Thoughts on the “Vice” Episode on Charlottesville
Partly because I had technical hang-ups and partly because I wanted to collect my thoughts, I’ve waited a bit before saying anything publicly about this shocking video on Charlottesville. So here are my reactions, and again I’m closing the comments on this because I think that will help to contain further fighting.
==> It will possibly be the case that this post will anger/disappoint everyone who reads it. If so, I hope that’s because I am truly trying to step outside of the standard reactions to the episode, i.e. either “we told you so” or “but what about antifa!” It’s also true that some of what I say below is self-serving but I’ve waited a couple days to search my motivations and I hope my remarks are helpful.
==> I used the word “shocking” quite literally when I’m describing the episode. I know people post that kind of crap (said in the video) online from anonymous accounts, but I was truly shocked that people would sit there with a camera rolling and say those kinds of things. So for some of you who may have thought (based on past reactions from me to concerns about the “alt right”) that I was being naive, fair enough, I am admitting that it’s still hard for me to believe that people are actually marching with Nazi flags and saying things like that on camera.
==> For those in certain circles in the libertarian community, the worst aspect of this video is that it features a guy Chris Cantwell. He used to be a part of what we can call the “liberty movement.” It’s because of his presence in the video that I am making this post.
==> However, before I talk about Cantwell, I want to first say that to me, the fact that former self-described libertarian(s) have anything to do with this stuff, is not nearly as disturbing as the fact that self-described Christians do. It’s not simply that Christians are supposed to show they are Jesus’ disciples through their love, but that on the specific issue of anti-Semitism, God’s chosen people were Jewish. Their Lord is Jewish. His inner circle were Jews. The author of much of the New Testament (Paul) was Jewish, an expert in the Mosaic Law. As far as “They killed Jesus, His blood is on their hands!” well yes, but the Bible teaches that we all killed Jesus through our sins. His blood is on all of our hands, and it’s what cleanses us. So in addition to being repugnant, to hear self-described Christians preaching hatred of the Jewish people is nonsensical to me.
==> Regarding Cantwell: Since I have interacted with this guy and to see him end up in that HBO episode, it is shocking and sad. I could tell from the transcript of a speech he gave (years ago) that he was very depressed, and it looks like he apparently descended further into his own personal hell.
==> For those who don’t know the backstory, this guy had started out as an “edgy” comedian / political commentator type. He built up a following on social media of people who appreciated his lack of concern for “PC thought police” for his jokes. The more outrageous he got, the more people began backing away. (To be clear, these were just crude and mean things, I had never even heard about the anti-Semitic stuff until watching the Vice video. But then again, he really hadn’t been on my radar for a while so perhaps people who were more familiar with him were not surprised by the Vice video.)
==> I struggled a lot with this last major point, because believe me, I realize how defensive and “but what about!” it sounds. But I really do mean the following sincerely. Recently I’ve had a run in with someone demanding that I sign this pledge to demonstrate that I oppose the ideas of Nazi Germany. In general, I think lists like this are goofy, and in particular I’m not signing something because somebody demands that I do.
In light of Cantwell being in that video, I imagine the people who agree that libertarians should sign that pledge will be thinking, “See? Even if you and your close buddies don’t personally endorse those views, it’s problematic that for some reason, it attracts a certain type.”
I am pushing back against that argument right now; that is the sole purpose of me bringing this up. First of all, Cantwell rejected libertarianism precisely because it did not allow for enough violence, in his book. He literally wrote a blog post criticizing Rothbard’s writings on proportionality. So that’s very good for the integrity of the libertarian movement; its principles–enunciated by Rothbard–eject someone who likes violence.
Second, one of the people who signed that pledge has literally endorsed the legitimacy of mass murder of rich people on Twitter. This is well known in libertarian circles; it’s not like I follow the guy’s Twitter account. This guy also subscribes to the labor theory of value and is definitely a leftist as opposed to a right-wing libertarian.
