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The Functions of the State

Wordsworth Donisthorpe — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 09:58:06 -0500

Editor’s Note

Having declared for democracy, having surveyed history to find that states tend to accumulate together into larger states and greater numbers of people join the ruling class as time goes on, Donisthorpe now proceeds to address the two master questions of political science: What is the State? and What does the State do? Though they are clearly different questions with different sorts of answers, they “are usually confounded and treated together,” resulting in a great many familiar political problems. The next “great question” our author introduces is “What ought the Government, however constituted, to do?” But before we may detail and delineate all the things a government ought to do, it might do well to take stock of all the things states actually do. So, armed with the historical and anthropological knowledge marshaled in his first two chapters, and with his key questions in mind, Donisthorpe takes us through the long ledger of modern statecraft.

First and foremost, states constitute themselves to provide for the common defense of those within their borders or those competing for their protection. Beyond this, though, modern states engage in endless methods of projecting power out beyond their borders, protecting private tradesmen with whole squadrons deployed to the ends of the earth, fortresses and coaling stations dotting the way there. States provide law and order for their territories, though these institutions are prone to corruption and inequity. States raise funds through taxation, a practice universally hated but also near-universally accepted (though our author notes that “The raising of revenue by some kind of taxation is denounced by Mr. Auberon Herbert, but he seems on this point to be in a minority of one.”) States undertake to regulate and protect the interests of “private workers,” which many people certainly appreciated, though many others resented the state’s heavy hand. States engage in a large amount of their own industrial, scientific, exploratory, and information-gathering work, some of which is essential to other, more basic state functions, but most of which serves the private interests of various lobbies—the Museum Trusts, let’s say.

Modern states, of course, routinely went beyond these simple and near ubiquitous functions. They have been called upon to provide libraries and schools, public baths and public housing, mandatory vaccinations, proscriptions against supposedly immoral behavior like drug use or sex work, established churches and state media, sanitation boards and family courts, and of course there were even those who wanted their government to control greater and greater portions of the globe in the constant scramble for empire. And there are—as we are each painfully aware—a thousand other functions he could have listed in more or less detail, though as our portion concludes, “In spite of all these omissions the area surveyed is wide enough to call up doubts in the minds of both parties—Individualists and Socialists—as to whether the happy mean has in all cases been yet hit by the State.”

Anthony Comegna, PhD

Assistant Editor for Intellectual History

Individualism: A System of Politics

By Wordsworth Donisthorpe
London: MacMillan and Co. 1889.

CHAPTER III: The Functions of the State

When we examine the numerous questions which exercise the minds of those who take an intelligent interest in politics, we find that they fall into two distinct classes: one class relating to the structure or constitution of government; the other to the function or duty of government. These two fundamental questions, “What is the State?” and “What does the State [do]?” though standing clearly apart, are usually confounded and treated together. Now, although they may be equally vital, that is no reason for assuming that those who agree upon the one point must necessarily hold identical views on the other. With respect to structure, politicians fall at once into two large and nearly equal parties, namely, those who are satisfied with the existing constitution just as it is, and those who contend that it ought to be more or less modified. Doubtless, the members of this latter class differ also among themselves as to the kind and amount of change desirable, from the red republican, through all shades of radicalism, to the most timid trimmer that adorns the Liberal benches. Their opponents are of opinion that changes are dangerous, or that at all events, if they must occur, it is best to let them come of themselves, and to retard rather than hasten them on. This party also contains many shades of Toryism, from the old-fashioned worshipper of antiquity, who would fain, if possible, reverse the tide of history and undo the evil of modern days, to the so-called Liberal-Conservative, who deems it wise to bend to circumstances and to float passively on the stream, though not to swim with it.

Turn now to the other great question, “What ought the Government, however constituted, to do?” “What are the duties of the State, be it monarchical, republican, or mixed? ‘” And here again politicians may be split up into two great parties. There are those who maintain the greatest possible liberty of the individual citizen compatible with the equal liberty of his fellows, and who disapprove, therefore, of all meddlesome legislation. They would restrict the functions of the State to the administration of justice, the maintenance of order, the defence of the country against foreign antagonism, and the collection and management of revenue for these purposes; and leave other matters to take care of themselves. On the other hand, there are those who believe that a well-organised body like the State is, or might be made, the most highly-efficient machine for the carrying out of many great and noble schemes for the improvement of the people and the amelioration of their lot. Such are the persons who support State education. State charities, State museums and galleries, State railways and telegraphs, State banks, State post-offices, and even State censors and spies. Such are the persons who would close the public-house at ten o’clock or altogether, and who would convert drunkards by force, who would and do force their medical nostrums upon unbelievers, and imprison those who resist. Such were the persons who took into the general-charge the eternal welfare of their fellow-creatures, and founded inquisitions to keep them in the right path. All these and a thousand other matters say they, can be best regulated and managed by the State.

Diametrically opposed as these two parties are, and fundamental as the issue between them undoubtedly is, it is a remarkable fact that they enjoy at present no distinctive appellations; and it is entirely upon difference of opinion concerning State structure that the existing party divisions are based. Indeed, some persons (even experienced statesmen) appear to be so far carried away by zeal for structural change or resistance to it, as never to give the equally if not more vital question of function a thought. Others, again, care little for the form of government so long as it is easy to live happily and freely under it….

Men of this stamp have during the last fifty years kept themselves in the background. The battle for equality, the struggles for parliamentary reform, for a redistribution of seats, for extension of the suffrage, for the enfranchisement of women, for the reconstruction of the House of Lords, and for the endless other constitutional reforms and changes, must be fought out when liberty is not in danger. But the very structural changes accomplished since the framing of the first Reform Bill have produced unforeseen effects upon the views of the ultimate governing body with respect to the duties of the State, which effects have been quickened since some two decades ago Mr. Disraeli threw open the floodgates still wider to the torrent of democracy. Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Liberty and Property Defence League, Mr. Pleydell Bouverie, said—

“One sees proposals of even eminent men nowadays which, by looking into the history of this country, you will find are strictly allied to the old sumptuary laws, and laws for the regulation of labour, and for settling what men are to earn, eat, and drink, which are to be found in the statute book four hundred years ago. We thought these notions had been exploded a hurtful and foolish, but they are coming to the front again, and I think it is due to the fact that a large amount of political power is now wielded by the comparatively uneducated and ignorant classes. The very mistakes and fallacies which were not recognised to be such by the educated classes four hundred years ago, and which influenced their legislation, are again influencing the classes which have recently acquired political power. They are for emulating those old-fashioned Acts of Parliament; unreasonable and impossible expectations are indulged in; and there is a great desire for ridiculous interference by Act of Parliament, which will again have to be exploded by the good sense of those who agree with the gentlemen here.”

Agitations for constitutional reform in harmony with the principle of equality are giving place to agitations for restrictions on the liberty of one class for the benefit of another, and the liberty of the individual for the supposed benefit of the public. This tendency brings politics home to the doors of those who take but a lukewarm interest in the “levelling ” process, and a very keen interest in their own freedom….

Before we are competent to define the proper sphere of State action with any degree of accuracy we must survey the whole field covered by officialism at the present day, in this country and in other countries, and in past times. By the use of the comparative method we shall possibly be enabled to detect permanent tendencies which will guide us in predicting the probable limitations of State action among civilised communities of the future. This work has not yet been done, or even begun, and it is needless to say I do not presume to attempt it here. At the same time it may be some help to those who are seriously considering this most important of all political questions of the day, if we cast our eye over the province of governmental interference in our own country, and point out what substitutes for such action have in the several departments been suggested, and how far they are feasible. From a condition of tribal socialism Englishmen have taken many centuries to attain their present degree of civil liberty, and it is admitted that considerable remnants of the old patriarchal socialism still remain, and are likely to remain (though possibly in diminishing quantities) for many years, decades, and perhaps centuries to come. In so far as such socialism is necessary because we are not yet ripe for absolute individualism, we are bound to regard it as “beneficent socialism.” It is none the less socialism. It must be understood then that in the following review of existing State interferences I am at present offering no opinion on their goodness or badness, but merely pointing out the fact.

…It may be well to begin with those which are admitted by most people to be normal functions, and to pass on to those which are condemned by larger and larger numbers, till we come to those which even socialists would hardly defend. First, then, we find that the State undertakes the defence of the country against foreign aggression. It maintains at the general expense a costly army and navy. It builds forts and ships, and supplies itself with all the requirements in connection therewith. Some persons contend that it should not make its own guns and ammunition: that it should not build its own ships, or construct its own military railways, that it should not even erect its own fortifications; but that it should purchase all such things and services from private persons under suitable contracts regulated by competition. Apart from the defence of the country, the State goes farther, it follows the trade of its citizens to the uttermost parts of the earth, and for their protection it keeps up lines of communication along the water highways. It holds other peoples in subjection, partly for their own good, but chiefly for the commercial advantage of Englishmen. Some persons think that traders should be left to take care of themselves, to raise and maintain their own armies and fleets, as the East India Company did last century.

The next State function of which the large majority approve is the maintenance at home of law and order; that is to say, the defence of every citizen against the aggression of other citizens, and the enforcement of promises of a certain kind (contracts). With the exception of Anarchists none dispute the propriety of this State work. The performance of it requires the maintenance of Courts of Justice and an army of police. The extent to which the State should go in preventing crime is keenly disputed. Some, for instance, would prohibit the carrying of firearms; others would allow the storing of dynamite in private houses, leaving the consequences to private responsibility. Recourse has been had recently to spies and informers; some consider this bad, others maintain that it is defensible.

The next State function which very few persons deprecate is the levying of the necessary means for carrying out the above and other Government work. The raising of revenue by some kind of taxation is denounced by Mr. Auberon Herbert, but he seems on this point to be in a minority of one, though I have no wish here to beg the question.

We now come to matters of State interference which excite a considerable amount of opposition-rightly or wrongly. The State holds itself responsible for the qualification of certain private workers. Persons who wish to practise medicine and surgery, to sell drugs, to lend money on pledges, to deal in second-hand metals, to sell alcoholic liquors, tobacco, or “game,” to plead in the Courts, to mind engines, to carry on a variety of other occupations, must satisfy the State that they are properly qualified by education or respectability, or both. Some think that if the Bar, for example, were thrown open, the public would easily judge for itself as to the competency of the competitors, just as it now does in spite of the Government certificate. The same argument is applied to medicine. Due responsibility for culpable negligence would, it is said, suffice.

And the State carries on many works also on its own account. It carries letters and sends telegrams and parcels. Some point to the fact that the telephone companies, which are private, are much more cheaply worked than the telegraphs, and deduce the natural conclusion from the observation. Others point to the high charges which private carriers made for letter-distributing before the State took up the work and claimed the monopoly. But the State examines poetry and chooses the best poet as the Laureate. It studies astronomy on its own account and appoints an Astronomer Royal. It undertakes scientific expeditions and (some ten or twenty years after) publishes reports of them. It vies with private enterprise in its efforts to get to the North Pole. It collects pictures and books and objects of antiquarian and scientific interest, and stores them in national museums and galleries. It keeps up botanical gardens, and also gardens for simple recreation. All these things may be regarded as national, and not calculated to benefit any particular class of persons at the expense of the others. In some quarters it is objected that these matters would be attended to by private enterprise if it were not for State competition, and better managed. It is pointed out that the Polaris Expedition effected more than the British Expedition under Captain Nares at less than a tenth of the cost; and that the report of the Challenger is only still very far from complete. On the other hand, it is contended that no private library can compare in any respect with that of the British Museum. Similarly, it is said, that private individuals could never have kept such recreation grounds as Hyde Park out of the hands of the builders for the good of the public health.

We have surveyed the field of modern State action, and passed in review certain institutions intended to benefit the nation as a whole. But beyond these national institutions the State undertakes to provide others which benefit one class at the expense of the remainder: it maintains local baths and wash-houses, free libraries and free or half-free schools, and it builds dwelling-houses for certain classes of persons. It is contended by the advocates of these State institutions that, although one class is primarily benefited, the whole community derives indirect advantage from them. Individualists, on the other hand, urge that private enterprise will, in the absence of Government competition, supply enough to meet the demand, and that more than this is detrimental to the public welfare. It is also said that the quality of the supply is thus stereotyped and private initiative crippled. The State is asked by some to distribute the population in accordance with the fertility of the soil and the production, of the district, by what is called State emigration or State-aided colonisation. This is strongly opposed by the majority, which maintains that population distributes itself most economically when left to itself. But the same majority approves of so distributing wealth that those who have shall contribute something towards the maintenance of the utterly destitute. Some contend that the levying of a poor-rate is in response to a legal and moral claim on the part of the poorest section of the community —a right to live. Others say it is a tribute to the national sentiment, the offspring of pity, and in the same category with the laws against cruelty to animals; while others again defend the poor law as a safety-valve against revolution, and without any other justification. Again the question has been keenly debated whether the State is warranted in stepping in between a citizen and his own animals in the interest of humanity. Some say these matters may safely be left to the social sanction.

Other State interferences may be classified under the heads of Sanitation, Morality, Religion, and Justice. Whether individuals should be allowed to dispose of their sewage as they think fit, or should be compelled to adopt some general and approved system; whether they should be forced to adopt certain medical precautions in the general interest, such as those required by quarantine laws, Vaccination Acts, Contagious Diseases Acts, notification and compulsory removal laws and the like; whether they should be allowed to build according to demand, or according to rules like those contained in the Metropolitan Buildings Acts; whether such matters as smoke-abatement should be treated as questions of mere private nuisance; whether the dead should be disposed of according to the fancies of their surviving relations, or on some State-ordained system; whether private persons should be permitted to use and also to abuse public waters by polluting them until such time as they see the necessity of combining to keep them pure; whether the makers and vendors of foods, drugs, beverages, etc., should be untrammelled by any other law than the maxim caveat emptor, or whether the State should analyse these commodities and punish adulterators: upon all these questions of sanitation, and a hundred others of the same kind, opinions differ.

In the interests of Morality some contend (an enormous majority) that the State should punish bigamy and practices inimical to monogamy, and should prescribe between whom, marriages should lawfully be sanctioned. Some of those who admit this, contend that the State is needlessly strict in its prohibitions, e.g. in the case of marriage with the sister of a deceased wife. Some of those who would allow young girls, against their inclinations, to be sacrificed to the greed or ambition of parents or guardians, provided the contract is one of marriage, deny the sufficiency of parental responsibility in the case of similar contracts of a temporary character, even when the young person is a consenting party. Opinions widely differ as to how far the State is warranted in sharing the responsibility with parents, and in standing in loco parentis with respect to orphans. It is also debated whether the suppression of brothels other than disorderly houses is, properly speaking, a State duty; and the same difference extends to the question of public-houses, where drunkenness may (or may not) result in disorder and nuisance. In the interest of morality the State exercises censorship of plays, though it has not till the other day been deemed necessary to continue the precaution in the case of light literature. In the matter of gambling, opinions widely differ, and the State seems to comply with them all. It prohibits some kinds of betting and lotteries under heavy penalties. Other kinds, such as betting on racecourses, it tolerates, but refuses to sanction; and other kinds, again, it recognises and sanctions, such as Stock Exchange speculations. Probably it may be said that according to the spirit of Scotch jurisprudence a fair bet should be enforced like any other contract, whereas English law would consistently refuse to sanction it. As to which is the best course for the State to adopt, having regard to the general welfare, opinions again differ.

Coming to State action in the interest of Religion, there is great diversity of view. The tendency has clearly been in the direction of diminished Government interference in such matters. People are no longer burned for heresy. Whether heretics should be burnt is still a debated question, but the “Noes” have it. Not so, however, with regard to Sabbath observance, Sunday trading. Sunday amusements, etc. On these points, and on the maintenance of a Church Establishment, public opinion seems to be pretty evenly balanced. There still remain on the Statute-books certain laws relating to oaths, and others relating to blasphemy, which imply that the State considers itself bound to punish offences against what may be called the national religion.

In this very brief survey of existing State functions in England we have necessarily omitted all reference to whole classes of Government action, and notably to that coming under the head Justice. And we have passed over the whole field of municipal functions, such as road-making, maintaining, paving, and cleaning; lighting, bridge-building; the laying of sewers and drains, water supply, fire extinction, the regulation of cemeteries, markets, and fairs, etc. etc. In spite of all these omissions the area surveyed is wide enough to call up doubts in the minds of both parties—Individualists and Socialists— as to whether the happy mean has in all cases been yet hit by the State.

The Structure of the State

Wordsworth Donisthorpe — Sun, 16 Dec 2018 11:15:00 -0500

Editor’s Note

In his first chapter of Individualism: A System of Politics, Donisthorpe began to sketch a vision for modern democracy in a highly integrated, technologically advanced world. He concluded by arguing that modern countries should include myriad—perhaps innumerable—interlocking and overlapping institutions to establish the various limits of individual powers and rights.

Now, he begins by distinguishing between the science and the art of politics just as one might distinguish between mechanical science and mechanical design. The “cloistered economists” may think that politics is a problem of data—if only we had enough information, collected and analyzed by experts, enforced by a single entity with absolute authority, we could solve all of society’s problems from the state house. In fact, though, as societies reached greater heights of what Donisthorpe called “civilization,” they became better situated to govern themselves through decentralized institutions of questionable authority but unquestionable efficiency. Great wealth, ease of communication, sophistication of concepts, and wider cultural sentiments empowered people to organize themselves in ways simply unavailable to most premodern people, including many of those under the control of Donisthorpe’s own nation, the British Empire.

Humanity’s natural tendency toward home- or self-rule, then, was of particular importance to him. In some cases, he notes, Britain has forced forms of modern governance on people not yet “ripe” for them (he cites land reform in Ireland and Bengal); in others, Britain acted merely with cruel imperiousness and lack of real concern for any sort of civilized behavior. Over time, the combination created a general crisis of “colonial questions” pressing themselves on the Empire in flashpoints all over the world. Our author proceeds to offer his own contributions to the debate by delineating the co-dependent general tendencies toward centralization, democratization, and individualization in states over the long course of history. After a bit of an anthropology lesson, our author decidedly stakes his claim for democracy, “but the doctrine is subject to this qualification—that the function of the citizen is the safeguarding of his own liberties, and not the manufacture of restraints on the liberty of his fellows.”

Anthony Comegna, PhD

Assistant Editor for Intellectual History

Individualism: A System of Politics

By Wordsworth Donisthorpe
London: MacMillan and Co. 1889.

CHAPTER II: The Structure of the State

The science of politics and the art of politics are two distinct branches of study, and should he kept so; just as the science of mechanics is a very different matter from the art of engineering. One may be an adept in the science, and yet utterly unskilled in the art—quite unable to apply the conclusions of the science to the art. So also we may be expert at an art, and yet be more ignorant than we should be of the science on which that art is based….

Now the science of politics, by whatever name known, is very little studied at the present day by our statesmen. They even affect to despise it. On the other hand men of science, or as they have been styled, “cloistered economists,” are prone to imagine themselves capable of solving all kinds of political problems simply by the aid of scientific research, without any practical experience whatever of the facts and conditions of the situation. Let me give an illustration; sociologists have reached the conclusion that the end towards which civilisation is moving, the goal which it bids fair to attain, is a system of self-government. In other words, self-government is the government of the future, and presumably therefore the best government. But it is for the practical statesman to decide when any particular nation is ripe for the application of the principle.

Few will deny that England has reached this stage of development; but when we look farther afield, when we pass even to India, where the people are indeed in a comparatively high degree of civilisation, we find grave doubts whether they are yet fit to exercise the functions of a self-governing nation. Certain doctrinaires in this country, but quite inexperienced in Indian affairs, are indeed anxious to thrust it upon them, but those who have more practical knowledge of the inhabitants are of a contrary opinion. And even those book-learned but inexperienced young statesmen would shrink from imposing free institutions on such races as the Zulus. We all remember the reception accorded by the Turks to Midhat’s paper constitution. It remained a dead letter. Free institutions are no doubt good, but they are good only for peoples who demand them.

