The Freedom to Approve, Not Decide

Alysa Liu survived hard work and no drama to win Olympic figure skating gold, the first U.S. woman to do so in over two decades.

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Pro-Trump ads are flooding the TV, sponsored by Homeland Security. The government is advertising for the government.

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Nearly one in four adults in that generation currently identify as something other than heterosexual. This is in contrast to older Americans, among whom LGBTQ+ identification remains relatively uncommon.

Pick the sci-fi plot you like best.

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Government debt is projected under the CBO’s baseline scenario to balloon from nearly $31 trillion today to $56 trillion over the next decade.

If that is true, why is it not a topic of conversation, an interview subject, or an election issue?

What are the options to deal with it?

***

The U.S. trade deficit hit a near-historic high of $901 billion last year.

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The Freedom to Approve, Not Decide

Every so often, the popular world teaches a lesson. Science is harder than people say. Dogs that 'never bite' sometimes do. Bread usually falls jelly-side down.

The recent American display at the Munich Security Conference was such a teaching experience. The Pretty Girl Representative (PGR) showed up for no good reason and behaved like a moron. When asked, she did not know the basic geography of her continent, did not know the dramatic origin of the modern American horse, and was unable to say anything beyond "Uhh....." to a simple — and expected — political question. Watching this stirred a feeling of recognition. What was this?

It was a replay of something many teenagers experienced: a friend who showed up at an uncle's business for a token interview before getting a summer job. It was an audition where the required qualities were assumed.

For the nephew, the required qualities were being a blood relative and not drooling. For the PGR, the qualities were...not drooling. The PGR was auditioning for the international stage. She has been a successful American politician, and she was the PGR. She just needed a nod of approval, and she would move on.

Her failure is beside the point. The real question is what she was doing there in the first place? How did the PGR advance to be considered at this level? It makes you think she was picked somehow in advance, sometime earlier, that let her onto the scene. If that sounds a little too conspiratorial, remember that after she exploded on the audition stage, she rushed in tears to call her uncle NYT.

 

The Demographics of Independence and Loneliness

On this day:
1226
Tran Thu Do, head of the Tran clan of Vietnam, forces Ly Hue Tong, the last emperor of the Ly dynasty, to commit suicide.
1470
Henry VI of England returns to the English throne after Earl of Warwick defeats the Yorkists in battle.
1485
King Henry VII of England is crowned.
1905
Czar Nicholas II of Russia grants Russia’s first constitution, creating a legislative assembly.
1918
The Ottoman Empire signs an armistice with the Allies, ending the First World War in the Middle East.
1922
Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy.
1938
Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.
1941
World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
1985
Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.

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"Even $1 million isn't going to make you happy. It is not going to happen. You look around, and you see people with $2 million, and your happiness will disappear."--Warren Buffett

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From a remarkable paper:

'Researchers have shown for the first time that flipping an epigenetic “switch” in specific memory-holding neurons can directly alter memory strength. By targeting the gene Arc—which helps neurons adjust their connections—scientists used CRISPR-based tools to either boost or silence its activity in engram cells within the hippocampus.

Silencing Arc blocked memory formation, while activating it strengthened recall, even days later, and these effects were reversible. The discovery offers groundbreaking insight into how gene regulation within memory cells can control learning and forgetting, opening possibilities for future therapies in PTSD and neurodegenerative diseases.'

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The Dadger manager entered the World Series famously saluted his team's overwhelming scouting and financing with the line, "Now, let' destroy baseball."
Last night's Toronto starter went seven innings, gave up one run, and struck out 12. He is 22, started this year in Single A

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Seven years ago, President Xi promised to end Fentanyl shipments.

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The Demographics of Independence and Loneliness

In 2024, Poland’s fertility rate collapsed to 1.1. Round up the usual suspects. But in this article culled from The Guardian, Anna Gromada offers a unique idea about the problem.

'Unemployment in Poland has dropped to one of the lowest rates in the EU. Incomes have more than doubled. Nursery and childcare places are multiplying. The government now channels almost 8% of the national budget into cash transfers known as the “800 Plus” programme, so called because the state pays families 800 zlotys every month, per dependent child.

And yet, over the same time period, the population has shrunk by 1.5 million. A million new one-person households have materialised in the demographic ledger, quiet entries in a changing social contract. In 2024, Poland’s fertility rate collapsed to 1.1 – meaning it ranks among the world’s least fertile countries, beside war-scarred Ukraine. This year, it is poised to fall further, to 1.05.

The problem is not simply that Poles are having fewer children. Increasingly, they have no partners with whom to try. For the latest phase of gender wars impedes not only childbearing but the very formation of couples – here understood as heterosexual unions – on which birth statistics still mostly rest.

For most of human history, being alone meant being dead. The word “loneliness” barely existed in English until the industrial age. At the dawn of the 20th century, only a tiny share of adults remained unmarried – smaller still in eastern Europe than in the west. In the lands of today’s Poland, scarcely 8% lived as single people; in England, it was nearly double.

A century later, the balance has flipped. Nearly half of Poles under 30 are single. Another fifth are in relationships but live apart. This generation, in particular those aged 18 to 24, surveys show, is more likely to feel lonely than any other – more even than Poles over 75. In 2024, almost two in five young men said they had not had sex for at least a year. Abstinence, too, has become partisan: right-leaning men and left-leaning women are the likeliest to be sexually inactive.

