On libertarians and the right to bear arms

I had a rather heated online discussion the other day at the blog Cafe Hayek. Entries on this particular blog vary from poignant economic insight, to sheer partisan drivel. But if you can excuse some of the quizzical rants, you can actually find some good libertarian/conservative arguments. My discussion the other day started because the author linked to an article ranting about the right to bear arms and this raised a few issues with me, most of which remain unresolved.

1) If you believe that the constitution grants you the right to bear arms, and that this right should not be impinged in any way, my argument is essentially that you logically must believe that every single citizen has the right to build a nuclear warhead in their back yard, drive an abram's tank on the D.C. beltway, walk around NYC with a pocket full of anthrax, take assault rifles into public schools, etc. Any law preventing either of these scenarios would surely violate the "right to bear arms" tenet that you so strongly believe in. I'm taking extreme examples here, but any strict constitutional or libertarian argument would have to agree with this and any reasonable thinking human being realizes that this would be sheer lunacy and our country would be in ruins in no time.

So, if we throw away the purely libertarian argument, we essentially have to draw a line in the sand that says what arms we truly have the right to bear. I don't claim to know the answer to that, but I'm pretty sure that intra-continental ballistic missiles should be banned, and bb-guns should not. In between is an enormous gulf which I don't wish to get into, but this is where serious arguments can happen.

Should we ban any item that has the potential to kill more then 10 people in 60 seconds? How about anything that can be concealed? Explosives? Projectiles? The ways that you slice up 'arms' could be infinite but I trust that some ways of slicing can strike a reasonable balance between individual liberty and societal welfare. That's a scary thought to libertarians, and if you take a stance on either end of this spectrum I'll grant that your argument is logically consistent. If you however give an inch by agreeing that c-4 explosives shouldn't be allowed on airplanes, you leave yourself open to virtually any attack on the 'right to bear arms' because you clearly don't stand behind that right with all your weight.

2) I have even less patience for the logic behind the constitutional argument than I do for the libertarian viewpoint which I attempted to deconstruct above. Quite frankly, the constitution is wrong. It has been wrong in the past (3/5ths law anyone?), and will be wrong in the future. That's why we have amendments, and I feel strongly that the current incarnation of the US constitution is far better with amendments than it was in its initial framing. As a document, it has surely held up fantastically well over the years, but the day we treat it as scripture is the day when this country is left standing still in an otherwise moving world. How I loathe religious like deference to the constitution....

3) Of course, not all arguments about the right to bear arms defer to the constitutional or libertarian reasoning highlighted above. A well armed populace really might be the best deterrent to crime. While I don't necessarily agree, we could have a lot of heated discussions looking at facts, figures, and natural experiments to see how safe loose gun laws really make us. Depending on what those studies say, I'd have a very open mind. This is a discussion worth having, but best left to another day.

4) Trying to look at the libertarian argument in this one case was kind of illuminating and made me realize that I'm not at all sure of the difference between libertarianism and anarchy (aside from the fact that one sounds so much more academic and intelligent). I fail to see how a single law would pass were it to be judged against the criteria that if it restricts an individuals freedom it is not worth having.

Libertarians avoid potentially calamitous claims about murder or theft by saying that you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others, but I'd love to hear cogent deconstructions of drunk driving, smoking, speeding, etc. All of these cases can potentially be areas where you harm someone else, so do we allow them? Do we allow some, but not others? Where do we draw the line?

What about wearing a seatbelt or a helmet? By not wearing a seatbelt you're sure to need more medical care when you get into an accident and the costs of this will rarely be recovered from the individual. Make no mistake about it, we all pay more whether its through taxes or insurance premiums to subsidize foolish choices such as riding a motorcycle without a helmet or eating McDonald's 5 days a week. Isn't this an infringement on my rights which in turn could lead to laws to limit this behavior?

5) I've been told that: "A true libertarian asks one question, and one question only about a political policy: does it increase individual liberty? If yes, then a libertarian is for it. No, against."

Presumably restricting the freedom of individuals to restrict their own freedom if they so choose is the one exception...

6) All this criticism and I consider myself a libertarian. Just not a crazy one.

*posted on my blog, fingerprints.and.snowflakes*

On free trade

After listening to this weeks EconTalk, which is essentially a lecture on the merits of free trade that I recommend to anyone who still has doubts, I felt compelled to write a response to Russ Roberts on where I see his analysis falling short.

