Maggie's Farm

Harvard's Michael Sandel is a rock star political/moral philosopher. I've never read him. All I know about him is from this review of his new book, What Money Can't Buy, in The Guardian.

So just a brief thought about the article, not the book. It seems to me as if Sandel has created a straw man of money - or maybe of markets, and wishes people would consider more elevated, more moral views of life.

But don't markets simply reflect what people want, and the decisions and choices people make? Many people seem to want to buy his ideas, which is why his book is making him big bucks in the marketplace of the bookstores.

Sandel makes the illuminating observation that what he calls the "market triumphalism" in western politics over the past 30 years has coincided with a "moral vacancy" at the heart of public discourse, which has been reduced in the media to meaningless shouting matches on cable TV – what might be called the Foxification of debate – and among elected politicians to disagreements so technocratic and timid that citizens despair of politics ever addressing the questions that matter most.

"There is an internal connection between the two, and the internal connection has to do with this flight from judgment in public discourse, or the aspiration to value neutrality in public discourse. And it's connected to the way economics has cast itself as a value-neutral science when, in fact, it should probably be seen – as it once was – as a branch of moral and political philosophy."

"Illuminating observation"? That's new?

It may be true that profs of Economics have attempted to make their area of study as value-neutral as physics, but economics as practiced by the individual person in a free society is as far from value-neutral as can be. After all, there are "markets" in values and morals too and everybody seeks different versions of these products.

Free markets in everything, from ideas, to religion, to dating, to education, to health, to business. That's America to me. Just don't expect me to approve of your choices.

Help me out, gentle readers. What contradictions can you see in Sandel, as seen through the article?

Despite the cultural storms and waves, it it is the daunting job of royalty (or at least of Brit royalty who are currently, sort-of of German origin despite being Brit in culture and manner) to make the best stand for the core values of duty and service.

I have never met the Queen, but I have always liked the cut of her jib.

The Queen of Duty - In an era of irresponsibility, Elizabeth Regina always does what is expected of her.

It's a new minority classification in New York, of all places. (h/t Prof J). A quote:

A steering committee led by Joyce Moy, director of CUNY’s Asian Research Institute, ran faculty focus groups based on “identity.” The groups included “African-American/black, Asian, White/Jewish, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender, Hispanic/Latino, Individuals with disabilities, and Italian-American.”

CUNY targets Italian-Americans for affirmative action in response to lawsuits alleging bias….

“White,” said a Jewish professor at Kingsborough Community College, “is in every way a detriment to be categorized because of the push to hire minorities.”

Good grief. And still, it seems exclusionary to me to omit "White Native Americans" from the special treatment list.

Let no crisis go to waste. It's always a "crisis" when government wants power and control, and it is in the nature of governments to desire those things.

Not from The Onion: Frank Bruni in the NYT tries to make the case that government should control what we eat. It's a crisis, you know.

Related article: Is Freedom Possible Without Virtue?Albert Jay Nock on doing the right thing:

Nock’s essay on the Right Thing is a reminder that the advocates of the paternalistic state, whether “left” or “right,” have it backward: good conduct isn’t a precondition of freedom; it is a consequence of freedom. He contrasts the “region of conduct” regulated by force, that is, by government, with the region regulated by the individual’s sense of doing the Right Thing.

Image is from Political Commentator's Mayor Michael Bloomberg starring in "The New York Nanny State of Mind"

From the article:

The National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys argues for repealing those non-dischargeability provisions, at least for private lenders. That is actually a good idea, as long as, on the public side, the federal government gets out of the student-loan business altogether. No direct lending, no loan guarantees to the private sector--and no disability-rights oversight, either. Without the twin safety nets of non-dischargeability and taxpayer guarantees, a lender would be entitled to ask the next Carol Todd, without even broaching the subject of her Asperger's: "We've already lent you tens of thousands of dollars that you haven't repaid on degrees that you haven't used--why, exactly, should we lend you even more for yet another likely useless degree?" There would be nothing like having to live with the consequences of one's imprudent lending decisions to put an end to irresponsible adventures in higher education at public expense.

