05 Nov 2008

A Black Libertarian Reflects on Obama’s Win

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Over at TAE, Dan D’Amico is telling the old fogeys that race isn’t important to the young kids these days. In response, Steve Horwitz pointed out this blog post by a black libertarian.

I think it’s probably a good sign that young people like Dan (and me) don’t see what the big deal is, because the notion that you wouldn’t vote for somebody because of his race (rather than his quasi-Marxism) is so alien to us. But the post linked above made me pause and realize that yeah, it’s kind of a big deal what just happened.

05 Nov 2008

Practical (Yet Still Free) Advice

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Lest my readers feel that they get nothing but hard-hitting analysis suitable for abstruse thought experiments, let me share a very useful tip gleaned from actual experience:

In your work environment–whether a home office or in a skyscraper–if you use an electric kettle, and the printer cable becomes draped across the little switch that pops up when the water is done boiling, be very careful. The water will sit there boiling and boiling and boiling (because the cord is holding down the little switch), and the kettle handle gets really freaking hot.

05 Nov 2008

Naomi Wolf Stands Corrected

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I don’t really have that much to say about the Obama win; it was what most people were expecting. I’m glad that at least Obama’s economic policies will be labeled “Marxist” rather than John McCain’s Obama-lite policies which would have been touted as “market-oriented.” At least now, if and when we get ration cards for milk and the wait times for kidney transplants go up, we’ll be able to blame it on interventions in the marketplace. I will have a column this Saturday at TownHall that elaborates on this theme.

I should also admit that my enthusiasm for this interview with Naomi Wolf was a bit misplaced. I thought she was great for saying (start listening at 21:00) something like, “There’s not going to be an election as usual…Why on earth would he [Bush] hand over power to a Barack Obama presidency after an election? This is crazy thinking, this is denial, and we have to snap out of it.”

Well, it looks like that was a bit overblown. Now to distance myself, I said at the time (when I was arguing with people who pooh-poohed Wolf’s shrill warnings) that I thought she was being naive for assuming Obama was outside of the Powers That Be. His backtracking on foreign policy convinced me that he would go along to get along, and wouldn’t pose a serious threat to The Man.*

So in fairness, I want to publicly acknolwedge that Wolf’s interview now sounds humorously alarmist. I am forced to make this post, because if (say) there had been a subway attack on November 2 in New York City, such that the Bush administration “had” to postpone the election, then obviously I would been pointing to Wolf as a genius. So fair is fair, she was wrong about this election.

* The Man will remain unnamed because I don’t know exactly who he is, and even if I did I wouldn’t let him know that I knew his identity.

04 Nov 2008

George Carlin on Not Voting

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Scott, in the comments at MR, posted a link to this Carlin clip. I don’t actually endorse everything Carlin says here; for example, he thinks awful politicians prove how awful Americans are in general, when I would say it rather proves how awful democratic institutions are. But in any event, it’s always fun to hear Carlin’s take on something like this:

04 Nov 2008

Why I Don’t Vote

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Today it’s appropriate for me to summarize my reasons for not voting. To put it in a nutshell, democracy is a repugnant and ridiculous system, and so I have no ethical duty to vote. And then, my vote by itself will almost certainly have no effect on the election, and hence I have no pragmatic interest in voting. So why would I do something morally dubious if it won’t even make a difference?

Even though I’m sure you’ve heard this before, let’s review just why your individual vote does NOT count. In order for your vote to make a difference (in the presidential race), your state would have to be decided by a margin of exactly one. In other words, suppose you don’t vote. So long as the candidate who wins your state does so by a margin of two or more people, then your decision to abstain meant absolutely nothing.

But it gets worse. Suppose against all odds that it works out that the popular vote in your state is a dead tie, considering everybody else who votes, and then you cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of your candidate. (We already know this would never ever happen.) Even so, your vote still only affects the identity of the next president, if the margin in the Electoral College is close enough such that your state decides the outcome.

OK, now I should dispose of some of the obligatory objections.

* “That doesn’t make sense. If you’re saying it’s rational to not vote, then nobody should vote. But then you get to write yourself in as president. So then everybody should vote. Duh, you economists are stupid.”
—> No, there is nothing wrong with cost/benefit analysis, so long as you are framing the costs and benefits correctly. The reason I am virtually certain my vote won’t affect the outcome, is that I am virtually certain that millions of Americans will stupidly vote. When Free Advice gains 10 million daily readers, perhaps I will revise my forecasts of voter turnout.

(Technically, if you do a formal model the symmetric Nash equilibrium is a “mixed strategy” where everybody is indifferent between voting or not, and so everyone is willing to pick a strategy of voting with probability x, where x is really small. So x times the whole population means you expect a certain amount of people to show up and vote, and that expectation is just enough to render you indifferent. But in the real world, we’re not in a Nash equilibrium–at least, not if everyone just gets utility from influencing the outcome of the election–and so I get strictly more utility by not voting. Also, I should add that I don’t really view the world as if I’m “in” a game theoretic model, I’m just showing how there’s nothing contradictory about the analytical framework.)