If this is true of uncivilised races, of semi-civilised races, and even of races which like the Hindu have reached a fairly high degree of civilisation, it follows that there must have been a time in our own course of development when we also were unripe for free institutions. When was that date passed? Again, the same people is ready for one form of freedom before it is ripe for another. A nation is not suddenly transformed from a despotism into a free democracy; it acquires its liberties one by one, and at dates separated by long intervals of time. Hence it is quite conceivable that there are some forms of freedom for which even the English people are not yet prepared. We are therefore compelled to qualify the general and too-sweeping proposition “Self-government is good” to this effect, “Self-government is good for those peoples which are ripe for it,” or in other words, it is good for those for whom it is good. And for whom is it good? To this question the cloistered economist has no answer. It is a question of experience, a question for the practical statesman.

Again, philosophical jurists have detected a distinct tendency in the laws of civilised nations towards individual ownership, in land as in other things. All forms of common ownership operate in restraint of transfer. And this is true not only of tribal and family ownership, but also in a less degree of what is called dual ownership, where the interests of the two parties are diverse. But, although the tendency towards separate ownership is strongly marked, it by no means follows that any particular people is ripe for it. In the case of Ireland, the English land system was thrust upon a nation which had not yet emerged from the stage of tribal ownership, and the effects of the shock have not yet spent themselves. The same thing was done again in Bengal a century ago. Lord Cornwallis’s arguments in favour of his scheme of land reform are unimpeachable, the one flaw in them was this: basing his predictions as to the effect of the separate system in Bengal on his experience of the working of that system in his own country, he overlooked the extreme unlikeness between the two peoples. The immediate consequences were injury to the Zemindars, cruelty to the Ryots, and permanent loss of revenue to the Government. And at the present day the question seems to be whether it will not be deemed necessary to modify the arrangement, even at the cost of England’s honour (no very high price they say nowadays). Here, again, is a problem for the practical statesman: must we refit the boot to the foot, or leave the foot to grow to the boot? It is merely a question as to how far one or other process has been already in part effected. But the sociologist has said his last word, namely, the highest civilisation will adopt the system of separate or individual ownership.

I have dwelt at some length on the distinction between the art and the science of politics, because we are at the present moment exposed to two dangers—the one is the rule-of-thumb politician, who turns a deaf ear to all the teachings of science; the other is the “professor,” who hastens to apply the inductions of science to cases which do not supply the requisite conditions.

In order to understand political institutions, to track their general tendencies, and to predict their future we must study them from their origin, from the earliest times of which we have any records. The germs of all existing laws and institutions will be found far back in the days when our ancestors were in that stage of civilisation which is called the “patriarchal stage.” In the archaic independent family all our modern complex institutions existed in embryo, just as the little acorn contains within itself all the potentialities of a spreading oak. The earliest form of the State is the family with its internal despotism and its external independence; for it must be remembered that the family was amenable to no law from without…The father was king, priest, and judge, and the whole system was an absolute despotism. The early Hebrew records furnish us with pictures of these little independent nomad families, wandering about over the face of the earth at war with all mankind. It is from this period that the institution of monarchy dates.

But when these families came to group themselves together in clans and tribes for mutual protection and advantage there was a tendency for the heads of the families so compounded to claim an equal voice in the management of the general concerns. Thus resulted what is called an oligarchy, or, in the language of the rulers themselves, an aristocracy. It is true that there are forces at work which for a very long period tend to cause the reins of government to pass into the hands of some member of the ruling body—some man of great force of character or natural superior power. The point to note now is that from the date at which families first began to compound themselves into houses or “gentes,” we have the possibility of aristocratic government. As we have seen, these houses or clans again recompound themselves into tribes, which in process of time aggregate into the larger group called the nation.

A tendency has been observed by historians for the government of the nation to gravitate steadily into the hands of larger and larger numbers of the people, till the ruling body comes to comprise all the individual members of the community. It is not urged that this state has ever yet been reached, but that such is the observable tendency. This tendency has been styled democratic. There are many forces in society operating in a contrary direction, but as social development proceeds, the forces acting in the direction of democracy increasingly prevail. This is a well-based political induction. We are not now concerned with the causes of this tendency—the fact is patent….

Is the tendency a good one? Is it a tendency to be desired or merely one to be put up with as a necessary evil? I believe the very best friends of democracy have admitted its inherent weakness and vices….

The practical question for us all is whether, in spite of its inherent faults, we are to accept the principle of democracy, or to fall back on some system of aristocracy or monarchy, or as Lord Brougham himself advocates, on some mixed system? Seeing that to democracy applies the old proverb, “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” seeing that divided counsels result in delay and sometimes in disaster, seeing that democratic government is wanting in continuity of purpose, is shifty and inconstant, swayed by sudden gusts of popular impulse, and above all, that it embodies the will rather of the ignorant than of the wise: admitting all these charges, shall we in despair look elsewhere for the form of government of the future, or shall we rather seek to discover the several causes of these observed diseases, and if possible the cure?

I hardly feel called upon to furnish illustrations of these observed vices of popular government. Those who care to see them fully exposed may be referred to the late Sir Henry Maine’s very able work on the subject. But to take one very recent instance: I do not say that the Conservative Government was wrong some few years ago to commence laying down the Quetta Railway with a view to improving our defences against the threatened Russian advance upon Afghanistan. And I do not here say that the Liberals were wrong to pull it up again; but I do say most emphatically that the country was wrong which permitted such a piece of extravagant fooling as the combination of the two acts. What would be thought of an employer of labour who set one gang of men to dig a hole and another gang to fill it up again? As we should regard this man, so the other civilised countries of Europe probably regard us. And are they not justified?

Instances might be cited in which democracies have gone nigh to committing political suicide, as for example where carried away by temporary enthusiasm or hero-worship they have voluntarily abdicated in favour of a dictator; arming him with sufficient powers to enable him to defy the quickly-repentant will of the people. Both Cicero and Tacitus, who knew something of democratic impulsiveness and instability, have been cited in favour of a mixed form of government…Either he [Brougham] fails to see, or he wilfully shuts his eyes to the price that must necessarily be paid for this complex arrangement. In order to perpetuate what he would call our present mixed form of democratic monarchy we must be prepared to stereotype what is left of caste among our people, we must respect hereditary privilege, we must arrest the growing tendency in the direction of civil equality. No; the advantages may be great, but the price is too high for an Englishman.

I have said that the strongest argument of all against pure democracy is the apparent absurdity of putting the reins of government into the hands of the most ignorant classes of the community. Is it expedient, feasible, or even safe to place the inexperienced masses (no fault of theirs) at the helm of the State? Recently we have extended the franchise to the agricultural labourer, and I ask any unprejudiced person whether he is honestly of opinion that Hodge is really qualified to make laws either immediately or vicariously? Would he accept Hodge’s ruling on a delicate question of morals? Is he prepared to lend a wistful and a wondering ear to the inspired utterances of the modern Elisha? “Vox populi vox Dei.” Good; but the voice of the people is not necessarily the howl of the numerical majority. Apart from all false sentiment, apart from mob flattery (the maudlin foible of the day), apart from democratic bias, everybody knows, and honest men admit, that Hodge’s several views on things in general are not of the most enlightened character. And I for one positively decline to submit passively to his dictation in all the numerous concerns of life which are usually regarded as falling within the province of the law-giver. Let us face this problem fairly and squarely. Not on the one hand by falling back in dismay into the arms of a doomed class despotism, nor on the other hand by falsely attributing to the uneducated or half-educated untold faculties of intuition which in our inmost hearts we know well they do not possess.

The art of legislation is a very difficult and complicated study; much more so than farming or boot-making for example. And yet, as has been remarked with amazement by thinkers of the weight of Socrates, Shakespeare, and Spencer, whereas a lifetime is required for the mastery of the humblest handicrafts, almost any ignorant busybody is credited with intuitively understanding that most intricate art, legislation. The sole qualifications of a past master seem to be noisy self-assertion, burning class-envy, and fanatical faith in some social nostrum. Were I to walk into an engine-room and point out to the engineer the intolerable waste of steam entailed by a hole in the boiler, and urge him promptly to stop it, he might turn upon me with some such reply as this: “Sir, that hole is called the safety-valve; if you would bring your mighty brain-power to bear on some subject with which previous study has qualified you to deal, without making an ass of yourself, you might be doing more good to the community and less harm to me. Good morning.” And yet this same engineer will walk into the great legislative laboratory where the complex parts of the machinery of State are forged, and with the serenest self-confidence take off his coat and set to work. What is the explanation of this anomalous state of things?

The functions of the legislator are twofold. Under a democratic system therefore the functions of the citizen are twofold; for every citizen is by hypothesis a legislator. The first is that of making laws; the second is that of safeguarding liberties. These are clearly two different functions. And I am at once prepared to admit and to contend that every citizen is not only morally justified but also morally bound to take his share in legislation so far as this duty of safeguarding his own liberty is concerned. The process of breaking his own fetters is a very different process from that of forging shackles for his neighbours. I am aware that the two are usually confounded and spoken of as though they were one and the same thing. But a very little reflection, is required to see that they are two very different things. It does not need a bootmaker to find out where the shoe pinches: the wearer is competent to do that. It takes a bootmaker to make a boot that will not pinch. Hence every citizen has a clear right to a voice in the legislature, if by that is meant the right to safeguard his own liberty against all law-makers—to see that no law is passed which infringes upon his own rights and liberties. And under a representative system it is the duty of the representative to see that no law is passed which infringes upon the rights of his constituents. That is his duty. Hodge, therefore, has as good a right as any other citizen to watch the course of legislation on his own behalf, and to move for the repeal of any existing law which unduly interferes with his freedom of action. This is surely a very different matter from worrying and harassing other people.

And here is another argument for democracy. The end, aim, and test of all government—such is human nature—is the welfare of the ruling class. All history proves it. Human nature is such that it is absolutely impossible to provide against it. Hence aristocracies always have made laws for the good of the aristocratic class, and only indirectly and mediately for the good of the whole people. When the whole people has the making of the laws, then the test of the laws is necessarily the welfare of the whole people. Bad laws may of course be passed, but they will tend to fall into abeyance and finally to perish. The welfare of the whole people being the object of those who have the making of the laws, a defective system has a tendency to readjust itself. Good institutions will survive; bad institutions will die. By a bad institution is meant bad for the ruling class—the law-making class. And that is the reason why it tends to perish. Little by little those who suffer from it come consciously to see or unconsciously to feel the true cause of the mischief, and to uproot it accordingly; just as our own upper-class rulers have learnt the harmfulness to their own order of many early laws of their own creation, and have, during the last five or six centuries, made great strides in the direction of freedom by removing many State restrictions which impeded their own liberty of action. These reforms have also incidentally benefited the whole people in many instances; but such was not, in truth, the end and cause of reform. As evidence of this it can be shown that that which is good for the aristocratic class is not always good for the people; but that so long as the ruling class actually does benefit by it as a class, so long it will continue to survive. And this constitutes a real danger for the people. A protective duty on corn did undoubtedly benefit the landowners, and its reimposition would undoubtedly benefit them now; and although the repeal of the corn-laws has been an unmixed blessing to the people, we may safely say that it would never have been brought about but for the swamping of the landowning vote by the Reform Act of 1832. The country might have suffered for years, but the stimulus to remove the evil did not exist in the class which then ruled the land.

If this reasoning be sound we have reached the conclusion that the democratic form of government is not only defensible, but also highly desirable, and even essential to social evolution; but the doctrine is subject to this qualification—that the function of the citizen is the safeguarding of his own liberties, and not the manufacture of restraints on the liberty of his fellows.

Each new layer added to the electorate seems to have to learn the lesson do novo that sweet as it is to bully others, it is sweeter still not to be bullied oneself. About thirty years ago the more powerful section of the ruling body had learnt the lesson thoroughly, or nearly so; but since then we have had two extensions of the franchise, and in each case it has become increasingly manifest that the lesson has been unlearnt by the new recruits. This we may regret; but it is a comfort to reflect that they are of the same metal as their predecessors. and will doubtless show an equal aptitude for self-government. They will speedily learn the great lesson of liberty. It is only an abundant faith in the destiny of the race, the fullest confidence in the stuff of which this people is made, and a reasoned conviction of the truth of the democratic principle, that can buoy any honest and thoughtful person up at the present time to help forward the popular movement. Indeed, some of the proposals emanating from the new contingent are so wild, so dishonest, so silly, and withal so impracticable, that it is no wonder if some of even the faithful begin to waver. Fortunately, in the conflict of opposing interests lies the salvation of liberty. The principle of true Liberalism is, in the words of Mr. Gladstone, “trust in the people, qualified by prudence; the principle of Conservatism is mistrust of the people, qualified by fear.” This is the true spirit of enlightened democratism. It is because of faith in the destiny of our race that we may look without dread on its temporary aberrations. We see that hitherto they have marched steadily forward, not without turnings and even backslidings, it is true, but still, in the long run, forward on the path of progress. Clinging to this faith we may look not with fear but with confidence to the indefinite extension of the franchise, in the belief that whatever may be the temptations held out to them by place-seekers and dishonest demagogues, there is ingrained in the inmost nature of Englishmen an inherited love of justice and a consuming zeal for freedom which, in the long run, must prevail.

There seem to be but three reasons which any one is justified in adducing for not accepting the democratic principle: 1. Because he does not know what is meant by the term. 2. Because he lacks faith in the destiny of his own people. 3. Because he is consciously actuated by class interest, and is a traitor to his country.

The Spanish Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers

Gabriela Calderon de Burgos — Sat, 15 Dec 2018 11:15:00 -0500

Do you know what book John Locke, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Francisco de Miranda had in common? The Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana’s The General History of Spain. This curious fact hints at the fairly unknown story of a shared liberal tradition between the Old and New World.

Usually, when we learn about what schools of thought influenced the American Revolution, our history teachers rightly point out the influence of the British, Scottish, and the French Enlightenments. This fits in nicely with the narrative of the typical Western Civilization course taught in many American high schools, where students are introduced to John Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and maybe even Edmund Burke.

But missing from this narrative is the existence of the Spanish Enlightenment of the 16^th century, known today as the School of Salamanca, and the influence it had on the American Founding Fathers. This rich school of thought flourished with the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria and may be said to have culminated with the Jesuit Juan de Mariana.

To the south of the Rio Grande, we grow up learning about the influence the French Revolution and the ideas of Rousseau had on the Latin American Founding Fathers. This narrative, too, misses the much greater influence of the ideas shared by the School of Salamanca and the American Revolution: that all men are created equal, that sovereignty resides in the people, limited government, no taxation without representation, among others.

Ángel Fernández Álvarez, member of the History of Economic Thought Research Group at the Complutense University of Madrid, says that Juan de Mariana, the direct heir to the School of Salamanca, is a precursor to Western liberalism. Doctor Fernández documents this in his thesis (now published as a book: La Escuela de Escuela Española de Economía, Unión Editorial 2017). Fernández shows us how widely read Mariana was in England, despite the censorship of the writings of Catholics. He zeroes in on the influence the Spanish Jesuits had over John Locke and on one of America’s Founding Fathers, John Adams.

This is relevant for all Americans—northern, central and southern—because it allows us to debunk the historical myth that somehow we don’t all share the legacy of Western Civilization. It is also important for the English and Spaniards, because very few of them know of a liberal tradition within the Spanish Empire and its influence in one of England’s greatest philosophers —John Locke.

With regards to Locke, Fernández points out the striking similarities between Locke’s Two Treatises on Government (1689) and Mariana’s On the King and the Royal Institution (De Rege et Regis Institutione, 1599). We know that Locke actually read Juan de Mariana by way of a couple of surviving documents where he included a detailed citation of one of Mariana’s works and where he listed Mariana’s The General History of Spain among the greatest, most important history books that every aspiring gentleman should read.

Mariana and Locke concurred that men enter into society because in the state of nature they are worse off. They both also agreed that civil society precedes government and that government is established to safeguard the individual’s natural rights. These rights, as well as certain obligations, according to both Mariana and Locke, are independent of any positive legislation and are accorded to individuals “by nature.”

Fernández also points out that Locke’s argument for “no taxation without representation” is almost identical to Mariana’s. Compare both pertinent quotes (boldface added):

“…the king cannot impose new taxes without first having the consent of the governed. Ask, then, and do not strip your subjects taking every day something by your own will and reducing little by little to misery those who until recently were rich and happy.”
—Juan de Mariana, On the King and the Royal Institution (1599)

“for if any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people, by his own authority, and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government
…
They must not raise taxes on the property of the people, without the consent of the people, given by themselves, or their deputies.
…
The legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of making laws to any body else, or place it any where, but where the people have”.
—John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, (Hollis ed., 1689)

Fernández claims that Locke shares with Mariana positions on “the origin of society, the origin of the State, the origin of property in work, the consequentialist justification of property, the hierarchy of rights, the role of the state, the constraint of government and the right to rebellion.” And like Mariana, Locke saw in a king’s violation of property rights a justification for rebellion.

Even when it comes to the conception of the institution of money, Fernández argues that Locke agrees with Mariana as to money’s origin and functions, though, Fernández notes, the English philosopher did not reach the same conclusions as Mariana when it comes to the debasing of money. On this particular point, Fernández says that Mariana was “four centuries ahead of the 20^th century economists” who talked about the “inflationary tax.”

Mariana’s influence spun across the Atlantic and is evident in the United States’ third president, John Adams. Fernández documents that not only did Adams possess a couple of Mariana’s works, but that he seems to have read them. Fernández shows that in 1788 Adams acquired a work of Mariana’s that he had been avidly searching for: On the King and the Royal Institution. This copy has survived until today and is part of the John Adams Library collection at the Boston Public Library (it can be viewed here).

Fernández shows that there is a clear similarity between Mariana’s arguments in On the King and the Royal Institution and those of Adams in his Discourses on Davila, which were originally serialized in the Gazette of the United States between 1790 and 1791. The Gazette was an important publication at the time; President George Washington subscribed to it between 1788 and 1796.

Fernández sees Mariana’s work reflected in Adams’s many references to the history of Spain and his similar distinction between a king and a tyrant, as well as the same justification for the right to rebellion. Fernández also points out that the edition of Mariana’s political economy work that Adams read was the one that included the chapter “On Money,” which is relevant because Fernández believes Adams later used Mariana’s arguments to oppose the alteration of money and the creation of a central bank with the monopoly over the minting of money.

Fernández also mentions that Thomas Jefferson not only bought for himself Mariana’s The General History of Spain, but seems to have deemed it important enough to purchase it for several of his friends, among them James Madison. And we could add to Mariana’s list of distinguished readers the Venezuelan liberal who led the country’s first Independence and Republic, Francisco de Miranda.

Recent populist movements in Latin America have tried selling the idea that Latin Americans are not part of the tradition of Western Civilization and would be better off rejecting the classical liberal ideas on which it is based. Works like Fernández’s show that both empires, the British and the Spanish, shared an intellectual heritage which followed them to the new world. Liberalism is not bounded by the Atlantic Ocean or the Rio Grande.

William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass on Disunionism

George H. Smith — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 17:35:41 -0500

By the late 1830s, William Lloyd Garrison had developed his belief that the U.S. Constitution was proslavery. Not long afterwards, Garrison arrived at what he believed to be the logical corollary of this belief, namely, that abolitionists should call for secession of free states from the Union. This position, known as “disunionism,” provoked heated debate in the abolitionist community. It also brought about a split between Garrison and the escaped slave Frederick Douglass. For over ten years Douglass was a colleague and close friend of Garrison. During those years Douglass defended the Garrisonian positions down the line. By the early 1850s, however, Douglass, under the influence of Gerrit Smith, abandoned the position that the U.S. Constitution is proslavery. He also changed his mind about Garrison’s call to dissolve the Union. A former disciple now attacked the positions of his mentor—positions Douglass himself had defended in public for over a decade—and this generated tension between the two men.

After his escape from slavery, Douglass ended up in New Bedford, where he made his living as a common laborer. After living four or five months in New Bedford, Douglass was given a gift subscription to the Liberator. This brought him “into contact with the mind of Mr. Garrison, and his paper took a place in my heart second only to the Bible.” “I love this paper and its editor,” wrote Douglass. “His words were full of holy fire, and straight to the point.”

In March 1860. Douglass explained that some of his views had changed over the course of the past 14 years.

When I escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent experience and reading have led me to examine for myself. This has brought me to other conclusions.