So, does anyone think we need to stop and set up a pledge, showing that as libertarians we reject mass murder and are familiar with all of the communist purges of property owners in the 20th century? No, nobody thinks we need to do that. I have no idea if that guy’s tweet was just a bad joke or what, but nobody is accusing the people around him of wink-winking at left-wing radicals who smash property and kill capitalists.
So yes, the HBO video was truly shocking to me and I am reflecting on whether my reactions to all the chaos is still correct. Yet I don’t think there is any real danger of white supremacists gaining power anytime soon; these people are all being ridiculed, fired, and threatened with violence to the applause of the entire world. (Ask yourself: Five years from now, one college professor tells his class, “Sure Stalin killed millions, but he did some good things too,” and another college professor says, “Sure Hitler killed millions, but he did some good things too.” Which one gets fired? Do you seriously think there is any doubt on that question?) Even so, a week ago I would not have predicted what I saw on that HBO video, so I am reflecting on my overall assessment of the situation.
What I am quite certain of is that the work I’ve been doing, and that of my closest colleagues, is conducive to human liberty and peace, and that none of us is at all trying to make the type of people in that video feel welcome. If I haven’t engaged in public denunciations on social media, it’s because I think that is counterproductive. The people featured in that episode all grew up in this country learning that our society thinks Hitler is literally the worst person who ever lived. (Seriously: When you do a philosophical thought experiment in the US, you say, “If you had a time machine and could kill baby Hitler…”) It’s not that these people didn’t get the memo, and were simply misinformed on this point. For whatever reason, they have decided to go down a path where they are utter social pariahs. I truly do not think public denunciations of Nazi Germany are what will help the country right now.
In contrast, I think people saying, “Initiating violence is always wrong, even if it’s against people espousing hateful ideas” are doing a great service, at risk of being denounced themselves. They are the truly courageous ones right now, in my book.
Responding to Steve Landsburg on Government Debt
Steve graciously commented on my recent talk from Mises U, in which I rehashed the Great Debt Debate of 2012. (Steve left a comment here and here.) Below, I will respond to Steve’s points individually. But before doing that, let me give an analogy.
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A HYPOTHETICAL DEBATE ON GUNS
PAUL: It’s impossible for handguns to hurt our grandkids, so long as they are wearing bulletproof vests.
BOB: What the heck are you talking about? I could shoot the grandkid in the head. Dead.
STEVE: Well no, actually it would be the bullet that would cause the actual pain there; the handgun is incidental. Indeed, I could kill someone with a rifle or indeed any device that accelerated a bullet. Furthermore, a handgun without bullets can’t hurt our grandkids. So Bob, you are actually wrong on this, and Paul is right.
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AN ACTUAL DEBATE ON GOVERNMENT DEBT
PAUL: It’s impossible for debt to hurt our grandkids, so long as they hold the Treasuries.
BOB: What the heck are you talking about? We could have overlapping generations like this. Utility up for earlier generations and down for later ones.
STEVE: Well no, actually it would be the taxes that would cause the actual pain there; the debt is incidental. Indeed, I could cause utility movements with simple transfer payments. If the government ran up big debts today but never taxed anybody to pay the interest or principal, clearly our grandkids would not be harmed in the way you think. So Bob, you are actually wrong on this, and Paul is right.
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Now on to Steve’s specifics, with his words in italics and mine in normal text:
Your chart and your presentation are very clear and engaging (as one expects from Bob Murphy). Also, a big thumbs-up on the beard.
I always liked Steve.
1) Your chart does not display the effect of govt borrowing; it displays the effect of a Social Security system (with old people receiving transfers of various amounts in various generations). If you financed exactly the same system through taxation, you’d get exactly the same results. In year 1, we tax Young Bob 3 apples and give them to Old Al. In year 2, we tax Young Christy 6 apples and give them to Old Bob. Et cetera.