What appears, in statistics, as a fertility crisis seems, in lived experience, to be a crisis of connection.

Gender wars – stoked by political polarisation, the bias of dating algorithms and the clash between autonomy and intimacy – have swept across much of the world. But in post-communist Europe, the conflict feels more acute. Three forces combine to set the region apart: the dizzying speed of change, the rise of psychotherapy as a new cultural grammar and the legacy of communism itself.

Few regions have transformed with such vertigo. Since 1990, GDP per capita in Poland has risen eightfold, even adjusting for the cost of living. Since 2002, unemployment has fallen from 20% to 2.8%. Prosperity has altered both daily life and consciousness, upending generational life patterns and sparking a reckoning between the genders.

The family, once imagined as Poland’s unbreakable core, has begun to fray. When the Berlin Wall fell, less than 6% of children were born out of wedlock – almost five times fewer than in Britain. But as that generation came of age, many chose distance over duty. Data on estrangement remain imperfect, but by one estimate up to one in four Poles under 45 has no contact with their father; up to one in 13 is cut off from their mother. (In Britain, around one in five has no contact with a family member.) When parents no longer serve as role models, stepping into parenthood yourself becomes an act of improvisation.

What the family and the church once provided, the therapist’s couch now supplies. Raised on an low-calorie emotional diet, many Poles have turned to psychotherapy. A decade ago, it was taboo. Today, public health providers report a 145% surge in psychological consultations in 10 years.

Behind these intimate dramas lies a paradox peculiar to post-communist Europe: it is at once more and less gender-equal than the west. Communism, in rejecting the bourgeois model of the family, propelled women into full employment and higher education, a policy that left Poland with one of the EU’s smallest gender-pay gaps. By the 1980s, women already outnumbered men at universities. Yet in the private sphere – marriage, domestic labour, child-rearing – conservative norms endured. When women still seek partners with equal or higher status, but in a society where they get two out of three university diplomas, the numbers no longer add up.

Men and women are literally in different places too: internal migration has shifted the balance so that in the country’s largest cities – such as Warsaw, Łódź and Kraków – there are at least 110 women for every 100 men. Men are more likely to stay in smaller towns, away from the new economy and new norms.

Poland’s baby deficit is not something that can be remedied with cash bonuses, cheaper mortgages, or subsidised creches. What’s faltering in the first place is not the willingness to raise a child but the capacity to build a life with someone.

Beneath Poland’s economic boom lurks what could be called the new generation’s Ingmar Bergman moment: a quiet crisis not of war or want, but of silence – of how to live together, how to find each other, how to sustain intimacy in a nation where people have learned all too well how to thrive on their own.'

This is a different, spooky assessment of a world maturing into group independence and plenty, both becoming individually toxic.

A Riddle of Freedom

A Riddle of Freedom


We are teetering on the edge of an election that will pit viewpoints against each other that bear little resemblance to principles that are woven through the country's history since its founding.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “One of those riddles is: how is it that the people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves first in spirit and then in body, while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste for it, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?”

Conflicts in Conservativism

 

Business has the responsibility to utilize resources and maximize production within the rules of a free and honest culture. Moral responsibility is personal.

                             Conflicts in Conservativism

That human beings start out crooked and prone to sin means we require strong social institutions meant to form us, and that we cannot thrive in their absence. It means the good of the individual cannot be achieved in a society that is not meaningfully attuned to the true common good. But that human beings are made in a divine image and possessed of inherent dignity means that each of us has rights that in practice amount to constraints on what society can do to us. In this sense, the conservative anthropology points toward both communitarianism and individualism, and the tension between the two emerges in every conservative effort to wrestle with real-world governing challenges.

This is a thoughtful and provocative remark by Levin and is worth some reflection. The origin of human dignity, the nature of human error, these are basic elements that any thinking culture must at least consider. If it does not, then the culture has made up its mind on other premises that the culture should be able to express.

McCloskey's Preface to the Korean edition

Deirdre McCloskey’s Preface to the Korean edition of her book, Why Liberalism Works. Her opening:

"Liberalism is the theory, by now only about two centuries old, that people should not be slaves—not Koreans as slaves to Japanese, not wives as slaves to husbands, not citizens as slaves to the State. A slave cannot say No. You can be a 100 percent slave, bought and sold, or merely a 14 percent slave, taxed at that rate. Being a slave to the State only on 14 percent of the days, only on Mondays, say, unable to say No, and beaten or imprisoned if you do, still means you are a (partial) slave. Liberalism makes everyone equal in permission to buy and sell, vote and protest, move and venture. No slaves."

So a group of McCloskey's Liberals can be an economy, or a club with variable membership. But can they defend themselves?

Power and its Enemies

                  

                     Power and its Enemies




One of the difficulties in reflection on any problem is that we all bring our own colored glasses to the viewing room. So those with a special knowledge or dislike of religious persecution see religion as a special victim or persecutor. The aristocracy is an obvious target; few persecutions are from small groups so obviously unqualified to appoint themselves to lead. The Marxists target the historical backward waiting for displacement, i.e. most people. But this all omits the crucial element: Oppression. What we should always be concerned about is the arbitrary assumption of power. And we should particularly raise our concerns when groups try to undermine institutions and political infrastructure as policy; they can only want one thing.

