Persuasion Is More Powerful Than Violence
My latest Liberty Chat post pushes back against people trying to blame radical libertarian rhetoric for the recent shooting of two police officers in Las Vegas. An excerpt:
Thus we see that if the SPLC and others try to pin such violence on “anti-government rhetoric” then they have failed to carefully digest what the principled libertarian worldview actually is (surprise, surprise). Yes, it’s true that in his fiery writings Rothbard would refer to the State as a “gang of thieves writ large.” Yet from that worldview it does not follow that an individual is justified in attacking agents of the State. Libertarian theory certainly offers no defense for walking up to two random police officers eating pizza and opening fire, as allegedly happened in this case.
Even if a mob boss has systematically shaken you down, taking money from you over the years, in standard libertarian theory you’re not allowed to walk up to him point-blank and shoot him. That would be punishment in excess of the crime. So even for libertarians who take “the State is a big gang” as a genuine statement of fact, rather than a metaphor, it still doesn’t follow that one is justified in shooting at agents of the State, merely because they are working for a group that has stolen money from your paychecks.
Now let’s move on to the pragmatic considerations. Suppose there are readers who are not persuaded by my above appeals to justice and morality. Perhaps they’ll say, “This is war!” (which is always a sign that awful things are about to happen). Perhaps they’ll draw analogies with the American Revolution.
Yet hang on a second. It would be weird to look with pride upon the American colonists for their violent uprising against Great Britain, when what modern liberty lovers hate is the State that grew out of the American Revolution. The Confederate states tried to use violence to get the people in DC to back down. That didn’t work out very well. Not only did hundreds of thousands of people die, but the US empire emerged even stronger from the carnage of the 1860s.
Potpourri
==> My latest Mises CA post points out that Krugman has a very low bar for ObamaCare. David R. Henderson made different points about the same Krugman post, but I wanted to focus on just one issue in my post.
==> Ron Paul talks about the Spitznagel goat situation.
==> The Free State Project’s Carla Gericke wins her lawsuit against the police. (They had arrested her for filming them.)
==> Richard Ebeling comments on thick vs. thin.
==> Tom Woods was not invited to the recent conference on Catholicism and libertarianism.
==> Dan Simmons (a policy expert from IER) talks about “fracking” with Tom Woods.
No, We’re Not Inventing 1973 as the Starting Point for “Income Inequality” Stats
Judging from the comments in a previous post, you’d think that Dave Howden made up the idea that income inequality starting rising in 1973. No, that’s the low point, using the Piketty-Saez figures. Howden didn’t pick that number, progressives typically do when quoting figures. Just from a quick one that I googled:
As Isabel Sawhill of Brookings pointed out in one of the finest studies of income mobility, made with the Pew Foundation five years ago, “from 1947 to 1973, the rate of growth of the typical family’s income was unusually rapid, roughly doubling in a generation’s time. However, since 1973 the increase over a generation’s time has been much smaller, about 20 percent.”
The reason these stats do this, is that it gives them the biggest juice to their numbers. If you want to make Reagan look bad, for example, they’ll do stuff like quote “gains in the top 1%” from 1973-1992.
Potpourri
==> Bryan Caplan points out a problem with the stand-up economist’s cartoon introduction to climate change.
==> If you’re a fan of musician Tatiana Moroz, I encourage you to check out her “TatianaCoin” project. It’s an interesting way for fans to crowdfund artists using altcoins.
==> Phillip Magness summarizes outstanding data problems with Piketty.
==> Nick Rowe is so awesome. He has a post on Dutch Inequality Theory, which draws on his Dutch Capital Theory. I don’t even know what his point is; I just know it is awesome.
==> Chimps are good at finding Nash equilibria.
David Howden on Inequality
David Howden has a Mises CA post talking about the usual stats on income inequality. They typically start in 1973. (In a later post I’ll explain why they choose that date; it’s to goose the numbers.) Here’s Howden:
What happened in the early 1970s to explain the divergence? Maybe it was the end of the Bretton Woods system, and with it any nominal restraint on the Federal Reserve (and other central banks) to inflate at will.
