Good Wednesday noon Fellow Seekers of Wisdom and Truth,
Paul Krugman, the economist and New York Times columnist, has just launched a new blog called “The Conscience of a Liberal,” which is also the name of Krugman’s forthcoming book, and was the title of Paul Wellstone’s last book.
Krugman decided to launch with this graphic…
which shows changes in the share of total U.S. income received by the richest 10 percent. In his inaugural post, Krugman celebrates the middle period of the graph and credits the New Deal for it.
I will confess that I am instinctively opposed to too much concentration of wealth, income and privilege and that in some way (I gather Krugman is saying the same about himself) this is the essence of my own starting point on many issues.
In the only conversation I ever had with George Will he posited that the essence of the liberal- conservative is the tension between the competing impulses in favor of freedom and equality. You get it, liberals lean toward equality (and are therefore willing to constrain the freedom of the wealthy to be even wealthier in order to subsidize quality) , conservatives toward freedom (and therefore defend the freedom of the poor to remain poor.)
What think about that? Is that the essential divide?
Call me a pragmatist, but this graph looks a lot like the inverse of a balance of trade graph through most of the period being lauded. We can credit politics for that if we want, but the key issue isn’t politics but whether or not there are well paying jobs - like those found in factories. Bigger Better Ideas like “liberalism” and “conservatism” don’t seem to stack up all that well next to a good salary and its effects.
The period being lauded was not all a bed of roses, either. The start of it marked increasing segregation and racial tension, and the end included some resolution through both street action and legislation. The progress of this key issue of the time makes no appearance on this graph. If “liberals” are for equity, I think that something showing the march of equity would make a better banner. It’s rather absent on this one.
In the end, the labels “liberal” and “conservative” are not all that meaningful. Conservatives are for freedom? Explain Nixon’s “Law and Order” routine or the Patriot Act. What it all comes down to, if you actually listen to what is touted, is which sort of instution you favor - churchs and corporations and similar closed organizations, or government and unions and more open ones. The reason we have such a hard time creating a meaningful debate on nearly any issue right now is that everyone who has thought this through realizes that we need all of these institutions. Those who want to push the power of one set over the other have to obfuscate the debate considerably if they want to be able to advance their position.
The best thing we can do is abandon these labels, since they don’t explain anything important at all. What we have here is just another attempt at bringing meaning to something that doesn’t actually explain history, society, or politics. Trying to keep these barricades up only prevents a more topical debate from occurring.
George Lakoff says conservatives have a “strict father mentality”, where liberals have a “nurturing mother mentality.” Fiscally conservative ex-baseball GM Terry Ryan (my example) enforces a dress code on the Minnesota Twins. I hate it that (conservative) baseball is such a supporter of military dogma. Once the Twins get a government financed outdoor stadium, we can count on military jet fly-overs, each July 4. It seems that both conservatives and liberals of this era want to turn back the clock, not recognizing the “bad old days” (and cold April baseball games) of the past. I’ll suggest that liberals who desire to live in “urban villages” are masochists, conservatives who desire to live in gated communities are sadists, and that both parties vote to improve their property values. I don’t mind if people want to call themselves “liberal” or “conservative”, but I identify more with “progressive”.
bertrecords, thanks for bringing Lakoff into this! I tend to think of political fights as a battle of interests, the Machiavellian way, but I realize that there are emotional desires and tendencies that come into the whole thing as well. Your comment hit the nail for those issues, IMHO. The problem we keep running into is another Lakoff routine, the need for frames to have a public debate. I see “liberal” and “conservative” as nothing more than frames that save us all the need for lengthy explanations as to where we are coming from. The problem is that these frames aren’t what they used to be, even though we still have interests and outlooks on life that have to squeeze through them.
I’m with you on my own identity. “Progressive” means we at least accept things will change, and we’d like to make them better. Freedom and equality, meat and potatoes, and dessert too, why the heck not?
No… not the essential divide. Will’s opposition of freedom and equality is a language game that would take a Wittgenstein as much as a Lakoff to sort out fully. But it is a conservative trick bag that is much more self-serving than illuminating.
What does ‘freedom’ mean? My favorite result from a Google define search is “Freedom is an album by Neil Young, released in 1989″; but more seriously freedom is usually and appropriately defined in negative terms of a lack of constraints, compulsions, or more generally in opposition to necessity.
“Equality” is the real trick bag which gives rise to all sorts of dumb arguments …. ’some people are taller…. more talented…’.