This is from the witheringly brilliant Lord Acton and his February 26th, 1877, address to the Bridgnorth Institute, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity“:​

In the zeal for the popular interest, however, there was no provision for the unpopular, and the minority soon found itself at the mercy of the majority. The people, now sovereign, felt themselves bound by no rules of right or wrong, no criteria except expediency, no force outside of themselves. They conducted wars in the marketplace and lost them, exploited their dependencies, plundered the rich, and crowned their guilt with the martyrdom of Socrates. The experiment of Athens taught that democracy, the rule of the most numerous and most powerful class, was an evil of the same nature as monarchial absolutism and required restraints of the same sort: institutions to protect it against itself and a permanent source of law to prevent arbitrary revolutions of opinion. Men learned for the first time what later history was to confirm again and again: ‘It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.’

Veil of Ignorance

If you do not know where you have been, the present is a single data point.--Me

A lot of sports this weekend. The Penn State and the LSU games were the real shockers. Donald is just a monster. Cook from the Vikings was impressive.
 

A beer company with the charming name of Tactical Ops Brewing in Fresno has produced limited-edition beer cans with the message  ‘2019/11/06 EPSTEIN DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF’ on them.

Clashes broke out after Hong Kong police shot and critically injured a protester as the city’s start-of-week commute was disrupted by demonstrators trying to block roads and delay trains.

Shadyside in WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-historic-millionaires-row-in-pittsburghs-east-end-11573148167?mod=hp_listc_pos4

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has rejected GOP calls for the so-called whistleblower to testify in the sham impeachment hearings. What a surprise.

Estonia is doing an interesting experiment. When they stop a speeder, they don't fine him, they detain him on the side of the road and delay him, depending on how fast he was going.

The gigantic deficit that the current Medicare system already faces is projected to total $44 trillion over the next 30 years — plus an additional $28 trillion in resulting interest costs — that will need to be financed with general revenues. This is before any of the new nonsense like Bernie or Warren.

In a Fox News poll released on Sunday, 50 percent of likely Democratic primary voters said they would definitely vote for former first lady Michelle Obama if she entered the race. Twenty-seven percent said the same about Hillary Clinton, and just 6 percent said that about Michael Bloomberg. 57 percent of respondents who said they do not support the impeachment of President Trump said: “nothing would cause [them] to support impeachment.” However, 34 percent said that “new evidence could make [them] support impeachment.”

WSJ summary of streaming:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-great-streaming-battle-is-here-no-one-is-safe-11573272000

If you go back a few years ago, there was a value chain in music — started with the musician, worked for the record label. The records went to the record distributor. They went to the retailer, who sold the record to the consumer. At that point, everybody in that chain had a vested interest in a healthy music ecosystem in which people enjoyed songs. The more people enjoyed songs, the better business was for everybody. That chain has been broken now. Apple would give away songs for free to sell devices. They don’t care about the viability of the music sub-economy. For them, it could be a loss leader. Google doesn’t care about music. They would give music away for free to sell ads. In fact, they do that on YouTube.The fundamental change here is, you now have a distribution system for music in which some of the players do not have a vested interest in the broader musical experience and ecosystem. This is tremendously dangerous, and that’s the real reason why I fear the growth of streaming, is because the people involved in streaming don’t like music.--Gioia

Democratic groups threw at least $54 million at the Virginia elections—an unprecedented sum in an election that didn’t feature a single federal office—outspending Republicans by some $12 million. Outside groups accounted for at least $22 million of the Democratic effort, nearly four times what they spent in 2015. Three billionaires—Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and George Soros—and their organizations spent more than all outside Republican contributors combined.

Facebook continues to take a hands-off approach toward political ads by refusing to regulate or fact-check them. Unfortunately for CEO Mark Zuckerburg, most voters — 59 percent — “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose the idea of social media platforms choosing not to remove advertisements that include lies, according to a recent Morning Consult poll. In fact, 77 percent of voters — including 81 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans — said they either “strongly” or “somewhat” support a law that ensures advertisements on social media (including political ads) are factual.

On this day, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the Great War ended.

                    Veil of Ignorance

The "veil of ignorance" is a method of determining the morality of issues. It asks a decision-maker to make a choice about a social or moral issue and assumes that they have enough information to know the consequences of their possible decisions for everyone but would not know, or would not take into account, which person they are. Sort of "do unto others" after being run through a think tank weekend discussion group. The theory contends that not knowing one's ultimate position in society would lead to the creation of a just system, as the decision-maker would not want to make decisions that benefit a certain group at the expense of another, because the decision-maker could theoretically end up in either group. The idea has been present in moral philosophy at least since the eighteenth century. The veil of ignorance is part of a long tradition of thinking in terms of a social contract that includes the writings of Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson. Prominent modern names attached to it are John Harsanyi and John Rawls. So the idea is to render obsolete those personal considerations that are morally irrelevant to the justice or injustice of principles meant to allocate the benefits of social cooperation. Sort of turning morality into a self-interest debate. (from wiki)

Here is a segment of an interview with McCloskey about the ambition of individuals in an economic system that is accurate, if unexpectedly harsh about the downside of freedom:

"We need to get people to understand they have a choice. You could have everyone do the same job tomorrow that they’re doing today. Then everyone would have a job forever.