When Austrian economists talk about “non-neutral” money, income inequality is, in a way, illustrative of their point. New money has to enter the economy somewhere. Someone has to spend it. Those who get early access to central- and bank-created money get to spend it first. That has the effect of pushing up prices, and in the process impoverishing everyone else.
Since late 2008, the Federal Reserve increased the monetary base by over $3 trillion dollars (about a 350% increase). That’s almost $10,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Do you remember receiving a cheque in the mail signed by Ben Bernanke or Janet Yellen? Don’t worry, I didn’t get one either.
On “Following Jesus”
There is an intriguing gospel story that, prima facie, suggests that Christianity is incompatible with earthly riches:
Jesus Counsels the Rich Young Ruler
16 Now behold, one came and said to Him, “Good[a] Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?”
17 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good?[b] No one is good but One, that is, God.[c] But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”
18 He said to Him, “Which ones?”
Jesus said, “‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ 19 ‘Honor your father and your mother,’[d] and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”[e]
20 The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept from my youth.[f] What do I still lack?”
21 Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
(Matthew 19: 16-22)
Now I had always thought that Jesus was tailoring His commands to this specific guy because Jesus knew that the man would not be willing to give up his material wealth. In other words, I had thought (and possibly I heard some conservative preacher even say this, I don’t remember) that the important thing is that a Christian would be willing to give up everything. I didn’t think Christians were supposed to read this passage and conclude, “Yikes, if I really want to go the extra mile, I need to sell all my stuff and go into ministry.”
The other day, I re-read another familiar story–that of the man possessed by a “legion” of demons. After Jesus casts the demons out into a herd of pigs, look what happens:
14 So those who fed the swine fled, and they told it in the city and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that had happened. 15 Then they came to Jesus, and saw the one who had been demon-possessed and had the legion, sitting and clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. 16 And those who saw it told them how it happened to him who had been demon-possessed, and about the swine. 17 Then they began to plead with Him to depart from their region.
18 And when He got into the boat, he who had been demon-possessed begged Him that he might be with Him. 19 However, Jesus did not permit him, but said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you.” 20 And he departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him; and all marveled. (Mark 5: 14-20)
Look at the part I put in bold. At that point, that guy has been given his life back, and he is ready to leave his family behind–without even saying goodbye!–to hop in the boat and follow Jesus. He actually begged Jesus to allow him to travel with Him. Yet Jesus said no, and told the guy to go back to his friends.
By no means would I dare to suggest that I understand all of the nuances in the various interactions Jesus had with people, but I think these two stories juxtaposed show that we shouldn’t draw sweeping conclusions from any single one. Jesus clearly did not want everyone who heard His voice to break off all existing social ties and physically follow Him around. Thus, the story of the demon-possessed man reassures me that Jesus gave those specific orders to the rich man, because Jesus wanted to reveal what that man valued most.
P.S. It detracts from the main message, but I also note that there is something odd/suspicious that when Jesus tells the guy to keep the commandments, his response is, “Which ones?”
Is the State More Like a Gym or an Army?
Not surprisingly, Gene Callahan did not care for my novel analysis of General Zod’s (brief) domination of planet Earth. Yet in his attempt to show how much I was misconstruing the average person’s support for the State, Gene seems to give away the whole game. Here’s Gene:
Bob Murphy claims “Thus, the average person defends the existence of the State not for principled reasons but instead as the lesser of two evils.”
This is true only by equivocating on the meaning of “the lesser of two evils.”
In one sense, we use the phrase all the time for things we don’t really think are evil, but that, if reality were different, and they became unnecessary, we would not engage in just for the heck of it. So, one might say “working out is the lesser of two evils” (when compared to getting fat and out of shape), or “paying those hospital bills is the lesser of two evils” (compared to dying of a heart attack). In cases like these, the person using the phrase “the lesser of two evils” does not actually think that exercising or paying for medical treatments are evil at all….They just are not pleasant things.