A more useful discussion seems to me to be taking place around the banner of ‘positive rights’ versus ‘negative rights’ in Communitarian discussions. A positive right might be understood historically to be a ‘right to healthcare, or housing, or economic security in general’ versus a negative right to be free from regulations or taxation.
So what do you suppose Mr. Will might say to an opposition of ‘negative rights’ versus ‘positive rights’… or should we say ‘Justice’.
Is Krugman aware of Wellstone’s book? Not even a “nod” to Wellstone is mentioned in that post or in the comments section.
You wrote:
“Liberals lean toward equality (and are therefore willing to constrain the freedom of the wealthy to be even wealthier in order to subsidize [e]quality) conservatives toward freedom (and therefore defend the freedom of the poor to remain poor.)”
I’m disappointed, Eric. Is that really a fair statement of the issue? “The freedom to remain poor?”
First, let’s look at your idea of “leaning” toward equality, which you define as willingness to “contain the freedom of the wealthy in order to subsidize equality.” The modifier “of the wealthy” is a only a specific case of the general principle of “constrained freedom.” Your statement implies that government can constrain freedom for any moral end.
Why, for example, could not government “constrain the freedom” of people to be communists in order to protect the freedom of the nation? Or for that matter constrain the reproductive freedom of the mentally incompetent for the good of the nation through mandatory sterilization (as did Justice Holmes in Buck v. Bell).
My point is not to debate these issues; my point is if you agree in principle that government can constrain freedom with no further justification than to pursue a social objective (defined by the majority), then there really is no limit on the power to constrain any minority – other, of course, that the authority of government to constrain the freedom of people to pursue a different point of view than the majority (of which you necessarily must ardently hope you forever remain a part).
You are in the position here of the “Lord of the Rings” knight errant Boromir – you have the One Ring of unlimited power, but of course, unlike any that has ever possessed the One Ring of arbitrary government power, you will only use it for “good.”
As to conservatives defending “the freedom of the poor to remain poor,” that statement is beneath you.
First, understand that conservatives make the same error as liberals. They make a distinction between economic and personal freedom where none exists. Conservatives believe in the freedom to constrain every bit as much as liberals. Conservatives would “constrain the freedom of the immoral in order to promote goodness in society.” Same principle as yours – government has the ability to constrain the freedom of people who are simply going about their business and who through their behavior and actions are not denying the rights of others – all in the name of perfecting society.
That said, the conservative side of your economic equation is “conservatives defend the freedom of people to make independent economic choices regardless of outcome.” Those choices might prove directly beneficial to large numbers of people – such as when people choose to buy single-family homes, which creates real productive jobs and wealth that sifts through the economy. Those choices may also create “unfair” and “unjust” distributions of wealth – like a .200 hitting utility infielder making $2 million a year while a teacher makes $25,000. They may wreak havoc with some groups of people as when people stopped buying buggy whips or whatever happened to pets.com.
There are so many notions of “equality” that for government to get into the equality business (beyond the legitimate “equality before the law”) is fraught with danger. For example, does “No Child Left Behind” mean “No Child Gets Ahead”? Must government constrain the freedom of some children to, say, make the choice to attend a private school with a better learning environment than his public school because his family is poor? Again, I don’t want to debate public versus private education. I simply point out the principle in play.
Bottom line — what “conservatives” defend (when they are acting like “classical liberals” in the economic sense) is the concept that creation of wealth creates opportunities; the individual and seeming chaotic transactions of millions of individuals pursuing their own ends ultimately produces the best possible outcome for society. (What liberals object to, with some justification, is that the “best possible outcome” does not always occur in a timely manner that agrees with our moral sense of “fairness” and “justness.”)
Perfection (or even the pursuit of “the good” through the perspective of something “perfect” – for example “perfect equality”) is impossible in a society where people are free to make independent choices. Pursuit of perfection simply cannot tolerate the diversity inherent in a free society and a free society in which people have the liberty to make individual choices will never produce perfection. That is Will’s point.
Unless you are willing to trust the “One Ring” of arbitrary government power to your worst enemy, then you are kinda stuck with the “unfairness” and “unjustness” of a free society – or you are morally obligated to abandon the coercive power of government and use the voluntary mechanisms of civil society to achieve the ends of fairness and justice – regardless of what others might choose to do or not to do. (Can there be virtue without the power to choose?)