* “What if everyone thought like you?”
—> If everyone thought like me that would be great. Nobody would vote, and so 535 people in Washington DC saying, “Send us half your income so we can bomb people and bail out bankers” would be a funny joke. If you want to do a Kantian deal, and pick the action you wish everyone else would, then why in the world are you voting for a guy you yourself admit is the “lesser of two evils”? That makes no sense at all. It’s one thing to do a morally odious action because it provides tangible utilitarian benefits; e.g. making the bus swerve so it hits 3 people instead of 30. But why participate in voting in a guy you think will do evil, when your participation doesn’t do anything to limit the evil? If you think Obama/McCain is the worse candidate, your vote for McCain/Obama doesn’t do anything to contain him. Obama/McCain would win/lose with or without your vote, with about 99.9999% certainty.

* “If you don’t vote, then you have no right to complain about our government.”
—> This is just about the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard, and there is stiff competition in this category. We all agree that our government is run by thieves and liars, right? OK, so how do they get in there? Because voters put them there. So you’re telling me that I’m responsible for the horrible people in DC, rather than the people who actually voted for them?

* “It’s because of the apathy of people like you that our system isn’t working properly.”
—> This is related to the above objection. I really would like people who believe this, to just think through the implications of this type of statement. It means that the people who actually vote are (in general) morons and/or evil, whereas the people who don’t vote are (in general) wise and virtuous. You have to believe that, if you claim that increasing voter turnout will improve the politicians we end up getting. I thank you for the kind words, but I think you are mistaken. If (as in some countries) the government forced people to vote, I don’t think our politicians would suddenly become honest statesmen (and women). The reason democracy yields awful results is that it’s a repugnant, ridiculous system, not because we’re too lazy to “make it work.”

WHY DEMOCRACY IS A REPUGNANT, RIDICULOUS SYSTEM
==================================================

I’ll close by defending those strong words. Imagine if you had to get your brakes fixed, but you weren’t allowed to pick the company to do the work. Instead, there was an election for city mechanic, and everyone in your city had the option to cast a vote deciding which person got to fix your brakes. Also, that person could then decide how much to charge you, and, you didn’t even have the option of switching to riding the bus–you had to get in your car everyday after the work was done. Would you like that system?

If you are a parent, I’ve got an even better one. Suppose you didn’t get to choose who babysits your kid(s), but instead the position is decided by majority rule. If you are just skimming this it probably isn’t sinking in. Seriously, imagine that you couldn’t control who watches your kid(s), but that perfect strangers had just as much individual say as you did. And not only that, but that the pool of eligible candidates would be restricted, to those potential babysitters who didn’t mind enduring a year-long investigation into their lives, with the backers of other potential babysitters starting nasty rumors and so on. Do you think the outcome would be good? Or would you rather the freedom to pick your own babysitter, using your own criteria?

Well, I hope you can see now what I mean when I say democracy is a repugnant and ridiculous system. It’s true, you could argue that there are some things like national defense or the legal system, where it is practically impossible to have the freedom that we all agree is ideal in cases like fixing your brakes or hiring a babysitter. If that’s your view, I encourage you to check out this pamphlet [pdf].

In conclusion, I don’t vote because I see no reason to participate in the collective anointing of someone who will violate property rights and end up killing innocent people, when my vote doesn’t even have the slightest chance of influencing the outcome.

03 Nov 2008

Peace Candidate Obama Calls for Civilian National Security Force "Just as Powerful" as Conventional Military

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HT2EPJ. I don’t know the context of these remarks, but does it even matter? When someone calls for a “civilian national security force” that is “just as strong, just as powerful, just as well-funded” as the military, I think that should give people pause before making this guy the most powerful person in world history.

03 Nov 2008

Gordon Tullock on Not Voting

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Here is a short PBS video featuring Gordon Tullock and the typical game theory critique of mass voter turnout; HT2MR. (Incidentally, for my “third year paper” at NYU I came up with a way to get arbitrarily large voter turnout–where each voter only cared about the outcome–so long as certain conditions were satisfied in the voters’ preferences. Naturally the journals were not interested, even though I have heard plenty of economists say in conversation or in front of students that the result is impossible.)

One warning about the video, at the end the narrator seems to think he’s come up with a clever immanent critique, along the lines of, “If everyone followed Tullock’s advice, nobody would vote. But then it would be rational to vote, so…everyone would vote.” There’s no contradiction here; the game theorist would say you need to allow mixed strategies to get a Nash equilibrium. The narrator could just as well rip a game theoretic analysis of Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Tomorrow I will blog my own personal reasons for not voting. It relies partially on the Tullock view, but it’s more than that.

03 Nov 2008

Obama Says He Wants (Dirty) Coal Power Plants to Go Bankrupt

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I am sorry for the obviously partisan YouTube; I couldn’t find a neutral one that had the money quote as succinctly as this version.

I don’t know whether to find his frankness refreshing or scary. In other words, is he at least telling us exactly how he will kick the economy, or are his plans so broad that even his campaign rhetoric sounds like the below?