Unfortunately, Judge Gordon's ruling in Todd's case seems to point in another direction: toward relaxing the non-dischargeabiity rules by judicial fiat, so that ever-large numbers of people can load their student debt onto the backs of taxpayers on the basis of some chronic ailment that should have barred their borrowing in the first place. That's the worst of both worlds.

On the small scale, these seem to be close to universal in studied American populations. On the large scale, quite rare.

From the WSJ, Why We Lie - We like to believe that a few bad apples spoil the virtuous bunch. But research shows that everyone cheats a little—right up to the point where they lose their sense of integrity:

We want to install locks to stop the next Bernie Madoff, the next Enron, the next steroid-enhanced all-star, the next serial plagiarist, the next self-dealing political miscreant. But locking our doors against the dishonest monsters will not keep them out; they will always cheat their way in. It is the woman down the hallway—the sweet one who could not even carry away your flat-screen TV if she wanted to—who needs to be reminded constantly that, even if the door is open, she cannot just walk in and "borrow" a cup of sugar without asking.

Some of our readers were discussing trust and "trust cultures" the other day, in the comments. I suppose, when I consider the word "trust," I refer to the confidence that a person will not lie (except for white lies), cheat me, steal from me, be unreliable, or try to harm or take advantage of me.

In other words, trust is a gift given to someone that says "I have decided that you will behave reasonably benevolently towards me - or at least not malevolently - regardless of how you may feel about me."  That is a big gift, and not lightly given until earned.

As our commenters noted, cultures vary in degrees of trust (as we in the Western world define it), and, of course, different cultures have entirely different expectations of others which would not meet our definition of trust (eg you can "trust" an Istanbul rug dealer to never offer you his best price, even if you are his best friend).

Here's AN EXPOSITION OF FRANCIS FUKUYAMA'S "TRUST"

and Where Trust is High, Crime and Corruption are Low

Wki has a discussion of trust as viewed by the social sciences

Oxytocin, not Oxycontin which also, I hear, produces warm, fuzzy feelings: Kin and Kindness.

I aspire to fulfilling the Golden Rule in my life. Who would wish to grow old and to feel that they had not done so during their brief time here? I aspire to forgive those who sin or trespass against me too. It's all a struggle because I tend to react against fools, jerks, jackasses, the malevolent and the arrogant, but it's a worthwhile struggle anyway, with the Lord's help.

The Golden Rule comes easier with kith, kin and tribe, doesn't it? In a way, it's a definition of community. Ostracism is the community's curative; its purgative, but that is another topic.

End of sermon.

I am afraid that this post at American Thinker is correct.

The main enemies of state power are family and religion.

Why do Lefties trust big government over free commerce, free markets, and achievement? I believe it is because they want to be in charge of things, in charge of me. I resent that impulse.

Insty noted that California is considering forbidding genetically-engineered foods.

Well, that is retarded. Very few of the things humans eat have not been genetically-engineered by humans. Bear meat, for one. Fish and shellfish. Mushrooms, I suppose, also preserved from the scourge of genetic engineering.

But why should we stop improving our foods now, after 5000 years of doing it with remarkable success? We're much better at it now because we figured out the mechanism.

Hunger was once the norm. Now obesity is the "problem." I think obesity is just fine, for those who want it. Cheap and plentiful high-carb and tasty food is thanks to human ingenuity, and we all now struggle not to be over-fed. What a terrible problem, a human tragedy. Too much food.

Even our dogs are genetically-engineered. Nobody wants to sleep with a wolf at the foot of the bed, and nobody wants teosinte-on-the cob.

Photo is the pre-genetically-engineered teosinte, from which ancient central Americans engineered maize (corn, to us). Who would eat that mangy weed at a Memorial Day cookout?

By the way, corn (maize) is a high-carb food and is not on your weight-loss diet. It's like bread, grain.

Who is the better steward of the land: a robber, a plunderer, a squatter, a renter, or an owner?

An excellent example is our modern fisheries: Property Rights and Fishery Conservation. A quote:

Now we have a stake in protecting crab populations for the future. Because we aren't in such a race against the clock, we're able to get more young and female crabs we don't keep back into the ocean unharmed. When we find an area has too many juvenile crabs, there's time to go somewhere else instead.