This will be a completely stagnant society whose income is not increasing and everyone is safe. But then you ask yourself, which society do you want to live in? It’s the philosophical point that the Rawls made, which is that, behind a veil of ignorance, which society would you choose? The society in which enterprises made decisions and people had to move to North Dakota to have a job in the oil industry temporarily? Or a society in which they stay in Youngstown, Ohio, forever?

The French used to have a shipbuilding industry that eventually got outcompeted. So, being the French, they subsidized the ship makers in northwestern France to stay there, playing boule and drinking aperitifs. This is not the kind of society a free person wants to be in.

Look, being free is scary." 

This is probably too long but the point is, is the French decision defendable? One can argue that they will eventually fail as a system because one can not just subsidize a failed product forever. That's what happened to the U.S. steel industry. So the long-range result will be bad. But what about the short term? What about charming men sitting around in the café doing nothing but whistling at the passing American girls? Or smoking dope all day? Or living on welfare all day? The long term is bad, but the short term is probably not what we are really like. It's like putting an Australian Shepherd in an apartment; regular feedings and the occasional walk will not be enough.

At least I hope not.

Liberty/Property/Trade

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -William Pitt, British prime minister (28 May 1759-1806)


Saw Donny and Carol Capone last night and we had a great time. They are doing well. Donny made a very good dinner. A nice night compromised slightly by a scary ride home in a lunatic Uber. 
Another great performance by an ex-Pirate in the playoffs. They will probably never give up on a pitcher again, regardless of how terrible he is.
We head for Bonita Springs today.

Sanders has had myocardial damage. The impact on his physiology is a bell curve of possibilities. He might be physically able to continue but his V-P will be as important as he is, like an old Roman election. If he drops, who gets his funds? Whoever does must assume some of the socialist mantle which I think will make Trump stronger.

The word "sin" in Hebrew means "to miss the mark."

                                         Liberty/Property/Trade

Liberty is often described as an internal process where the mind surmounts some horrible material restraint. Not poverty, not the Gulag can enslave the heart of man. Liberty has some external examples like "Free speech," and "Free press" but these can be as abstract as internalized freedom. So what is Liberty's touchstone?       

There are some realities: Liberty is a recent concept, recent for a reason. One could argue that Liberty requires some unfettered sphere of influence; it is impossible without the ability to have something of one's own. Until recently, that personal influence was impossible. The Powers That Be allowed no individual sphere of influence. The rise of production beyond subsistence created value. That is, Liberty is a corollary of personal property. Put another way, is freedom meaningful without having something of one's own?

Then things get sticky. According to Ayau, "A person can exercise property rights in one of two ways: through personal use, the enjoyment or consumption of what he owns; or by trading it for something else, either directly through barter or indirectly through the use of money and the intermediation of third parties. Thus, trade is a fundamental manifestation of your property rights."

So Freedom, Property and  Free Trade are Siamese triplets, one impossible without the other. Indeed all three are a function of each other, which explains their concurrent development. And, if you will allow a wonderful reach, the triplets create The Three Body Problem.

So, of course, it gets more complex. As Frenchie Rourk says, "Property is without meaning unless you are allowed to defend it."

Equality and Choice

The question of equality does not look as if it going to go away. The enemies of individuality and liberty never sleep--like greed.

A question on the topic worth considering is the complicated "choice question." Many feel that how one lives depends less on what your intellect is and more on the choice of your lifestyle. Shortstops and nuclear science jobs are very exclusive and pay well but are not in high demand. But if you choose to be a teacher, it is unlikely you will become rich. Ditto nursing. Or fiction writing.

Indeed there are few real jobs in the world that lead to wealth. But millionaires in the U.S.--who are generally not extraordinary people-- have some distinguishing characteristics. First, they usually do not live like millionaires; they are scrupulously frugal. For them, work is their enjoyment; life is otherwise not much fun. Second, they work several jobs or areas; over one third are immigrants whose first language is other than English and many own mundane businesses that they work like crazy on. (A common business is fast food, like pizza shops. Millionaires--and there are a lot that do this--own four or five such shops and are constantly working long hours at multiple sites.)

The casual office worker may admire the guy's earnings but not his life style. I know a guy who works as a military contractor in Africa. He makes a lot of money but I am not sure many people would think his paycheck would be worth it. Everyone will tell you there is a lot of financial opportunity owning rental property but one must accept a risk and an incredible hassle. The lower paid general practitioner had the same option to become a high paid neurosurgeon, but chose not to.

So how much of one's tax bracket is his own choice?

The Fourth of July

Jay Leno had a recurring skit where he asked questions to passers-by on the street--questions most people think are rather simple and obvious. He asked several people what the Fourth of July celebrated, when independence was declared and who the country separated from. Of course the results were embarrassing to most of those interviewed. One was particularly interesting. A college instructor knew nothing about the Revolution at all, thought it occurred in the 1920's and thought China might have been involved.

A survey published recently said that 27% of people questioned did not know the American Revolution was waged against the British.

