Gun Control via Liability Insurance

This post is cross-listed on From Corn Fields to the Capitol.

NPR has a really great post tied to a story they ran on Morning Edition this morning. In it some experts suggest one practical way to achieve a measure of gun control and price in the potential for negative externalities is by requiring gun owners to purchase liability insurance.  If you own a gun you must also purchase a liability policy to cover the cost of any damage your gun incurs, very similar to the requirement many states have requiring car owners have, at minimum, liability insurance. But there's another wrinkle that could be throw in there.  Here's Prof. Justin Wolfers from the University of Michigan:

Another even more powerful approach is to recognize that the problem isn't guns per se, but gun violence. Thus, instead of taxing guns, we should tax gun violence. Basically, this is the same as saying that we should make gun owners liable for any damage their guns do. Not only would this discourage some people from buying guns, it would lead those who do keep guns to be more careful with how they're stored. Indeed, greater care would surely have kept Adam Lanza out of his mother's cache. The problem though, is that Nancy Lanza is neither with us to pay the damages her gun caused, nor could she afford to pay for the enormous damage her gun wrought in Newtown. And so the only way this solution works is if guns required mandatory liability insurance, much as we force car owners to buy insurance for the damage their machines wreak.

This is an intriguing solution to me, and one I think may sportsmen and women would find very compelling. I know my dad would. He's a card carrying member of the NRA, hunter, gun enthusiast, and all the rest. In the wake of the tragedy at Newton our annual Christmas Eve dinner started out talking about gun control. You won't find a bigger proponent of the second amendment, but you won't find a bigger proponent of individual responsibility either. He thought it made perfect sense that if your gun is used in a crime, you are charged as if you had committed the crime. What if the gun is stolen? Did you report it? Was it locked in a gun safe or did you have a trigger lock on it?

Of course, the trouble with requiring the purchase of "gun insurance" or "gun violence insurance" is that some people just won't buy it. Here's Russ Roberts a research fellow at the Hoover Institution:

[T]he logic is not quite as neat as it might appear. Many people already buy and own guns illegally without license or registration. Adding the cost of insurance would further discourage honest gun ownership. That would make matters worse not better. And is it so obvious that all guns are harmful to others and that gun ownership should be made more expensive to every owner?

Point taken, but we know there are folks on the road who don't have liability insurance. It's part of the landscape, but it doesn't mean doing this is a bad idea. It was a bit like Mr. Wayne LaPierre at the Senate Hearing yesterday saying background checks wouldn't do anything, so we shouldn't do them. Wonder what he would think about requiring liability insurance to be purchased.

Also, if you didn't see this Daily Show segment about how hard it is for the ATF to do it's job, a job Mr. LaPierre said it should be doing, you're missing out.



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The Changing Nature of War?

This from Dexter Filkins writing in the New Yorker about the revocation of the U.S. military's ban on women in combat irked me:

Notions of equality aside, the real factor that rendered the “non-combat” distinction meaningless was the changing nature of the wars. In an old-style conflict like, say, the Second World War, big, uniformed armies squared off against other big, uniformed armies. In a war like that, driving a truck in a supply convoy, or briefing reporters on the days’ events, could be deemed relatively safe. As long as you were behind the lines, your chances of getting killed were small. But in Iraq and Afghanistan there are no front lines. Or, as the troops on the ground say, the front line is where you are.

Filkins is write that insurgencies are messy and are largely fought without front lines in the way we often imagine European-style warfare in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  But insurgencies are not new and that the United States has faced two in the last twelve years is hardly reflective of the changing nature of war.  

Don't misunderstand me: Filkins' point that the distinction between combat and non-combat jobs--and the supposed protection this distinction afforded female servicemembers--was fairly meaningless in Iraq and Afghanistan is not lost on me.  But Filkins wrongly locates the cause of the distinction's meaninglessness in a non-existent paradigm shift in the nature of warfare itself.  It is not warfare that has changed but the composition of the U.S. armed forces.  Even in Filkins' imagined World War II, women driving supply convoys  would be frequent targets of attack.  Airborne interdiction played a prominent role in World War II.  In North Africa and the Italian campaign, for example, the U.S. Army Air Corps attacked supply depots, ports, and even the ferries traveling over the Messina Straits.  Had women soldiers been used by Axis forces to pilot those ferries or load or unload materiel at ports, then female soldiers would have been killed there.   