Yes, I am begging the question of what happens to the truly poor in a free society, but that is perhaps a topic for another discussion – a discussion of the utility of various approaches to improving the lives of the poor (without the necessity of government constraint of freedom) rather than the perceived moral necessity to just “do something.”
I think we have gone beyond the point of useful public political ideology. Candidates, legislation, issue ads, campaigns, and so on and so forth are all set in motion with a design that has more to do with marketing than it does with an abstract view of the power of government.
The amount of resources that are placed into this, that, or the other candidate turn the ideological fidelity displayed by Mr. Westover into a useless luxury. Modern political ideology is brand marketing; nothing more, nothing less.
All good marketing has its roots in basic human emotions and views of the world. However, it is not a genuine continuation of these ideas; rather, a manipulation. Because its nature is not geared to keeping the original social meme completely in tact (it is more concerned with moving product), any relation it has to a “real” emotion, ideology, thought, etc, is either coincidental or targeted for reasons other than true belief. (True belief can be a part of this equation, but it matters not when your goal is simply to win a zero sum contest with your competitor.)
Being a modern conservative has more in common with liking Pepsi than it does to understanding Edmund Burke.
Ideological political battles are dead. Who can get the suckers to buy the most product is what filled the void.
I completely disagree that there is any tension between “freedom” and “equality” as those terms are defined in political debate. “Equality” I take to mean “equality under the law”. Freedom I think means the same thing but especially subjection to the rule of law. Now that conservatism has had its day with the Republican control of virtually everything and the Democrats moping in their shadow I think we see that conservatism stands for neither freedom nor equality as those terms are understood. Consrvatism means any means to an end, the end being “he who has the most toys wins.” Conservative politics are the use of government to reward your friends who support you financially to maintain those ends. It is all unprincipled and amoral. This is why the conservative have gone about for the past fifteen years undoing the New Deal and Great Society returning to what they see as the golden era the age of McKinley, a similar age of unprincipled and unbridled avarice. The New Deal and the Great Society curbed the malefactors of great wealth and their control over money and banking to employ these institutions for the majority. Government’s role is to aid the few with grants of property, tax breaks and other advantages to acquire and maintain hoards of wealth without regard or concern for the struggling masses. Attack poodles like George Will are retained in the “kept press” to pose false riddles to amuse and befuddle the rest of with blather about “principles” of which there are none.
What I love is how “conservatives” howl about “activist judges” like William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, Earl Warren and Harry Blackmun who actually understood that the Constitution protects people, not just corporations and the wealthy, and struck down mindless laws that gave people freedom and equality. It seems the conservative mind cannot comprehend a decision like Roe v. Wade which to me would be a “conservative” decision as it stands for limiting government and maximizing freedom and equality the very things “principled conservatism ” claimed it stood for. The conservative need to pack the Supreme Court with ideologue trained seals to overturn that decision is proof of the utter absence of any principles.
I used to work for a firm that had an account with an up-and-coming agriculture related company (let’s call them Agatron). Agatron’s success was based on a little product that claimed to provide some seed related service to producers (let’s call this product Corn Cakes.) The problem with Corn Cakes was the same reason why Agarton called my place of employment: there was already a product on the market that dominated Corn Cake related farming processes (let’s call this product Slappy Patties.) Agatron had had enough success with Corn Cakes to hire an ad firm, but they needed to open up new markets if they were going to take their company nation wide (and then into global markets.)
The problem for me and my fellow coworkers on the Agatron Corn Cake account was that Slappy Patties, Slappy Patty utility, Slappy Patty price expectation, and even (relatively) detailed Slappy Patty biology was understood by Slappy Patty customers. In short, what we had was a problem of customer familiarity and trust with a competing product. Our first task was to directly attack these two senses that controlled the customers that kept on spending Corn Cake cash on Slappy Patties.
Without getting into the details of a private account, we began our assault on trust (and, to be fair, reality; Slappy Patties were popular for a good reason) by finding various bits and pieces of data that challenged Slappy Patty’s utility (never mind that we didn’t tell Slappy Patty customers that the data was collected from a non-comparable climate than where Slappy Patties were typically used.)
We then found an industry related group that would provide a farmer or two to make personal statements about their Corn Cake related success vis a vis their Slappy Patty using seasons. We piled on a few industry related scientists who did nothing more than look at our data and confirm that our process was correct.