After I read this guest post at Zero Hedge, More Than 30 Blocks Of Grey & Decay (h/t American Digest), I thought a little more about my post yesterday, An interesting response to Charles Murray. Here's a quote from the Zero piece:

There is now a grey pallor that seems to engulf this once thriving corridor. The houses that were built in the 1950s and 1960s and kept up by middle class families that took pride in their neighborhoods have been deteriorating for years. The homes are in disrepair. The bricks have grown dingy from years of pollution buildup and lack of power washing. Porches and awnings are sagging. The woodwork hasn’t seen a paint brush since the 1970s. Trash is strewn in the streets. Gardens are no longer tended to. Lawns are overgrown with weeds. The inhabitants of these neighborhoods either don’t care or don’t have the financial wherewithal to maintain their homes. On the current trajectory, these once proud neighborhoods will eventually resemble the 30 Blocks of Squalor.

It's not lack of wherewithal. If you can afford a car, an iPhone, and a big flat screen TV, you can afford a few gallons of paint, a scraper, and a paintbrush from Home Depot. It's just about old-fashioned degeneracy, ignorance, or sloth, which will always be with us in some proportion of the population. We have to accept that reality. For heaven's sake, we have prostitutes in Hartford getting Disability checks for anxiety disorders. It's their loss more than it is mine. If you wish to live a life without dignity, have at it; I won't let you starve, but don't expect any respect from me. A young gal with Down Syndrome works every day at my market. She is not on Disability.

I don't know whether Mr. Welton is right or wrong about government benefits enabling parastic or feral subcultures, but I do think he is correct that the middle class feels that all they can do about it via government is to give them some money and hope they will live, and stay, drunk or stoned or just unmotivated, far away from them. "NIMBY, s'il vous plait. I want a pleasant, peaceful life, and work hard to have one."

Funny, the middle class feels the same way about feral government, most of the time. Except when they are getting freebies. Never dare take freebies from the middle class.

From a thoughtful reaction to - not against - Murray's Fishtown and Belmont analysis by Clark Whelton: SugarHouse Rules - On certain aspects of Charles Murray’s new book:

...if feckless men in Fishtown are not unmanly, what are they? Murray invites us to choose our own words; I suggest “remittance men.” In nineteenth-century Britain, sons, brothers, and uncles whose disreputable conduct made them an embarrassment to their families sometimes received an offer they couldn’t refuse: “Move to Capetown, Jamaica, or Tasmania, and—provided you never come back to England—we will send you a monthly remittance. It won’t be a lot, but you’ll be able to live without working.”

Do the residents of Belmont (median household income $95,000) and countless other communities like it have a similar understanding of Fishtown’s feckless men? The Belmonts of America help fund the various government payments that keep neighborhoods like Fishtown afloat. In return for remitting to the tax man, Belmont, Massachusetts (83.5 percent white, 11.1 percent Asian, 3 percent Hispanic, and 1.8 percent black) gets a measure of isolation from the troubles and failures of urban neighborhoods.

One of my kids attended a very demanding high school, a boarding school, actually. During senior or possibly junior year, this youth showed me his AP European History thesis. The master had written on top, in the usual red ink, "Best AP European History thesis I have read in ten years. Almost publishable. B+"

I believe he understood the compliment. The master believed that, however fine and well-researched the work was, he could have taken it even further.

From The Unteachables: A Generation that Cannot Learn - The greatest tragedy of progressive education is not the students' lack of skills, but of teachable character.

“An A,” she said jubilantly, but with a strong undertone of derision. “And I didn’t even read the book!” As the paper thudded into the trash basket, her friends joined in the disdainful laughter.

That quote is about college, not the local high school. Another quote from the essay:

The person who is never challenged is also never refined, never learns to cope with the setbacks that come on the way to high endeavor. And it is not only in the academic realm, of course, that they may be hampered: a full life outside of university also requires the ability to confront one’s weaknesses and recover from defeat. Despite the admittedly important emphasis on character formation in our schools — on tolerance, anti-racism, refusal of bullying, and so on — it seems that we have failed to show students what real achievement looks like and what it will require of them.

Colleges have become high schools. As far as I have heard, only the elite boarding schools still maintain the highest expectations and standards, far higher than even the most elite colleges.

