Oh noes! The lefties are mocking us!

It’s not just code for worship of wealth, but it is the vast majority of the policy they push. I’m thankful for Cato’s brief in Lawrence V Texas, but they people they have influence over tend to ignore that sort of thing. Cato makes a much bigger deal out of tax increases than it does traditional conservative political gay bashing.

I never really understand why there’s always such a pissing contest between lefties and libertarians in a world where governments hurt poor people so damn much. The continued existence of the US death penalty ALONE should be enough of a cause for unity.

“I never really understand why there’s always such a pissing contest between lefties and libertarians in a world where governments hurt poor people so damn much”

Possibly because the libertarian response is to say that individuals can hurt poor people much more efficiently than governments?

Of course this post conveniently overlooks that those on the political right tend to have higher rates of philanthropic giving than those on the left, and that this is true even when one controls for religion. While it was not always the case, in recent years those on the secular right (a rough proxy for libertarians) donate more than those on the secular left, and the propensity to give of those on the right is less elastic than those on the left (that is, patterns of giving are less responsive to changes in economic conditions). It also appears this pattern holds for rates of volunteer work and blood donations.

JHA

I think the hilarious thing here is that Julian Sanchez (and all the other principled libertarians) are basically in the position of someone who has applied for a job at Bernard Matthews Farms Ltd, in the capacity of “Senior Turkey” and are now acting all surprised at his plans for Christmas.

Of course this post conveniently overlooks that those on the political right tend to have higher rates of philanthropic giving than those on the left, and that this is true even when one controls for religion

Note that for the purposes of the study you’re implictly citing here, Charles Koch’s funding of the Charles Koch Foundation (later renamed the Cato Institute) constitutes “philanthropic giving”. And now he’s volunteering time to run it too!

@12 There’s quite a bit of research on this. A quick non-academic summary of some of the findings is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html
Much of the data was collected by Arthur Brooks for his book on the subject. The data is sound. Brooks’ explanations for the patterns are a bit speculative.

@13 some of the data would include gifts to 501(c)(3) political organiations as charitable giving, but this cuts both ways. e.g. it would include gifts to Cato, but also to most major environmenalist groups, etc. As for the Kochs, according to published reports, neither Charles nor David Koch has given anything to Cato of late, and together they are only responsible for a tiny share (~5 %) of Cato’s funding since its founding.

JHA

@10: This well-known phenomenon is explained by the fact donations to religious organisations themselves, used for their own purposes, are considered to be charitable in nature.

in recent years those on the secular right (a rough proxy for libertarians)

Good grief.

A Koch takeover would be unfortunate because Cato is more anti-imperialist than about 80% of the Democrats.

But as a matter of sociological and political fact the libertarian think-tank industry, for which Sanchez is a paid operative, is about shilling for the rich (and is financed as such).

Sanchez comes across as a reasonable guy, for a libertarian, and not particularly a corporate shill. But, as he’s about to find out, that leads to being an unemployed libertarian.

I realize it’s not to the (fascinating) point, but what the hell is “herp-derpery”?

@27: Let’s take health insurance as an example. As a moral matter I believe that there is a level of health care that a decent society provides to all, and that providing this publicly is a moral issue. This is less “I’ll give if you give” and more “this is the cost of our common social contract.” If you want a blunter take, people who benefit from public goods (such as universal education, roads, air traffic control, military defense, and so on) have no moral standing to act as parasites by refusing to pay their share; and we decide on what counts as a public good by democratic means.

Private charity suffers from a severe free rider problem: businesses, for example, can cut costs by treating employees badly, and rely on others to provide charity to their desperate employees. In the limit of a bad economy this can be a very successful model.

The remarkable thing about the Randians is that (and I admit this is a gross stereotype) they largely seem to be the kind of people who wouldn’t do that well in a Randian world – i.e. they are largely talkers, rather than doers, who largely survive off the largess of the powerful, and whose roles would not exist in the state they argue for.

The same is also true of most members of the various Western Communist Parties – they’d be first up against the wall in any dictatorship of the proletariat, as most revolutions have proven.

But with the Randians, there seems a particular hubris. Why aren’t they as succesful as Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs – or at least able to point to a Randian on that level of success? Or are they claiming that, to a man, they are being held back by the state and high taxes. That’s just weak! What kind of superman is that?

That too. Who are the other strong anti-imperialist voices in DC?