Diplomacy Isn't Dead

This post is cross-listed on DC Exile and From Corn Fields to the Capitol, Jason's new wider ranging blog.

Writing in the New York Times, Roger Cohen has a column up claiming flatly "[d]iplomacy is dead." He feels the U.S. will never achieve a diplomatic accomplishment to rival Nixon's trip to China or the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union.  While, I'm inclined to agree on the latter example, I think Mr. Cohen doth protest too much declaring diplomacy dead.

He rightfully criticizes our current age of, "impatience, changeableness, palaver, small-mindedness and an unwillingness to talk to bad guys." He notes the role of professional diplomats has been squeezed in this country because of our post-9/11 focus on non-state actors, which have more visibly involved the armed forces and the CIA, then the State Department. Again, I agree.

But I think he goes too far when he laments the end of realpolitik, but cites Syria as an example of diplomacy failing. I'd tend to think many a realist would size up Syria, even back two years ago, and say there is an not imminent national interest there. Indeed realpolitik isn't for the squeamish, but it seems like that's the cold-hearted analysis driving the lack of U.S. engagement in the country today.

He goes a bit too far when he cites three long standing thorns in the paw of U.S. foreign policy: Cuba, Iran, and Israel-Palestine. These thorns have been lodged for 52, 34, and 65 years respectfully.  And while I'd agree sometimes these three issues are used to scare up domestic constituencies  I think to cite them as diplomatic failures is to ignore the facts.

In Cuba, we had a dictator that was uninterested in seeking a change in relations with us for nearly all the 52 years of the dispute. But now with a new leader there has been some thawing out of relations with revised travel permissions and a continentially slow creep of capitalism into the country. You must have a willing partner to make a diplomatic break through and I'd dare say slow and steady still wins this race.

In Iran, much like Cuba, we find a ruling authority quite disinterested in making peace with us. And yet, diplomacy has happened around the edges. Have we normalized relations? No. Have we convinced Iran to give up any supposed nuclear ambitions? No. But you can't call the ballgame in the third quarter.

With respect to Israel and Palestine, you're dealing with two parties whose own political machinations have made a lasting peace agreement fall in and out of vogue. This is an old conflict and America isn't quite seen as an honest broker. It's hard to fix something so entrenched, which is why so many past efforts have failed  To declare diplomacy dead because the U.S. hasn't facilitated a peace agreement in the Middle East is to raise the bar to dizzying heights and tell the competitor to jump flat footed from the floor.

Mr. Cohen also dismisses two big diplomatic successes, namely Burma and Libya. He mentions Burma but glosses over how the U.S. diplomatically engineered the opening up of the country with carrot extended only in reward for desirable behavior. It was peaceful, it was orderly, and it appears to be genuine. If that's not diplomacy in action, I don't know what is.

With regard to Libya, I'm talking Libya 2003 when Gaddafi voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons without a shot fired. Again, this is a success story for diplomacy, even more so given what would follow eight years later. Imagine a nuclear armed Libya disintegrating into revolution. Surely that we avoided such a scenario should prove diplomacy isn't dead.

Indeed, diplomacy isn't dead. It's alive and well and working all over the world.  As we look to continue to manage the Arab Spring, as we look to manage a rising China, and as we face all manner of international challenges, we know there are diplomats around the world engaging in diplomacy. It's not often flashy, it's unlikely to be trending on Twitter, but it's happening nonetheless and we'll see it from time to time when the moment is right.

Obamacare: Losing the Battles of Communication & Facts

There's a brief post up at Economist's Democracy in America blog commenting on a speaking appearance by Valerie Jarrett, Senior Adviser to the President. When asked what the administration's biggest mistake has been so far, Ms. Jarrett reportedly said it was a failure to communicate the benefits of the administration's policies. "If people voted their self-interest, they would vote for [President Obama]."