Two changes were especially significant for Douglass. He initially agreed with the Garrisonians that the Constitution was proslavery, and he advocated disunionism as the only moral position consistent with abolitionism. In 1850 Douglass debated Gerrit Smith on the advisability of disunionism, maintaining that dissolution of the Union would make it impossible for slaveholders to maintain control of their slaves. Within a year, however, he wrote to Smith that he was “sick and tired of arguing on the slaveholders’ side” with the argument that slavery is sanctioned by the Constitution. Douglass now accepted the antislavery interpretation, and this caused him to abandon the Garrisonian rejection of voting, as well as Garrison’s call for secession by free states. I shall examine Douglass’s beliefs and how they changed in my next essay. In this essay I provide some background on Garrison and his advocacy of disunionism.

Henry Mayer (All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, Norton, 1998) commented on the gradual conversion of Garrison to disunionism during the late 1830s. “Unlike Garrison’s attacks upon the colonizationists or his endorsement of women’s rights…in which his intentions were clear and his gestures compelling, his assault on the Constitution began ambiguously as prophetic utterances and only gradually developed into a political and philosophical critique.” Whatever the timing may have been, there can be no doubt that Garrison’s belief that the Constitution was proslavery was essential to his call for free states to secede from slave states and form their own union, one in which slavery would not be allowed. As Garrison and his followers saw the matter, disunionism was a logical corollary of the belief that the Constitution was proslavery.

Was Garrison right? Did the advocacy of disunionism follow logically from his interpretation of the Constitution as proslavery? One of the few modern historians to discuss this question is Aileen S. Kraditor in her indispensable study, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850 (1969). Kraditor pointed out that “Garrison’s interpretation of the Constitution is now regarded as the correct one”; nevertheless, the same historians who agree with Garrison on this point typically reject as politically naïve his call for a voluntary secession of free states from slave states. Quoting Kraditor:

Each faction saw a logical connection between its theory and its practice; if they were right, the historians are wrong. A recent survey of changing interpretations of Garrison suggests that historians have felt more kinship with the middle-of-the-road liberal abolitionists, who worked within the constitutional framework, than with radicals of the Garrison stripe. [Historians] can easily, or perhaps unwittingly, sever the activist’s theory from his practice—on the one hand, accept Garrison’s reading of the Constitution but consider absurd the practical policy deducible from it, and on the other hand regard the political abolitionists’ exegesis of the Constitution [that it is antislavery] to be historically false, yet consider realistic the policy that translated that exegesis into practice. But perhaps in this instance the logician is nearer the truth.

Consistency was important to all abolitionists; none would concede a breach between theory and practice. As a result, during the late 1830s and early 1840s we find an interesting array of positions. Garrison encountered considerable opposition to disunionism among fellow abolitionists. Before the publication of William Goodell’s Views of American Constitutional Law in 1844, and especially Lysander Spooner’s Unconstitutionality of Slavery in 1845, many political abolitionists, including members of the Liberty Party (formed in 1840), conceded that the Constitution was proslavery. Consequently, they claimed that the federal government had no authority to banish slavery in the states—such a measure would require a constitutional amendment. But the federal government did have the constitutional authority to prohibit slavery in Washington, D.C. and in federal territories, and it could render illegal the slave trade between states. Only political measures could accomplish these goals. For abolitionists to denounce voting, according to political abolitionists, would be to surrender the most effective weapon available to the antislavery activists. Moreover, to call for free states to secede from the Union would strike most people as a hare-brained, anarchistic notion that would prevent reasonable people from joining the antislavery crusade.

A notable exception to this position was defended by the prominent abolitionist Alvan Stewart. Stewart maintained, as early as 1837, that the Constitution should be understood as antislavery, Then he went on to defend the position, unusual at the time, that the federal government had the power to abolish slavery in the states. As William Goodell wrote, “Alvan Stewart was the first to elaborate a compact argument in defence of the doctrine that the Federal government had constitutional power to abolish slavery in the slave States.” Stewart was joined in his dissent by Thomas Morris, who said in 1837 that the controversy over the Constitution had “long been settled, that by the Declaration of Independence, followed by the Constitution of the United States, Slavery, by the legal force and fair construction of these instruments, is forever abolished throughout our country.” A proslavery construction would mean that “a person can be converted by law into a thing.” The first book to defend the unconstitutionality of slavery was probably the poorly reasoned case presented in An Argument on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery, published in 1841 by the Boston chemist George Washington F. Mellan.

Despite these and other early exceptions, the position that the Constitution is proslavery dominated the thinking of political abolitionists until 1844. After that year important abolitionists, such as James Birney, Gerrit Smith, and other members of the Liberty Party, sought to refute the Garrisonian interpretation. Garrison replied in detail with lengthy articles in the Liberator. These articles defended both the proslavery interpretation of the Constitution and the wisdom of secession by free states.

1844 also saw contentious debates over the annexation of Texas. Abolitionists opposed annexation because they understood that Southerners anticipated the division of Texas into smaller areas, which would then be admitted to the Union as slave states (according to the Missouri compromise of 1820). This eventuality would dramatically increase control of the federal government by the detested Slave Power. Abolitionists also opposed the subsequent war with Mexico (1846-48), condemning it as naked aggression by the United State government. It was a war brought about and supported by the selfsame Slave Power. Political candidates were automatically disqualified from support by abolitionists if they supported either annexation or the war.

In 1844, Garrisonians supported a resolution submitted to the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) that called for secession by free states. This resolution passed by a large margin. Secession was defended by Wendell Phillips on the floor of this tenth-anniversary convention. He declared:

[T]he only exodus of the slave to freedom, unless it be one of blood, must be over the ruins of the present American Church and the grave of the present Union…[T]he abolitionists of this country should make it one of the primary objects of their agitation, to dissolve the American Union….[S]ecession from the present United States Government is the duty of every abolitionist; since no one can take office, or throw a vote for another to hold office, under the U.S. Constitution, without violating his anti-slavery principles, and rendering himself an abettor of the slaveholder in his sin.

Garrison followed up with an open letter, which stated (in part) that a primary goal of abolitionists should be

To persuade Northern voters, that the strongest political influence which they can wield for the overthrow of slavery, is, to cease sustaining the existing compact, by withdrawing from the polls, and calmly waiting for the time when a righteous government shall supersede the institutions of tyranny. To endeavor to effect, by all just and peaceful means, such a change in the public sentiment of the North as shall convince the South that nothing but the immediate abolition of slavery can make us a united people.

Garrison’s critics charged that he was attempting to make belief in disunionism a condition of membership in the AASS—a demand that Garrison had opposed years earlier in a controversy over women’s rights. Garrison set the record straight, again. The only condition of membership should be a sincere belief in the immediate abolition of slavery. All other topics were to be decided according to the conscience of individual members. Merely because a policy recommendation was passed by a majority of members did not obligate dissenters to defend that policy. A policy proposal, such as the advocacy of women’s rights and disunionism, merely expressed the beliefs of the majority, nothing more.

Smarter Together, to What Ends? A Review of AIQ

Will Rinehart — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 11:52:13 -0500

In 1979, sociologist Aaron Wildavsky surveyed his era’s technological sophistication and observed that the very technologies which provided freedom from want could spark new fears. “How extraordinary!” he said. “The richest, longest-lived, best-protected, most resourceful civilization, with the highest degree of insight into its own technology, is on its way to becoming the most frightened.”

While he was describing the anxiety surrounding nuclear energy and chemicals, those words could just as easily describe how many feel about artificial intelligence (AI) today. The dread has merely shifted from toxic spills and nuclear meltdowns to AI taking jobs and undermining human autonomy.

In their recent book AIQ: How People and Machines Are Smarter Together, data scientists Nick Polson and James Scott hope to provide an antidote to the anxiety around AI. “After you’ve read our book, you’ll be able to decide for yourself whether you think these worries are credible.”

But unlike Wildavsky who analyzed the risks of new technology, Polson and Scott’s medicament against AI anxiety is education. Indeed, AIQ is an entertaining exploration of some of the core ideas and a number of the key figures in the development of AI as a suite of technologies. They begin where any discussion of AI should, by noting that AI currently is just the application of simple mathematical models or algorithms to big data sets. The bulk of the text details the history of these models’ development.

For example, Polson and Scott recount the story of Abraham Wald, who is best remembered for his work on survivorship bias. During World War II, Wald was part of a team of statisticians that examined how aircraft were damaged in combat. At the time, planners wanted to provide greater protection to parts that received more damage, yet Wald correctly noted that only aircraft that had survived their missions were being assessed. Those that had been shot down couldn’t be checked. His survivability recommender system wouldn’t become known to the public until the 1980s, but pushed forward the science of recommender systems. Wald used these techniques to add armor to aircraft that couldn’t be observed in the same way that Netflix’s algorithms give recommendations to people for movies they have never seen.

They also discuss Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered how to measure the distance between earth and other galaxies using pulsating stars. It is through Leavitt’s method of applying a “series of visual concepts, chained together in a five-layer-deep hierarchy, to extract a useful feature from an imagine,” that the authors are able to illustrate the topic of deep learning. And John Craven’s work to find the USS Scorpion, a submarine that went missing in 1968, is used to explain how autonomous vehicles work.

Yet, the authors are explicit in keeping the most contentious topics off the table, even as they dance around them throughout the book. Near the beginning they ask the questions underlying popular concerns about artificial intelligence: “Will AI create a jobless world? Will machines make important decisions about your life, with zero accountability? Will the people who own the smartest robots end up owning the future?”

The call is met with a response a couple of lines later: “We should let you know up front that you won’t find the answers to these questions in our book, because we don’t know them. Like our students, we are ultimately optimistic about the future of AI, and we hope that by the end of the book you will share that optimism… We can teach you about AI, but we can’t tell you for sure what the future will bring.”

The book implicitly rests on an education centric model that is endemic in Silicon Valley. A simple version of this folk theory runs thus: A lack of understanding about technology encourages apprehension. To counteract this suspicion, education is needed, as education about technology will lead to understanding and optimism. Having both, people will embrace new technologies and worry less about their effects.

Whether AIQ accomplishes the broader goal it sets out depends entirely on the nature of the risk that AI poses. If the concerns with AI derive from its mysteriousness, then yes, the education about these mathematical techniques can help reduce concern.

But anxiety about AI isn’t solely a pedagogical problem that can be mitigated by better understanding. Sure, it helps to know what is going on inside the black box of algorithms, but most people don’t know how televisions work, and yet they don’t seem to view the small screen as an existential threat. Rather, AI concerns strike at the deeper issue of human dignity and technological control, which Polson and Scott only address in passing.

The most destructive conception of the AI revolution is the disappearance of all jobs. While this may seem outlandish, a subtler version of the AI revolution envisages machines subsuming worker autonomy and dignity. Both are part of a broader class of worries about the relationship between people and machines, namely that people will increasingly work in the service of machines.

But it is worth asking: Why do these worries seem to have legs when unemployment is historically low? The answer seems to be that the possibility of AI displacing people’s jobs inherently undermines the dignity of work. One of the greatest benefits of working is contributing to something greater that validates their individual worth, yet many sense that AI will reduce people to replaceable parts serving not people but machines.

Workplace dignity isn’t a new age version of the Marxian theory of labor alienation. It involves, according to workplace sociologist Andrew Sayer, autonomy, dependence, seriousness, and trust between both parties. Whether or not organizations name dignity as such, workplaces that focus on dignity understand the inherent power dynamics within the workplace and avoid taking advantage of workers while giving them the freedom and trust to accomplish complex tasks.

In one study detailing how a hospital turned around from poor quality of medical care, declining patient numbers, high staff turnover, and severe financial difficulties, researchers found that a shift in worker relations was an important component. Workers were given trust, granted autonomy, and recognized when they contributed to the organization. The emphasis on worker dignity helped to build a sense of ownership and pride among employees.

AIQ provides the background knowledge to counter the fears of AI while simultaneously granting some legitimacy in the anxiety. Chapter 4 focuses on the difficulty in modeling spoken language, a technique known as Natural Language Processing, ending with the observation that “language models will become personalized; the machines around you will adapt to the way you speak, just as they adapt to your movie-watching preferences.” In other words, the machines will serve humans, and not vice versa. In Chapter 6, the authors examine innovative attempts to utilize AI in medicine, while highlighting the limits of integrating data into the provision of medical services. The final chapter seems to set up a discussion of the relationship between humans and machines as it articulates the failures of Google Flu Trends, the Flash Crash in 2010, and the COMPAS risk recidivism model, which is used in sentencing hearings for felons.

Opportunities abound for the authors to illustrate that AI is being used to make better decisions in the service of human values, not in replacement of them. Indeed, the authors don’t try to push back against techno-supremacy, one of the most worrying trends coming from Silicon Valley and articulated most clearly in Wired editor Kevin Kelly’s book What Technology Wants. Techno-supremacy ascribes innate wants or goals to technologies, and privileges them in relation to human values and dignity.

AIQ tiptoes around this concern with AI, the value struggle between people and machines. The book provides a solid introduction to these technologies and how they came about, yet the foundation for a useful response to these legitimate concerns with AI is laid out here as well. AI has tremendous potential to aid humans, as AIQ shows, but it must always be in service of people.

Why Being Poor is Expensive (with Ryan Bourne)

Trevor Burrus, Aaron Ross Powell — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 00:15:00 -0500

Ryan Bourne joins us today to discuss the intricate hardships that the poor in the United States are experiencing. Some suggest that the United States should raise the national minimum wage, thinking that will solve some issues of the impoverished. Others believe that the poor have different buying and spending habits than the rest of the population.

What do poor people spend a majority of their money on? How does regulation of services actually hurt the poor? How does coning affect housing prices? Should we raise the minimum wage to a ‘living wage’?

The Genius of American Liberty, Part 2

Frances Whipple — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 10:30:46 -0500

Editor’s Note

Before offering our concluding portion of Frances Whipple’s epic poem—one of her last and more important works—I will take a moment to remind readers about where we have been. In the words of Whipple’s biographer, Sarah O’Dowd:

After Whipple moved away from New England and began to write for Spiritualist periodicals, her essays and poems were featured less often in New England abolitionist publications such as Garrison’s Liberator. Most people who became involved in a reform cause stayed with it for only a few years, then lost interest or became less active in it, but Frances Whipple never gave up her reform efforts. She continued to write—and after she moved to California, also to lecture—against slavery. …
In San Francisco in 1867 she published “The Genius of American Liberty,” a long allegorical patriotic poem that recapitulates the themes she had taken up in her antislavery writing in the 1840s. In this work she reviews American history since colonial days with an emphasis on the recently ended Civil War. She contrasts two metaphorical creatures: the Eagle of Freedom and the monster-serpent “Slave Power,” an alleged conspiracy of southern slaveholders and their northern henchmen such as Boston merchants, joined by the church, the press, and the law. The Eagle was present at critical moments in American history including the burning of the Gaspee, led by Whipple’s ancestor Commodore Abraham Whipple, and at the Boston Tea Party….The Eagle made her nest in the Tree of Liberty planted by America’s forefathers, and the Tree gave shelter to “the Oppressed of every Land” who “flocked to our shore by thousands,” but the deadly serpent Slave-Power lay around the root.
Using imagery similar to that in Shahmah [in Pursuit of Freedom], Whipple represents the spread of slavery to the western states as the serpent “Slave-Power” traveling through great distances in “its Juggernautic car.” “High and holy ‘virtue’” shakes hands with the devil as Slave-Power is blessed by churchmen and supported by the law. … Although freedom is finally regained after victory in the Civil War, many heroes die.

And this is really the most significant contribution Whipple can make to our understanding of her complex place in the ever-swirling nineteenth century; this sense that the Civil War was actually a libertarian moment can help us better see the potential of a society revolutionized from the bottom up rather than the top down. For her and countless thousands like her during her lifetime, Whipple believed the war was a marvelous opportunity to expand the zone of human freedom well beyond its previous limits. All other man-made curses paled in comparison to slavery, and if such a terrible war was the cost of its extinction, then so be it. The war was an opportunity as well as a sentence; it was the judgment of history made manifest in all its horror and a chance for all of us to atone for our various sins. And make no mistake—whether slaveholder or not; Yankee, westerner, or southerner; Baptist, Mormon, or Spiritualist—every American had something worth atoning for. Now was the time, and a better future was within their grasp. The circumstances were beyond reason, the costs of centuries worth of innocent blood, ceaseless toil, and inhuman suffering, but the potential gains were beyond all reckoning and well worth fighting for. After all, Whipple believed, death itself could not extinguish the enlightened soul.

See: Sarah O’Dowd, A Rhode Island Original: Frances Harriet Whipple Green McDougall, University of New England Press: Hanover and London, 2004.

Anthony Comegna, PhD

Assistant Editor for Intellectual History

The Genius of American Liberty: A Patriotic Poem

By Frances Harriet Whipple Green McDougall

San Francisco: Benjamin Todd & Co., 1867.

Out from the blossoming forest,
When the opening year was young,
Came forth our glorious Eagle,
And high in the air she hung,
Her keen eye piercing Southward,
And her talons striking, strong,
Into our lifting banner,
That woke the wondering throng:
“Ho! Dastards! Tarry not, nor lag!
Give to the winds our brave old Flag,
That hath lain idle long!”

On the verge of the far horizon
A threatening cloud uploomed;
From the time-worn towers of Sumter
The cry of “Treason!” boomed!
Old Hudson, through his Highlands,
Bore back the sound afar;
And, leaping from her parapet,
Niagara thundered “War!”
Erie to Narrangansett spoke;
And laughing Minnehaha woke,
With one wild cry of “War!”

Away on the wing of the Lightning,
And over the vocal wire,
Went the weird Herald westward,
Wrapped in a robe of fire!
The Golden Gate swung open,
With action true and bold,
As California answered
With men, and arms, and gold;
And still the rallying cry rolled on;
Nevada heard, and Oregon:
“Ho! Freedom for our gold!”

Over the western Prairies,
And over the woods of Maine,
Went forth our wide-winged Eagle;
Nor was her flight in vain:
“Out from the loom and spindle!
Up from the lathe and wheel!
Leave the plowshare in the furrow,
And plant your ground with steel!”
Then the young Kansas, listening, cried,
And hoarse old Plymouth quick replied,
“Yes; plant your ground with steel!”

She stood by the marbled Hero,
When the damning deed was done,
And the Friends of Right were gathered
In the shadow of Washington;
And she heard the serried City
To the distant Cities call:
“Up, with your mailed millions!
Up, for the Union, all!”
Then rolled along the distant sky
A pealing, pealing, pealing cry:
“For Union stand or fall!”

They came with the tread of an earthquake;
The ground beneath them shook;
And the loyal thought, and the loyal word,
To their heart of hearts they took!
Then who shall stand before them,
Or break their God-armed van,
As they go forth but to conquer,
For Freedom and for Man?
Then lift our time-worn banner high,
And wake our ancient battle-cry:
“For Freedom and for Man!”

Press on, heroic Champions!
Bear down the traitor band,
For home, for wives and children,
Freedom and Native Land!
Keep every soldier’s honor,
As gleaming saber, bright,
And cut each clanking fetter
With the tempered blade of Right!
On, with stout heart and straining breath,
To freedom, victory, or death!
Charge home! Charge heavy! Charge!

Crowned with the golden glory
That lit the dying day,
The gallant ship weighed anchor
That bore our brave away;
Like the silence that heralds earthquakes,
Was the stillness that heralds earthquakes,
Was the stillness that bound us all;
For, dumb and benumbed with aching,
Our hearts were held in thrall;
Then from the bannered vessel came
A shout, clothed with a breath of flame:
“Our country!—stand or fall!”

And a thrilling cry made answer,
That echoed along the bay,
As the laden ship moved seaward,
With the hosts she bore away;
Long may the listening Ages
Wait such another knell—
So helpless in its wailing—
So glorious in its swell!
But one wild word from ship and shore—
The last of friends to meet no more—
“Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!”

Out on the bannered sunset,
Tinged with its heavenly hues,
Above the ship high soaring,
The Eagle swift pursues;
And thus o’er the hosts heroic
She hovered while they slept,
As away to the Land of Southrons
Their tireless course they kept;
And there she decked with laurels brave
Full many a dark and nameless grave,
Where dews of Heaven wept!