When I was a child in the 50's, the Fourth of July was a great event. The kids decorated their bikes, small local parades were held--every community had some commemoration and the larger communities had fireworks. It was unlike other secular events like Thanksgiving which were delightfully family oriented; this was a commonly held social event. It was a birthday party. And it was heartfelt. Everyone felt that years ago something of value had been accomplished, something special in the world created. There was a glow.

When Obama was first campaigning he was asked about American Exceptionalism. (The phrase was de Tocqueville's, from Democracy in America, 1835: "The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.")

The phrase has been used since by those who saw America as a point of reference in man's search for freedom and liberty. (It was also used by Stalin as a slur, decrying America's self-held belief that it was somehow excluded from the Marxian class warfare generality.) Obama saw a trap--it would not do to talk of "exceptionalism" when we want all people to be the same, all nations indistinguishable. So he hedged and said, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." He, unlike those Americans of just a generation or two ago, does not think that America is unique.

Unique. If that element is lost in this country a lot has been lost. So, buy a small flag. Decorate your bike.

Equality, Diversity and Family

The aspirations of the modern world--at least those propagandized--include "Equality." This is a tricky word because it means many different things and, as a battle cry, can attract quite diverse devotees to its flag. Is it the equality of opportunity? Of results? Are we content giving everyone the same chance for success in life--and, as an aside, how is that success measured? In some cases the equality desired seems to be a floor from which everyone may progress, in others a desired ceiling that will eliminate many from the anxiety of competition with their fellows.

One wonders about these ideals when looking at the outcome within families. Here individuals with very close genetic makeup and raised in the same environment emerge into adulthood in very different personalities and pathways. From the point of view of controlled circumstances, nothing could be better except for identical twins or triplets. In many ways this is a tribute to the inevitability of diversity, an engine of selection and change. On the other hand it is overwhelming evidence against the our ability to control outcomes. An adherent of equality could respond to this only by raising the strictures of upbringing, of narrowing the choices and experiences, in hopes of creating more uniformity, of taking individuality off the table. With uniformity, of course, there is less diversity. And, hence, less genetic creativity.

One wonders if this bland uniformity is at the core of the fascination our intelligentsia has with AI.

Bastiat

Protection and Freedom


The French economist Frédéric Bastiat is an economist whose writings are more than accurate, they are wise. This is a disturbing observation from  Economic Sophisms and “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen”:


“What is the term that is common to both restriction and prohibition?”


“Protection.”


“What is the final effect of protection?”


“To require a greater amount of work from men for the same result.”


“Why are people so attached to protectionist regimes?”


“Because freedom is bound to provide the same result for less work, this apparent reduction in work terrifies them.”


One could argue Bastiat saw men as fulfilled by work and that the loss of work was threatening. Or is it the obverse? Is the freedom that less work offers the terrifying element?

Berlin

Berlin, Arendt and Liberty

Isaiah Berlin gave a number of lectures on liberty. His two concepts of liberty--or freedom (he uses the words interchangeably)--are the "negative" and the "positive." The former, generally professed in the West, deals with the question: "What is the area within which the subject is or should be left to do or be what he wants to do or be, without interference by other persons?" The latter, universally professed and practiced in the Sino-Soviet East, deals with a very different question: "What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, one thing rather than another?" Bottom up versus top down.
Top down is easier, but it may not work as well.

Inherent freedoms and liberties are complex. The argument is what rights are inherent to us as human beings. (Some think the answer is "none." Remember, Natural Rights, according to Bentham, are “simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, — nonsense upon stilts.” Some think we are so dangerous we must be tightly controlled.)  In On Revolution, in 1963, Hannah Arendt discussed America and its "isonomy," the equality of political rights. She wrote "Isonomy guaranteed equality, but not because all men were born or created equal, but, on the contrary, because men were by nature ... not equal, and needed an artificial institution, the polis, which by virtue of its νόμος would make them equal." 
 

One must remember how new and fragile this notion is; historically rights were determined by the powerful. (Berlin's "positive liberty")  There is still that element in our lives now, where rights are granted people by the society. This should be held in distinction from those rights that we, as humans, have and are not dependent upon those in power. Those rights that are granted can be "un-granted" and withdrawn. And they may depend upon circumstance; true rights cannot depend upon circumstance. The real question is the nature of man and what rights he has, as a person. The creation of a community cannot create a right. A right cannot be endowed by the community, only preserved. Inherent rights of an individual must exist with or without the community. (I suppose Berlin's "negative freedom") 
 

You can always tell when something is important; the state when it punishes you takes important things away. It will kill you (life) or imprison you (liberty) or fine you. (property, essential to liberty). Life should be an obvious given. Liberty is a wonderful ideal and the essence of integrity and independence. It is certainly difficult to have liberty without property rights.
 

But a lot of problems are arising in the U.S. over what is inherent to people and what is merely desirable; what is his by nature versus what is merely very important to him. For example Health Care. Health Care might be very important but does not really fit as a right. Health Care is a circumstance. What about places without health care? What about man before Health Care? It would be a lot more reasonable--and advantageous to its adherents--if Health Care was seen as an aspiration. 