I'm not going to summarize his argument, but rest assured he makes a compelling, albeit tried and tested case, for why trade helps everyone in the long run and that 'self sufficiency is the road to poverty'. In simple thought experiments, as well as practical real world examples, the benefits of trade are virtually indisputable; my qualm comes when we try to extrapolate these findings to a global scale.

The global marketplace is filled with individuals and groups that not only speak different languages, but also have drastically different cultural norms as well as varying degrees of governmental regulation and support. Recognizing that governments are imperfect (as they are made up of imperfect individuals), we have to account for the fact that conflicts will inevitably arise. In a truly interconnected idealized global economy with high degrees of specialization, countries of the world would be mutually dependent on one another to potentially damaging degrees. This dependence wouldn't necessarily be even as some goods are quite frankly more important to immediate survival than others. Markets provide a way to equate goods by differential valuation, but this doesn't change the fact that humans have several absolute necessities such as food, water and shelter which will always take economic priority over iPods and mattresses.

Let me expand on this thought: Japan has emerged over the past decade as the global leader in automobile sales. It makes economic sense to say: if Japan can produce better automobiles for cheaper, Detroit should close down and there would be no need to produce cars in America. We could instead focus on something that we do well, say harvesting corn. However, if for some unforeseen reason Japan stopped exporting cars to the US, a large sector on which our economy depends would come to a stand still causing massive disruption. And without existing factories, no matter how inefficient they may be, the US would have a several year lag time until they would be able to start producing cars on their own. In this respect, I can see an argument for why we would keep subsidizing a failing industry that is crucial to our economy.

The US could tolerate a lag time in automobile production, but in the case of more essential goods like raw building materials (concrete, steel, plastics, etc.), medicine, and food, any trade disruptions would have absolutely devastating consequences for the country who is on the losing end. To overcome this possibility, countries specializing in relatively low priority goods would have to find other ways to make up for their clear lack of economic power that arises from the inherent inequity of goods. How they do so could involve physical defense in the form of weapons, or pacts with other countries neither of which are ideal options for economically disadvantaged countries that with to retain a certain amount of political autonomy.

To put it bluntly: small, poor countries hardly get a fantastic deal out of this situation. They may benefit greatly from free trade in lieu of disruptions, but when conflicts arise the well diversified rich countries can weather the storm leaving nations that are unable to produce their own food to fall into ruin.

In an interconnected world, economic sanctions could be far more devastating than any bomb. This is not an issue amongst a tribe of traders, or even between states and nations where well designed social and political institutions can easily handle conflicts. Yet, as the circle of free trade grows, so to does the potential for conflict and disruption. Why we can't all just get along is more an issue for philosophers and political scientists but it has real ramifications for the economics of globalization when we realize that there is not a serious institution that can be deferred to in order to solve conflicts on a global scale. When distances expand and trading partners become a number rather than a face, there is a much greater potential for fraud and misrepresentation. Designing efficient conduits for information exchange can help alleviate some of these problems, but cultural barriers may still lead to misunderstandings and outright acts of aggression between trading partners.

In reality, I'm still a staunch supporter of open borders and tariff free goods and I see trade friendly policies as being crucial to economic development and technological advancement across the world. However, serious information/transparency problems as well as cultural/linguistic divides invariably emerge between economic actors as interactions are scaled to the global arena.

Though the costs might not outweigh the obvious benefits, at very least we need to recognize that trade occurs in an imperfect political environment. Therefore there are costs which could outweigh the benefits in certain situations, whether real or hypothetical, and lead to protectionist policies being reasonable options. I don't claim to be able to predict those situations, but as a scientist I recognize that all theories must be falsifiable and we all benefit from further investigation and tests to our theories.

*posted on my blog: fingerprints.and.snowflakes

On why I don't hate the tea party movement

And by don't hate, i mean kind of like. Kind of.

My political views over the past several years can be summed up by saying that I loathe the Republican party ever so slightly more than the Democratic party. My free-market ideology heavily favors economic libertarianism and is therefore more closely aligned to textbook 'small-government' conservatism but unfortunately I find Republican stances on social issues such as abortion, immigration, privacy, gun control, defense spending, executive power, and gay rights as falling somewhere between misguided to utterly abhorrent. My passionate disagreements on these latter issues has regrettably forced me to swallow my economic misgivings and side with the Democrats in most elections.