O, never wore the Ages
Such high, heroic mood;
For Giant battled Giant,
Titan to Titan stood!
It seemed some strange enchantment
Of fabled Heroes’ power,
That made the brave Americans
Worthy their noble dower:
Such History no pen records,
Such Eulogy no hero lauds,
As opened every hour.

Our men, thank God! Were champions
Of Right’s eternal laws;
No tongue may tell their sufferings
For Freedom’s holy cause,
In the prisons dank and noisome,
Or fired with scorching light,
The bitter thirst and hunger,
Long day, and hideous night;
Snatched from a hard and hating Foe,
Happy were they whom Death laid low
Upon their armor bright!

Still our eyes o’erflow with weeping,
As we think upon the brave,
Who have poured their precious life-blood
Our own dear Land to save!
Mourn for the brave young ELLSWORTH!
To his laureled grave we bore him!
He sleeps on his native hill-side,
With the old Flag waving o’er him:
Long as we cherish virtue—truth—
Or love our patriotic youth,
O, we shall ne’er ignore him!

Miles away the cannon thundered—
Miles away the volleys blazed—
As the long lines of our army
The Flag of Union raised;
Leagues in length—all winding, sweeping
Through the field and by the wood,
Further than the eye could fathom—
One vast wall of brave men stood:
Behind, their camp-fires smouldering lay,
Where, in the soft declining day,
The deep death-shadows brood.

What could the do but conquer,
With such a force outspread?
His bold and dashing Irish boys
The brave young MEAGHER led;
With a wild shout rushing forward,
And plumage streaming gay,
The invincible Rhode Island men
Dashed in the hottest fray;
And where such spirits lead the van
As PORTER, SPRAGUE, and HEINTZELMAN,
O, we must win the day!

Wrapped in the fire of battle,
‘Mid the boom and blaze they go,
Where hide the hovering vapors
The crimson floods below!
On, till the mounting mid-day,
We have borne back the Foe,
While Death’s pale harvest thickens
In the heavy swath below!
But a fresh legion bars our way!
We faint! We fail! We lose the day!
Woe for our promise! Woe!

A death-defying courage
Lit the young SPRAGUE’s clear eye:
“Come on, my brave Rhode Island boys!
We conquer or we die!”
He vainly strove the panic
Of our flying men to quell,
Till twice a noble courser
In the fierce onset fell;
Then slowly, sadly turned away
From the red field where SLOCUM lay—
A blazing, bleeding Hell!

Behind lay the roaring River,
With the yelling Foe before,
When gained the gallant BAKER
That bold, defiant shore;
And he, with his hosts intrepid,
Stood still, and met the shock,
With hard, unmoved, flint faces,
As they were born of Rock;
Then blazed abroad their latent ire,
In one wild stream of battle-fire—
The Spirit of Rock!

For hours the god-like heroes
Held back the furious hosts,
Strewing the earth with bodies,
Filling the air with ghosts;
And still, above the tumult,
Rang BAKER’s charging cry:
“Forward, my Californians!
Let the poor coward fly!
Into the thickest—hottest—come!
And for the homes we love strike home!
Who shall dare say die?”

No coward voice cried “Quarter!”
No white flag floated by;
But high, heroic madness
Illumined every eye!
Firm stood our brave Leonidas
Amid his Spartan band,
Still shouting—charging—cheering:
“Freedom and Native Land!”
And never struck for Liberty,
Upon the old Thermopylae,
A braver Spartan band!

The gallant crest of BAKER
A proud defiance wore;
But, the mark of many a foeman,
He fell, to rise no more!
That noble brow lies lowly
Upon the crimson mold;
Hushed is the voice all-eloquent;
The generous heart is cold!
But, winged with echoes, rich and clear,
That matchless voice we still shall hear,
Through ages yet untold.

Slack hung the shroud of midnight,
The woods and waters o’er,
As five dark forms crept slowly
By the old Ohio shore.
The weird Winds, shrieking wildly,
The leafless tree-tops tore,
While the roll of the rapid River
Went up with a sullen roar.
But hark! Above the sleet and rain
The iron tempest wakes amain!
Torpedoes burst before!

Near and nearer crept the gunboats,
Wrapped at first in friendly haze!
Nearer, till exploding cannon
Set the sulphurous air ablaze!
Pointed well, and manned so bravely,
Every gun made sure its hold,
Till the fell response was slackened
By our cannonaders bold.
“Another gun is thrown at large!
Cheerly, my brave men! Cheerly charge!
The fiery shroud unfold!”

Thus stood, with shout and cheering,
A youth, all fair and brave,
When from the sea of Battle
Rolled forth an iron wave!
With deeds of death on-sweeping,
It shot across our ken;
And the beautiful Boy BRITTAN
May never rise again!
For on his country’s altar, rife
With crimson gifts, his fair young life
Was made an offering then!

Is this the blue-eyed baby
I’ve dandled on my knee,
Crushed in this frightful carnage,
So horrible to see?
A fountain of manly courage
Lay deep in his tender breast,
And his flaxen locks were folded
With a hero’s shining crest!
He passed away, as he gave, the while,
A ringing cheer and a loving smile,
To gild his fair Southwest!

On the blood-field of Chantilly
Our gallant STEVENS fell,
His death-cold fingers clasping
The Flag he loved so well!
Shrouded by the sheeted lightning,
On the same ground KEARNY lay,
While a strange knell the solemn thunder
Pealed over their cold clay!
The storm above—the storm below—
With one terrific interflow,
Together rolled away!

Came forth the noble SEDGWICK,
And BAYARD left his bride,
To serve their suffering country,
Whatever might betide;
MCPHERSON, WALLACE, WADSWORTH,
Fell, challenging the Foe,
While SUMNER, LANDER, LYON,
In Death’s red ranks lay low—
All great and glorious, starry names,
Lit with the high, the immortal fames
That were not born to die!

Nor from the roll of heroes
Can we with honor go,
Without a passing tribute
To the brave young CHARLIE SNOW!
With a heart broad as high country,
And a mind as deep and high
As the arch that first bent o’er him
In his native Rockland sky;
We read but rarely such a name,
So lustrous in its early fame,
And aspiration high.

With a will to do brave service,
He went forth from the band
Of home-loves, nerved to suffer
For his struggling, suffering Land.
Like a young god—glad and glorious—
He stood, in that parting dire,
With his eagle eye uplighted
With patriotic fire!
But from the old, familiar door
He went away, and came no more:
Yet still his word is, “HIGHER!”

And men of Light and Learning
Amid our forces fell:
MITCHELL, and WILKES, and WINTHROP,
Leave names to cherish well
And praise, with heads uncovered,
With reverent, loving thought
Of all the immortal beauty
That with their lives was wrought;
Their presences from us ne’er departs;
We take unto our heart of hearts
The lessons which they taught.

But the space of ponderous volumes,
Filling, swelling, flying fast,
Teeming with a thousand Epics,
Would require a theme so vast.
Every man becomes a hero,
When for Liberty he draws;
And our Foes had skill and courage
Worthy of a better cause:
They yet shall give, with heart and hand,
Their strength unto our common Land,
And aid our common cause.

On your brows, heroic WOMEN!
We the crown of virtue set;
At the Hospital or Fireside,
Bravely still your work ye met.
Who can know its strength—its pureness?
Who can measure all its power,
Save the Suffering ye have cherished
In the agonizing hour?
Weave and wear your crowns immortal,
And, in passing Death’s dark portal,
Claim your glorious dower!

Shall our hard-handed Freedom,
With its all-grasping Toil,
Drive from beyond our borders
The Princes of the Soil?
Room for the hapless Indian
To flourish by our side,
And reach the grand proportions
His fate has yet denied!
Cherish—unfold the Forest Braves,
The while and Equal Freedom waves
O’er all our country wide!

Now our weeping hearts are joyful,
Thinking sweetly of the Brave
Who have poured their precious life-blood,
Our bleeding Land to save.
Now in hosts they gather round us!
Say not, then, that they are dead;
For they walk on the wider pathway
From Earth to Heaven outspread:
And thus come forth the brave Immortals,
With light illuming Death’s dark portals
Around each starry head!

The Eagle led our armies forward,
As they crowded rear and van;
And never more heroic hosts
Honored the name of Man.
The clash of their glittering weapons
Struck out new sparks of light,
That warmed the waking Nation
With a truer sense of Right;
Then soared the Eagle, far and high,
Pouring her bugle through the sky
For Honor and for Right!

She looked through the eye of LINCOLN,
When the glorious word he gave
That woke the dumb and dreaming Man
In the bosom of the Slave;
“Snap off the soul’s deep rivet!
The fetters fast unbind!”
Then the Four Winds sang together,
“Freedom for ALL MANKIND!”
From shore to shore—from main to main—
Swept on the world-awaking strain:
“FREEDOM FOR ALL MANKIND!”

The inmost heavens burst open
With Freedom’s quenchless fires,
As the multitude of Angels
Smote their responsive lyres:
“The human step is forward;
Hand, heart, and soul are free!
Lead on the happy Ages
To higher Liberty!”
Through worlds remote the chorus rang,
And Heavens and Earths together sang,
“To higher Liberty!”

But when our martyred Chieftain
On his bloody bier was borne,
The World wept, and the Nations
Came forth, like friends to mourn;
Then the stooping Eagle softly,
With her folding plumage, crept
Close to the faithful bosom,
And there her vigils kept;
And thus—his bright, immortal bays
Illumed by Love’s divinest rays—
A People’s Savior slept.

Up rose our glorious Eagle,
With victory on her crest,
And the Starry Banner flowing
Around her pure, white breast;
And she shall still soar upward,
Her broad wing hovering o’er
One BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS
To Earth’s remotest shore!
Her strength still grasping truer Right,
Her deep eye shedding purer light,
Forever, ever more!

Is Amazon HQ2 Worth it?

Paul Matzko, Will Duffield, Vanessa Calder — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 00:15:00 -0500

If you live in NYC, Washington DC, or Nashville, TN, Amazon is coming to town. But unlike Santa Claus, Amazon’s new headquarters locations are arriving on a raft of subsidies instead of a sleigh. State and local governments offered billions of dollars in tax rebates and cash grants in order to woo the company.

If everything goes according to plan, Amazon HQ2 might generate a budget surplus for DC and NYC, but, as many cities that have courted companies through special tax breaks have found over the years, that is a big “if.” And there are serious questions to be asked about the wisdom of allowing individual companies to have so much power over setting regulatory policy.

Are the greater-Arlington residents excited about Amazon? Should they be worrying about this type of gentrification? What does zoning policy affect when a company like Amazon enters your city? Do libertarians think that the way that Amazon handled their HQ2 search is appropriate? Is the Amazon location debate a question of fairness?

The Genius of American Liberty, Part 1

Frances Whipple — Wed, 12 Dec 2018 10:30:58 -0500

Editor’s Note

By now, I hope Frances Whipple is one of your favorite early libertarians—as she certainly is one of my own. Her example to us is as complicated as her life story, which we have covered extensively elsewhere. Readers should take a moment to pause before beginning the current piece, one of Whipple’s final noteworthy productions, one of her most prophetic and yet naïve, to remind themselves of a few essential details about this remarkable woman. First, and perhaps most significantly, she devoted her entire life to the broad cause of reform: reform in politics, economics, social dynamics, intellectual life, personal ethics, and our connections with spiritual beings. Whipple’s entire career, her whole body of work (even seemingly mundane books like her guide to housekeeping or her botany textbook), and her long history of personal activism were spent in service to revolutionizing the world her generation had been given. For Young Americans and radicals like Whipple, the American, French, and even the Haitian Revolutions all proved that when the average citizen determined to assert their rights, history could not stand in their way. Tyrants of all kinds could be laid low if and when the people determined it should be so; but far too often the people’s weak wills betrayed their inconsistent ideals. Her long history of involvement with the abolitionist movement, Rhode Island’s suffragist, constitutionalist struggle, the “Dorr War,” and even her dabbling in political stumping all informed Whipple’s opinion that people too often appealed to power over principle when dealing with their fellow beings. Far too many of us tend toward petty tyranny over our families, our coworkers, people somehow in our employ (including those in “the service industry”—a phrase laden with class bias I cannot stand), our political, religious, and economic opponents, and any other possible enemy out there in the world. Far too many of us, moreover, stand by and watch idly while some misuse their power or prestige to exploit others. We figure that so long as it’s not us or people like us on the chopping block, then so be it. If you want to keep at least a white man’s republic, you might just have to break some black, Indian, or female eggs—noble sacrifices in the interests of our freedoms! Visionaries and constant reformers, consummate revolutionaries like Whipple knew better and spent their lives trying to show others the way to a better future. In her case, she capped off a brilliant and far under-examined career with an epic poem suited to the times—“The Genius of American Liberty” tells the story of a grand eagle, the manifestation of Liberty in the broad field of history, standing watch over the key moments in American history. The spirit of Liberty watches over the Pilgrims, generations of colonists, the revolutionaries, and the Revolution’s direct ancestors—the abolition movement. Each step of the way, the Eagle delights in the advances made for human freedom, but apprehensive over the influence of history great evil force, the serpent of Slavery.

Anthony Comegna, PhD

Assistant Editor for Intellectual History

The Genius of American Liberty: A Patriotic Poem

By Frances Harriet Whipple Green McDougall

San Francisco: Benjamin Todd & Co., 1867.

Proem

Stern Fosterer of Freedom, stooping down
So grandly from the summit of thy mountains!
But crimson spots are on thy radiant crown,
And their dark shadow stains thy silvery fountains.
Not such wert thou described in early pages,
Thy strong wing sunny with the Golden Ages.
Wash, and be clean; then soar, sublime, above,
Thy brave heart sanctified and warmed by Love—
Still looking outward from thy forest bower,
With all the Eagle’s majesty and power—
Still stretching upward, with a straining pinion,
Unto an Angel’s glory and dominion!
Be thy bright plumage over Earth unfurled!
Fold thy protecting wings around the world!

She sat on the mast of the Mayflower;
She perched in the white, wintry wood;
And as the bold bark bore inland,
On a crag of the cliff she stood;
And she heard the Pilgrims’ paean
Over the wild waves roll:
“Shout unto God thanksgiving,
For Liberty of Soul!”
And waving wood, and heaving main,
Sang, as they caught the loud refrain,
“To Liberty of Soul!”

She lit up the flaming Gaspee
By the wild Narragansett shore;
And the Tyrant’s Tea, at Boston,
To the gulfing wave she bore.
She stood by PATRICK HENRY,
And winged his burning breath,
When he cried out “Give me Liberty,
O God! Or give me death!”
That word was borne on banners high:
For still our Country’s charging cry
Is “Liberty or death!”

And when the Patriot Sages,
By the old, retiring Night,
Held up their glorious Charter
In the new and wondrous light,
Thrones shook, and Despots trembled,
As if their bolts would sever;
When came the stooping Eagle,
To watch that bold endeavor,
Crying aloud, with stirring stress,
“Life, Liberty, and Happiness
Are Human Rights forever!”

She stood on the summit of Bunker,
When the storm of battle awoke,
And the shock of the thundering cannon
From the could of the onset broke;
And she cried, with a din that sounded
Above the battle’s breath,
“Press on, ye noble Warriors!
To victory or death!”
Then sharply rang the clashing steel
With armed hoof and armed heel,
“To victory or death!”

She stooped in the cloud over Yorktown,
When the Foes of Freedom failed,
And before our glorious Leader
The brave CORNWALLIS paled;
And she heard, in the roll of the ocean,
The song of the woodland bowers,
And the throb of the rock-ribbed mountains,
“Freedom for us and ours!”
Then high her starry banner swung,
And far the thrilling chorus rung,
“Freedom for us and ours!”

Then hand in hand close clasping,
Our conquering Fathers stood,
Strong in the sacred Union
So sealed with patriot blood;
Deep in the earth they planted
A fair and goodly Tree,
To grow with the growing ages,
A shelter for the Free;
And there, to watch, and wait, and rest,
The Eagle came and made her nest,
In the Tree of Liberty.

Strong grew the spreading branches;
The Oppressed of every Land
Flocked to our shore by thousands,
In many a woful band!
The good Earth gave her treasures,
And the lax hands grew strong;
And minds, deformed and crippled
In the long arrear of Wrong,
Came out of the deep dark, to be
Intelligent, enlightened, free
From Tyrants, bold and strong.

With a full self-possession,
The conscious Man awoke;
And there went forth from his presence
New power, with every stroke;
His shining ax, fast swinging,
In the forest deep and wide,
Called forth the latent village,
In its beauty and its pride;
And while, amid the bowering green,
The school-house and the church were seen,
Where woke Life’s tuneful tide;

He drove his piles down deftly
In the ocean’s oozy marge;
And the sound of his ringing iron
Woke turret, tower, and barge;
And there, with inspiring Freedom
To gladden the classic bower,
We focalize the ages
In the baptism of an hour;
A truer Science and a nobler Art
Enrich the mind and purify the heart,
With high, immortal power.

No wilder tales of magic
The Orient ever knew,
Than concrete all around us,
Yet tangible and true.
Forth walks the great Enchantress,
All-opulent in might,
And a thousand noble cities
Stand strong against the light;
Then weaves she many million miles
Of iron road, to bind their piles
In union true and tight.

Her Ariel is the Lightning;
And around the Earth she’ll bind
A girdle for his pathway,
Till his flight outspeeds the wind;
She yokes the snorting Steam-Steed
To the ponderous iron car,
And through the tunneled mountains
He bears our burdens far;
And when her longest trail is done,
From Sunset to the Rising Sun,
We’ll ride away, ha, ha!

Fair grew the Tree of Freedom;
But a deadly Serpent lay
Around the root, close coiling,
And the Weak he made his prey.
His poisonous breath infected
With its venom all the air,
Till its vaporous folds hung heavily
Around the noxious lair;
And, like some fell narcotic flower,
It bound the Eagle with its power,
The while she nestled there.

Thus, side by side with Freedom,
An arrant Slave-Power grew;
But its strength, its wrong, its danger,
We never saw or knew.
It cracked its cutting scourges,
Defiant, daring, bold;
And at its simple history
All human blood runs cold:
The weeping friends asunder led,
The husband’s violated bed,
Are stories true and old.

Hard grew the grasping Slave-Power,
Pushing to outposts far,
Beyond all former limits,
Its Juggernatuic car.
The godly Gospel blessed it,
With a bold, emphatic “Vive!”
And Law the golden sceptre
Held out, and bade it live.
Thus honored, in its high estate
The blinded Power defied its fate,
Forever crying, “Give!”

It made its own vile statutes
To suit its own vile ends;
And learned Judge, and pious Priest,
Stood fast among its friends.
Profaned and helpless Woman
Before its presence fell;
And high and holy “Virtue”
Beheld, and said ‘t was well—
(For who might hope or dare to save?
The Master owns his chattel-slave)—
And thus struck hands with Hell.

Though strong and bright as Lucifer,
All-mighty it would stand;
And, like him, it wrought sedition,
With suicidal hand.
The chain, with deep corroding,
Thought dumb and dark so long,
At length reached human bosoms
With its magnetism strong:
The mother’s shriek, the virgin’s prayer,
The dark dethroned Man’s despair,
Found voice to speak their wrong!

The ground grew rank beneath it,
And the crimson cry was heard;
For one true heart with sympathy
Unto its depths was stirred:
The good and brave young LUNDY,
With his simple scrip in hand,
Went forth, to print on paper
The Sin of this great Land.
Alone, unaided, thus he hurled
The Truth upon a lying World—
Challenged, and bade it stand.

With pinion low and drooping,
Our outcast Eagle fled;
For she, like other Traitors,
Had a price upon her head;
But when she saw that Pilgrim,
So fed with heavenly light,
As, weary and heavy-laden,
He journeyed through the night,
She soared aloft, with daring wing,
And woke the Hosts of Heaven, to sing
Her glory and her might.

There came forth then, from Bennington,
The youth we needed most,
And power enough within him
To GARRISON a host;
And the stopping Eagle knew him,
As she looked into his eye,
And felt a power within it
Prepared to “do or die.”
And when all night alone he wrought
To clothe with form his fiery Thought,
The bird of Jove was nigh.

The BURLEIGHS woke, and WHITTIER,
And BRYANT, brave and strong,
And winged with indignation
Speech, paragraph, and song.
Good GERRITT SMITH and LOVEJOY,
ROGERS and CASSIUS CLAY,
The eloquent young SUMNER,
With GIDDINGS came, and MAY;
And out from every thunderous stroke
On giant Wrong, new light awoke,
That opened a new day.