The author of the post calls this sort of response "arrogant," and in full said:

I think, goes to the heart of one of the Obama administration's weaknesses, one that certainly cost him the 2010 mid-terms and might cost him the presidency itself in two month's time. It is the idea that if only people were in full command of the facts, they would immediately see that the president was wise and right. It is arrogant, and, when you think about it, fundamentally anti-democratic. And it leads you to push policies that voters don't actually like.

 I have to disagree with the author that this sort of response is arrogant. I think ACA (Obamacare) is a great example of this. When people are polled on the individual elements of the legislation they support many of the pieces, but the administration has lost the battle of communicating the law in totality. Now part of losing that battle is the willful cognitive dissonance of the conservative attack on the legislation, perhaps tippified by this absurdly false and misleading advertisement from the 60 Plus Association, which perpetuates Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan's shameful and repeated attack that the Obamacare cuts $716 billion from Medicare (when it's actually future savings, not diverted funds) when Ryan himself would have included the same cuts in his Medicare plan.

The broader point being, healthcare reform as enacted by Obamacare is incredibly complex. The individual parts, healthcare for dependents up to age 26, no exclusion for pre-existing conditions, insurance plans required to cover birth control, poll incredibly well. The parts that don't poll well, like wringing $716 billion in savings over ten years from Medicare, which helps perpetuate the Medicare program aren't as easy to understand immediately. The point being, it's easier to point at these things, call them flaws, and harp on them at the cost of not telling the whole story.

That's where the administration is suffering. On certain elements they have been drowned out by misleading half-truths on policies that aren't simple to understand. This is all by way of saying that facts aren't what they used to be and if you lose the communication battle it can obscure the positive effects that the facts would seem to indicate, because everybody is getting skewed facts. I don't think it's "arrogant" on the part of Ms. Jarrett to says that's a mistake. I think it reflect the reality of a conservative movement that has systematically created a world of parallel facts designed to discredit ideas not aligned with their ideology.

I'm not sure how we fix it, but it is frightening that beyond trying to get an electorate engaged, we will now constantly debate who's facts to believe.

The Neoliberal Bender & Today's Hangover

Alasdair Roberts has an interesting post up on Foreign Policy blaming the American people, and our enthusiastic embrace of neoliberalism over the past 30 years, for why we find ourselves in such a political and fiscal calamity now.  There were parts I agreed with, but I think he misses a few things.

I very much agree that:

Americans wanted "a minimum of government authority," Ronald Reagan said while campaigning for the presidential nomination in 1976. "Very simply, they want to be left alone." And that was exactly the program enacted over the next quarter-century: Marginal tax rates were reduced, especially for the wealthy; social programs were restricted; controls on commerce and finance were removed. By the time 2000 rolled around, Reagan was remembered as one of the greatest presidents in modern history.
By then, the project of restricting government and liberating market forces was a bipartisan one. It was a Democrat, President Bill Clinton, who famously conceded in 1996 that the era of big government was over. Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and a trade agreement with China in 2000, saying that this was "the only way we can recover the fortunes of the middle class in this country." He also signed laws that loosened federal control over the financial sector, promising they would actually "enhance the stability of our financial services system." 

But these moves, to remove government out of the lives of business and increasingly out of citizens' lives had consequences:

Unfortunately, the decades-long neoliberal project had a price, which became increasingly obvious in the new millennium. The removal of trade barriers put U.S. jobs at risk, while lowering top tax rates and loosening the social safety net aggravated problems of inequality. Lighter regulation encouraged overexpansion and recklessness in the financial sector. Even before the 2007-2008 crisis, Americans were uneasy about the effects that followed from policies they had once enthusiastically endorsed. In 2004, according to an ABC News poll, a majority of Americans believed that they were no better off than when Reagan was inaugurated. In a 2006 CBS poll, two-thirds of respondents doubted that the next generation would be better off than they were. And in an April 2007 Gallup poll, a similar share said that wealth in the United States was unfairly distributed.