At first, the Slappy Patty folks didn’t take much notice. They had the attention of the lion’s share of the market and the consumer base knew their product was superior. After a few crop generations, more and more producers were using Corn Cakes. The Slappy Patty folks started to get less dismissive and more and more confrontational concerning the Corn Cake challenge. However, since the entire “debate” between products was based on an appeal of emotion and loyalty, the Slappy Patty folks did not and were not able to effectively respond to the Corn Cake menace; they couldn’t simply call upon the familiarity and trust that customers used to have with what Slappy Patties were, how they worked, and why people liked them in the first place.
Because of this, and because of the effectiveness of our firm’s ad construction, the Slappy Patty folks returned fire with a bunch of nonsense that made the same appeals as our initial shot across their product’s bow.
It has been going back and forth ever since. No one gives a s%^t about how or why either product works anymore. I’ve sat at a co-op and looked at the two–side by side–and I don’t even know anymore. I know how each product appeals to their customers. I know the likes and dislikes of the customers, but I really couldn’t tell you the biology behind a product that has to change from generation to generation. (BTW: for those of you who don’t believe in evolution, don’t eat any mass produced food. It doesn’t exist for you.) Granted, I have a biologist in the family who can tell me exactly how and why each product works (both products have a unique set of utilities) but this only matters at a level behind many, many curtains. In practice, in actuality, as long as the damn things produce a minimum level of success, they could be made out of green cheese and walrus flesh and a certain percentage of the population would buy them.
I don’t think that the people who come up with things like “no new taxes,” “compassionate conservatism,” “happy to pay for a better Minnesota,” etc, are any different than me and my former coworkers on the Corn Cake account. When people spend their hard earned capital (political or the green kind), they want in-and-out experiences that reinforce rather than challenge their emotions and thought. We’ve doubled back and forth on our “ideologies” so many times that we now have a “conservative” in office who may be one of the most radical politicians ever to walk upon the American political scene.
The “cure” to a marketing and sales approach to the world is to develop a results-based pragmatism that sets aside form for function. This is hard to do thanks to (former) ad men like me. Folks like me take things like cars and sell them with appeals to your penis. Folks like George Bush do the same things with wars and taxes.
I also come from an advertising background, and I know that nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising. You can get any idiot and a lot of smart people to try anything once – keeping customers requires a product (not the advertising) that first meets basic expectations, then exceeding expectations and finally anticipating needs and turning unanticipated “needs” into expectations. The product of politics is no exception.
Communication, of which advertising is a subset, is achieved through deception, perception or conception.
Deception is self explanatory it is lying, knowing one thing is true and saying another. It is also “bullshit” in the sense of communicating without regard for the truth. Bullshit is more nefarious than lying; a liar must know the truth to create a falsehood. The bullshitter disregards the truth as irrelevant. Much political communication is bullshit, not lying.
Communication through perception is an appeal to the existing mindset of one’s audience. It is the famous “Daisy” ad used by Lyndon Johnson to reinforce the perception that Barry Goldwater would start a nuclear war; it is the George Herbert Walker Bush “Willie Horton” ad that played upon people’s perceptions of black males. There is some validity to perception-based communication; one needs to understand how one’s audience thinks in order to communicate. It is once one is inside the audience head that the communicator must decide, do I now haul out the bullshit or do I take a conceptual approach.
A conceptual approach too communication is presenting one’s ideas in a straightforward, unapologetic manner. Conceptual communication certainly presents ideas in the best light and it advocates for ideas, but it does so without the intent to deceive or bullshit. It relies on persuasion rather than fraud or coercion.
Certainly any of the three methods of communication can lead to success – such as convincing folks to buy Corn Cakes instead of Slappy Patters or George Bush instead of Al Gore or John Kerry. But consider –
A person might achieve success communicating through deception, but no one would want to be deceived – even the person doing the deceiving.
A person might achieve success communicating by manipulating people’s perceptions, but no one would want to be manipulated – even the person doing the manipulating.
A person might achieve success communicating conceptually; that is, treating his product and his audience with respect, and all people want to be treated with respect — even those that might not purchase the product or agree with the idea. A person need not be ashamed of standing for something and presenting it honestly.
The question then becomes, why doesn’t the American political system engender conceptual communication? The Gumper blames the audience (which raises questions about American education, but let’s not go there). That’s a somewhat elitist point of view. I would place blame on the high stakes of politics, which brings us back to what Eric was writing about.
The notion that government can constrain the freedom of some for the benefit of others makes politics a no holds barred contest. Elections are not just about who gets to run the country for the next four years – they are about who gets to constrain whom for the next four years. Elections are not about who gets to manage the essential functions of government for the next four years, they are about who gets to engineer the social agenda for the next four years.