The GRIMKES, Slavery’s nurselings,
Came, first among the Free;
And the noble PHILOTHEA
Stood strong for Liberty;
The beautiful young CHAPMANS,
And the musical SOPHIA,
Were firm amid the conflict,
Braving the fiercest fire;
While WENDELL PHILLIPS, eloquent,
A tide of strength and courage sent
To sufferers dark and dire.

The brave old Poet, PIERPONT,
Whose fame resounds afar,
Made the Slaveholder some stanzas
For the meddlesome North Star.
Amid the world’s corruption
He stood immaculate;
And the HUTCHINSONS, sweet singers
From “the Old Granite State,”
The first fruits of their genius gave,
To help the poor despairing slave,
Invoking happier fate.

And Afric’s sons and daughters
Among the foremost show,
That they who strike for Freedom
“THEMSELVES MUST GIVE THE BLOW.”
And they have done it bravely;
No people on the Earth,
‘Mid conflicts so terrific,
Have brought such power to birth;
And many a grand and glorious name
Sheds on the Race and immortal fame
Of intellect and worth.

L’ISLET, AMO, and CAPETEIN,
Are names that e’er will stand
Among great Men of Learning,
The elite of every land;
TOUSSAINT, the black Napoleon,
Rivaled that son of Mars;
And the dark-browed Herschel, BANNEKER,
Who walked among the stars,
Lives with imperishable names,
Whose glorious, constellated fames
Shine high above the stars.

Poor PLACIDE, the young Cuban,
Felt with a poet’s soul,
Till his burden grew too heavy;
Spurning the base control,
He boldly struck for Freedom;
But ah! It was in vain:
With his beauty and his genius,
He perished in his chain!
Chanting, as unto death he went,
With heavenward eye, and form unbent,
A sweet, seraphic strain.

The Orator, black GARNET,
With a genuine genius shines;
And WILLIAMS, CRUMMEL, PENNINGTON,
Are eloquent divines;
All these, with BROWN, the scholar,
Came out from Slavery grim;
And yet their brows wear lustre
That whiter crowns may dim.
No marvel that his people boast
Of DOUGLASS, in himself a host,
And cry out, “Who floors him?”

The Slave-Power, clutched its manacles,
And drove the rivets in,
Swearing to make more damnable
Its foul and fiery sin.
It mobbed and murdered LOVEJOY,
And made his press a wreck;
Through Boston dragged out GARRISON,
With a halter round his neck.
Unchecked, unchallenged, it came forth,
And then went tramping through the North,
Bidding us mind its beck.

It basely struck down SUMNER,
With murderous intent,
And silenced in our Congress
The “old man eloquent.”
It burned down halls of Learning,
Broke up and scattered schools;
And the brave young PRUDENCE CRANDALL.
It made the prey of fools,
Who, blest themselves with liberty,
Were so debased, that they could be
The Slaver’s slavish tools!

Armed with flint, and shod with iron,
Forth it trampled in its pride,
Spreading death and desolation
Through our borders, far and wide,
Doing deeds whose bare rehearsal
Seems the savagest of tales.
Still more bold and overbearing,
It attacked and robbed our mails,
All faith and public honor spurning!
Behold our private letters burning,
Lit by infernal gales!

With their cotton, and their sugar,
For a mote in either eye,
No wonder an unwelcome truth
Should, sometimes, show awry;
And that engrossing color,
Which we have known as White,
Should, looking from between them,
Make Wrong seem fair as Right—
Its high prerogative a deadly ban,
Poor human beings to unsex, unman,
And plunge in endless night.

The patronizing Slave-Power
Fondled a currish Law;
And the animal, obedient,
Made haste, and “gave its paw.”
It turned us all to blood-hounds,
And led us in its chains,
To hunt the flying fugitive
Over our own free plains;
And all the powers of Church and State
Made its decrees as fixed as fate,
And licked its bloody chains!

The Land of our Pilgrim Fathers
Became one vast SLAVE-PEN;
And the Hills of our free New England
A HUNTING-GROUND FOR MEN;
For we were bought with money,
Though our chain we could not see;
And we caught the Slave, no only,
But we TRAFFICKED IN THE FREE!
Yes, we were a guerilla band,
When, from the Slaver’s bloody hand,
We took the bloody fee.

The famished and the foot-sore
Our mercy sought in vain,
Till mothers slew their children,
To save them from the chain!
Through old, time-honored King Street
We dragged the preacher, BURNS;
Yes, o’er the very pavement
Which the blood of ATTUCKS urns!
Not unto death, for that were kind;
But the deep dark of heart and mind,
Where no sweet day-star burns.

With more than Spartan courage,
Came forth John Brown, the brave,
And the first blow struck for Freedom—
The freedom of the Slave!
And the Slaver swaggered hugely,
And swore it in his song,
That HE should die for Treason—
Yes, TREASON AGAINST WRONG!
But hosts of angels round him hung,
Shouting aloud, as off he swung:
“Good heart! Great heart! Be strong!”

He sleeps in his mountain fastness,
Where the blue-bird earliest sings,
And the towering Pines make music,
Like the swoop of an eagle’s wings;
And there shall the Friends of Freedom
Gather, with reverent tread,
To look on the earth that shelters
So blandly the brave old head;
While the free wind goes sweeping by,
And pillared wood, and arching sky,
Entomb the glorious dead.

But the North, though so long hooded,
Could NOT be made a slave;
For a sterling heart was in it,
And it came out true and brave.
The sugar, and the cotton-bags,
Like cobwebs dropped away,
And on the People’s naked eyes
Fell Truth’s most potent ray;
Quickened and warm, it woke, to shine
Forth from the soul, with light divine—
Life of the fair new day!

Like the young god in his cradle,
By serpent foes entwined,
Came forth, unto our rescue,
THE FREE, ENLIGHTENED MIND;
It grasped the subtle clasper,
And broke his sinuous tie;
Writhing, with savage impotence,
He gave himself the lie:
The Coward COURAGE seemed to show!
The “MUDSILL” might not be so low!
But blenched that cruel eye!

The North awoke so grandly,
And knew her strength once more,
Fired with the quenchless freedom
She had inhaled of yore;
Though mystified by Leaders,
A slavish, selfish band,
There yet was conscience in her heart,
And sinew in her and;
From her long lethargy she woke;
And, with ten thousand voices, spoke
Our glorious Native Land.

And the MAN for this great conflict
Was living; and he stood
Beside his father’s cabin
In the opening of a wood;
So small the corn-clad clearing,
It seemed all hid away,
Like an island, ‘mid the ocean
Of deep green that round it lay.
The Eagle came and watched the boy
With a far-seeing, prescient joy,
As he went forth day by day.

To wider paths she led him,
And higher lessons taught;
And she opened for him volumes
Of deep, unwritten thought.
The Stars looked down and blessed him,
As he boated by the shore,
While the solemn cypress shadows
Fell round, ad stretched before;
With muscle strong, and spirit free,
Thus grew the MAN OF DESTINY,
As men grew up of yore.

He came forth for an Era,
That made the Ages wait;
And he was duly chosen—
For HIS VICTORY WAS FATE.
Before him was a purpose
Unto his heart most dear—
‘Tween Scylla and Charybdis
The Ship of State to steer.
He never seemed to heed or know
The praise or blame of friend or foe,
But kept his canvas clear.

The Nations old, King-ridden,
As they watched the clouded star
That crowned our boasted Freedom,
Laughed bitterly, “Aha!”
And they told the slaves around them,
Whene’er our flag unfurled,
That ours, like all Republics,
Into ruin, should be hurled;
And as they answered from afar,
The hissing sneer, the bold “Aha!”
Went ringing round the world.

Sneer on, ye owl-eyed prophets!
Nor seek, as yet, to know
The deep and deadly ruin
That quickens now below
All rule—all power engrossing—
However high or strong,
That fixes its foundations
On the rotten base of WRONG!
Round RIGHT’S eternal center stand
The Nations true, a deathless band,
As peopled ages throng!

America was Founded by Runaways & Renegades, with Joseph Kelly, Part 1

Anthony Comegna — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:15:00 -0500

Professor Joseph Kelly joins us today to talk about his book Marooned and how much of our understanding about the beginning of the New World is simply names of people and approximately when they died. Stephen Hopkins, a passenger on the Sea Venture which shipwrecked in Bermuda in 1609, is an exception to that trend.

Who is America’s real founding father? What did the Virginia Company do in 1608-1609? Was Jamestown a utopia or a dystopia? Did the Virginia Company have any leadership to guide it? Did they have any real power? What was the difference between colonial Virginia and colonial Bermuda? What is a doctrine of mutual consent?

Three Widely Believed Economic Fallacies

Steven Horwitz — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 17:27:05 -0500

Economists could spend all of our time combatting the dozens of economic fallacies found in the media and among the general public. What we might call “folk economics” can be seen just about everywhere people talk about economic issues. Rather than go after a long list of very specific fallacies, I’d like to address three high-level beliefs about the economy and economic growth that are both widely accepted and very damaging.

The Fallacy of the Zero-Sum Game

The first of these fallacies is the belief that market activities, especially exchange, are zero-sum games. Zero-sum games are those in which the total gained from playing the game is zero. So, for example, if each of five people playing poker buys into the game for $100, there is only $500 to be won. Collectively, that’s a zero-sum game. If I have $200 left at the end of the night, then all of the other players together have only $300 to divide among the them. In zero-sum games, one person’s gain is another person’s (or several people’s) loss.

We see this misperception of markets in a variety of forms. At the most general level, the belief that the rich get rich by impoverishing others is a species of zero-sum thinking. This view is held by people talking about the rich and poor within specific countries, but also when people think about the relationships between richer nations and poorer ones. It is a commonly-held belief that the way that the West grew rich was by extracting resources or labor power from the rest of the world, often through colonialism. Note the zero-sum thinking here: there is implicitly a fixed amount of resources to go around and the West “took” them from the rest of the world. There is a similar fallacy at work in the belief that individuals or households within a specific country get rich by “taking” from others.

The fallacy here is the implicit assumption that there is a fixed pie of wealth and that what market activity does is just allocate that among individuals, households, or nations. It ignores the way in which wealth is created through production and exchange. One of the most fundamental insights of economics is that exchange is mutually beneficial and therefore wealth-creating. When Starbucks sells me a coffee, they prefer the two dollars to the coffee and I prefer the coffee to the two dollars. We are both made better off by the exchange. Notice that exchange makes us both “wealthier” by giving us something we value more for something we value less, and that this happens even without any new resources being produced.

When we take production into account, the weakness of the zero-sum view becomes even more obvious. If we back up the Starbucks example a bit, consider their decision to make and sell coffee in the first place. The owners of Starbucks, or any other successful business, have indeed become rich, but not by “taking” from everyone else. As noted above, Starbucks’s decision to make and sell coffee, and our decision to part with our dollars to purchase it, make both of us better off. Their gains in wealth are matched by our gains in having a product we really like. When we then consider the ways in which successful business employ workers and offer returns on investments to those who finance them, the wealth they gain through success does not come at the expense of others, but rather benefits others in the process. Markets are in all of these ways positive-sum games in which it’s possible for everyone to walk away with more than they started.

This argument applies regardless of where the traders live. So when individuals in rich countries trade with individuals in poor countries, that’s mutually beneficial. To the degree that the people in rich countries became rich through trade, they didn’t “take” their wealth from those in poor countries. Both were made better off. Of course the history of international relations has not always been one of trade, and imperialism and other forms of force have certainly mattered. However, over the long run, the adoption of both domestic and global institutions that have facilitated trade explains the gains of wealthy countries far better than alternative explanations.

The Fallacy That Order Requires Design

The second fallacy is the belief that economies require someone or some group to design and/or control them. Often this belief is linked to an argument from complexity: only a simple economy could be left to its own devices. Complex, advanced economies like those across most of the globe require human monitoring and regulation to function properly.

The flaw at the heart of this fallacy is that it ignores the idea of spontaneous or undesigned order. The mainline of economic thinking over the last 250 years has been focused on understanding the ways in which good social institutions can lead self-regarding individuals to cooperate and coordinate in ways that none of them intended. This idea was at the heart of Adam Smith’s metaphor of an “invisible hand” guiding humans to create benefits that none of them intended, and Carl Menger’s work a century later, which asked how it was possible for institutions to emerge that no one had willed into existence. In the 20th century, F. A. Hayek took this line of thought one step further by explaining how markets created coordination and order by making better use of dispersed and tacit knowledge than any other system could.

All of these are articulations of the concept of spontaneous order, which is the claim that many of our most useful norms, practices, and institutions are the products of human action but not human design. Think of the way a path gets trodden through the fresh snow on an open quad on a college campus. People have to take the first steps through the snow. Others see the footprints and walk there, where it’s a bit easier. As the snow slowly gets tamped down, a path begins to emerge. Several such paths will likely cross the quad, all reflecting the directions in which students and faculty need to walk. No one designed that system of paths, and no one put up signs directing people to walk in particular places. Rather those paths emerged as the products of human action but not human design.

We recognize these sorts of spontaneous ordering processes in nature through Darwinian evolution. The whole theory of evolution through natural selection is one of emergent order. There is no designer in nature, rather variations that improve the chances of survival and reproduction are passed on, leading to changes that make living things better adapted to their environments. Order is produced without design. It is also worth noting that Darwin borrowed many of his ideas about competition and evolution from social thinkers like Smith and David Ricardo.

The trouble is that so many who accept that idea for nature cannot see how social systems work in the same way. In fact, the very arguments that are used to support spontaneous order in nature work in society too. The objection that nature could not produce something as complex as the human eye can be rebutted by pointing out that its very complexity could only be produced by a process that operated over a long time span and that had the ability to sift out beneficial marginal changes from harmful ones. That’s precisely how evolution works. And market economies work the same way, though at much more rapid speed thanks to humans’ ability to pass on acquired cultural adaptations.

The prices and profit signals of the market provide the feedback that informs producers whether or not they have created value for others. In a genuinely competitive market, profits indicate that consumers valued the good more than they valued the individual inputs that went into its production. If your ready-to-eat pizza is profitable, that means it is worth more to consumers than the sum of the value of flour, yeast, cheese, sauce, and pepperoni, and labor that went into making it. Firms that create value this way, as indicated by their profits, survive, and firms that destroy value, as indicated by losses, will eventually die off.

This process, and the more general process that create economic order, cannot work unless the institutional rules of the game are right. Unlike biological evolution, where the environment for competition is given by nature, the environment in social competition is the set of rules and institutions that any society adopts. When those rules clearly define and protect private property, enforce contracts, respect the rule of law, and assure sound money, then the competition that takes place within them will produce economic coordination and social progress. By contrast, when the rules are wrong, for example when we penalize profits or subsidize losses, the competitive behavior of individuals and firms will not lead to the unintentional creation of order and social cooperation. Under poor rules and institutions, the signals do not reward value-creating behavior, breaking down the mechanism by which self-regarding behavior is channeled into undesigned social order.

What prices and profits enable us to do under the right institutions is to communicate our own bits of knowledge—some of which we might not even be able to put into words or numbers—to the rest of society through our acts of buying and selling. Those prices and profits form a complex system of communication that shifts and changes as we make decisions to buy or sell. Those changing prices and profits provide both knowledge and incentives to sellers to adjust their behavior accordingly. Those who do so, succeed, and those who do not, find themselves failing.

When governments attempt to design market outcomes, they will find it impossible to obtain all of the knowledge needed to know how best to act, as political action cannot capture all of the knowledge that can be processed by the decentralized communication network of the market. The ability of markets to make use of knowledge in this way, and enable us to communicate across our individually limited fields of vision, enables us to generate a level of economic complexity that designers could never match. Complex modern economies do not require designers. In fact, those who presume to design make matters worse as they stumble their way around, deprived of the illumination of market signals generated by the choices of consumers and producers.

The Fallacy that Consumption is the Key to Growth

The final fallacy is the belief that consumption is the source of economic growth. This belief is widely held by everyone from the citizenry at large up through economic journalists and politicians. We hear it every time the economy enters a recession and begins to recover. Pundits declare that consumers need to start buying things to generate a recovery, and reports about the latest data on consumer spending make the headlines. I see this in my own students, who even after a course or two, like to talk about the importance of consumption spending and the need for money to “circulate” in order for economies to be healthy.

Before getting to the heart of the fallacy, we might consider its source. This is a peculiarly 20th century belief. A number of lesser-known thinkers in the 1920s made early versions of the argument, which they framed in terms of the need to keep up the “purchasing power” of consumers. This general idea informed President Hoover’s decision to try to prop up wages during the early years of the Great Depression. That idea was one of the factors that turned what would have otherwise been a garden-variety recession into the Great Depression. A decade later, John Maynard Keynes put consumption front and center in the most simple version of his macroeconomics. Consumption, along with investment and government spending, were key determinants of national income, and when either consumption or investment was lacking, government was presumed able to step in and make up the difference.

One reason why the focus on consumption as a source of economic growth is a fallacy is that, during the business cycle, the problem is not a lack of consumption. In fact, consumption expenditures vary the least as economies go through booms and busts. The component with the greatest variation is private sector investment. If anything is needed during a recovery, it is more investment by the private sector, not more consumption. Even if one accepts the broad Keynesian framework, the problem is not that recessions are caused by a lack of consumption. The solution, therefore, is not to be found in “stimulating consumption.”

The heart of the fallacy, however, is that consumption consumes things! When we consume goods and services, we destroy their value by using them up. Consuming food does not create anything valuable, it eliminates something valuable. The same is true when we use up part of the productive potential of a household appliance or other consumer durable. It’s why your car is worth less the more miles you put on it. You are consuming, i.e. destroying, its value. The real source of value is production. When we produce goods and services, we create value and create the opportunity for consumers to trade for that value. Buying a new refrigerator moves a valuable object from one party to another, making each somewhat better off in the process. But once bought, we begin the process of destroying that value by using its services. Or think of a meal prepared at a restaurant. Once we buy it and eat it, our act of consuming it, both economically and physically, destroys the object of value. The value is created through production and destroyed through consumption.

If we want to generate economic growth, whether in a recovery or outside of a business cycle, we need to focus on what sorts of institutions and policies encourage economically sustainable production. How do we create an environment in which people are willing to invest their resources in physical and human capital, believing that they will be able to make use of them to create valuable goods and services? That is the more important question for long-term economic growth and short-term economic recovery. Stimulating consumption does nothing to promote recovery and is likely to harm long-run growth, coming as it does as the expense of investment spending.

Conclusion

There are, of course, many more economic fallacies to discuss, but these three are very broad ones that affect the way in which people think about a number of more specific issues. Understanding that markets involve mutually beneficial exchange, that markets are spontaneous orders that require no designer, and that production—not consumption—is the source of wealth can together serve as a useful prophylactic against the more particular fallacies that dominate so much talk about economics. At a time when acceptance of so many of those fallacies is a feature of even the highest levels of the political structure, understanding some of the foundational concepts of economics is more important than ever.

Economic Education and Classical Liberalism

Steven Horwitz — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 16:22:23 -0500

It is with great pleasure that we begin an expansion of our economics education offerings here at Libertarianism.org. Our plan is to create a space for a variety of different economists to explore both core concepts in economics and the ideas of particular economists and thinkers in related disciplines. Our goal is to offer a resource for those interested in classical liberal ideas who want to learn more about economics. Our approach will be to focus on concepts and thinkers, with applications used for illustrative purposes. We hope to create something of an ongoing seminar in basic economics.

One of my motivations for taking on this role is the way in which I came to economics as an undergraduate. I became a libertarian at around age 15 after reading Robert Ringer’s Restoring the American Dream, quickly followed by Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty. (There’s nothing like diving right in to the deep end!) Over the next couple of years, I read lots of Ayn Rand, more Rothbard, and subscribed to multiple libertarian magazines. When I arrived at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1981, I intended to be a computer science major. Needing a fifth class in the spring semester of my first year, I thought it might be a good idea to take an economics course if I was going to continue to be interested in libertarianism. Knowing some economics, I thought, would help me better understand and defend my ideas.