What was seen as a good thing for our capitalist system, wasn't always a good thing for the individuals living in it and the elimination of social programs left people exposed to the harsh reality of laissez faire economics.  We instituted policies that did little to stifle the widening income gulf and we did little to redistribute wealth.  That notion was considered a dirty term (and indeed one I know will be questioned in the comments). So we find ourselves when Americans are feeling less optimistic about the future their children will face and a growing sense that income inequality is becoming a larger problem for the country.  In these moments, a polity will often look to their government for recompense, but cue the cognitive dissonance:

Popular attitudes about the handling of the crisis also reflected a deep ambivalence about the role of government in economic life. There was widespread anger at not just the rating agencies, predatory lenders, and fat-cat bankers, but also at the apparent cost of bailouts for the financial sector, along with opposition in principle to interventions like the takeover of General Motors. And as the government took on these onerous, unwanted economic necessities, many also worried about the rising federal debt. But there's little doubt that the public would have been equally outraged if the Obama administration had actually followed a strict neoliberal path of nonintervention and deficit reduction. It would have been seen as cruel and inhuman.

The government found itself in a true "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. And so this is where we find ourselves now and as Roberts closes he poses a challenge as a question to the American people:

[N]ow the limitations of the neoliberal project have become painfully clear. At that time, most Americans approved of smaller, more hands-off government. The question now is whether they will accept the consequences.

And this takes me into my critique and comment.  It is no secret, I'm a proponent of a strong federal government, but some of what Mr. Roberts says isn't quite right and some of the big drivers for our current conundrum aren't addressed.  The first and most easily dismissed is that people got a "smaller" government.  If you look at the chart for federal spending since Reagan, whom Roberts marks as the starter of this movement, we never get below 18% as a percentage of GDP (perhaps targeting a revenue level of 18% of GDP is to encourage chronic deficits).  Basically what I'm saying is that government, even if it was largely more hands off in the business (and I believe it was), it wasn't really smaller.


But if government wasn't smaller, but also wasn't doing as much, what was going on?  In this CBO report, you'll see in Table E-6 that mandatory programmatic spending as a percentage of GDP is growing very rapidly, but discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP was actually at the lowest level since 1971 in 1999 and 2000.  This would reinforce the argument that government was more hands off, even if on the whole, not that much smaller since discretionary spending is where the reach of government beyond Medicare and Social Security is captured. And then following on to Table E-10, you'll see spending on Social Security as a percentage of GDP has largely been flat for the past 30 years, while spending on Medicare and Medicaid have been reaching upward.  During this period we also saw defense spending that was consistently 20% of all government expenditures.


So the neoliberal experiment took a lot of government out of people's lives as discretionary spending declined.  We found ourselves with a surplus in 2000 and determined that the best thing to do would be to cut taxes, but this decision was based on flawed observations and followed up by fiscally calamitous decisions.  First, the decision to cut taxes ignored that our mandatory spending commitments, on two very popular programs, were continuing to grow.  Second, the tax cuts were followed by two wars financed entirely by debt.  As our deficits yawned ever wider we were hit by the worst recession since the Great Depression.  The government took decisive and expensive action to prevent the economy from backsliding, a move quite apart from the preceding decades.  And to some degree those moves worked.  Like a boxer that just took a thundering cross, our economy is stumbling around the ring, but still on its feet.


But here's the rub, a lot of people have learned the wrong lessons.  The cost of Medicare and Social Security continue to grow and now discretionary spending is also on the rise to help people deal with the economic downturn.  Instead of considering that the Bush tax cuts were ill-advised, that the revenue brought in is insufficient to pay for the programs the government does run and that are quite popular, we hear that this is in no way a revenue problem.  These wrong lessons are reinforced by the cognitive dissonance that leads to letters like this, where people demand government stay out of their Medicare.  Those wrong lessons lead to a stage full of GOP presidential candidates to reject a deal that would guarantee $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue.


I don't know about you, but if I've run up a lot of debt, I tend to thinking making more money is a good way to try and get out of that hole.  The GOP is pretty keen to wrap themselves in common sense.  Common sense would dictate we need more money to pay for our current obligations and pay down the obligations we already made.  Our neoliberal bender has led to a hangover and its led to an important choice for the country.  Do we take the "hair of the dog" approach and double down leading to some sort of libertarian vision where the federal government is starved and budgets slashed?  Or do we take the Vitaminwater approach, realize we made some bad choices and embrace the changes we need to get ourselves right and preserve the programs we want?