I would rather have a limited government, strong enough to protect individual rights but with no authority to constrain people going about their business without constraining the rights of others. Absent that model – given a model where government has the authority to constrain the freedom of some for the benefit of others – it becomes tempting to deceive, bullshit and manipulate to build an immediate majority. One may have no wish to control others, but if the choice is controlling or being controlled, then the choice is obvious.
The problem with politics is neither too much money nor too little honesty. The problem is, there is too much power at stake. As long as liberals want to constrain freedom to promote equality and conservatives want to constrain immorality to promote goodness, there will be no remedy for partisanship.
jonerik disagrees there is any tension between “freedom” and “equality,” an easy case to make when one limits the terms to mean exactly what one wants them to mean. “Equality under the law” is but one form of equality. Take a simple example of another form of equality.
Lawyer Able passes the bar exam with a score in the top ten. Lawyer Cain passes the bar exam with a score just barely above the cut-off. Both are now lawyers. They are “equal” in terms of their freedom to practice law. Lawyer Able has no special privileges vis a vis Lawyer Cain. Yet people consistently hire Lawyer Able and are willing to outbid each other for the services of Lawyer Able. Lawyer Cain struggles to find work, and when he does, he commands a much lower rate of pay. They are no longer equal.
But given the percentage of lawyers in Congress, the Fair Legal Representation Act is passed, which declares that no lawyer shall be allowed to charge more than ten percent over the rate commanded by any other lawyer, and no lawyer may have more than X number of active cases at anyone time (in order to ensure “high quality legal service”). Now Lawyer Able and Lawyer Cain are for all practical purposes “equal.” Is society better off?
Let’s talk about “the rule of law.” I surmise that jonerik would agree that there is no rule of law if a dictator can arbitrarily change the law at his whim or can exclude some individuals from observation of the law. My question would be how is that situation any different than a legislature, however duly elected, passing a law that excludes one group of people – for example, a tax on a person’s estate that excludes people below a certain income level?
What jonerik ignores is that there is two kinds of law – common law, which evolves from tens of thousands of cases brought to courts and statutory law, the work of legislators. Common law has a degree of certainty upon which people can rely. The law today will likely be the law tomorrow. Laws do change over time, but they change gradually as older case law is applied to more modern situations. Statutory law can change over night, at the whim of the legislator.
Do we really have rule of law” if all it means is that everyone must obey the law and does not consider how law is made?
I also wonder about the success of big government programs that jonerik hails. The war in Iraq is going on five years – the War on Poverty is still going strong 40 years later. The War on Terror has curtailed more personal freedom than has fear of terrorism. We are losing the War on Drugs. Brown v. Board of Education was decided 50 years ago and we are just now declaring “war” on the achievement gap. The argument against free market mechanisms would be far more convincing if big government could show some success.
Jonerik does find an acorn in his comments about Roe v. Wade. Although the legal reasoning from a right to privacy is pretty weak, the decision that government has no business in the abortion business indeed ought to be the conservative position. But what liberals ought to understand is that government also has no business funding abortion for the same reasons.
I think my original comments that one’s politics is merely which kind of insitution you favor in a battle for power between disparate institutions has been proven by this conversation.
Accepting this at a very base level means that political progress comes when an appropriate balance of forces, and thus these institutions, is achieved. I think you’ll find the vast majority of Americans tend to agree at some gut level. After all, we do tend to elect divided governments for some reason.
Given all of this, any kind of political discussion that begins with a shorthand for what sort of insitutions you favor is a political discussion that is ultimately vapid and pointless. But it is the discusssion aging Baby Boomers like Krugman still think are relevant. It isn’t. What is important is the appropriate balance between institutions, or even more interestingly how people relate to institutions at all, bracing up old ones and creating new ones - or wandering off on their own.
We lack the language to describe the relevant debate, or indeed to describe the typical behavior of voters in each election. This deficiency is perpetuated by the insistance that outdated language is the only thing appropriate in the media. They do us all a terrible disservice by their inability to understand how very much politics has left them behind.
People who insist on using “liberal” and “conservative” as if they mean anything at all are nothing more than dinosaurs, staring up at the sky and wondering why the comet is flying so low.