Equality raises a fascinating question because it is so strangely accepted. Equality before the law--isonomy--is an extraordinary concept, a wonderful leap in human thinking. But equality can not exist except before the law. Applying it outside the law is simply irrational. Intelligence, strength, integrity, beauty--all of these elements separate people. But nothing separates like age and health. Anyone who believes equality can be applied outside the law has never been in a hospital or a children's home. It is so unreasonable that it suggests some ulterior motive. And as equality can be approximated only by applying Procrustean distortions by government power at the expense of liberty, it is frequently the battle-cry of the tyrant. The failure of the French Revolution one could argue was the inherent contradiction in the "liberty, equality..." of their standard. 
 

The essence might be the distinction between man alone and man in community. The rights of man start with him as an isolated individual and are modified and softened by his interaction with the community. (The "Your right to throw your hands about stops with my nose" argument.) But it is focusing, this rights of man vs. demands of community.  Nor can the individual go to the community to enhance the rights he has by birthright. The community has no such power. For example, one can not enhance one's right of free speech by demanding to be heard or to be believed nor can one demand more than tolerance for the freedom of his behavior. 

There is no right that free speech be heard or that behavior be accepted. 

Isonomy

If mankind has risen above religion and equality before God, where does he turn for equality?

 

Isonomy means equality of political rights. Isonomy derives from the Greek terms ísos meaning “equal” and nómos meaning “law.” It entered English around 1600.

 

In On Revolution, in 1963, Hannah Arendt wrote "Isonomy guaranteed … equality, but not because all men were born or created equal, but, on the contrary, because men were by nature ... not equal, and needed an artificial institution, the polis, which by virtue of its νόμος would make them equal.

 

Read that again.
 

Arendt’s reading of the American Revolution was that the founders were after freedom, which they didn’t initially define all that sharply but which probably meant mostly negative individual freedom: “the more or less free range of non-political activities which a given body politic will permit and guarantee to those who constitute it." But in creating new institutions that would protect that kind of freedom, they discovered public freedom—the freedom to create together. And this was a source of happiness for them: “they were enjoying what they were doing far beyond the call of duty.”

In the French Revolution, however, the leaders felt themselves compelled by great forces beyond their control and they also lost interest in creating new institutions or even following the rules they had constructed as they declared the “social problem” the only thing that mattered. As a result, they lost all forms of freedom.

 

De Tocqueville thought freedom and equality were in opposition. "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
 

But for Arendt, public freedom requires equality. People are not naturally equal but they are made equal in “artificial” political spaces, “where men [meet] one another as citizens and not as private persons.” The tyrant, the master and the slave are not free because they are not engaged in equal politics.

 

The historian Stuart Finkel had the startling observation that communists have always acted more forcibly to undermine free association than to undermine free enterprise. When Lenin launched the New Economic Plan in the 1920s, Anne Applebaum notes in her Iron Curtain, the "systematic destruction of literary, philosophical, and spiritual societies continued unabated."

It is remarkable how insightful tyrants are.

 

So here is liberty and Equality joined within the structure of Law and Free Association.

American Independence and The Art of the Plausible‏

In the academic world one needs an area of expertise. It is even better if one can stake a claim to a new, unexplored area. One may not necessarily be correct in the new thesis; the creative and unclaimed nature of the notion is often enough. One comes up with an idea--the more provocative the better--develops a thesis to accompany it and then develop and nurture it as your own franchise. Interviews and tenure may follow. This is The Art of the Plausible.
It is the essence of revisionism. One takes a well established historic event and recast it with as little Procrustean effort as possible into a new, fresh concept. Eskimos, because they survived, are a culture superior to the Ancient Greeks, because they did not. Shakespeare was a Catholic. But any innovation will do. The Freudian franchise. The various takes on the Kennedy Assassination. The Nazca Lines of Peru are proof of extraterrestrials. Crucial is the ability to take such ideas and elevate them from simple interesting coffee house banter to a marketable academic--or simply popular--franchise.
One of the more startling such concepts popped up on C-Span recently, the novel idea that the United States rebellion against the British was not rooted in a desire for independence but just the opposite: It was an effort to protect the Colonies from the rising British abolitionist movement. (Irony is a great assent in The Art of the Plausible.)
The first European nation to engage in the Transatlantic Slave Trade was Portugal in the mid to late 1400's. Captain John Hawkins made the first known English slaving voyage to Africa, in 1562, in the reign of Elizabeth 1. Hawkins made three such journeys over a period of six years. He captured over 1200 Africans and sold them as goods in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. 
To start with, British traders supplied slaves for the Spanish and Portuguese colonists in America. However, as British settlements in the Caribbean and North America grew, often through wars with European countries such as Holland, Spain and France, British slave traders increasingly supplied British colonies.
The exact number of British ships that took part in the Slave Trade will probably never be known but, in the 245 years between Hawkins first voyage and the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807, merchants in Britain dispatched about 10,000 voyages to Africa for slaves, with merchants in other parts of the British Empire perhaps fitting out a further 1,150 voyages.
Historian Professor David Richardson, has calculated that British ships carried 3.4 million or more enslaved Africans to the Americas. Only the Portuguese, who carried on the trade for almost 50 years after Britain had abolished its Slave Trade, carried more enslaved Africans to the Americas than the British (the most recent estimate suggests just over 5 million people).
Nestled into these centuries of abuse are a number of legal debates that peppered the British courts. Where did the Magna Carta place slaves? Did a slave converted from paganism have a different status? In 1772, Somerset vs. Stewart debated the movement of an escaped slave in Britain and the legality of his resale per Common Law.
Looking over the timeline of the world's evolving opinion on slavery one can see a remarkable development, almost a "contagion of conscience,"  as small cities and city-states gradually outlawed slavery and the flow moved from Europe--where there were few slaves and the consequence of the decision was less--to North America, then South America, then Asia and finally the Middle East where the illegality of slavery is relatively quite modern--within the last several generations. (ISIS excepted.)
(Note to self: "Contagion of Conscience" possibly a Plausible notion?)