The other sense of the phrase indicates that one is stuck with two possibilities, both of which one considers to be actually evil: for instance, one believes one is faced with the choice of bombing the site of a nuclear weapon, killing innocent people nearby in the process, or allowing a nuclear launch from that site to destroy in major city, killing far more people.
If the average person says government is “the lesser of two evils,” they clearly mean it in the first sense: if they magically could have civil peace without having to pay taxes, they would prefer that to civil peace plus taxes. But not being in the thrall of an ideology, the average person is sensible enough to recognize that without a government, there is no civil peace. Given the nature of reality, government is not a “lesser evil,” it is a positive good.
I agree that there are two senses in which people often use the phrase “lesser of two evils.” I agree with Gene that picking something like exercising to lose weight is a good example of one sense of the term (where “evil” is just rhetorical), and I agree with Gene that killing innocent people because that seems to be the only technological method of preventing an even greater number of innocent deaths is a good example of the other sense (where “evil” is meant quite literally).
Where Gene and I disagree, is in classifying the State as something akin to working out, and not as an institution that inflicts very real injustices on innocent people. For one thing, in the real world, States kill innocent people all the time in order (their officials claim) to prevent greater deaths. So it’s weird that Gene’s very example shows that the State is a necessary evil in the second sense he lays out.
Now I suppose Gene will come back and say, “Oh come on, we’re talking about the State per se, not any particular State that happens to exist.” OK, and the State per se takes money from people who don’t support its activities; if it were truly voluntary, it would be a club, not a State. Taking money from people against their will is not akin to getting on the treadmill; it is akin to killing people against their will. It is an evil, that at best could be justified because it is necessary to avoid even greater evil.
Potpourri
==> The Detroit authorities are threatening to seize a billionaire hedge fund manager’s goats, which are grazing on land that the authorities claim is public. Bundy Ranch 2.0? (Just kidding. And it’s Mark Spitznagel.)
==> Richard Ebeling discusses the wisdom of Adam Smith.
==> An awesome photo of Milton Friedman and very young David R. Henderson, Jerry O’Driscoll, Jack High, and Richard Ebeling.
==> An interesting chart from Vox on global carbon dioxide emissions. Look at China and the US.
==> Tom Woods and Ron Paul talk about homeschooling.
==> I don’t agree with his overall stance, but Scott Sumner is pretty funny talking about the alleged “zero lower bound” in Europe.
==> Josie Wales on oppression (she’s against it).
==> This spiked article has some good observations about the reaction to the FT critique (HT2 AK). My favorite part:
When the Great Man himself responded to the FT, his annoyance at having to deal with someone raising questions about his awesome work was clear. ‘Ridiculous’
and ‘dishonest’ was how he initially described the FT’s findings. In his full reply, he says the FT’s points were ‘criticism for the sake of criticism’ – in other words, this wasn’t a genuine search for the truth. In response to a number of the FT’s specific charges, Piketty says that he often had to adjust the data because of their inadequacies, and he applied his best judgment. He admits that in a few cases he could have been more explicit in describing his adjustments.Such a response may lead to more questions, but not from his loyal supporters, who were busy celebrating Piketty’s ‘victory’ over the FT. ‘Piketty’s devastating point-by-point rebuttal’, says Robert Kuttner, shows that Giles ‘made a fool of himself’. Economist and New York Times contributor Justin Wolfers tweeted,‘Debate’s over folks’ – providing further evidence for Joel Kotkin’s theory of the spread of a ‘debate is over’ syndrome among the modern left, which seeks to impose a stifling conformity on a variety of issues (from climate change to the causes of poverty and the definition of marriage, among others). Krugman concluded that the FT-Piketty debate showed the persistence of inequality ‘deniers’– the same term of abuse thrown at today’s heretics who dare to question climate-change orthodoxy.
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