affairs, and regulate inter-State commerce for the sole purpose of ensuring against the erection of barriers to trade.
  • Liberty suffers when a central government imposes rules on all at the instigation of the majority or coalitions of minorities.
  • Liberty thrives when the rules that govern relations among the members of a group are agreed among the members of the group -- even if those rules vary from group to group. One group's liberty may be another group's strait-jacket, and vice versa.
It is easy to say that liberty consists of doing what we please as long as what we do does not bring harm to others. It is very hard to say what will and will not do harm. Socially evolved norms offer the best guide. We ignore and summarily reject those norms at great peril to liberty.

The simplistic definition of liberty -- do as you please but do no harm to others -- is superficially appealing. But it glides over the definition of harm, which may vary widely from group to group. Those who advocate abortion and same-sex marriage, for instance, may see those practices as harmless, but they fail to take into account the downstream effects of those practices on civility, without which life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Those who wish to live the simplistic libertarian life of "do no harm to others" are welcome to it, if they can find it in a group of like-minded persons. There is no such thing as a neutral or objective definition of "harm." Simplistic libertarians merely have a particular conception of "no harm" that they should not be able to impose on others who disagree with that conception. I, for example, do not wish to be bound by the simplistic libertarians' blind adherence to the non-aggression principle, which is both fatuous and suicidal. (See this, this, this, this, and this.)

That is why it is so important to devolve most governmental power to small groups. Doing so enables exit and makes it more likely that leaving will be rewarded by finding membership in a more congenial group. (For that reason I would constrain the size and membership of each zone of liberty, creating more of them instead of allowing any one of them to grow beyond the size of a small town (perhaps not exceeding a population of 150).

In conclusion, true liberty can be found in these four rules:
  1. A group's behavior must be governed by norms that have evolved among its members, rather than being forced on them through executive, legislative, or judicial edict. (Though legislation, if backed by a super-majority of the populace, may reflect evolved norms.)

  2. The norms must be susceptible of further, unforced change.

  3. Dissidents must be free to state their dissent openly, without fear of coming to physical harm at the hands of society or the state. (One must accept the possibility of disapproval, and even ostracism, but disapproval and ostracism are much less likely if one begins as an accepted member of a social group.)

  4. Dissidents must be free to leave, without paying any penalty other than the cost of leaving.
APPENDIX: NOTES ON HUMAN NATURE

The essential fallacy of simplistic libertarianism is that it does not account for the deeply embedded human impulses that we often call "human nature":
Man evolved in cooperating groups united by common cultural and genetic ties, and it is only in such a setting that the individual can feel truly free, and truly protected. . . .

The meaning of liberty is inseparable from the founding anthropology of man, an individual sharing a common history and common culture in a common community.

Alain de Benoist, "Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: A sociological view of the decay of modern society" (originally published in The Mankind Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 263-270).

* * *

The scene of evolution is the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, the EEA, essentially the Pleistocene, the whole, long period lasting from 1.6 million years ago up until the shift to the Holocene with the invention of agriculture and large settlements 10,000 years ago. Our present intellectual constitution was achieved by about 50,000 years ago. . . . [T]here were 80,000 generations of humans and proto-humans in the Pleistocene, while there have been a mere 500 generations since agriculture and the first cities. It was in the earlier, much longer period that selective pressures created genetically modern humans. . . .

. . . Libertarianism was not a viable strategy for the EEA. The actions of individuals produce by-products to affect whole communities, and [according to Paul H. Rubin, author of Darwinian Politics] “we have evolved preferences to control these actions.” We are genetically predisposed, it seems, “to interfere in the behavior of others,” even where the behavior has little demonstrable adverse effect on a community: we want to control recreational drug use, when people can gamble or drink, where they can smoke, and whether they can engage in private sex acts. We succumb to periodic moral panics about youth — the music they listen to or their hairstyles, their language, and so forth. We set up laws to regulate all aspects of behavior. We are fundamentally meddlesome creatures.

Rubin speculates that this impulse to control our fellows, even in matters that have little or no material effect on living standards or resource allocation, is an adaptation designed to increase group solidarity. In fact, he even suggests that a group in the EEA that put into practice libertarian values would likely be less able to survive than one that more tightly controlled social behavior: I have a picture of laid-back, freedom-loving Pleistocene libertarians being massacred by a nearby tribe of Pleistocene fascists. What makes the fascists successful is the enforcement of specified beliefs and rituals, “our” culture. Punish­ing defectors keeps the group strong. The result is a marked human taste for paternalism, for interfering in private behavior in the name of morality.