“I also come from an advertising background, and I know that nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising. You can get any idiot and a lot of smart people to try anything once – keeping customers requires a product (not the advertising) that first meets basic expectations, then exceeding expectations and finally anticipating needs and turning unanticipated “needs” into expectations. The product of politics is no exception.”
…is that why you previously complained about a need for statesmen and nuance in politics? How happy are you with your current political choices?
Also none of what you say follows in a market with limited options. I grew up in a town with a McDonalds and a local greasy spoon as the only eateries. Believe me, their business and appeal had very little to do with quality. Not once were my expectations exceeded at either establishment.
Your three facets of communication are not always exclusive. They relate to one another with an “and/or” not just an “or”. Communication is also a two way street that ends up looking like a complex mathematical equation rather than a simple game of back-and-forth catch. Certain car owners deceive themselves when Porsche offers up a spiffy SUV that fits the customer perception of strength, class, durability, etc, that is made in a straight forward manner by the company. Never mind that the Porsche Cayanne is just a VW Toureg with a different nameplate and a significantly higher price tag, all three aspects of communication were utilized in the transaction.
No one wants to deceive themselves, but smart people are very good at rationalizing dumb choices. To throw a bomb in the middle of the conversation, I think this is how people buy into Genesis (both the band and the Bible chapter). We’ll tell ourselves all sorts of good things to keep various beliefs, moral structures, etc alive and well.
This also opens up another important aspect of advertising: What do you call it when I truthfully tell you something that truthfully manipulates one of your shortcomings/miscalculations? I don’t need to lie to you to get you to believe in/buy something that is false or misleading.
Also, if no one really wants to manipulate and if people really don’t want to be manipulated, why are you afraid of big government?
I do blame the audience. But only in the sense that I blame people for buying Viagra after seeing it advertised after a few beers during the game on Sunday. Again, it’s a two way street and one side does what it does because of utility while the other does what it does because it is, for a lack of a better word, lazy, self deceiving, and only secondarily concerned with function.
I agree with you that elections have become our de facto accountability moments (which is kind of scary if you have an understanding of the Constitution and believe in responsible government). My point is that because this bi-annual singular moment has become our primary check and balance, that government models and/or ideologies have given way to a more practical weapon in a zero sum game: marketing. Any side, viewpoint, belief, etc that a candidate expresses is not deployed for any other primary reason than to elicit an emotional response in a constituency or voter. Political ideology has become a brand; it’s a flavor. This is why each month I get fundraising appeals from Democratic presidential candidates (my flavor of choice) appealing to this, that, or the other hot button issue. This is why campaigns buy contact lists from outdoor outfitters and cross reference them with people who buy vans when they want to identify independents in the suburbs.
You seem to be a very analytical person who thinks a lot about a lot of things and who needs to have formulas to get things to work in your head. I honestly don’t understand this mode of thinking as it is presented here and I assume that there is some stuff that we agree on but cannot get by because of the medium and the way by which we process information.
The divide between liberals and conservatives is the difference between Coke and Pepsi; Arctic Cat and Polaris; Ford and Chevy; and so on and so forth. Both “sides” appeal to patriotism; parochial ideas about religion, sex, and race; the belief that capitalism has outlasted Marxism and that there is no other viable option; the belief that markets are beyond government intervention; and various other popular American beliefs. It’s Red State vs. Blue State; Wal Mart vs. Costco; Home Depot vs. Lowes; the wife on Everybody Loves Raymond vs. all of Hollywood…repeat, repeat, repeat. My current favorite flavor is “first principle conservative.” I wonder if I can get that on a bumper sticker for my Cayanne.
and by “bi annual” I mean “biennial”. Stupid spell check.
wabbit, I think you’re on to something in your critique of “conservatism” and “liberalism” as increasingly meaningless labels. I think there is a very important matter of language not being up to our thoughts or our ability to explain or comprehend events. So we do what comes to us and fall back upon familiar terms and hought patterns. So we remain stuck in these debates. But I think there is some benefit from trying to discuss and sort things out because that is how we will evolve. That is why I think free speech and expression is so important. Free expression means freedom of thought and freedom of action within certain limits.
That’s why I’m glad Mr. Westover has interjected his criticism of my comment because I believe we all can learn from discussing each other’s comments. What I think Mr. Westover is getting at with his rejoinder is that some laws make sense and are “rational” and some are not. He says “Do we really have rule of law” if all it means is that everyone must obey the law and does not consider how law is made?” I think he saying that there is a reason for judicial review and that if legislators make an unreasonable and arbitrary “law” that is really tantatmount to no law at all and we ought not to obey it. True enough but disobedience even to an unreasonable, arbitrary and unconstitutional law may carry a price. In fact, one can and one does even today sometimes disobeys unconstitutional laws at the peril of one’s life. i won’t try to strain the point by citing a current expample, but I think it is fair to say that Rosa Parks literally risked her life by disobeying an unjust and arbitrary law that required her to move the back of the bus for a white person.