The critiques I have of Roberts' piece are all around the edges.  I think we agree on the overriding point.  The American people didn't want as much government and didn't want to pay for a well funded federal government, but wanted the stuff the federal government provides.  That approach has failed.  It's clear if we want stuff from the government, we will have to pay for it.  This summer a Pew Research Center poll found that 60% of respondents want to keep the benefits of Medicare and Social Security as they are.  That's a convincing majority, but we have to pay for it.

America’s Palestine Problem

As the 66^th General Assembly opens, the Palestinian Liberation Organization is set to request that the United Nations admit Palestine as a member. Because only states are able to be members of the United Nations, such admission would require, necessarily, that Palestine be a state. And, therefore, admission would serve to recognize Palestine’s statehood. It is likely that, should the United States be unable to wrangle enough votes on the Security Council to delay action on the Palestinian application, the U.S. will be forced to veto the U.N Security Council Resolution granting Palestine’s admission as a U.N. member-state.

Normally, the alignment of American and Israeli interests renders a U.S. veto of a resolution that contravenes Israeli policy goals unworthy of comment. However, because the Arab Spring has provided the United States with the opportunity to improve its standing in the Arab world—and because the United States has actually availed itself of this opportunity—vetoing Palestine’s application for statehood is a singularly unpalatable proposition.

One can imagine few more effective ways for the United States to squander its newfound position in the Arab world than by vetoing Palestine’s application for statehood. There is no better way for the United States to transition from liberator of Libya and friend of free Egypt back to oppressor of Arabs than by denying Palestine’s statehood.

Beyond merely losing standing, however, such action is likely to breathe life back into the al-Qaeda brand. That brand has suffered tremendously in the Arab Spring. Largely, the devaluation of al-Qaeda as a brand has both to do with Arab (and Muslim) rejection of terrorism and violence, as well as the stunning success of the Arab Spring’s alternative narrative—namely, that non-violent protest movements seeking dignity and humanity can bring down the same repressive, autocratic regimes that al-Qaeda has targeted but wholly failed to dislodge. It has been this counter-narrative that has provided the United States with space to change its perception in the Middle East. By standing with the protestors in Tahrir Square, with the NTC, and ever so slowly with Syrians, the United States is seen to be siding with oppressed rather than with the oppressors, as it has since at least Mossadegh. But, by vetoing Palestinian statehood, the United States will in the span of time required to cast a vote, squander a wealth or regional political capital it has been unable to garner since the Suez crisis. It will be a tremendous waste and one that is likely to haunt U.S. policy in the Middle East for at least a generation.

The only hopeful signal coming out of the U.N. is that the United States is working feverishly to avoid the vote altogether. While this is no substitute for unwillingness to veto Palestinian statehood, it at least signals that U.S. policymakers are aware of the stakes associated with this particular veto. But, as a good friend recently opined, this may be an example of old policy for a new world—old policy that leads to the same old problems for the United States.

George W. Bush, 9/11, and Intelligence

I plugged for the National Geographic interview of George W. Bush yesterday in The Short List.  Hopefully our (limited) readership watched it last night, because I think it's important for a few different reasons.  The interview kicks off two weeks of solemn commemoration of the events of 9/11, how it changed our world, how the United States changed, and what it might mean for the future.  It's fair to say that the events of that day, unbeknownst to me at the time, changed my life and I will always remember where I was, and what I felt watching the second plane hit.

The interview splices in images and video from 9/11 and the days immediately following.  The feeling in the pit of my stomach is as visceral as it was 10 years ago when I saw it happen live.  Anger, sorrow, fear, anxiety all flash through my body every time I see the second plane hit.  And you can tell that discussing 9/11 still gets to President Bush.  That unmistakable mix of anger and sorrow is evident in his eyes.  He discusses why he lingered in a Florida elementary classroom after Andy Card told him about the second plane.  He discusses his frustration in being shuttled around the country and not being allowed to return to DC immediately.  He discusses how Saddam Hussein's name was mentioned on September 11th, though he doesn't indicate a particular member of his senior staff.  He also spends a fair bit of time decrying the communication equipment available to him onboard Air Force One.  He discusses a great many things, but two things really stood out to me.