Denis Dutton, in a review of Rubin's Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom

Posted by Thomas at 11:10 PM

Friday, March 17, 2006

Trade, Government Spending, and Economic Growth

Executive Summary

One reason for continued economic growth and the resurgence of productivity is the trade deficit, which is not a form of debt. A trade deficit offsets government spending and therefore alleviates the "crowding out" effect that government spending has on private-sector consumption and investment. American consumers and businesses are better off than they would be in the absence of a trade deficit. For the trade deficit is nothing more than a manifestation of voluntary exchange, which -- by definition -- benefits both parties. In the case of international trade, foreigners (on net) are selling us goods and services while we are selling them a combination of goods, services, stocks, bonds, and mortgages. The so-called deficit, then, is nothing more than foreigners' purchases of U.S. stocks, bonds, and mortgages.

Thus, instead of using resources to produce goods and services and sending them overseas in exchange for goods and services of equal value, some resources remain in the U.S. And some of those resources are then converted into capital investments that help make American businesses more productive and profitable. In effect, some foreigners are using the income they receive from Americans to "invest in America," just as some Americans use some of their income to "invest in America." There is no difference.

Nevertheless, when there is a trade deficit we are treated to gloom-and-doom-saying about "foreign "ownership" of U.S. assets and the "exportation" of American jobs. But foreign ownership of U.S. assets is not a threat to Americans; rather, it gives foreigners a stake in America's economic growth. The threat of job "exportation" is just as bogus; when foreigners "do jobs that Americans could be doing" they are enabling Americans to make more productive use of their abilities. If you don't care (and you shouldn't) whether your car in made in Detroit or Tennessee, why should you care whether a computer technician works in the U.S. or overseas? What you should care about is the value you receive when you buy a car or use a computer help line.

The real villain of the piece is government spending, not government deficits. Government deficits are simply the result of government spending. It is government spending -- not government borrowing -- that threatens Americans' prosperity.Through spending (whether it is financed by taxes or borrowing), government confiscates resources and puts them to generally wasteful and counterproductive uses.

Where does the trade deficit fit in? It doesn't create government spending or government deficits. To the contrary, the trade deficit helps to offset the essential wastefulness of government spending by enabling Americans to enjoy and benefit from goods and services that government spending deprives them of.

You will come to understand the logic of these conclusions if you can bear with the bit of simple algebra that lies ahead. But first . . .

Some Background

The "real" economy -- the economy that produces and uses goods and services -- is healthy (though not as robust as it could be) in spite of (and not because of) government spending and regulatory activity. Although real GDP continues to grow at a lower rate than it did before the advent of the regulatory-welfare state about 100 years ago (Figure 1), the resurgence of productivity (Figure 2) offers hope for the future.

Figure 1

Source and explanation: "The Destruction of Income and Wealth by the State."

Figure 2

Source and explanation: "Productivity Growth and Tax Cuts."

As Figure 2 suggests, the so-called boom of the 1990s really began in the early 1980s, as inflation was tamed and Reagan's tax cuts and pro-business attitude gave new hope to inventors, innovators, and entrerpreneurs -- and to those who finance them. It is those economic actors, not government, who are responsible for economic growth. The best thing government can do, when it comes to the economy, is to get out of the way.

When I say "get out of the way" I am not talking about reducing government deficits. Nor am I talking about eliminating the so-called trade (or current-account) deficit, which many commentators see (wrongly) as a cause of government budget deficits. Government spending is the real obstacle to robust economic growth. It is a drag on the economy because it diverts resources to what are mainly nonproductive activities. Moreover, government regulatory programs have a cumulative, counterproductive effect that is out of proportion to their cost because the regulatory burden on business activity keeps piling up. (Refer again to Figure 1, and go to the source for the depressing details.)

Figure 3 (which encompasses spending and deficits at all levels of government) provides some needed perspective. Notice the historical disconnect between the government deficit and the current-account deficit. The fact that both have been rising in recent years is a coincidence, about which many commentators have drawn the wrong inference. The "500-pound gorilla" in Figure 3 is government spending, in particular, the growing burden of transfer payments (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), which take from those who produce and give to those who do not, and which discourage saving and encourage consumption. The rise in transfer payments has kept total government outlays above 30 percent of GDP since 1970. Figure 4 indicates that the situation is likely to worsen considerably, given current "commitments" to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Figure 3

Sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Economic Accounts, Table 1.1.5. Gross Domestic Product (lines 1, 20-24), Table 3.1. Government Current Receipts and Expenditures (lines 17, 29), Table 4.1 Foreign Transactions in the National Income and Product Accounts (line 29).