I’m not sure how Mr. Westover disagree with my point that “freedom” and “equality” are essentially the same thing or, if you will two sides of the same coin, which I submit is the rule of law. The example he gives of the fictitious “Fair Legal Representation Act” is an example of a straw man. if you assume, as Mr. Westover does, that the “market” for legal services is purely competitive and the legislature has attempted to tilt the market in favor of market losers who cannot compete because of inferior product or services, by regulating or fixing the price of legal services, then I think he makes a valid point. But there are many industries or businesses today where Congress or state legislators engage in this type of regulation and, unlike the lawyer example, they have a “rational basis.” E.g. Many wholesale businesses like liquor, beer and wine, use state regulation to to regulate the prices of their products through resale price maintenance which are supported through state and federal regulation. You cannot for example import wine or liquor yourself direct from the producer into the state. This type of regulation creates a state supported cartel.
I disagree with this law but that doesn’t mean it is irrational or that I can disobey it. Nor does it mean that I am being denied equality under the law. It is a rule of law.
Mr. Westover says he wonders about the success of the “big government programs” like the War on Poverty and he includes I take it “Brown v. Board of Education” and the “War on Drugs” in this list of programs. I don’t know why conservatives pick on the War on Poverty as an example of “Big Government” To me “Big government” is the Department of Defense and the Millitary-Industrial-Congressional complex. It is “big brother”in the form of the ever growing police state we have in this country. A lot of the anti-War on Poverty Program rhetoric comes from racism and the lie that conservatives repeated over and over until people started saying it was true that African-Americans moved to cities to get better welfare benefits and avoid work. The War on Poverty was the best even a political genius like LBJ could get passed through a Dixiecrat controlled Congress. If it failed, it had the failure programmed into it. It was not a program designed to empower people. Which is not something you can say for New Deal type programs like the GI Bill, or the FHA or the REA which actually lifted people out of poverty. These are successes that the right likes to ignore until they get into power and then they want to dismantle them.
I think that is what Mr. Krugman is getting at with his graph. I suppose I should have said above that I think the answer to Mr. Black’s question is a yes.
jonerik didn’t like my comparison of lawyers Abel and Cain as an example of different types of “equality.” He prefers a real world example that demonstrates “rationality,” to wit –
“There are many industries or businesses today where Congress or state legislators engage in this type of regulation and, unlike the lawyer example, they have a “rational basis”; e.g., many wholesale businesses like liquor, beer and wine, use state regulation to regulate the prices of their products through resale price maintenance which are supported through state and federal regulation. … This type of regulation creates a state supported cartel.”
Jonerik goes on to say, “I disagree with this law but that doesn’t mean it is irrational or that I can disobey it. Nor does it mean that I am being denied equality under the law. It is a rule of law.”
Here is where I see his error. First, there is inequality under the law. A law that creates and protects a cartel necessarily prohibits certain individuals the freedom to enter a market. The government is unequally applying its power to the benefit of a specific group at the expense of another. Such regulation also prohibits consumers the freedom to purchase products in a manner they choose. Law for economic preservation is distinctly different from law protecting health and safety, from which “rational basis” jurisprudence derives.
Second, jonerik makes the assumption that “rule of law” goes no further than “everyone must obey a ‘rational’ law.” But in doing so, he leaves us with wanting an operational definition of “rational.” Such a definition cannot be delivered unconditionally through legislation; however, the definition of “rational” is conditionally defined and refined daily through judicial proceedings, which is my major point.
Dare I introduce for the sake of simplicity another hypothetical?
Take the a situation where you and I agree to an employment contract where you agree to work for me at some salary for a period of ten years, after which I will provide you with a pension of $300 a month for as long as you live. Let’s further assume that many other employers and employees have the same agreement. This is a private contract; government has no regulatory interest other than judicial remedy in the event either party breach the terms of the contract.
As with any contract there is a statistical probability that both parties will meet the obligations. First. let us assume in 99 percent of the cases such contracts are honored. In the 1 percent where there is a breach, the breach is “conditional” – that is, it there will be a different set of facts constituting the breach, which a court will sort out, rule on, and provide remedy for the damaged party. Is legislative intervention required? I submit “no.”