First, as if a mantra he discusses how he never planned to be a "war time president," and how America was now "at war."  This could be legacy protection, but it could also be that he legitimately felt he was suddenly transformed into a war time president in the mold of Lincoln or Roosevelt (he draws no such comparison).  I've had a hard time, in retrospect, considering the acts of 9/11 and our actions following as a "war."  And I fear that President Bush wraps himself in the "war time president" cloak so we might dismiss the extra-judicial actions of his administration in the years that followed.

The second thing that struck me was toward the end of the interview.  He says "I was not acting strategically," and follows up saying he believed what he was doing was protecting the American people.  I know that 9/11 was an extreme case of terrorism, but to think that in the following seven years that the President of the United States did not act strategically just dumbfounds me.  Certainly in those first 24 to 48 hours it is about command control and strategy comes later, but the admission that the whole response was not strategic seemed to confirm for me a bias I had before the interview that the interview just reinforced.  President Bush was not up to the challenge of the situation.

If you listen during the interview you notice how little he decided as President.  There are briefings.  Information is coming in.  Things are happening, but there doesn't seem to be any decisions that began with President Bush.  He was a passenger to his own administration on that day.  Perhaps it was due to the poor communication system on Air Force One.  Perhaps the military had a protocol for a terrorist incident of this magnitude and it was implemented step-by step.  Perhaps the gears of the state were well-oiled and responsive to this kind of shock.  I have my doubts.  And so what emerges is the image of a figurehead president being shuttled around the country while the serious people make decisions and secure America.

In a post at Democracy in America today, E.G. posts commentary on the recent exploration of Gov. Perry's intelligence.  Towards the end of the post he says something that captures a bit of my reaction to the interview.

So this kind of examination leads us to a broader question: even if we could assess a candidate's intelligence... how clever does a candidate need to be, and how important is intelligence in a president? It's tempting to say that a person elected president can't actually be stupid, because otherwise we would be hard-pressed to explain how they got to be president.

And yet it wasn't intelligence that Bush was lacking in the interview.  He knew what was going on, the gravity of it, and that action needed to be taken.  E.G. continues:

I would prefer a president who isn't overtly anti-intellectual or hostile to empirical analysis, both of which suggest small-mindedness and ideological devotion.

So would I, and I don't think President Bush is hostile to empirical analysis as it related to terrorism, but by his own admission he did not approach the issue of terrorism strategically.  That's why his account of the day makes him sound like a bystander.  He was overwhelmed by the situation, and could not break it down strategically.  He knew something needed to happen or rather that many somethings needed to happen, but the sequence eluded him. The interview, I think, reveals a man with good intentions for his actions on 9/11 and in the years that followed, but a man sorely out classed by the gravity and complexity of the problems that led to 9/11 and the consequences of our responses.  

Thus Spake Juan Cole

Professor Cole provides this analysis of Libya's nearly fulfilled revolution.

Moreover, those who question whether there were US interests in Libya seem to me a little blind. The US has an interest in there not being massacres of people for merely exercising their right to free assembly. The US has an interest in a lawful world order, and therefore in the United Nations Security Council resolution demanding that Libyans be protected from their murderous government. The US has an interest in its NATO alliance, and NATO allies France and Britain felt strongly about this intervention. The US has a deep interest in the fate of Egypt, and what happened in Libya would have affected Egypt (Qaddafi allegedly had high Egyptian officials on his payroll).

I would add only that the United States also has an interest in not boxing-in states and leaders in such a way as their only option is to play a destabilizing role in the international system. The only tolerable endgame after the West moved to isolate and marginalize Qaddafi was his ouster--sooner rather than later.  

Song of Qaddafi

Qaddafi addressed the Libyan people, today. The desperation of his situation is patent in his remarks, suggesting for the first time that he recognizes his position even as he calls for a levee en masse:

You possess all sorts of weapons. Those of you without a weapon should come and receive a weapon. All the weapons depots must open and the masses must be armed. Thousands must receive weapons now. Open the depots. I give the order to open the depots to arm the masses.
I am with you now, I am with you in Tripoli. There shall be no retreat - we will not retreat until the last inch of land we want to liberate.