From the article:

• The graduates of our social sciences and humanities programs are increasingly found wanting in the workplace. Unless they can find employment in a leftist dominated milieu (e.g., government, academia, public sector union, media conglomerate), the American business world finds them ill-equipped to function successfully in what remains of the US entrepreneurial society.


• The costs of a university indoctrination--er, that is, education--have skyrocketed. In light of the previous bullet, consumers-- i.e., the students' parents--find it increasingly hard to justify the expense.


• Intense criticism of the faculty is on the rise: they can't teach; or what they teach is garbage or propaganda; they're too busy with their "research"; and they are overpaid.


• Administrative policies make no sense--multiculturalism trumps achievement, political correctness outweighs impartiality.


• Most damaging, our universities, after a prolonged period of indoctrination, return students to their parents in a form that parents cannot recognize--their opinions, values and behavior have been altered beyond repair. (To be fair, it is encouraging that a not insignificant percentage of college grads manage to resist the brainwashing on campus).

"People in the education and political establishments pretend they're not motivated by such "callous" motives as greed and profits. These people "care" about us, but from which areas of our lives do we derive the greatest pleasures and have the fewest complaints, and from which areas do we have the greatest headaches and complaints? We tend to have a high satisfaction level with goods and services like computers, cell phones, movies, clothing and supermarkets. These are areas where the motivations are greed and profits. Our greatest dissatisfaction is in areas of caring and no profit motive such as public education, postal services and politics. Give me greed and profits, and you can keep the caring."

Walter E. Williams, via Carpe Diem

How is this for elimination of poverty? The NYT deplores this graph, via Dino's post:

Today we worry about the social effects of the Internet. A century ago, it was the telephone that threatened to reinvent society. A quote:

...it is striking how many phenomena attributed to the Internet age have their historical echo in the telephone. Identity theft and Internet predators? The early years of the telephone brought concerns over the unwanted entry—via telephone line—of unsavory characters into the home, and some people called for laws to regulate criminal use of the phone. Or consider the contemporary argument that automated high-frequency Internet trading increases the volatility of financial markets. As Aronson noted, “The widespread use of the telephone probably added to the short-run instability of such markets.” Before unwanted spam e-mails there were unwanted sales calls. The phrase “information superhighway” was preceded by a century in an AT&T ad announcing “a highway of communication.” Computer hacking grew out of the culture of “phone phreaks”—those early-1970s technological obsessives (Steve Jobs among them) who figured out how to manipulate the phone system to place free phone calls.The list of parallels goes on.

Perhaps the telephone, despite its seemingly transformative nature—the annihilation of time and space—didn’t change us much after all...

The world is full of people who cannot or will not negotiate life very well, or with any pride or honor. Every sort of culture has them; the people who cost you money or detract from your life in some unpleasant way. Often, they have either had misguided or negligent upbringings, terrible karma, or have significant character flaws resulting in poor judgement, poor functioning, or antisocial or dependent traits. Often their families expect them to rely on government for survival or help, as so many do with the frail elderly these days. (That's the Julia story.)

Not everybody is born to be a real, self-sufficient, family-centered American-type. It's not easy. However, we are all fully aware of the grieveous moral and spiritual effects of moral hazard in government benefits, and of the temptation of freebies.

What's the answer? Or is it just the price of civilization that some people just don't or won't get it, and must be paid regardless of moral hazard? In other words, just write them off and absorb the losses. Let them rip you off or live off your labor, even though they are not your relatives.

That's my theory. Ignore moral hazard and people working the system, write them off as losses, give them some money and let them go away. Nothing anybody can do about it. With half of the country on the dole in one way or another, parasitism is becoming acceptable anyway.

When most people farmed, it was not thus. Even today, I think anybody can make themselves useful, and lead a positive existence, if they want to.

From Sultan's The Efficiency War:

Governments suffer from grandiosity. They think that they can fix everything. Worse they believe that they should fix everything. It never occurs to them to fix themselves except around election time. When they do recognize their own brokenness they treat it as a symptom of the brokenness of the real world.