Now lets take the same example, but assume that instead of 99 percent of contracts being honored, a mere 40 percent are honored and 60 percent are breached. Should legislators intervene? I would say “yes,” but the larger question, which relates to jonerik’s point about “rule of law” is how should legislators intervene.
Legislation by its nature must be “unconditional” to comply with equality before the law; that is, it must, as jonerik implies, apply equally to everyone. Although the outcome of a law will benefit some and harm others based on their specific conditions, unconditional law itself is not intended to benefit any one group. Yet, legislation is nonetheless always directed at some outcome. Let’s return to our example.
An unconditional, rational and desirable outcome is that all contracts be honored. Even a person on the losing side of a specific contract dispute desires that people honor their contracts with him – even if he disagrees or is harmed by a specific decision. Thus, in our hypothetical, it is rational and desirable that legislators create legislation that raises the statistical probability that contracts of the type we are discussing will be honored. That outcome is “unconditional” in that it applies equally to both parties to the contracts. It provides greater certainty to the law and thus greater freedom to employers and employees to plan for the future – a desirable outcome, again for both parties.
However, a “conditional” response by the legislature to our hypothetical, which has the intent of favoring one group over another, creates inequality before the law and violates the spirit of the rule of law. It is by nature arbitrary and subject to change during the next legislature, which provides very little certainty for the future of either contractual party.
For example – If the legislature were to respond to our hypothetical by declaring that all companies must provide pensions to their employees and an employee cannot accept work from anyone that does not offer a pension and then proceeds to set up a system of regulation and enforcement to ensure its edict is carried out — that is a conditional response predicated on producing a specific outcome with specific benefits to specific people causing specific harm to others.
This example is not all that far removed from the real world. Until a recent Canadian Supreme Court Ruling, Canadian doctors who participated in the Canadian health care system were prohibited by legislation from accepting private payments from private patients who might wish to do business with one another.
The point is simply this – law discovered through precedents set in specific, conditional court cases produces a certainty in the law that individuals can rely on. Unconditional legislation can further the element of certainty and enhance the rule of law when it limits itself to enhancing the probability that generally accepted practices will be enforced. Conditional legislation, where the legislature attempts to impose its will to produce a specific outcome for one identifiable group at the expense of another leads to inequality, curtails individual freedom and violates the spirit of the rule of law.
“Here is where I see his error. First, there is inequality under the law. A law that creates and protects a cartel necessarily prohibits certain individuals the freedom to enter a market. The government is unequally applying its power to the benefit of a specific group at the expense of another. Such regulation also prohibits consumers the freedom to purchase products in a manner they choose. Law for economic preservation is distinctly different from law protecting health and safety, from which “rational basis” jurisprudence derives.”
–Please tell me that paragraph is in relation to the Department of Defense rather than the War on Poverty and other related social programs.
I tell you what; when I go into that voting booth, I can’t decide between freedom or equality. Most of the time my vote comes down to hypotheticals concerning unconditional, rational and desirable outcomes involving obligated contracts and statistical probabilities. Although, one time I did pull the lever because some joker said he’d take away my gun and that the word “God” should be taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance.
With a little bit more seriousness, Mr. Westover’s unconditional/conditional legislative philosophy is a wee bit scary. Court judgments, constitutions, and existing law serve as the syntax for any possible future legislation. This doesn’t preclude future legislators from imposing legislation with a specific outcome for one identifiable group (which is pretty much the purpose of legislation in the first place); rather, it sets up the boundaries for acceptable action (which is malleable itself as this current SCOTUS is proving in spades).
Existing framework itself is not infallible. Let’s use Noam Chomsky’s famous sentence as an example: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. It’s grammar is correct but its meaning is nonsensical. The words you pour into the mix are every bit as important to certainty and meaning as is the structure.
Meaning, in both language and legislation, falls back upon itself; precedents are only precedents because they were once introduced as law. It’s almost like you’re saying it is dangerous to add another tiddly-wink to the pile because certainty can only be enhanced and maintained by existing tiddly-wink combinations. You seem to have concocted a quasi Irreducible Complexity theory for our legal system.
This says nothing of existing inequalities in our judicial framework (which would serve as the bedrock for future certainty-filled laws.)
Are you a deontologist? You seem very concerned with process vis a vis outcome.