Events appear to be accelerating as rebels close in on Tripoli -- and Qaddafi's regime appears to have only days left. 

"Mermaid Dawn"

After Libyan rebels took Zlitan, Zawiyah, and Gharyan, effectively encircling and cutting off Tripoli, an uprising broke out in Tripoli. Opposition groups in Tripoli, mostly quiet since Qaddafi's brutal crackdown in February and March, launched an uprising codenamed "Mermaid Dawn." At the same time, the Libyan rebels who have made rapid advances over the last two weeks to bring them to Tripoli's doorstep have pushed into Tripoli itself. Qaddafi's grip over Tripoli, at least, seems to be nearly broken. It remains to be seen whether Sirte, Qaddafi's hometown, and its environs will fall easily in the wake of Qaddafi's ouster from Tripoli or whether it will remain a redoubt of pro-Qaddafi support.

A Theory of Government – A Response

Our friend Colin at To Get Rich Is Glorious posted a two-part blog (one and two) over the weekend encapsulating his theory of governance. It is remarkable both for its scope and for its relative brevity, coming in at just about 2,600 words it addresses everything from democracy (the least bad option of governance) to politicians (which come in two varieties: malevolent or incompetent) to legislation (sausage) to bureaucracy (in gross, worse than politicians; in detail, victims of their own occupation). It is worth a read. It is also worthy of response. Because my own theory of government is not as fully developed as Colin’s, I will try only to respond to a few points.

Voters are Irrational. Colin adheres to this well worn trope of wisdom and subscribes to its insipid logic: voters are irrational ergo democracy is fatally flawed. He then points to all sorts of phenomena as evidence that voters are irrational—for instance, Barack Obama was endorsed by celebrities, therefore voters are irrational; Kennedy looked better than Nixon on TV and that influenced the election, therefore voters are irrational; and concludes that Obama’s victory over Sec. Clinton in the 2007–08 Democratic Primaries is attributable to youth, good looks, race, or oration (and, therefore, voters are irrational).

As someone who has spent a rather large amount of time interacting with voters and attempting to persuade them—and worked against the Sen. Obama in those very same primaries—I am sympathetic to the notion that voters are sometimes influenced by what we more policy-oriented folks view as insubstantial factors. But this being true for some voters does not render it so for other voters. In fact, a Project Vote analysis of the 2008 electorate found that the electorate that pushed Sen. Obama into the White House was more strongly progressive than the normal electorate, explaining both the gains of Democrats in 2008 and the retrenchment in 2010 when this electorate stayed home. In fact, these voters, by casting a ballot for the most progressive candidate in the race, acted rationally. (Notably, the same survey reveals that Tea Party adherents represent an extraordinarily small portion of the electorate—a true outlier community: lily white, well educated and fully employed or retired, upper middle-class to upper class, generally older and possessed of the notion that the poor or unemployed should be left to fend for themselves).

Nor is it true that a voter who votes based on a single issue is irrational—Colin may disagree with that particular voter’s calculus but the voter has surveyed the field of issues, weighted those issues, and accorded an overwhelming weight to the single issue that moves him or her to the polls. If one selects as the baseline of rationality doing something that garners to you the outcome you desire, then single-issue voting is not assailable as irrational.

Putting aside whether voters are or are not rational, and whether their relative rationality is uniform or even a fair characterization in gross, let us assume that they are all irrational. In this respect, Colin’s theory of government is the most curious. He argues (generally) that the market is the salve for all problems. Yet the free market is premised on the idea that economic actors (let us call them consumers) are rational. Who are these consumers? Well, by and large, they are the same as the voters. Why then would an individual behave rationally when making consumer decisions but not rationally when making electoral decisions? Is it any accident that political campaigns and products manufacturers both use advertising firms—sometimes the very same advertising firms—to win over consumers (voters) to their products (candidates)? Does this then suggest that consumer are not rational actors because they purchase Crest (Kennedy) over Arm & Hammer (Nixon)?