Voltaire on Diversity and, Accidentally, on Free Markets‏

Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind.  There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts.  There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word.
At the breaking up of this pacific and free assembly, some withdraw to the synagogue, and others to take a glass.  This man goes and is baptized in a great tub, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: that man has his son’s foreskin cut off, whilst a set of Hebrew words (quite unintelligible to him) are mumbled over his child.  Others retire to their churches, and there wait for the inspiration of heaven with their hats on, and all are satisfied.
If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.
--from Voltaire’s 1733 “Letters On the English.”  

Michael Roth and a Liberal Education

Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan University, was in town last night speaking on liberal education, the topic of his new book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters.. He is a very erudite guy with an academic background in philosophy and history. He gives several MOOC courses, an excellent one on the Enlightenment.
He started his talk defining a liberal education as being liberating, animating, cooperating and instigating. One could argue with these requirements but in the first fifteen minutes he spoke of the notion of "liberating" through the writings of Thomas Jefferson. It was electrifying.

Education had an impaired history in Europe. European traditions gave the church or the family the responsibility for education, and the nature of instruction much depended on the denomination with which one was affiliated. But in America, education was political, integral with our revolutionary system. For Thomas Jefferson, education was the guardian of freedom. Cultivation of the capacity for independent judgment was necessary to inspire and defend a fledgling democracy devoted to the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson admired knowledge for its own sake but insisted that it also be useful to human progress. John Adams and Jefferson agreed on the necessity of education as a foundation for maintaining freedom. "Wherever a general knowledge and sensibility have prevailed among the people," Adams wrote, "arbitrary government and every kind of oppression have lessened and disappeared in proportion."  Man, Jefferson, believed, is most free when he is most nearly or completely self-sufficient, hence his education must be concerned with developing such inner resourcefulness. All citizens should develop this capacity, and some of them would go beyond it to develop lives in which they pursued ideas for their own sake. Jefferson's On the More General Diffusion of Knowledge proposed that citizens should learn the basic skills for preserving their freedom, for conducting their affairs, and for continuing to learn. "If we think them [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." He was trying to create a system that would find gifted young men who might otherwise be overlooked because they didn't come from the right families. "The best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually." Imagine such a nation, growing with its citizens, each one growing in knowledge and liberty, intertwined.

It was inspiring. Roth was almost evangelical in his channeling Jefferson. I anxiously checked my watch; how could he keep this up? Everyone was on the edge of his seat when he said, "And now everyone is thinking the same two words...." I froze. What had I missed? Alexander Hamilton? What was Rousseau's first name? Roth answered his question. "Sally Hemmings!" Huh? The time honored and time-warped hypocrisy? Sally Hemmings?

I like this guy and I like his school. But in the midst of this inspiring discussion he must, must, throw in a anachronistic non sequitur. Like many of our educational elite, he likely brings this ghastly companion everywhere he goes.

This nation must get beyond this. I'm sure Mr. Jefferson was wrong about a lot of things. My solution is simple: We pardon both O.J and Jefferson and move on.

"Two Concepts of Liberty''

Isaiah Berlin's 1959 essay, ''Two Concepts of Liberty,'' is considered a major contribution to political theory. In it, he made a distinction between negative liberty, that which the individual must be allowed to enjoy without state interference, and positive liberty, that which the state permits by imposing regulations that, by necessity, limit some freedoms in the name of greater liberty for all. The question asked by negative liberty is: “What is the area within which the subject…is or should be left to do or be what he wants to do or be, without interference by other persons?” Positive liberty, universally professed and practiced in the Sino-Soviet East, asks a very different question: “What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, one thing rather than another?”



“Negative” freedom is a familiar enough concept, defined by liberal and conservative theorists, from Locke and Hobbes to Mill, Constant, Bentham, and Tocqueville. They have disagreed as to the area to be left to the individual free of society’s control but they all have agreed that something must be left— “To invade that preserve, however small, would be despotism.”



It is shocking to reflect on how new the doctrine of negative freedom is. It is a recent creation. Creation. Freedom, as an inherent part of mankind, is new and, as such, is fragile. There is no obvious evolutionary channel that was followed to create it, no obvious provenance. It has no discernible history in mankind before the Middle Ages. It has not, until recently, become a context in which to view man and his behavior.
Mr. Berlin writes:
There seems to be scarcely any consciousness of individual liberty as a political ideal in the ancient world. … The domination of this ideal has been the exception rather than the rule, even in the recent history of the West. Nor has liberty in this sense often formed a rallying cry for the great masses of mankind. The desire not to be impinged upon, to be left to oneself, has been a mark of high civilization both on the part of individuals and communities. The sense of privacy itself, of the area of personal relationships as something sacred in its own right, derives from a conception of freedom which, for all its religious roots, is scarcely older, in its developed state, than the Renaissance or the Reformation.