I then had the experience that so many professional economists have had. A few weeks into that introductory course, I felt like I was getting a systematic version of the way I’d always intuitively seen the world. Not only did the world “make sense” in a way it had not before, but the way economics approached it came very easily to me, given how much it validated my pre-theoretical intuitions. I had not declared a major at that point, but I quickly declared economics a semester later and added a philosophy major on in my junior year, thinking that it too was important for being able to better understand and defend my ideas. From somewhere around my sophomore year, it was also clear to me that I wanted to spend the rest of my life working in the world of ideas (perhaps unsurprisingly, being the son of a college professor) and I even knew enough to think going to George Mason University for the PhD in Economics was the way to go. And, 35 years later, here we are.

The experience of thinking that knowing more economics would be helpful for understanding and better defending classical liberal ideas is what I hope to recreate here. A variety of institutions and publications have played this sort of role in the history of the libertarian movement. As is to be expected, some of those institutions and publications have disappeared, while others have changed their missions in ways that have moved them away from the task of providing ongoing economic education to those already interested in libertarian ideas. Filling what now appears to be just such a gap is what we hope to do.

Having spent more than a decade on social media and in the blogs watching libertarians do their best to defend free enterprise to their friends and critics, I think there is work to be done in enabling libertarians do this work better. An example, and one that informs the culture I hope to create here, is the way in which too many libertarians divide economics and economists into “Austrians” (and perhaps Chicago School folks) and “Keynesians.” The reality, of course, is that there are a whole variety of schools of thought in economics, and the vast majority of economists are neither Austrians nor Keynesians. If libertarians over-simplify the discipline of economics, we will fail to persuade anyone who knows a little bit about what economics is really like.

Similarly, when libertarians insist that most economists are “statists” or the like, they radically under-estimate the general appreciation for markets held by the clear majority of economists. The arguments for government regulation offered by many economists are not part of a more general distrust of markets. They are often very particular cases that those economists believe are examples of “market failures” resulting from specific elements in those industries or markets. Making the case for markets and against regulation in those examples will require a more subtle understanding of the models economists use and what their limits might be. Calling such economists, or those who use their arguments, “statists” or “planners” will not be persuasive.

One can make similar points about macroeconomic policy as well. The misunderstandings about the origins and functions of the Federal Reserve System are widespread among the Fed’s critics, including libertarians. There is plenty about the Fed to criticize, but getting our facts and history wrong will not lead to persuasive criticisms, especially when libertarians drift into conspiracy stories found on the alt-right. If we want to be more successful in persuading people of the very real problems with the Fed, or with other aspects of monetary and fiscal policy, we’re going to have to demonstrate that we understand the concepts, history, and institutions under discussion.

The good news is that economics as a discipline is more market-friendly than it was when I was an undergraduate in the early 1980s, and far more so than 20 or 30 years before that. The patient work of a variety of scholars, many of them classical liberals, has contributed to that shift. For example, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s Monetary History of the United States (1963) almost single-handedly began the demise of old-fashioned Keynesianism, and work by many others has transformed the discipline’s thinking about competition, monopoly, and antitrust.

Libertarians who want to be more knowledgeable about economics need not fear that the discipline is the enemy. There is a great deal in both mainstream economics and in more heterodox schools like Austrian economics that can support classical liberal arguments. As the Austrian economist Peter Boettke has put it, we want to learn not from “mainstream economics” (which is simply a sociological concept of where the majority views are) but from mainline economics. Mainline economics is the long history of thought from Smith to Menger to Mises and Hayek to Buchanan, Ostrom, Friedman, Alchian, as well as to thinkers alive and contributing today that has been concerned with understanding how the right sets of institutions will generate positive unintended consequences from the largely self-regarding choices of individuals.

How dispersed and diverse individuals, each with their own fragments of articulate and tacit knowledge, are able to communicate, coordinate, and cooperate through undesigned social and economic institutions, and how even well-intentioned attempts at top-down social design frustrate that process, remains the fundamental set of questions at the heart of mainline economics. It is my hope that the work we do here at Libertarianism.org will enhance your understanding of the important thinkers who have explored those questions and the key concepts they used in doing so.

Bringing Wealth to the Poor (with Michael Tanner)

Trevor Burrus, Aaron Ross Powell — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 00:15:00 -0500

Michael Tanner joins us for a well-rounded conversation about what drives poverty in the U.S. including; felony convictions, lack of education, and housing policies. Tanner claims that in the U.S. there is no rational design behind our welfare programs, and that it is a conglomerate of special interests. The poorest Americans are among the wealthiest in the world, but that doesn’t mean that poverty does not exist in the U.S.

How does the right and left vary on their ideas about how to alleviate the poor? How do incentives play into their rationale? Is there a racial aspect to how people view the welfare sate? Does redistribution of money work? How much does having a felony conviction diminish your earning potential? How does housing policy affect poverty?

Federalism in Proudhon and Ostrom

David S. D’Amato — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 13:58:21 -0500

When people, libertarians included, think of federalism, chances are good that they do not think of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. More likely, they think of the The Federalist and its authors, and of the Constitution and its particular federalist structure. Federalism scholar S. Rufus Davis refers to Proudhon’s treatment of federalism, The Principle of Federation, as “a teasing puzzle,” long neglected as a bizarre and unwelcome entry in the story of the federal idea. Published in 1863, shortly before his death, The Principle of Federation arguably represents Proudhon’s mature thought and offers a robust account of federalism deserving of study among students of the idea, particularly libertarians. As we shall discuss here, certain libertarian thinkers, notably Vincent Ostrom, have perceived the importance and relevance of Proudhon’s federalism to a thoroughgoing approach to the idea itself and to a theory of the free society generally.

It is frequently argued that a variety of collective action problems demand a single central decision maker, one uniquely empowered to make final determinations. But centralized, hierarchical organizations are actually ill-equipped to provide effective solutions to collective actions problems, constrained both by their distance from the problems at hand and by the incentive problems associated with monopolies, which are insulated from feedback and competition. Indeed, as both Elinor and Vincent Ostrom’s work demonstrates, successful and efficient collective action requires just the opposite—a polycentric political and social order in which there are several centers of decision-making power, often even overlapping. Here, Proudhon’s federalism remains highly relevant and applicable to contemporary social and policy problems.

Whether through his mutualism, anarchism, or federalism, Proudhon’s project sought after a synthesis or reconciliation of liberty, the rightful, natural freedom of the individual, and authority, the needful structure and rules creating the preconditions for order and justice—establishing the limits that prevent liberty from crossing into the territory of license. In The Principle of Federation, Proudhon settles upon referring to himself as a federalist, though without completely abandoning anarchy, defined as “the government of each by himself” or “self-government.” Proudhon is deeply interested in bringing opposites into equilibrium. With social and economic relations properly structured and organized, after-the-fact political intervention becomes unnecessary and counterproductive, harmful to the social order and its own goals. In Proudhon’s thought, the perceived need for the intervention of a supposedly external political authority itself demonstrates that the ordering of social and economic relations was amiss in the first place.¹ Proudhon sees federalism as the key (or at least as among the most important keys) to unlocking society’s latent ability to govern itself, with social and economic relations ordered spontaneously by everyone simply “doing what he wishes and only what he wishes.”

In The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies, Vincent Ostrom notes the importance of Proudhon’s contributions on society’s capacity to self-organize and self-govern. Elsewhere, Ostrom observes that were political scientists not so insistent on applying the methods of the natural sciences to social or “artifactual phenomena,” they would not have failed to recognize the importance and transformative potential of the theory of federalism, which he regards as “a development of Copernican proportions in the history of political thought.” Ostrom believed that the work of anarchist left libertarians like Proudhon and Kropotkin had much to offer to contemporary market-oriented libertarians. He is interested particularly in Proudhon’s analysis of what Ostrom calls “[m]icroconstitutional systems of self-governing associations.” Following Proudhon, Ostrom treats federalist processes as both a goal and as a pathway to the achievement of that goal, a way to erode the power of “states as monopolies of authority relationships and instruments of force” without the need to destroy the state through violence. For Ostrom, then, the idea of a “federal state” is a contradiction in terms, federalism representing an alternative to the nation state, not a way to organize one.² Both Proudhon and Ostrom envision a network of intersecting spheres, at once cooperative and competitive. The state, in contrast, both exists as a result of the fact that individuals lack routes of egress—that is, are held captive—and itself naturally produces institutions that follow this pattern. It resists the development of a diverse and dynamic social ecology capable of producing viable rivals. Whatever fosters or enables competition strikes at concentrated power, which, by definition, exists precisely to the extent that it is without real rivals. Where the individual enjoys the ability to opt out of her interaction with a given institution, where there are several routes of egress, the ability of that institution (the state, in our example here) to dictate terms is undermined.

Writing in the federalist journal Publius in 1973, Ostrom provides the following explanation of his vision of federalism:

A necessary condition for federalism to exist is a system of concurrent regimes with overlapping jurisdictions. I prefer to characterize a “highly federalized” political system as one which has a rich structure of overlapping jurisdictions with substantial autonomy among jurisdictions. I see no point in confining discussions of American federalism to state governments and the Federal government…. Finally, I would prefer that a condition of democratic control be added as a qualifying characteristic regarding the government of concurrent regimes in a federal system.

Ostrom’s highly federalized system is a vast complex of associations, cooperatives, guilds, clubs, and communes, each one autonomous and reflecting the goals and values of its members. Thus is power dispersed, problems and solutions networked rather than consigned to the monolithic bureaus of the state. Ostrom wants to distinguish “objectively existent communities of interest,” organic and developing on their own terms from specific needs and desires of the group, from those grouped together simply because they are caught in the dragnet of the omnipotent nation state. Associated bodies should agree to be bound, their contracts contingent on continued mutual benefit. A genuine contract, a real bargained-for exchange, must be made, if it is to be made at all, between parties who both are free to decline its terms—that is, free not to make it in the first place. Such would be a true social contract, its terms “always to be temporary and revocable,”³ tailored to a common vision and leaving parties’ autonomy intact. Here, any agreement results from a definite process of discussion and deliberation between parties lacking special advantages at the bargaining table. This idea can be traced to the origin of the word “federalism.” Mikhail Filippov, Peter C. Ordeshook and Olga Shvetsova observe that “[i]n 1863, Proudhon was among the first to emphasize that the Latin foedus means a pact, contract, treaty, or alliance between equals,” each one guaranteed its sovereignty.

Proudhon famously bemoaned the influence of Rousseau, in particular his influence on the Jacobins, who embraced Rousseau’s “principle of authority” as opposed to “the Contractual Idea” advanced by Proudhon. Exalting politics and the state, Rousseau’s social contract was no contract at all; it was rather an apology for the domination inherent in the political system, for which Proudhon suggested the substitution of actual contracts between individual persons. Jacobinism entailed a fundamental rejection of federalist ideas. For if the power of the state expresses Rousseau’s volonté générale, as the Jacobins contended, then that power need not—indeed should not—be limited, qualified, or divided. Thus does federalism become a threat to democracy, “subversive of the ‘general will’” the vehicle of which is the “organic unity” of the state.⁴ Federalism came to be identified with the forces of counter-revolution, that is, with the political right, the centralism of the Jacobins with the political left.⁵ And so these associations have remained in the generations since, a powerful, indivisible state being the practical ideal of the left. In their principle “everything for the people, but everything by the state,”⁶ the Jacobins are among the obvious forerunners of the twentieth century’s various totalitarian regimes.

Today’s left follows the Jacobins in the essentially utopian belief that a powerful, unitary state can check (and, really, is the only body that can check) potentially harmful sources of power in society, for example, economic power. But it is a serious error to see the state as a check on this kind of power rather than to observe the glaring fact that it is in fact first among the principal reasons that such power exists.

Proudhon understood that political and economic power are connected, mutually interdependent forces that are coactive in society. The inauguration of the modern state, gathering all power within its hands, actually aggravates the kinds of power imbalances that Proudhon regards as being at the heart of the social and economic problem. To restore balance, he argues, requires federalism. Treating Proudhon’s conception of federalism, noted Proudhon biographer George Woodcock stresses that in Proudhon’s formulation, federalism does not stand in for “a world government or a confederation of states.” Rather, administrative or governing bodies would remain as close as possible to the local populations served, to the people. Nor was Proudhon impressed by the mere separation of powers within the state, insofar as the state itself remained intact and possessed of enormous power. Ostrom argues similarly that “the idea of federalism is rendered trivial” if we take it to mean only “the coexistence of state and national governments,” if we don’t consider it more expansively as “an enabling basis for the development of self-organizing and self-governing capabilities under conditions of equal liberty and justice.” Here, Ostrom echoes Proudhon in emphasizing the power of federalism as a motivating principle and tool for liberation and self-determination. Like Proudhon, Kropotkin saw Jacobin centralization as setting France and the continent generally on a dangerous wrong course, through which “local customary institutions” were displanted, often violently, by new, centralized governing bodies at the national level.⁷

Nor does democracy necessarily limit the power of the state. Ever skeptical of democracy, Proudhon worries that the extension of the franchise to the entire population would serve in practice to legitimize the status quo, strengthening and encouraging the arbitrary, undivided power of the state. To abstain from voting, to break from politics and its “coterie of intriguers,” would, Proudhon argued, redirect energies toward the development of federalism as an alternative to parliamentary activity. Again, federalism is, in Proudhon’s thought, both means and end. As Max Nettlau writes in his Short History of Anarchism, federalism means the reestablishment of the free play of socially useful associations and federations, which freedom accomplishes perforce the isolation and eventual liquidation of states.⁸ Federalism is a route around politics and a reimagining of revolutionary action. For Proudhon’s emphasis on the liberty of the individual and the division of power, Marx derided him as “a petit-bourgeois and petit-peasant socialist.” Though true, this charge was, as Gustav Landauer pointed out, not actually insulting. Proudhon’s distinctive proto-libertarian project embraces small landowners and artisans rather than treating them as class enemies to be eradicated in the revolution.

The Jacobins, of course, proved to be very wrong about how unified, unrivaled governmental power acts in the world, about its relation to liberty, equality and fraternity; these it attacks and destroys. Proudhon was, as Yves Simon observes, an incredibly prescient thinker, foreseeing the twentieth century’s “extreme centralization of authority” and its “rise of devouring dictatorships.” Yet from the ideological struggles of the nineteenth century, it was the “centralizing Jacobin left”⁹ that emerged victorious. Today, when we speak of the left, it is of this Jacobin left, of the particular means of a centralized, unified, bureaucratic state. The heretical suggestion that nonhierarchical, libertarian, decentralist social mechanisms could accomplish the goals of the left, however defined, is not given serious consideration, relegated to the infrequently trafficked domain of a few forgotten radicals. At present, then, the decentralist, libertarian left is effectively without a home, or else torn between two homes, two ways (a left one and a right one) of framing libertarianism. The language we use to talk about politics is impoverished, lacking nuance and an ability to meaningfully explain ideas and events. Maybe free markets and socialism can not only coexist, but actually reinforce one another, less opposites than they are aspects of one another.¹⁰ Proudhon’s federalism asks us to reconsider the relationship between all-embracing political, social, and economic centralization and progress, to revisit the possibility of ordered liberty without the dominating hierarchies of the state.

Inherent in this idea that justice cannot be achieved through intervention, through authoritarian means, is Proudhon’s rejection of “distributive justice.” In What is Property?, he even asks, “Why should the rich pay more than the poor? It is said that this is just because they have more. Frankly, I fail to comprehend this sort of justice.” ↩
Bojan Kovacevic, Europe’s Hidden Federalism: Federal Experiences of European Integration (Routledge 2017), page 26. ↩
Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism (Freedom Press 1996), page 47. ↩
See Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant and Constitutionalism: The Great Frontier and the Matrix of Federal Democracy (Routledge 2017). ↩
Reg Whitaker, A Sovereign Idea: Essays on Canada as a Democratic Community (McGill-Queen’s University Press 1992), page 186. ↩
Paul Thomas, Karl Marx and the Anarchists (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1980), page 180. ↩
C. Alexander McKinley, Illegitimate Children of the Enlightenment: Anarchists and French Revolution, 1880-1914 (Peter Lang Publishing 2008), page 65. ↩
Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism (Freedom Press 1996), page 45. ↩
George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography (Black Rose Books 1987), page xvii. ↩
In a 1922 article in the Journal of Political Economy, William H. George sketched the fundamentals of Proudhon’s program as follows: “It would be society without government, or, to be more precise, society with self-government based upon the idea of contract. It is the principle of commerce carried over into the sphere of social control. It is mutuality or mutuum—a natural exchange which effects a synthesis of private property and communism” (emphasis added). ↩

Place Your Political Bets

Paul Matzko, Aaron Ross Powell — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 00:15:00 -0500

We return to part two of our interview with John Aristotle Phillips, who is the founder of the political prediction market PredictIt. Instead of trading corporate stocks or pork bellies, PredictIt allows you to trade in political futures. Put your own money on the line when it comes to who will win an election or the next time a politician will say something stupid on social media. While it’s partly entertainment, prediction markets also serve an important social function since they have a more reliable track record for predicting events than even the best pundits and pollsters.

Finally, we talk with Phillips about his surprising personal biography. Long before his time in political consulting and prediction markets, he was known as the “A-Bomb Kid” for designing a nuclear weapon in his dorm room at Princeton University. How many people do you know who have been 1) the subject of a cover story in Rolling Stone (and not a rock star), 2) the focus of a Congressional hearing, and 3) a candidate for Congress themself all before their mid-20s?

What is the best way to predict the outcome of a Democratic or Republican primary campaign? What is PredictIt? How accurate is PredictIt? Why are markets accurate predictors of future events? How is their product better than what polling systems can predict? Should we betting on political events in the first place?

Ep. 83: Who Killed Jefferson(ianism)?

Anthony Comegna — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 00:15:00 -0500

Southerners strived to protect slavery as thoroughly as possible. In order to do that, they embraced a pragmatic ideology tailored to fight their Northern opposition. To many Southerners, slavery represented comfort, but others embraced slavery as their Christian duty to save Africans from the drudgeries of freedom and supposedly meek lives of Northern industrial workers.

What is methodological individualism? Was there a monolithic south? What is enlightenment liberalism? Who was Nathaniel Beverly Tucker?

Teaching Economics (with Steve Horwitz)

Aaron Ross Powell, Trevor Burrus, Steven Horwitz — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 00:15:00 -0500

The newest addition to the libertarianism.org editorial staff, Steve Horwitz, joins us to debunk some global myths about economics. We dive into how good economics is about tracing out the patterns of unintended consequences that emerge from the choices individuals make in the face of uncertainty and based on the information and incentives created by the price system.

Are people interested in economics? Is economics rooted in individual choice? What was the study of economics prior to 1920? What does “constrained optimization” mean? What are the biggest global myths about economics? Should we worry about the increase in economic inequality?

The New Gatsbys: A review of The Souls of Yellow Folk

Charles Fain Lehman — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 13:22:51 -0500

Much has been written in the past two years about the losers of the American economy. Bestsellers have documented in detail the lives of the men and women left behind by free trade, globalization, and deindustrialization. A series of books, ranging from the saccharine to the condemnatory, promise to definitively explain the losing experience to those who get their reading recommendations from the Times best-seller list.

Author and essayist Wesley Yang is the rare bird who chronicles the opposite: the pathologies, inadequacies, and burdens of those who can be said to have, in one way or another, won at the new American economic order. Based on the title alone, readers of Yang’s new book The Souls of Yellow Folk might expect it to be predominantly about the Asian American experience. While that topic is indeed given treatment, what binds the four sets of essays together is an interest in the kinds of people who have “won” – at education, at sex, at tech – and appear nonetheless to still be cast out, or downtrodden, or miserable.

Of course, society has always had “winners” and “losers,” whether measured in annual salary or the accrual of status. But in the 21^st century, a coalescence of factors has substantially altered the social mechanisms which determine how winners and losers are chosen. Education has been reframed as essentially egalitarian – the site of “equality of opportunity” – and so universities have gained an unprecedented power to determine status. The rise of the tech sector has created the richest men in human history, upending traditional hierarchies based on outmoded skills. And the sexual revolution, with its deconstruction of many norms that constrained conduct, has changed our means for success in the coupling marketplace, and with it how we engage in that most basic of human behaviors.