Figure 4

Source: Government Accounting Office (see also "Funding the Welfare State").

This recitation of dreary facts sets the stage for the rest of this post, which focuses on the real problem, which is government spending -- not government deficits (per se), and certainly not the so-called trade deficit.

The "Real" Economy in Simple Formulae

The following formulations depict the "real" economy at a given time. (See this article for a more complex but equivalent depiction.) These formulations do not, by themselves, depict the dynamics of economic growth or the cause-and-effect relationships among the various parameters of the real economy. I supply some of those missing ingredients in the commentary that follows.

The totality of real economic activity can be expressed as an identity:

(1) Income ≡ Output

That is, aggregate income (the claims on or distribution of output) must be equal to the aggregate of all types of output.

Income and output can be expressed in terms of certain parameters:

(2.a) Income = C + S + T + M

(2.b) Output = C + I + G + X ,

where the parameters are defined as follows:

C = consumption (private-sector consumption of goods and services produced domestically, excluding consumption that is subsidized by government transfer payments to the beneficiaries of such programs Social Security and Medicare)

S = saving (private-sector income not consumed, taxed, or spent on imports)

I = private-sector investment (output invested by non-governmental entities in technology, buildings, equipment, etc., for the purpose of increasing the future output of goods and services)

M = items imported for private-sector consumption or investment from other countries

X = private-sector output exported to other countries

T = taxes, including transfer-payment taxes for Social Security, etc.

G = government spending (including spending that is subsidized by transfer payments for such programs as Social Security and Medicare)

and:

(X - M) or (M - X) = trade surplus or deficit

(T - G) or (G - T) = government surplus or deficit.

These definitions vary from the standard version in that any spending subsidized by government transfer payments for such programs as Social Security and Medicare is included in G rather than C . These definitions also implicitly reject a role for government in saving and investment, for reasons spelled out in my post, "Joe Stiglitz, Ig-Nobelist."

Key Relationships

Because Income ≡ Output, it follows that:

(3) C + S + T + M = C + I + G + X
In a closed economy without government the Income ≡ Output identity reduces to this:
(3') C + S = C + I
Given that C ≡ C, it follows that S = I in a closed economy without government.That is, absent government (which usurps saving through taxation), the backbone of private-sector investment is private-sector saving.

In an open economy without government the Income ≡ Output identity becomes this:
(3'') C + S + M = C + I + X
Given that C ≡ C, it follows that (S + M) = (I + X) in an open economy without government. That is, given a level of exports, the backbone of private-sector investment is the combination of private-sector saving and imports that are not consumed. It therefore follows that . . .

The Trade Deficit Is Good

Solving 3 for (M - X), the trade deficit, we get:
(4) (M - X) = (I - S) + (G - T)
What (4) tells us is that a trade deficit is a boon to economic growth. That is, an increase in M (or a decrease in X) supports an increase in I , even when T reduces S .

Consider, for example, an exogenous increase in M (e.g., because of economic growth or a drop in the prices of imported goods relative to the prices of domestic substitutes). An exogenous increase in M means that more resources become available for I (as well as C). By the same token, an exogenous decrease in X (e.g., because a rise in U.S. interest rates attracts foreign money away from U.S. exports and toward U.S. bonds and mortgages) means that more resources become available for I (as well as C).

In sum, the causality runs from trade. Trade is an enabler. Foreign trade is just another form of voluntary exchange, which benefits all parties. In the case of foreign trade, Americans stand to capture real resources that can be invested in growth-producing capital. The so-called trade deficit isn't the "bad" side of trade, it's the good side of trade.

The catch is that government may confiscate some of the potential gains from a trade deficit by adding to its debt when G is greater than T . Which leads me to this . . .

A Trade Deficit Is Not a Form of Debt

Solving (3) for (G - T), we get:

(5) (G - T) = (S - I) + (M - X).

It is apparent that a trade deficit can finance a portion of the government deficit. That is why government-deficit and trade-deficit hysterics liken the trade defici