Worse, the market is premised on the notion that there is no information disparity between economic actors. This is of course ridiculous—it is, after all, an ideal; I will leave to another day the discussion of whether this particular ideal is more ridiculous than ideals in general. Democracy requires no such premise to function but, of course, prefers well-informed (although not fully-informed) voters.

Bureaucracy and Legislation. I will lump these two topics together because it is worth noting that the bureaucracy developed to fill the very gaps in the efficacy of legislation that Colin highlights. However, rather than acknowledging this, he unironically trots out progressive critiques of legislatures from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, used to argue for the administrative state. He then attacks bureaucracy with stereotypes that mostly ignore how the administrative state functions or how administrative law operates.

Bureaucracy may indeed connote those adjectives Colin ascribes it, however it denotes the specialization of government. It is intended to rectify the very problems Colin points out by alleviating the legislature’s burden of grappling with complex, technical questions beyond the ken of most if not all legislators. Is it perfect? No, of course not. No human construct is perfect, not even the market. But does it do a good job? By and large, the answer to that question is yes, it does do a good job. You may disagree—Colin certainly does—with the policy choices made by various administrations and the administrative state they have managed but is water and air cleaner today than it was 40 years ago? Yes. Are our cars safer to drive? Yes. Has malaria been effectively driven out of the United States? Yes. Do thousands of farmers rely on—and appreciate—the USDA’s Extension Service? Is our military the most advanced in the world? Yes. Have we explored more of the cosmos than the any other state—or collection of states—on the planet? Yes. What about land-grant universities, like Nebraska? Or a university established for the education of civil servants, like George Washington? These are all products of the administrative state. In fact, your ability to read this blog post right now is a product of the administrative state.

Now, because I’m a fair minded person, and because I’m committed to using this space not merely to advance progressive ideas but to actually engage in debate, I must acknowledge that there have been failures of the administrative state. Indeed, the failure of the enforcement side of the administrative state has played a significant role in the most egregious domestic crises we have witnessed over the last 10 years. But of these, several—Deepwater Horizon, Katrina, the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster—are not the product of the administrative state per se but a product of an administration committed to the destruction of bureaucracy. Unable to achieve that de jure it set about to do so in a de facto manner. And in so doing it was quite successful. And in its success we have had terrible results.

Quibbles. Finally, I must quibble with a few characterizations. First, the government to Apple analogy—though it never gets tired despite its patent baselessness—is flawed. The various departments of Apple are not akin to Congress. Rather, they are like the administrative agencies within the Executive Branch. Instead, the Board of Directors plays a more Congress-like roll (though this is still imperfect). And while Jobs need not get the buy-in of every department in Apple to pursue a new product, neither does the President need to get the buy-in of all the agencies. But as surely as the President needs the support of Congress to carryout those things that are not accorded to him, so does Jobs need the support of the Board of Directors to do those thing for which he is not solely empowered. Let us not forget, however, that ultimately both the Directors and Jobs are accountable to the shareholders. Who vote. Like in a democracy.

Second, the incentives argument, though persuasive on its face, ignores how the FDA (or most bureaucracies) actually function. There are numerous good lay and casebooks on this subject.

Third, the empire building critique can be leveled at anything. At literally any entity. Should we expect administrative agencies or corporation to commit suicide? Should this be valued? Or should we instead leave it to voters (and their agents) and shareholders (and their agents) to render these decisions. Ah, the very essence of democracy.

Finally, the critique of politicians—and the broader critiques leveled in the “Theory of Government”—is generally directed at the federal government but seems to cherry pick bad examples from local government, leaving the reader with the impression that 1) the federal government shutdown a lemonade stand; and 2) that bureaucracy across levels of government is somehow monolithic. More worrisome, though, is that the critique seems to conflate flawed politicians with flawed elections. The two certainly exist. But it is overbroad to say that all politicians are bad or incompetent—but, if you truly believe that, then perhaps you should run for office or at least find and go work for a candidate in whom you believe. As for elections, one solution to the problem of competitive elections would be to institute national election standards rather than allowing each state to parochially tweak its election code to suit established interests.