They conclude that the problem is not that their national health care plans are unworkable, but that there are too many fat people in the country. Bring down the number of fat people and there will be plenty of money left over for everything else. Get everyone to stop smoking, get them to eat their vegetables, floss twice a day and take the best possible care of themselves and the cost of health care will go down.

The Soviet Union similarly concluded that the problem was not with their collective farm system, it was with the people working on them. It didn't matter that wheat had been grown much more plentifully and efficiently before the rise of the red flag. It didn't matter that regions which had once been wheat exporters were now forced to import wheat from capitalist countries. The system was perfect, which meant that the people had to be made perfect enough to allow it to fulfill its potential.

Always enjoyed that Berthold Brecht quote about when a government is displeased with the people, the government should elect a new people.

Mulville:

...if Socrates is right, and true wisdom is accepting one's own ignorance ... what does that say about "progress?" As individuals, of course, we recognize our personal idiocy. But the arrogance of progress is that no matter how stupid individuals are, progressives have confidence that society (as a whole) is on a one-way trajectory toward comprehensive wisdom. Progressives trust that society is growing collectively smarter and wiser.

A brief summary of Walter Russell Mead's view of the world. He links to a Fukayama essay, The Two Europes. One quote on the topic of political clientilism:

Clientelism occurs when political parties use public resources, and particularly government offices, as a means of rewarding political supporters. Politicians provide not programmatic public policies, but individual benefits like a job in the post office, an intervention on behalf of a relative in trouble with the government, or sometimes an outright payment of money or goods.

In my view, clientelism should be distinguished from corruption proper because of the relationship of reciprocity that exists between politicians and voters. There is a real degree of accountability in a clientelistic system: the politician has to give something back to supporters if he or she is to stay in power, even if that is a purely private benefit.

Kimball:

Here’s a question I would like to ask François Hollande (I’d like to ask it of Barack Obama, too): just where does he think money comes from? I sometimes wonder if socialists suffer under a species of arrested development. Some credulous children believe that the stork brings babies. So it is that socialists tend to believe that money comes from “the rich.” Need some dough for your social program? Simple, take it from “the rich” (however you define that elastic category) and give it to someone else via a government bureaucracy you have set up.

But what happens when the rich cease to be rich? What then?

Zero Hedge: The European Union Is Destroying European Unity:

Certainly, the steep austerity policies have in Portugal, Spain and Greece only produced bigger deficits as tax revenues have fallen. But what really matters is that Europeans more and more are coming to see the E.U. and the policies it enforces as counter to their interests and harmful.

Nile Gardiner:

As economic freedom declines, EU member states are becoming less and less competitive on the world stage, while emerging economies from Asia to South America are gaining ground. Decades of big government policies have now brought several European economies to their knees. Soaring taxes, spiraling unemployment, mountains of red tape, stifling labour regulations, and ruinous levels of public spending needed to fund vast and unsustainable welfare states and entitlement programmes have created a perfect storm of economic malaise. And France is a potent symbol of that decline, with huge levels of public debt, now standing at more than 80 percent of GDP, government spending at 55 percent of GDP, and a tax burden equivalent to 42 percent of total domestic income.

In addition, Western Europe’s problems have been exacerbated by the relentless centralisation of political and economic power in Brussels, which has added layers of suffocating regulations for businesses operating within the EU, as well as onerous regulations on financial institutions, while the single currency has made it increasingly difficult for national leaders to address their own countries’ economic woes.

Why Big Government Is Offensive - The faster the state expands, the more likely it is to violate your values:

Any power that government has to do something you like will invariably be used for something you abhor. Today’s decision interpreting the Commerce Clause to justify snatching home-grown medical marijuana from patients in California becomes the justification for tomorrow’s federal mandate to buy health insurance. Reduce the scope of government, and we reduce the culture war, while promoting true tolerance of divergent viewpoints.

From an interview with David Stockman:

TGR: What should the role of the Federal Reserve be?

DS: To get out of the way and not act like it is the central monetary planner of a $15 trillion economy. It cannot and should not be done.

The Fed is destroying the capital market by pegging and manipulating the price of money and debt capital. Interest rates signal nothing anymore because they are zero. The yield curve signals nothing anymore because it is totally manipulated by the Fed. The very idea of “Operation Twist” is an abomination.