But perhaps change is afoot. The tea party movement firmly values fiscal conservatism and smaller government in general (read: libertarianism) and as this party grows in size several possible outcomes could happen:

1) Most likely, it will fizzle out and die leaving little to no lasting impact; no one wins and all the outrage is for naught. I'm left hating Democratic economic practices and Republican social/international practices alike.

2) By emphasizing what was once the core ideology of the Republican party above all else, I hold out hope that perhaps Republicans will be persuaded to suspend their unrelenting assault on social issues which has so scorned me over the years. Pro-life, anti-immigration, and pro-war are just a handful of issues that are ideologically unrelated to the issue of small governance and fiscal conservatism but these issues dominate party rhetoric and policy on virtually all fronts.

However, and this is an enormous however, I maintain a lasting skepticism that the tea-party is really only about fiscal conservatism and libertarian economic policies as opposed to the traditional god-fearing, gay-hating, gun-touting, war-hawk evangelical conservatism that I so despise. They've made the populist argument of less government, but time will tell if they stick to such a limited scope.

3) Almost a non-existent but ever-so-delightful chance is that the Republican party could split from the pressure resulting in a clear distinction between Republican moderates and hard-line conservatives. I cherish the thought and would further love to see the Democratic party split into two parties as well. Ideally, this would leave a ruling coalition of moderates at the center with each party having their fringe activists that lose and gain in popularity creating slight shifts in how the ruling center buffers popular opinion and thus governs.

4) Rather than split the Republican party, there is a chance that Republicans could instead be pulled further to the right. Democrats could thus move rightward which would shift the entire spectrum to the right or they could react by moving leftward creating a rapidly polarized government. On the surface, this would be awful but perhaps if it were to occur the outcome could look somewhat like number 3 whereby a vacuum in the center brings moderates together as a reaction against policy crippling polarization that has slowly been occurring.

Of all those options, most sound pretty okay to me except for the dreadful thought of the fiscal conservatism movement morphing into a growing evangelical conservatism movement. As long as that doesn't happen, some intelligent shifts in economic policy and decreasing emphasis on social issues would be a breath of fresh air potentially benefiting both parties.

The Democrats are succeeding in getting people incensed at the growing size of government, and perhaps this can be placated in exchange for a Republican easing on the social front. Any movement that brings this about, no matter how convoluted the means, garners my undying support.

*posted on my blog: fingerprints.and.snowflakes*

On iPads and Mao Zedong

Let me get this out of the way: I haven't touched an iPad, I don't own an iPhone, have never owned an iPod nor used iTunes, but I am writing this on a MacBook. So there.

That being said, I have more than a slight bit of disdain for Apple. It's not entirely justified, but at least I can admit this much. If you've read my scatter brained review of Up in the Air, its pretty obvious that I struggle at distancing products from reviews and hype. And so it is with the iPad, which seems like a great little toy that I might even want to buy if it were not for the fact that I'm being assaulted from all angles with undying praise for Steve Jobs and his new earth shattering product.

My number one complaint is that I don't understand how no one seems let down by this thing. We knew Apple would release a tablet, we knew it would be a giant iPhone, but seriously, didn't we expect it to to at least have maybe one feature aside from its size that isn't on the iPhone? The iPhone has been absolutely revolutionary, so I struggle to see how the iPad will match this kind of impact when it does nothing new.

My much more biased yet substantiative complaint is that the media fawn over Apple in such a way that makes Obama look like he's Joe Lieberman. So many companies have tablets in the pipeline, and so many others have been doing similar things for years but nevertheless the coming tablet revolution is accredited solely to Steve Jobs and his Jesus tablet. This device might change what an operating system looks like, and who knows, that idea could even stick. But knowing that devices take years to develop makes it pretty obvious that Apple is not some kind of isolated visionary on any of these issues.

How they have built up such a reputation is the source of my disgust, and that is: marketing, marketing, marketing. I have zero reservations in complimenting them on their genius marketing and advertising skills. I doubt they're forcing every publication in the country to sing their praises. Rather, it just comes naturally from the reputation that they have built not by producing the best most innovative, high quality devices, but by producing pretty good ones and marketing them like a snake-oil charlitan all over the world.