Each of these changes has given us heuristics for measuring success and avenues along which to pursue it. Of necessity then, liberalism – and to be sure, it is liberalism that has ushered in all of these changes – produces its own elite, the men and women who know how to operate within the nominally meritocratic educational system, or leverage an understanding of tech, or learn to play The Game against the opposite sex. Yang’s broader body of writing, of which The Souls of Yellow Folks is just a sampling, adroitly documents these changes. Out of it emerges a picture of those who can navigate the new system, but who nonetheless suffer from a profound sense of alienation. It reveals a contradiction, embodied in those who both follow the well worm path to meritocratic achievement and simultaneously find themselves excluded from its rewards.

Yang is American and of Korean descent, and Asian-American culture is often the focus of his work (a fact which has led to some profoundly uninspired criticism of TSOYF). By many measures, Asians do well under contemporary liberalism: taken as a collective, they have the highest household median income; the lowest poverty rate; the highest rate of college graduation.¹

In 2011, Yale Law professor Amy Chua published Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a book which attributed Asians’ success in large part to the parenting style of their mothers: harsh, unyielding emphasis on repetition until a child finally grasps a concept and can execute it perfectly. “Paper Tigers,” which ran as a response to an excerpt of Chua’s book and is the second essay in The Souls of Yellow Folk, is Yang’s clearest elucidation of how this regimen produces a generation of kids well-equipped for academic success, but fails to prevent a sense of deep alienation.

“Asian-American success is typically taken to ratify the American dream,” he writes, “and to prove that minorities can make it in this country without handouts.” But this model-minority status papers over the ways in which Asian-Americans are still essentially excluded from society.

Take, for example, a young man to whom Yang introduces us, Jefferson Mao. Mao is a graduate of New York City’s highly competitive Stuyvesant high school and the prestigious University of Chicago. Access to these institutions is strongly determined by test-taking ability, and Mao, like many of his Asian peers, spent hours and hours studying for standardized exams in “cram schools” in Flushing and Bayside. “You learn quite simply to nail any standardized test you take,” Mao tells Yang.

But when he got to Stuyvesant, Mao began to realize that it was not like the high school movie that ended with the nerds ruling the world. Rather, there was a whole set of implicit norms and rules which governed success. And Mao, because he was Asian, had never had the chance to learn and internalize these strictures.

“You realize there are things you really don’t understand about courtship or just acting in a certain way. Things that somehow come naturally to people who go to school in the suburbs and have parents who are culturally assimilated,” Mao told Yang.

In one sense, the moral of this story is that while explicit meritocracy legitimates the system, implicit social norms still produce white hegemony. And Yang makes no bones about the role that racism (e.g. the “bamboo ceiling”) plays in this arrangement. But “Paper Tigers” has a broader focus than this: the experience of doing everything to be on the inside, but somehow still being on the outside.

The Souls of Yellow Folk shows us a gap: the gap between where young men like Mao expect to be, and where they actually end up, between doing everything that is expected to acquire social status and actually reaping the promised awards. The nominal paradox of Asian-Americanness – socioeconomic success despite minority status – becomes re-expressed as this distance, where one does all the work perfectly, but still finds oneself excluded from America.

In the first quarter of the book, Yang introduces us to the Asian men struggling to cross this gap. In “Paper Tigers,” they are the guys who take J.T. Tran’s “ABCs of Attraction” workshop, where attendees pay to learn “the lessons in masculinity taught in the gyms and locker rooms of America’s high schools.” But we also meet fashion designer and restauranteur extraordinaire Eddie Huang, who seems deeply uncomfortable with the way in which he has been offered success are all-too-often contingent on his conformity to popular expectations of Asianness.

And then there is Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter whom Yang profiles with a tender empathy for what it feels like to be “the loser whom everyone is shutting out… one of the disadvantaged of the fully liberated sexual marketplace.” Cho’s sense of alienation – before his suicidal rampage, he imagined himself a martyr whose death will ignite class consciousness and revolution among losers everywhere – seems to be shared by many of Yang’s subjects, Asian and White alike.

A similar sense, for example, suffuses Yang’s profiles of men like hacktivist Aaron Swartz and autodidact “terrorist search engine” Evan Kohlmann. These men made or make their livings off of 21^st century tech skills. Why, Yang seems to ask us, do they appear embittered and disconnected in the same way as Cho?

For many of the aforementioned men (lord forbid anyone should write about men), sexual frustration is a common theme. From Cho to the high-status men who take Tran’s course, there is a feeling that sex is something everyone should have access to but which they can’t seem to grasp. The Souls of Yellow Folk is at its best in its essays on modern elite sexual culture. Here the nexus of status and technology is most apparent, as Yang argues in “Inside the Box” that the rise of mass media directly facilitates the rise of a more consumerist model of sex (“Britney Spears was something else—an inflection point in the culture”).

“On Reading the Sex Diaries,” Yang’s synthesis of the New Yorker’s reader-submitted diaries of their sexual encounters, is a searching, unflinching analysis of the results of this transformation. “Has the search for erotic gratification ever been so efficient?” Yang asks. But with this efficiency comes new, deeper anxieties: the fear that you are too attached, that the other is too attached, that you might make the wrong, or too few, or too many choices. The diaries that Yang reads are written by high-status New Yorker readers in the most powerful city in the world. Yet among these elites, there is also a profound sense of something missing – of a gap between their status and actual fulfillment.

And if you are a “winner” of the economy, and yet you cannot get laid, how to go about rectifying this unfortunate situation? “Game Theory,” the last essay in the sex section, documents the escapades of the Pick-Up Artist (PUA) community – men who believe they can apply the latest in social science to get a woman into bed, guaranteed. PUA is the cram school of sex, the meritocratic educational scheme applied to the sexual domain. And, like a peculiar permutation on Goodhart’s law, its most devoted practitioners find themselves more beholden to the Game than to forming actual human relationships. They have been taught that to win is to “quite simply nail” whatever challenge is in front of you – either a person or a test.

This same line of analysis can be applied to the book’s last section, concerned with the new campus radicalism, and which cannot help but be read as an exploration of the downsides of the peculiar glamor now afforded to the Ivy League and its ilk. Yang is sympathetic to some of the social justice warriors’ goals – opposition to racism should be uncontroversial. But he seems to worry that campus radicals’ illiberal methods will simply reinforce the broader structures which induce their anger. There is a certain Great Gatsby quality to the whole analysis — not in that Yang’s subjects are layabouts or liars, but in that their unhappiness seems so intimately tied up in their status and the paths they pursue it along.

This Gatsby-esque alienation has a complicated relationship to other historical forms of alienation. W.E.B. DuBois begins the first essay of The Souls of Black Folk (a book to which Yang has, admittedly, disclaimed analogy) with the subtextual question that suffuses others’ view of him: “How does it feel to be a problem?” DuBoise is talking about the experience of blackness, but this phrasing invites a general question: what does it mean to be a “problem?”

Within a given system, problems have a special character: not as less important components of the system, but as things which exists inside it yet altogether do not belong to it. Within hegemonic white society, blackness is problematized not merely by being rendered second-class, but by being excluded from the system as such, by being the thing which does not belong and therefore has no place, no rights to be present.

The status of blackness as problem is not incidental to white supremacy, but a necessary component of it – an identity which is excluded from society to define a boundary, to set up an outside against which the inside can be constructed. DuBois presents blackness as a kind of “included exclusion” – that which is incorporated into the system by its existence as a thing severed therefrom.

Such “included exclusion” is a well-explored theme in the diverse world of post-modern, post-colonial thought. What the Souls of Yellow Folk shows us is that the rise of modern meritocratic liberal society has facilitated the emergence of its opposite: the excluded inclusion, the person or institution at the “core” which is nonetheless somehow simultaneously on the outside.

Modern society legitimates itself through certain ideals: equality of opportunity, inclusion, sexual liberation. These goals define paths to success, to being a “winner.” The Souls of Yellow Folk does not deny the laudability of those goals per se, but asks us to consider why those who have met them are still on the outside. It is a portrait of the new alienation, the gap between “having it all” and actually having a happy life. In that, it well recommends itself as a vital analysis of modern liberal society, and what it means to live in it.

1.These statistics are more complicated if one disaggregates them by national origin or citizenship status.

Micro-Targeting Voters with Big Data

Paul Matzko, Aaron Ross Powell — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 00:15:00 -0500

We’ve all heard the talking heads on cable news declare that this or that election was the year of the “suburban soccer mom voter” or the year for voters who prefer Heineken beer and so on and so forth. Have you ever wondered who decides that these small voter niches have outsized importance in any given election?

If so, then you’re in luck! This week, Building Tomorrow interviews John Aristotle Phillips, the founder of the eponymous political campaign consultancy Aristotle. He leverages big data to micro-target voters for politicians from both sides of the aisle. Phillips has also run campaigns overseas, including in Kenya where he was deported for his efforts to unseat the party in power.

Why do you need access to all data when you are running for office? What is public record when it comes to campaigning and voting? How much does a campaign rely on data collection? What does Aristotle do? How does Aristotle help candidates who are not members of the mainstream political parties? Should Americans export political campaign consultants to intervene in the politics of other countries?

Polybius and the Origins of the Separation of Powers

Paul Meany — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 17:29:16 -0500

Any American high schooler can tell you that the separation of powers is one of the defining features of American government. The division of political power into the legislative, executive, and judicial branches is a well-known practice in many Western countries. But where did this idea originate? This idea did not derive wholly from Enlightenment or modern thinkers. On the contrary, the division of powers was first proposed by Polybius, a Greek thinker of the second century BC.

Polybius was born around 208 BC in Arcadia, a region located in Greece’s Peloponnese. His father, Lycortas, was a politician and loyal ally to the Achaean league, a federalist organization among Greek city-states that aimed to preserve local independence through collective action. Following in his father’s footsteps, Polybius became a statesman and cavalry commander in the Achaean league. The focus of his political career was the preservation of the league’s independence through cooperation with the powerful Roman hegemony.

The Achaean league was initially aligned with Rome in opposition to the kingdom of Macedonia. When the league began to contemplate the idea of an alliance with Macedonia, the Romans reacted quickly by seizing a swathe of hostages to ensure Greek loyalty. These hostages were kept in Rome for a trial that never came. They were eventually permitted to return home, but only after seventeen years in captivity.

Polybius was among the hostages captured and transported to Rome. However, unlike his fellow Greeks, Polybius was fortunately treated well by his host Aemilius Paulus. The pair had met while on campaign and had become good friends. As a result, while in Rome, Polybius was hosted by Aemilius and tutored his two sons. Thanks to his friendship with Aemilius, Polybius not only avoided miserable living conditions, but he also had access to the elite of Roman society. From this vantage point, Polybius was ideally poised to study the unique and unprecedented Roman constitution.

From City to Empire: The Rapid Rise of Rome

By the time that Polybius was writing, Rome had expanded from a meager city state to an ancient superpower. In the beginning, Rome had few if any natural advantages; it was inland and therefore cut off from trade, located on infertile soil, and surrounded by enemies. For years, the early Romans were a hardy, agrarian people who had to work extremely hard simply to sustain themselves. Traditional wisdom would predict a depressingly short history of liberty for the Roman people, who would eventually be dominated by their enemies due to their lack of resources. Against all odds, traditional wisdom was soundly thrashed as Rome progressed from strength to strength, overcoming their Italian enemies and expanding out into the wider Mediterranean. Many stunned spectators questioned how such an austere, agrarian civilization had come to dominate the Mediterranean with such unprecedented success. Polybius sought to answer this question in his book, The Histories.

Polybius believed that Rome’s constitution was effective for two reasons. Firstly, the constitution adapted to suit human nature. Secondly, it prevented what he referred to as “anacyclosis,” a cyclical theory of political evolution and decay.

Human Nature: Self-interest and Fear

Many ancient political theorists believed that political theory was limited by the nature of man. Therefore, any theory of politics must start with an examination of man’s nature and faculties. At first, Polybius believed that people were united due to their own weakness and fear. Thus, the strongest man among them rose to a position of power. This order resembled little more than the actions a herd of sheep or a flock of birds.

Humans cease to resemble animals when they begin to apply reason. According to Polybius, “when one human sees another wronged,” they “will notice the thing and be displeased at what is going on, looking to the future and reflecting that they may all meet with the same treatment.” They “will naturally be displeased and offended by such conduct, sharing the resentment of their injured neighbour and imagining themselves in the same situation.”¹ Through moral imagination and sympathy, an idea of justice is formed. “Ferocity and force having yielded to reason,” the alpha transforms; what was an alpha now becomes a king.² Polybius’s account of the origins of justice bear a striking resemblance to the moral theories that Adam Smith would later articulate in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.³

Polybius describes humans as rational and self-interested creatures.⁴ The duality of fear and sympathy rule our lives. As long as fear exists, people will cooperate and sympathise with one another, producing a stable society. Problems arise when members of a society lack the imaginative capacity to put themselves in the place of others. This results in the unsympathetic person practicing little if any restraint and benefiting themselves at the expense of others.

Anacyclosis: The Cycles of Government

Polybius stated emphatically “that all existing things are subject to decay and change is a truth that scarcely needs proof; for the course of nature is sufficient to force this conviction on us.”⁵ According to Polybius, this maxim of nature can also be applied to political orders. This was not a new idea in Greek political thought. Aristotle believed in a cyclical theory of government in which each order begins pure but rapidly decays to its corrupted form.⁶ Polybius, like his fellow-Greek predecessors, believed in a cycle of governments. For the Greeks, governments came in three varieties: monarchy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by the few) and democracy (rule by many). These forms of government were distinguished as far back as Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC.⁷

Polybius believed that, like other animals, humans naturally formed a herd for the purpose of mutual protection.⁸ Given the nature of herds, “it is a necessary consequence that the man who excels in bodily strength and in courage will lead and rule over the rest.”⁹ Therefore the cycle of political orders—anacyclosis—began with monarchy, the rule of one.

Monarchy to Tyranny

The first monarch would be an honorable man worthy of the right to rule due to his staunch upholding of justice. As a result, his rule would be respected even when his physical strength waned in later life.¹⁰ Sadly, this state of peaceful affairs would not last. As the king reaches old age, it would be necessary that he choose a successor to inherit his position. Because the first king had lived a life of hardship and toil, he would be an austere figure who conducted his leadership as a first among equals. Polybius wrote that the first kings “were exempt from all vituperation or jealousy, as neither in their dress nor in their food did they make any great distinction, they lived very much like everyone else, not keeping apart from the people.” ¹¹

The successor to the first king would not prove so virtuous. Growing up in luxury and privilege, the new king would act as if he were superior to his subjects. His tastes would become excessive and offensive to the populace at large. As a result of his lack of virtue, he would eventually become a tyrant.

Aristocracy to Oligarchy

Unable to bear the humiliation of injustice, the best of men would rise up against the new tyrant. These rebels would not usurp power for selfish gain since, according to Polybius, they were “of the noblest, most high-spirited, and most courageous, because such men are least able to brook the insolence of princes.”¹² When they prevailed, harmony would once again be restored: “these chiefs gladly assumed this charge and regarded nothing as of greater importance than the common interest, administering the private and public affairs of the people with paternal solicitude.”¹³

But yet again, the same issue would rear its ugly head, namely the problem of succession. The sons of these noblemen would not grow up to emulate their courageous fathers. Instead, “having no experience of misfortune and none at all of civil equality and liberty of speech, and having been brought up from the cradle amid the evidences of the power and high position of their fathers,” these petulant aristocrats would indulge in all kinds of greed, lust, and excess.¹⁴ Consequently, they would meet the same fate as the kings: a violent overthrow.

Democracy to Mob Rule

The people of this exhausted society had lost faith both in monarchy and in aristocracy. Since both rule by one (monarchy) and rule by the few (aristocracy) had proved to be unreliable systems, the new political order was to be based upon rule by the many, or democracy. As with all of Polybius’s political orders, democracy experienced its moment of flourishing glory.

For a time, the founders of this new democracy valued equality and freedom of expression.

The next generation, as always, proved problematic. Growing up in a society of equals, the new generation—especially the richer members—no longer valued the virtue of equality, instead aiming for preeminence. When these people “lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way.”¹⁵ This new political order rapidly degenerates into violence and anarchy. Those who lust for preeminence band together and “massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch.”¹⁶

The central problem in anacyclosis, as Polybius characterizes it, is the lack of continuity between successive generations. The justice of the monarch decays to the pride of the tyrant. The virtue of the aristocrat decays to the indulgence of the oligarch. The equality of the democrat decays to the greed of the mob. Unsurprisingly, this decline culminates in anarchy. Reverting once more to step one, the grim sequence began again. Was there any solution to this miserable and eternal cycle?

The Greek Solution to the Cycle

Each system of government has its own virtues, but each has an inherent vice. Using the analogy a ship, borrowed from Plato, Polybius explains that iron can rust, wood has its worms, and timber is subject to pests.¹⁷ Similarly, “each constitution has a vice engendered in it and inseparable from it.”¹⁸ This theory of decaying cyclical affairs was common amongst Greek thinkers.¹⁹ Aristotle proposed that the solution was to unite and blend the political orders together.²⁰ By having a mixture of all of the orders, the vices inherent in each are nullified. Aristotle and Plato aimed to eliminate disagreement and conflict while promoting harmony and unanimity. The idea that a mixed constitution would yield a peaceful society was an idea that dominated political thought in the ancient Greek world.²¹ Polybius, however, departed from this consensus drastically.

Polybius’s Solution

For Polybius, the function of politics is not to create unanimity, but rather to preserve liberty through stability. This idea is evident in his praise of the Spartan constitution, where Polybius notes that Sparta enjoyed a “lasting heritage of freedom.”²² Polybius asserted that anacyclosis, with its constant gravitation towards despotism, is detrimental to liberty. Thus it is necessary that the cycle be halted and stability maintained.

How did the Romans preserve their liberty? One might argue that the Romans were made great by their leaders who displayed great personal and civic virtue. There are many examples throughout Roman history of selflessly dedicated and brave leaders, such as Cincinnatus, who gave up absolute power for a simple agrarian life.²³ However, this was not the reason that Rome succeeded. Polybius did not believe that virtue alone was enough to engender a stable and free society.²⁴ He disregards Athens, rejecting it as an unhelpful model to follow precisely because its moments of greatness were achieved by great men.²⁵ Shortly after these great men perished or were ousted, Athens, according to Polybius, collapsed back into mediocrity, confusion and destitution.²⁶

Another issue for Polybius was that human nature is not particularly malleable. Political theory has to adapt to human nature, not vice versa.²⁷ Rather than hoping blindly for virtuous leadership which was not guaranteed, Polybius firmly believed in reliance upon good rules and institutions to preserve an orderly liberty.

If humans are, as Polybius theorized, self-interested animals driven by both fear and sympathy, the solution must be to institutionalize fear in order to promote sympathy. Instead of attempting to eliminate social conflict altogether, Polybius proposed that humans should aim to make conflict productive and useful. Fear can be institutionalized and conflict can be made productive by the combination of the three simple forms of government, i.e. monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.

In another radical move for his time, Polybius rejected the solution of a mixed constitution. Polybius never uses the word “mixed.” Instead, he uses the words “composition,” “arrangement,” “balance” and “equilibrium.” Polybius’s ideal political order is not mixed like the ingredients in a cake are mixed into a single homogenous entity. On the contrary; each piece is separate and distinct and has a different role.²⁸ This concept of the separation of power is the key to the success of Rome, which Polybius describes as having dominion over almost the entire world.²⁹

Innovation in the Roman Government

Polybius identifies and discusses three institutions of the Roman government: the Consuls, the Senate, and the Popular Assemblies. Each embodied one of the three orders of government.

Monarchy was represented by the two Consuls. The Consuls had the power to command armies and presided over the Senate and the Popular Assembly. The Senate filled the role of the aristocracy. This was an advisory council of ex-magistrates who were members for life. In theory, the Senate was merely an advisory body, but in practice, its authority extended to a variety of public policy issues. Domestically, the Senate presided over courts, had power over tax revenue, and provided the main arena for political debate. On matters of foreign policy, the Senate was responsible for declaring war and negotiating with foreign ambassadors. Finally, democracy was represented by the Popular Assembly, which had the sole power to pass legislation, elect magistrates, and even ratify or reject foreign policy treaties.