Positive liberty is older. Philosophically, this kind of liberty rests on the assumption that there is one “real” human nature, with “rational” needs. Every prophet of positive freedom, from Plato to Khrushchev, thinks he knows what this “real” human nature is.
He write:
This renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own sake, in their, not my, interest. I am then claiming that I know what they truly need better than they know it themselves [and they would not resist me if they were as rational and as wise as I. … But I may go on to claim a good deal more than this. I may declare that they are actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist, because there exists within them an occult entity—their latent rational will, or their “true” purpose—and that this entity, although it is belied by all that they overtly feel and do and say, is their “real” self, of which the poor empirical self in space and time may know nothing or little; and that this inner spirit is the only self that deserves to have its wishes taken into account. Once I take this view I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name, or on behalf, of their “real” selves.

Freedom and Safety

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” --Thomas Jefferson


This Planned Parenthood atrocity will confuse everyone. First, it is another example of one man's vision, essentially the tyranny of one. It underlies philosophies, revolutions, religions and art. It is the hallmark of the seeker of truth, from the hermit to the zealot. This has always been a problem in the world and especially in this nation which has been created to protect the minority from the majority. (Jefferson said a democracy was mob rule.) Second, it raises the problem of freedom vs. security, the essence of the justification for autocracies and monarchies.
Obama said immediately "Enough is enough" and launched on gun ownership. So constitutional guarantees have to be withdrawn. This is in opposition to the freedom of strangers to come to this country--at some at least theoretical risk to its citizens-- which apparently is sacrosanct and  cannot be challenged. While this is clearly inconsistent and irrational, that is not an unusual position for Obama.

But it is also beside the point. The point is freedom, an inalienable right. Regrettably security is not, it is only an effort and a hope. It is a desire where freedom is a fact. Freedom is the national agent, security is a hoped for effect.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, wrote, "They have elevated safety -- which is a goal of government -- to the level of freedom -- which created the government. This common and pedestrian argument makes the creature -- safety -- equal its creator -- freedom. That is a metaphysical impossibility because it presumes that the good to be purchased is somehow equal to the free choices of the purchaser.
Liberty is the default position. Liberty is the essence of our natural state. Liberty cannot possibly be equal to a good we have instructed the government to obtain.
It cannot be balance, because liberty and safety are not equals, as one created the other. It can only be bias -- a continual predisposition toward and preference for freedom.
Every conceivable clash between the free choices of persons and their instructions to their government to safeguard freedom must favor the free choices because freedom is inalienable. Just as I cannot authorize the government to take away your freedom any more than you can authorize it to take away mine, a majority of all but one cannot authorize the government in a free society to take freedom from that one individual. So if somehow freedom and safety do clash, it is the free choice of each person to resolve that clash for himself, and not one the government can morally make."

Monbiot Bearing Greeks

A recent article in the Guardian sees the Greek failure as a battle between the rich and the poor, with flint-eyed evil plundering wide-eyed innocence.  And this is, of course, as in all modern questions, dialectic--which is to say resolvable only as one-sided and righteous. There has been no Greek input to the problem at all.
It is here: http://gu.com/p/4aemb/sbl 

This is a peculiar article but has this lovely and revealing line: "This is the true road to serfdom: disinventing democracy on behalf of the elite."
The Road to Serfdom is, of course, Hayek's classic book on economies. It is decidedly and famously anti-elitist. In it he argues that central planning is morally objectionable as it suppresses freedom. More, it is doomed to fail because it denies the small steps that occur in everyday life where decisions are made.

The objections to Hayek are very straight foreword but rarely made. Orwell said, "[A] return to 'free' competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the state." So, for Orwell, the people would be at the mercy of unscrupulous businessmen rather than unscrupulous politicians and, for some reason that I do not think history supports, he thinks powerful politicians can be benign. This, I think,  contains the basic conflict between Progressivism and the Hayek-conservative-de Tocqueville position: The irresponsible market versus the irresponsible government. But, again, it is more than a philosophical difference, it is practical. Hayak showed that manipulation of the economy, fueled too much by debt and not enough by productive income, sacrificed long term decisions for short term ones--the exact error we criticize single-quarter/bottom-line-obsessed companies for. Average people suffer when economic decisions are bad.
Surprisingly, Keynes said this of the book: "In my opinion it is a grand book...Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement." He thought it impractical. The elite always feel that liberty is impractical. They always know better.
None of these are new arguments. What is interesting about this article that it assumes the unelected, self appointed leaders of these organizations--the government agencies and the central banks--are not perversions of leadership and governance. They are, rather, some sort of creed, some kind of philosophy, that is more general and outreaching than simple lust for power, money and gratification. It is not seen as simple bad, uncontrolled government--on both sides. So, somehow, this philosophy sees an IMF member running naked after a cleaning woman in a four-star hotel hallway as an aberration rather than an example of their nature.
One can saddle these self-important predatory and arrogant characters with philosophy if one likes but applying Hayek's philosophy to them would be a serious reach.