All of the effects you’re illustrating would have been exactly the same if you’d financed all the transfers by taxation instead of borrowing. It’s the transfers that are having all the real effects.
Your particular assumptions lead to different sized transfers in different years. But any pattern of transfers you care to specify can be achieved equally well by appropriate timed borrowing or similarly timed taxation.
See my analogy above.
There is no doubt that Krugman thought it was our grandkids owning the bonds that made all the difference. This is why I was so frustrated with Steve at the time of the debate. Steve was making a series of correct statements showing how government financing was a red herring, but in that framework, “we owe it to ourselves” is still a non sequitur. And yet that was literally the mantra of Abba Lerner, and it was explicitly adopted by Krugman and Dean Baker.
That’s all Nick Rowe and I were doing with our simplistic thought experiments. We were trying to show as simply as possible that Lerner and Krugman were simply mistaken when they argued that “we owe it to ourselves” therefore meant government debt (and yes the taxation to service it) couldn’t hurt our grandkids to our benefit.
I myself believed this at first. Then I realized Nick was right. (Don Boudreaux was right too, but it was Nick’s specific numerical examples that made me realize I was wrong.) Dean Baker himself later admitted that theoretically his original position was wrong, and switched to an empirical defense. To my knowledge, Krugman never realized the problem.
2) You’ve assumed a 100% interest rate. This means that in each year, people adjust their bond purchases until, at the margin, they consider two apples in old age a perfect substitute for one apple in their youth.
Therefore:
Al is a winner.
Bob is neither a winner nor a loser. (He gains 6 “old age” apples, which exactly compensates him for his loss of 3 “youth” apples.)
Christy is neither a winner nor a loser.
Dave is neither a winner nor a loser.
Eddy is neither a winner nor a loser.
Frank, George, and the rest are losers — because they get taxed. The bottom line is that you hurt people by taxing them. Again, this would be true with or without the borrowing program.
I didn’t go back to check this, but I *think* you said Bob, Christy, Dave and Eddy were winners. If so, I think that’s a mistake.
No, in the very simple example I sketched out, there is no private borrowing. I specified actual utility functions and so the Excel sheet told me who had more or less utility, relative to the consume-your-endowment baseline.
In a more general framework, yes we have to allow for private credit markets, but even there the government can improve the utility to lenders by offering a higher interest rate (relative to default risk) than the market. I will do more work on this once I see how far things have been taken in the literature.
(Steve anticipates a bunch of these subtleties in the following, but I don’t see how it overturns my position:)
3) Your simplifying assumptions mask the most interesting (to me) issues. Namely: Because the govt is essentially doing people’s saving for them, they face a reduced incentive to save on their own. This isn’t an issue in your model because they can’t save without the govt anyway. But in the real world, this means people will engage in less private saving, so there will be less investment (and in fact suboptimal investment) which hurts
all generations going forward above and beyond what your chart shows.
(This is the essence of Martin Feldstein’s calculations of the social cost
of Social Security.) But once again, this effect will be exactly the
same whether you finance your program through taxes or through borrowing.I should add, though it’s a second-order effect, that some borrowing is inframarginal, so the govt, by making borrowing possible, can make some people better off. For example, we know that the last apple Bob borrows is, for him, a perfect substitute for 1/2 a present apple (otherwise he’d borrow more). But his first and second borrowed apples might be worth more to him than 1/2 a present apple apiece. So Bob can be a winner here, though I think this is a relatively minor point in the context of the issues you’re trying to get at. (Or maybe it’s a major point, if I haven’t fully understood your purpose.)
Potpourri
==> Tom Woods interviews Federico Fernandez on the real legacy of Che.
==> Rob Bradley writes a tribute to Milton Friedman on 105th anniversary of his birth, esp. his views on energy.
==> I take issue with Tyler Cowen’s recent post when he implied that the serious conservative intellectuals were all fine with a carbon tax. (Tyler had been, in his mind, defending the honor of conservatives from Paul Krugman.)