I really don't dislike most Apple devices that I have used, and on the contrary find them to be above average products. But no Apple users think they're using an above average product. To the ever growing and highly vocal Apple elite, they're the best products ever made and I just frankly fail to see it. They have become the Burberry of computing. High quality products to be sure but known far more for their prestige. This creates a self perpetuating positive feed back cycle that adds no technological value to the product but greatly increases perceived value.

Their secretive nature and control issues are laughable and I still think it kill the company in the long run if they don't relax a little bit and loosen the death grip that they hold over all of their proprietary software and hardware. Apple is the business incarnation of Maoist communism, with a tight top-down control struture that regulates all aspects of development, production, pricing, distribution, and sales.

This is perhaps most evident in their ridiculous agreement with AT&T which for some unknown reason they are actually going to continue with the iPad. It really makes no sense why they wouldn't relinquish a bit of control and let Verizon and T-Mobile customers reap the benefits of their hardware in the true spirit of the competitive marketplace.

Would I like to play with an iPad? Sure. I might even think about buying one a few years down the line. But someone has to be the one to say that it's just not that big of a deal. Their products just aren't that amazing. Rant complete.

On deficit doves

It appears that the senate has rejected Obama's proposed deficit panel. While I'm quite frankly not informed enough about this particular proposal to make any judgments, I do think it's time I dedicate a few words to the deficit hysteria that has swept the nation.

For the sake of brevity I don't want to write about the lead up to the financial crisis and what could have been done differently. I wouldn't say I've completely swallowed the Keynesian pill, but ignoring the economic policies allowed the bust to happen, our solutions were limited to letting government spending make up for private shortfalls or to do nothing and let the economy pick itself up by the boot straps over an arduously long period of time.

If your brother needed money for knee surgery, and you had a comfortable credit line that allowed you to borrow a few thousand dollars to help him out, wouldn't you take on some debt to help out? Sure he should have saved and planned ahead incase something like this happened, but given that he didn't you can either loan him money and lecture him later, or you can let him slowly recover. The latter might be better for his future integrity and to teach him a lesson, but it won't help out the other family members who rely on his being able to go to work.

Yet, the government had been carrying a balance on that proverbial credit card for many years. Even thought it makes sense to borrow in order to save the economy during a bust, the elephant in the room is asking the question: why on earth we weren't paying down debt during the boom years?

Counting myself as a relative fiscal conservative, I find it abhorrent that during the most prosperous and profitable years in known economic history, our government was still adding to its cumulative debt burden by running a yearly deficit for the entire duration of the Bush administration. I'll try to refrain from being too political here, but amidst cries about our country heading to a socialist dystopia under the Obama administration, it's at least worth noting that prior republican administration far outspent the Clinton administration which had several years of budget surplus (*gasp*) in the mid 90's.

As the current administration clearly adds to the debt burden with what will hopefully be short term economic crutches to get its brother the economy back on track, its worth asking the question to deficit doves: when exactly will we be able to worry about the debt? When the economy is growing healthily, the US is like an individual who gets a hefty raise every year, so every year he decides to carry a higher balance from month to month on his credit card to keep up with his increasingly expensive tastes. Rather than look at the credit card balance, its far more indicative to look at it interms of income and that is what debt to GDP ratio is for the government. I don't see any inherent problem in our gross level of debt rising as long as we can come to a consensus on exactly what levels of debt/GDP would be problematic.

I don't think we're at that point yet, and most mainstream economists don't either, but public choice economists will also be the first to tell you that unless we set that standard before we hit it, no government will ever admit that we are there.

You absolutely can not have your cake and eat it to, even though all politicians will try to tell you that you can. We can not fund national healthcare without adding to the deficit, it's adding another expenditure without a proportionate income. I'm okay with making this choice, but lets not delude ourselves into thinking that the government budget is anything other than revenue in the form of taxes plus expenditures in the form of social programs, wars, infrastructure, etc.

If we make the choice to care about the deficit, someone has to pay for it. Once unemploment drops back to around 9% and we can safely say our economy is back on track, someone should start paying. Even if it only lasts for a few years, we need to prove that this country has the political will and ability to pay down debt and run a surplus in the good times. That knowledge can go a long way in sending the right signals to the global marketplace about the health of the american government, economy, and dream.

On terrorists and criminals

Defending the rights of criminals has always been a thankless job but let me give it a try. John McCain was spouting off this past week about why Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab should be tried in a military court and stripped of all rights afforded under the constitution. Seriously John McCain, have you completely stopped paying attention to the words that are coming out of your mouth?