Unlike his predecessors, including Plato and Aristotle, Polybius did not aim to establish harmony and unanimity. Rather than eliminate conflict entirely, he wished instead to make it useful.³⁰ By molding politics around human nature, Polybius’s account of the Roman constitution demonstrates how conflict, since it cannot be avoided, should instead be utilized in the most productive manner possible for the common good.

According to Polybius’s account of human nature, we are fundamentally self-interested beings who aim to increase our power. However, we are also responsive to fear. Each part of the government has a separate and distinct function. Given the separate nature of each facet of the government’s jurisdiction, each part will naturally fear the encroachment of the others beyond their proper limits. This fear generated a surprisingly beneficial type of conflict. Each of Polybius’s institutions would compete against the others in order to protect its own realm of authority. Their mutual fear of losing their respective powers would thereby produce the stability Polybius valued.

The Roman constitution also made it difficult for one particular group or individual to seize power. Each part of the government controlled a different area of life and each was interdependent on the others, so none could wholly dominate. In spreading power out and giving each office a particular function, the Romans instituted checks and balances that guaranteed an orderly liberty by preventing government overreach and decentralizing power.

Polybius after Rome

Polybius’s work was widely referenced and employed by a variety of thinkers throughout history, including the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, the Renaissance writer Nicólo Machiavelli, and, most importantly, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède—better known as Montesquieu. In his seminal work On The Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu drew heavily from Polybius’s analysis in book six of The Histories.

On the Spirit of Laws was constantly cited by the Founders, who were aware of Montesquieu’s debt to Polybius. The Founders could hardly ignore the ancient influence on Montesquieu’s thought as they were fully immersed in a culture of Classicism. From a young age, males were educated in a curriculum filled to the brim with classical authors including Homer, Virgil, Horace, Plutarch, Cicero, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus, to name just a small sample.³¹ As Noah Webster put it, “the minds of the youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rome.”³²

A knowledge of classical authors was possessed by every educated male in the Early American Republic. The idealized image of Republican Rome was constantly evoked as a model to follow by the Founders, who agreed with Polybius’s premise that the key to Rome’s triumph was its masterful implementation of the separation of powers.

In John Adams’s A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, he cites Polybius numerous times and even dedicates an entire chapter to his theories. Praising the Roman constitution’s separation of powers, Adams writes:

The Roman constitution formed the noblest people and the greatest power that has ever existed. But if all the powers of the consuls, senate, and people had centered in a single assembly of the people, collectively or representatively, will any man pretend to believe that they would have been long free, or ever great?³³

James Madison, discussing the separation of powers, stated that “no political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value.”³⁴ In Federalist 63, Madison cites Polybius, and he dedicates Federalist 47 entirely to the separation of powers. The influence of Polybius can be keenly felt when Madison writes: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”³⁵

Polybius’s account of the Roman Republican constitution was a widely appreciated work, gaining praise from thinkers including as Machiavelli, James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, Montesquieu, John Adams, and James Madison. Polybius demonstrated that virtue alone was not enough to preserve liberty. An orderly set of rules that distribute and limit power is essential for a free republic to endure the test of time.

Polybius,The Histories 6.6. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.6. ↩
Christopher Berry, Social Theory and the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1997), pp. 162-163. ↩
Benjamin Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2016), p. 154. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.57. ↩
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1120b. ↩
Herodotus, The Histories 3.80-82. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.5. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.5. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.6. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.5. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.7. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.8. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.8. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.9. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.9. ↩
Plato, Republic (488a–489d). ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.10. ↩
David E. Hahm, ‘The Mixed Constitution in Greek Thought’ in Ryan K. Balot, ed., A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (New Jersey, 2009), pp. 178-199. ↩
Jed Atkins, Roman Political Thought (Cambridge, 2018), p. 23. ↩
David E. Hahm, ‘The Mixed Constitution in Greek Thought’ in Ryan K. Balot, ed., A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (New Jersey, 2009), pp. 178-99. ↩
Polybius, The Histories 6.48. ↩
Livy, The History of Rome 3.29. ↩
Benjamin Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2016), p. 157. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Jed Atkins, Roman Political Thought (Cambridge, 2018), p. 22. ↩
Frank William Walbank ‘A Greek look at Rome: Polybius VI Revisited’ in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections (Cambridge, 2002), p. 281. ↩
Benjamin Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2016), pp. 156-58. ↩
Polybius,The Histories 6.2. ↩
Jed Atkins, Roman Political Thought (Cambridge, 2018), p. 24. ↩
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard, 1967), p. 24. ↩
Carl J. Richards, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (Harvard, 1995), p. 13. ↩
John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Vol.1 XXX. ↩
The Federalist Papers, No. 47. ↩
Ibid. ↩

Ep. 82: The Constitution & Castle Walls

Anthony Comegna — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:15:00 -0500

Southerners did not support Jeffersonianism as a matter of principle, but as a strategy that would ensure the survival of slavery and institutionalized racism. This support of Jeffersonian liberalism was ill-founded and tainted the philosophical tradition for many years after.

What is the relationship between libertarians and the southerners who were proponents of limited government? How did slavery make the phrase “states’ rights” dirty? How did southerners use the Jeffersonian philosophy to their advantage? Why did southerners fear the health of the republic without slavery? Did southerners actually support a small and limited government or was that just a facade?

Free Thoughts/Power Problem Crossover: Are Libertarians Isolationists? (with Trevor Thrall and Emma Ashford)

Aaron Ross Powell, Trevor Burrus, Emma Ashford, Trevor Thrall — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 00:15:00 -0500

Trevor Thrall and Emma Ashford from Power Problems Podcast join us to discuss the nuance differences between isolationists, non-interventionists, and pragmatic realists. When it comes to foreign policy, the way U.S. officials make decisions is largely based off the fact that the United States maintains and all-volunteer military. This military is the most powerful in the world, considering the U.S. spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined. There are many reasons for this, but at the forefront is the American desire to remain #1 or the superpower in the eyes of the rest of the world.

What is the difference between an isolationist and a pragmatic realist? When do policymakers decide when intervention is necessary? What are real threats? What is John Bolton’s philosophy on foreign affairs? What is the main role of our military? Do we have an obligation to keep America safe, but not all humans safe? Are U.S. policymakers only responsible for Americans? Or the entire Western world? What is the interplay between technology, news, public opinion, and military strategy? Is joining the military the only way to serve your country?

We Got Your Black Friday Shopping List

Paul Matzko, Aaron Ross Powell, Will Duffield, Matthew Feeney — Thu, 22 Nov 2018 00:15:00 -0500

Are you tired of the usual Black Friday listicles telling you which gifts to buy for your tech-obsessed friends and family? Do you suspect that the authors are really just recycling the same basic gadgets over and over again that seem like something out of an old Sharper Image catalogue?

Then we have the show for you! This week, the guys conduct a single-elimination competition for the Ultimate Techmas Gift Championship™ Extravaganza 2018®. It’s a showdown between fancy Fitbits, end-to-end encryption, a new internet, and smart diapers.

In the Pursuit of Self Government, Does Quality News Matter?

Anthony Comegna, Caleb O. Brown — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 16:30:49 -0500

The following is a transcription of a recent episode of the Cato Daily Podcast with host Caleb Brown and guest Anthony Comegna.

Brown: This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, November 21, 2018. I’m Caleb Brown. As you sit down with your family this holiday, turning off the 24/7 flow of low-grade pablum on cable news may be the first step toward an enjoyable day, but even if you can’t get that small concession, take this cold comfort from Anthony Comegna: He argues that the value of quality news-gathering and reporting—whatever comfort it might give us—is a lot less important to the cause of self-government than we might hope.

As we record this, Jim Acosta, a newsman from CNN who I guess is their chief White House correspondent, was recently prohibited from White House press briefings—a place that is well known to produce very little of value for the news-consuming public, and so now this fight is over that. Before the fight with respect to White House press was about Sarah Sanders publishing a video from a guy who works very closely with conspiracy monger, Alex Jones, and why that’s outrageous and terrible, and it got me to thinking, “Well, there are a lot of different ways that people are going to interpret this, I think, largely meaningless event (like, if you care about quality news coverage, one guy no longer being in the room is not that important, and news gathering that is consequential probably doesn’t come out of White House press briefings). But the way people actually consume their news is so separate now—you can choose your team and then get your news coverage, and at least with respect to television (and I guess it’s true of newspapers to some extent as well, and websites), so my question to you is: What parallels do we have going back a hundred and fifty years to say “Well, this separation—the fact that people are able to broadly not consume the same set of facts—what does that give us and was there a time in history we can point to and say this kind of information dissemination maybe posed a problem, or maybe it was a very good thing?”

Comegna: Well, yeah, don’t you remember the great days of White House press briefings when the Bush Administration could come out and lie to the entire country and everybody would dutifully go “Oh, okay, great, okay. That’s what the White House says, moving on!” and nothing exciting ever happened at a press briefing. That was great. Great things happened from that kind of world. Yeah.

No, I’m not—I never get singularly depressed by things like this, that we’re in this kind of a culture, because really there are plenty of parallels to draw on from the past. In some sense, that should be discomforting, because the past turned out so badly, too, you know?—It doesn’t spell great things for the present, but hey, maybe people find some sort of comfort in the idea that we have had to deal with things like this before and the world wasn’t great for it, but it also didn’t fall apart. And people did sort of learn how to deal with it.

Brown: But on this specific point about how people get their news—I mean, I spoke with historian Michael Douma recently about history and how it’s sort of a prism from which we’re trying to draw out the most relevant things to tell a story (a substantial and real story) about the past. And how people get news and how they are informed, and the actions that they take based upon what they’ve learned are pretty important today. And with the way people consume social media, how they’re strongly encouraged to look at and engage with things that they probably already agree with, and how we choose our friends and that sort of thing. When we go back in time, it seems much clunkier in terms of our ability to sequester ourselves into these kinds of echo chambers, these reality tunnels if you will.

Comegna: Yeah, so my field of specialty is the Jacksonian period, which is incredible. I just find it the most deeply fascinating period of American history because absolutely everything about life changed from one end of the period to the other. In about thirty years, give or take, practically everything about normal life changed, and it was in ways that people could not possibly have predicted at the beginning of the period. So, at the end of the War of 1812, it could take you weeks to get from New York to New Orleans. It could take you more than a month to get from Pittsburgh to New Orleans by way of the Mississippi River, and then you would have to travel on land by foot over old Indian trails to get back north. And by the end of this thirty year period, people had the ability to transmit their thoughts electronically, instantaneously, across thousands of miles of space, and the entirety of human existence is transformed by that fact and everything seemed possible to these people now. The whole world of dazzling imagination that had existed in fiction beforehand suddenly became a very real possibility. People were using electricity to reanimate corpses and they thought electricity and telegraphy could be a way to communicate with the dead because they existed somewhere still in the world of energy and electromagnetism. The new Victorian science opened up all sorts of incredible, imaginative pathways for people and the sort of future they thought they could make for themselves.

Now besides telegraphy, some of the other amazing inventions for revolutionizing communications were more humble things like steam driven presses to print newspapers, that could now make newspapers that cost pennies. So there were penny papers that were the first very widely available newspapers that printed tens of thousands of copies and had very wide circulations. They started popping up in the 1830s and spread everywhere in the 1840s, and more people than literally ever before were reading and consuming news, like had never existed in any country. Add to that railroads and canals, and people are moving everywhere much faster, and the nation sort of shrinks dramatically. You see very clearly in the record over this twenty or thirty year period, people become intensely more interested in the affairs of their neighbors—not their immediate neighbors, mind you, but anybody they might consider a neighbor. So everybody in the country is a potential neighbor when you can now travel to them within a day or a couple days time, and you can talk to them instantaneously by telegraph, or you can get the news from their newspaper wired to yours, so you can find out everything that’s going on in the country that might possibly be of interest to you—and you can get involved in it. And that really is the big transformative thing that I see from mass communications in the period: this new sense that now, very distant people who otherwise would not have much to do with my life, well now I can have an awful lot to do with theirs, and vice versa.

Brown: It reminds—there’s a moment on the show Deadwood when Earl Brown, who plays Dan Dority, he’s sitting there and he’s going through a newspaper and he just sort of slams it down and says “I wish they had more news of the baseball.” You know, there are any number of things that people would be relatively, more or less concerned with given their station in life, given their area of work and things like that, but in terms of penny papers and what counts as influence at the time, is there some clear shake-out of things that were temporary and less than credible, and so they died? That’s what I’m hoping for—that there’s a story in there about how, well nobody trusted this paper, they routinely lied, and so it went away. Please tell me this story existed somehow.

Comegna: That story happened constantly. So much, in fact, that it was the normal process. Every paper was a party paper, unless it was just simply a commercial paper, some sort of commercial advertiser or price bulletin. Every paper was a party paper that ran its candidates on the masthead and they got party patronage to do it. Journalists were not, properly speaking, reporters. That’s a very modern invention, basically by people who want to lie to you about how objective they’re being in the media—that’s ridiculous. People in the Jacksonian period had no pretensions to objectivity. What was the point?—They’re in a democracy here. This is a battle for power in the country to protect freedom from Whiggish slavery, or whatever it might be, to protect liberty and republicanism from the Slave Power, you know? They made no pretensions to objectivity; they were citizens involved in a battle for their liberties against powers who would corrupt it and take it from them. Everybody took that very seriously as a charge. This was not some historical mythology they told themselves about who they are and then they go look at cat videos on YouTube. They lived that, and it really meant something to them. They didn’t tell themselves fables about that. So, there were all sorts of upstart, short-lived campaign papers whose only purpose was to make derogatory songs about Henry Clay and then they shut down after eight weeks. There were small town papers who wanted to be the opposition paper and it turns out there wasn’t enough opposition there. There were papers who wanted to agitate specific issues and do it in a specific way because of the campaign season, and sometimes they made it through that and they found a base and an audience big enough to keep going, but most of the time they folded because their limited mission was accomplished. Especially bad examples of newspapers or journalism and dishonest really did not necessarily stick around for long because they were also built into the process. They had a place within the overall media and because people were not making pretensions to objectivity and labelling other people as mere partisan hacks or liars or whatever, everybody was in the same boat of either declaring your allegiances outright or you’d be suspected of hiding them.

Brown: Yeah, so one of the things that I guess is a bright spot in what I think it otherwise a vast wasteland known as cable news is the fact that there is a declining level of pretense. I mean, you have Fox News that allows one of their more popular evening TV hosts to step onstage with the President of the United States to promote Republicans for political office. It seems like if it’s not already dead completely, we’re fast approaching a time in which that is no longer the case—that there is not this pretense to objectivity.

Comegna: Yeah, so far as it goes I suppose that’s a good thing. Now, I’ll often hear from my libertarian-leaning friends that this is one thing they appreciate about Trump’s influence: that he’s busted trough the media in so many ways, PC culture and things, that he’s really shaken things up, that people are being more refreshingly honest now. I mean, okay.

Brown: So let’s say someone listening is now sitting down with their uncle and it’s Thanksgiving, and their uncle has drank from the firehose of MSNBC or CNN or Fox News to the exclusion of the others. What should that listener tell them if they want to get into a spirited, lively discussion about the quality of information that he’s being dealt?

Comegna: You know, I think that’s a little bit of a tricky question for me to answer, because I don’t see the problem as one of quality of information. There’s plenty of quality information out there. I mean, most people, I guess, don’t find themselves to it, or they don’t bother accumulating a variety of different sources of information, they don’t really spend much time challenging their own preconceived notions or their established views. I’m kind of used to that, and I doubt that’ll much change, partly because you only have time for so much and if you find a good place that you trust to get your news, I don’t see people being convinced by a Thanksgiving conversation, certainly, to go out and change the way they do things. But to me the more significant problem is this whole underlying notion that we’re engaged in self government here. That by becoming an informed citizen, by going out and voting, by engaging in debates about ongoing political affairs, or whatever else, that’s part of your duty as a citizen in a democratic republic, that’s part of self-government. That is not true, and I think we all need to face up to the idea that we’re not trying to govern ourselves, we’re trying to govern everybody else. So that’s really the ultimate pretense that sticks around no matter what news outlet people go to. They all are wrapped up in this idea that they’re an essential part of democracy and republicanism, and as long as people are informed by consuming good media, they will be able to make good decisions to govern themselves. That is still a lie. We’re not trying to govern ourselves, we’re trying to govern everybody else. We’re not setting rules for our own personal behavior because we think they’re good general rules to follow. Generally speaking, none of us want to follow the rules that are set supposedly by ourselves. We only get really concerned when we think somebody’s going to be interfering with our interests or we want to stop somebody from doing X, Y, or Z. It’s not actually about setting up rules that I know I’m going to follow because I’m a responsible citizen and I just think that these are good ideas for everybody else to follow. The vast majority of people, it seems to me, go out and vote because they’re angry at their fellow human beings, they want to control their behavior, there’s some sort of tribalistic elements going on, and it really doesn’t matter what media you consume. My God!—there are much deeper myths and problems here that involve overturning hundreds of years of established history and preconceived wisdom about what we’re up to.

I recently did an interview for Liberty Chronicles with an author who writes about a man named Stephen Hopkins. Hopkins was on the Third Supply going to Virginia in the early Jamestown years. I think 1609 was when he got onboard the ship called the Sea Venture which was leading the Third Supply. Hopkins was just a sort of middling class person, not very wealthy, not very educated, but he could read and write. He worked for the church to some small degree as a clerk, and he goes on the Third Supply as a minister’s clerk, and the Sea Venture is the flagship of this resupply mission to Jamestown. It gets smashed apart by a hurricane and miraculously everybody survives. They make it to Bermuda. The rest of the convoy goes on the Virginia thinking that the Sea Venture is just lost at sea forever. Virginia is a disaster, of course, and nobody in the working class wants to be there because it’s basically a prison camp. Hopkins decides to lead a rebellion on Bermuda to set up a colony of maroons and castaways there. They said the charter for Virginia that bound us to the company is null and void since we crashed on Bermuda. It’s time for us to build our own society here, fresh, by the consent of the governed, because here we are, all together on the beach, agreeing to govern ourselves. Well, the governor quash all of those rebellions pretty handily and they use terrorism to get ships rebuilt and they go back to Virginia. Stephen Hopkins, about twenty years later, is probably the author of the Mayflower Compact, and one of the prime signatories to it. His idea from the time of Bermuda—thirty years before Hobbes, forty years or so before John Locke—was real consent in government, real government built from the bottom up where we actually do govern ourselves. I mean, he wasn’t reading any kind of penny presses, party presses, he didn’t have telegraphy. He just had the right idea: that people actually can govern themselves if the powerful leave them to it.

Ep. 81: Spooner & The Secret Six, with Phil Magness

Anthony Comegna — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 00:15:00 -0500

Phil Magness joins us this week to teach the radical nature of Lysander Spooner. Spooner’s legal career started in an apprenticeship under 2 lawyers and he was best known for his support for the Abolitionist movement. His philosophy of liberty heavily influenced his law practice as well as his activist lifestyle.

Who was Lysander Spooner? Is there a connection between his post office activism and his abolition activism? What radical politics did Spooner practice? What is the secret six? How does natural law relate to slavery?

Libertarianism.org

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Federalism in Proudhon and Ostrom

Place Your Political Bets

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Ep. 83: Who Killed Jefferson(ianism)?

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Teaching Economics (with Steve Horwitz)

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The New Gatsbys: A review of The Souls of Yellow Folk

Micro-Targeting Voters with Big Data

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Polybius and the Origins of the Separation of Powers

From City to Empire: The Rapid Rise of Rome

Human Nature: Self-interest and Fear

Anacyclosis: The Cycles of Government

Monarchy to Tyranny

Aristocracy to Oligarchy

Democracy to Mob Rule

The Greek Solution to the Cycle

Polybius’s Solution

Innovation in the Roman Government

Polybius after Rome

Ep. 82: The Constitution & Castle Walls

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Free Thoughts/Power Problem Crossover: Are Libertarians Isolationists? (with Trevor Thrall and Emma Ashford)

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We Got Your Black Friday Shopping List

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In the Pursuit of Self Government, Does Quality News Matter?

Ep. 81: Spooner & The Secret Six, with Phil Magness

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