==> I want to alert readers (especially European ones) to the Xoán de Lugo Institute. (I just linked to the English-language version of it.) Here’s how they describe themselves:
The Xoán de Lugo Institute seeks to produce and disseminate studies and opinions in the field of social sciences to promote the values of free market, private property and a society of free individuals. Its geographical scope is primarily the galician society, but studies and considerations about other areas of interest, in accordance with these values, will be included.
Especially if you can read Spanish / Galician, the site has a lot of original articles (with some reprints from Mises Brasil). I was pleasantly surprised to learn of this hotbed of anarcho-capitalist theory.
Tom and Bob Triple Play
I am swamped with work so I can’t really do more than just point you to these, but…
==> For Liberty Classroom, Tom and I did a Q&A with some of his subscribers, which he then made episode 960 of his show. It’s not as polished as a regular podcast episode but if you can get into the rhythm then it has some good content.
==> Ep. 97 of Contra Krugman was recorded in front of a live audience at Mises U. We talked about Cantillon effects and central banking.
==> Ep. 98 of Contra Krugman is on Irving Kristol and the “skinny repeal.” Plus Easter egg at the end.
I Throw Scott Sumner Under the Bus
In a recent EconLog post, Scott writes:
You are about to take a bus from Zurich to Milan, right over the Alps. You have three buses to choose from:
1. Bus A is a self-driving machine, fitted with a rear-mounted camera and the latest automatic steering mechanism, designed by noted Swiss engineer Johan Taylor. When the camera sees that the bus has deviated too far to the right of the road, it automatically steers the bus to the left, and vice versa.
2. Bus B is driven by Johanna Yellen, widely regarded as one of Switzerland’s best bus drivers.
3. Bus C is a complicated human/machine hybrid. It has forward looking cameras, that feed road images into a large building, in real time. About 10,000 bus drivers sit at the controls of a simulator, and steer the bus as they think is appropriate. The average of all of their steering decisions is fed back to the bus in real time, in order to adjust the steering mechanism. To motivate good steering decisions, the 10,000 bus drivers are rewarded according to whether their individual steering decisions would have led, ex post, to a smoother and safer drive than that produced by the consensus.
Which bus would you take?
Put aside your views on monetary policy for a second. The answer to this is CLEARLY (2). We know this is the case, because people routinely take buses all the time. These buses are not self-driven or driven by 10,000 people, but instead by a driver. If people knew, “This particular driver has been rated one of the best in the country,” then they would be even more comfortable with it.
And yet, Scott obviously thinks the right answer here is (3), which corresponds to his monetary proposals. My comment:
I’m being dead serious: Anyone who answered “C” to Scott’s question is having his or her hand forced by prior commitment to NGDP targeting. There’s no way in the world you would get on that kind of bus if it were driving through the Alps. You would first want several years of tests on flat county roads.
And I’m not just quibbling with the analogy. For the exact same reason, you should be very wary of NGDPLT proposals.
For what it’s worth, Scott responded to me: “Bob, i’ve written papers on how the proposal can be tested, and gradually implement to reduce risk of error.”
The Jewish Calendar a Microcosm of History
In our Bible study we covered Leviticus 23, and this was the ending of the commentary from Guzik. I thought it was very intriguing:
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1. Structurally, the first four feasts are linked together, and the last three feasts are also linked – and there is a separation of time between these two groups of feasts.