I'll be the first to admit that no longer referring to a 'war on terror' is purely a rhetorical move by the Obama administration, but it nevertheless pleases me greatly. There is not and never has been a unified definition of 'terror' or terrorists. It has always been a convenient word to rouse populist uproar and create a sense of us vs. them, good guys vs. bad guys, all of which makes it easier for the war mongers among us to justify a bloated defense and security budget.

Make no mistake about it, whether we call them terrorists or not isn't going to make them go away. But there is a certain dignity in being honest about the way we label our enemies; axis of evil anyone? Calling every terrible thing that happens in this world an act of terrorism and evil gets us nowhere. And trying to make an arbitrary line between who is a terrorist and who is a criminal on a case by case basis shameful.

If someone can give me a consistent black and white definition of a terrorist, I might reasonably accept the differential treatment that goes with it. Does a terrorist have to attempt to kill more than 5 people? 100? Does it have to be in the name of Islam? How about other extreme religions? Why stop at religion at all, what about political groups? Scrabble clubs?

Wars are no longer, and probably will never be again, fought in the trenches. 'Enemy combatants' and garden-variety murderers are increasingly harder to tell apart from one-another and until we can reliably do so there is no justification in holding these two groups of people to different judicial standards.

McCain and other like minded jack asses think that we can get more information out of terrorists in military courts, and that there is no opportunity for loopholes that exist in the criminal system like plea bargaining and that ever-inconvenient Bill of Rights. Why abdul-Mutallab would decide to give us more information in one context over the other is left as an open ended question. Even McCain is rightfully against torture, so we're lead to believe that he will just voluntarily spill his al-qaeda secrets for our convenience if he is tried in a military court.

I don't think our legal system is perfect, but it is a fundamental pillar of American society that is admired and respected by intelligent, compassionate individuals across the world. Giving up on our principles of justice by arbitrarily deciding to bypass this system in favor of vigilant military tribunals is a slap in the face both to the architects of our great country and to the mere idea of human rights.

On Up In the Air

Try as I might to clear my expectations before watching a film, often times I admittedly fail miserably and my viewing experience suffers. Based solely on the director, Jason Reitman, my excitement for 'Up In the Air' was contained to say the least; while I thoroughly enjoyed 'Thank You for Smoking', my hatred for 'Juno' is far more intense. I was suprisingly able to shelf these feelings of discontent and was then left struggling to forget about the fantastic reviews this film has received. In the end, I was unable to contain myself from putting my hopes in the sky.

I don't want to delve to deeply into the plot, but the film is about a perpetual vagabond played of course by George Clooney. Rather than live the prototypical drifter life, however, he goes about his life by minimizing attachment to people places and things while maintaining a presumably lucrative white collar job that affords him the luxury of traveling First Class across the U.S. for a great majority of the year.

The plot lays a decent enough foundation for Clooney to make some magic happen, but rather than sit here and praise his performance I was lift a bit flabbergasted at how little he really had to act in order to fill what could only be described as a tailor made role. As the protagonists love interest, Vera Farmiga steals the show in terms of acting but her role is regrettably small in the grand scheme of things. I won't spoil anything, but I have no problems crushing any expectations that a reader might harbor for intriguing plot twists because they never come. Sure, there is a bit of drama throughout, but the majority of the film is a realtively trite romantic comedy that is completely uneventful.

More than anything, the tone of the film is what laid my high hopes down to rest. The overall feeling that the director crafts is so absolutely harmless and inoffensive that I am flabbergasted how viewers are able to walk out with any feeling other than mild indifference.

I'm not trying to be harsh; I actually liked the film and can think of far worse things to do with two hours of my life. Nevertheless I can't help but criticize it in the face of so much praise. In successfully making a film that no one could possibly hate, they succeeded in making a film that few could love. I don't necessarily need gripping plot twists, pertinent satire, passionate relationships, lovable/hatable characters, or probing social commentary to enjoy a film, but I do need something along those lines to enjoy a film enough to want to give it a good review.

Up In the Air is a great example of a very enjoyable, albeit stunningly mediocre, film that is unfortunately shrouded by undying praise from an endless army of critics. If you are a better person that I, and think that you can forget about the praise and view this movie in all its superficial glory, I advise you to do so. If not, don't feel bad; you're not missing out on much.