2. The group of the first four feasts relate to the work of Jesus in His first coming, of His earthly ministry.
a. The feast of Passover clearly presents Jesus as our Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7), the Lamb of God who was sacrificed, and whose blood was received and applied, so the wrath of God would pass us over.
b. The feast of Unleavened Bread relates time of Jesus’ burial, after His perfect, sinless sacrifice on the cross, during which He was received by God the Father as holy and complete (the Holy One who would not see corruption, Acts 2:27), perfectly accomplishing our salvation.
i. We may regard the burial (or actually, entombment) of Jesus as a small thing in God’s redemptive plan; but it was an essential part of Paul’s gospel: For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)
c. The feast of Firstfruits relates to the resurrection of Jesus, who was the first human to receive resurrection; He is the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18) and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep . . . Christ the firstfruits, afterwards those who are Christ’s at His coming. (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23)
d. The feast of Pentecost obviously is connected with the birth of the Church and the “harvest” resulting (Acts 2); significantly, in the ceremony at the feast of Pentecost, two unleavened loaves of bread are waved as a holy offering to God, speaking of the bringing of “unleavened” Gentiles into the church.
3. Between the first set of four feasts and the second set of three feasts, there is a significant time gap – almost four months, which, significantly, was a time of harvest in Israel; even as our current age is a time of harvest for the church, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.(Romans 11:25)
4. The second group of the last three feasts relate to events connected with the second coming of Jesus.
a. The feast of Trumpets speaks of the ultimate assembly of God’s people at the sound of a trumpet – the rapture of the Church (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17), and of the gathering of Israel for the special purpose God has for them in the last days.
b. The Day of Atonement not only speaks of the ultimate, perfect atonement Jesus offered on our behalf, but also of the affliction – and salvation – Israel will see during the Great Tribulation.
i. It will truly be a time when the soul of Israel is afflicted, but for their ultimate salvation; as Jeremiah 30:7says regarding that period: Alas! For that day is great, so that none is like it, and it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.
c. The feast of Tabernacles speaks of the millennial rest of comfort of God for Israel and all of God’s people; it is all about peace and rest, from beginning to end.
i. Tabernacles is specifically said to be celebrated during the millennium (Zechariah 14:16-19).
5. Significantly, there is good evidence that each of the four feasts relevant to the first coming of Jesus saw their prophetic fulfillment on the exact day of the feast.
a. Jesus was actually crucified on the Passover (John 19:14). His body would have been buried, and His holy and pure sacrifice acknowledged by God the Father during the Feast of Unleavened Bread following, and He would have risen from the dead on Firstfruits, the day after Passover’s Sabbath. Additionally, the church was founded on the actual day of Pentecost.
b. For this reason, many speculate it would be consistent for God to gather His people to Himself at the rapture on the day of the feast of trumpets – on the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. This can certainly be regarded as a possibility.
If Libertarians Reject the “Left/Right Spectrum” Then Why Do We Use Those Terms?
I’m genuinely asking the question. (And this isn’t just coming from me; I’ve seen other people in the last few months making this point.)
On the one hand, we libertarians like to roll our eyes at standard political surveys or classification schemes in which Adolf Hitler is the polar opposite of Josef Stalin. We like to point out that they are both socialists and that it makes much more sense to have a spectrum of degrees of State control over people’s lives. I totally agree with this standard libertarian view.
On the other hand, libertarians often self-sort into left/right, or at least distinguish themselves from other libertarians with such labels. And to be frank, I know exactly what they mean. (I don’t want this post to turn into a proxy war for the recent flare up, so let’s keep it on-topic in the comments.)
Does the reconciliation go something like this? I’m just throwing it out there:
“It’s not perfect, but we have to use words conventionally and so if someone is a ‘leftist’ we mean the person wants to focus on reducing income inequality, oppression of minorities, police brutality, and gender stereotypes in the workplace. If someone is coming from ‘the right’ we mean the person cares about maintaining the culture, tradition, family, church. However, most people just assume that the *way* to achieve these goals is through State power, and hence a ‘radical leftist’ is a Marxist, while a ‘radical right-winger’ is a Nazi. So a left-libertarian is someone who rejects the means of State power to achieve them, but endorses the typical leftist’s goals, and likewise for a right-libertarian.”
How’s that?
Who Bears the Burden of Government Debt?
As I explain in this video, I might get hit by a bus, so I wanted to go on record explaining this stuff. And here’s the link to the legendary “The Economist Zone” post.
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