Cato was a strong anti-imperialist voice? Huh, I must have missed the big impact they had on our foreign policy. Here I was, under the impression that they primarily went to the wall over taxation and government regulations, with civil rights, drug legalization, and even fiscal responsibility filling the role of right-libertarian figleaves, on which no substantive action is forthcoming or expected.

“I realize progressives think libertarianism is just code for uncritical worship of rich people, …”

Oh, heavens, no. I think American right-libertarianism is just code for uncritical worship of extremely right-wing rich people, the ones who sign their paychecks. As for our wacky herp-derpery in general: Given that Mr. Sanchez will have some downtime before moving on to his next cozy sinecure funded by extremely right-wing rich people, I invite him to indulge in auto-eroticism with a George Soros figurine.

Of course this post conveniently overlooks that those on the political right tend to have higher rates of philanthropic giving than those on the left, and that this is true even when one controls for religion.

This has been disposed of in a couple of different ways, including by the original poster, but I’d like to add that the original post quite clearly contemplates the possibility that some unspecified number of libertarians might indeed donate oodles of money to the less fortunate. The passage was quite plain, and ended thus:

To those libertarians, I apologise in advance.

So, even if we equate libertarians to conservatives and refuse to differentiate between types of charitable giving, what’s Jonathan’s gripe?

Of course this post conveniently overlooks that those on the political right tend to have higher rates of philanthropic giving than those on the left, and that this is true even when one controls for religion.

The people who want to destroy pensions and medical care and education and labour standards and environmental standards are the real givers here.

Maybe there’s an opportunity here for George Soros or someone else to arrange a left-libertarian takeover of Cato, aided and abetted by the current management, who would prefer management that forces them to talk about the left-allied views of libertarians, rather than making them work for the current Republican party.

Ok, never mind. Though finding its meaning did no good to the schadenfreude level.

25: In Washington DC, there isn’t much. The Institute for Policy Studies mainly. Center for Economic and Policy Research does some foreign policy. The liberals are caught between the impulse to do good and the impulse not to support something that ends up blowing up a lot of innocent people. They usually come down somewhere in between.

When all is said and done, Cato is just a bunch of NIMBYs when it comes to their own philosophy. The Princes of the Boardroom can take over some other think tank, but not precious Cato.

True.

In a sense, this is highly analagous to standard corporate practices. Senior management as Koch Conglomerate, Inc, have become aware of a small firm they own (CATO, Inc). That firm was producing a product which was far from optimized (in the eyes of top management). It was wasting money on being cool, and producing good products which were not profitable. So they decided to take charge and restore economic efficiency.

The worker Julian Sanchez is young, single, childless, and has a good work reputation. He can leave, and not be harmed that much. Julian Sanchez Prime (40 years old, married, with two children) is not in such a good position, and will either knuckle under, or take an economic hit from which he won’t recover.

In normal circumstances, Julian Sanchez would be quite unconcerned with Julian Sanchez Prime’s predicament, offering a bunch of market pablum, and possibly also pointing out the JSP has been using other people’s property for his own purposes, and so has no reason to complain.

Because statements like ‘I don’t think a consistent leftist should care about helping poor, because a consistent leftist shouldn’t believe in rich and poor in the first place.’ don’t make sense at all.

@ HV

I don’t think a consistent leftist should care about helping poor, because a consistent leftist shouldn’t believe in rich and poor in the first place.

Huh? Surely a lefty can believe that there will be no rich and poor once end state leftism is reached but still accept that there are actual poor people now who need help until end state leftism can be implemented.

“Possibly because the libertarian response is to say that individuals can hurt poor people much more efficiently than governments?”

Zoinks??????

Surely even leftists don’t believe that uncritically. Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but doesn’t pretty much everyone, left, right, center, anarchist, libertarian, and socialist, realize that the government can hurt poor people much more efficiently than individuals?

Are you trying to say that libertarians are more willing to risk harm [than you are] from individuals *because* they are so [too??] worried about the intense amounts of harm that everyone realizes governments can dish out?

It seems weird how much time leftist spend worrying about libertarians, who are not now and don’t seem likely to be in power any time soon, instead of trying to find at least temporary common cause with them over completely insane right-wing politicians who overhype the war on terror to ‘leagally’ defend killing of citizens without trial well off the battlefield. (Oh, sorry that would be Obama.)

Surely a lefty can believe that there will be no rich and poor once end state leftism is reached but still accept that there are actual poor people now who need help until end state leftism can be implemented.

Sure, but I don’t think he would be a consistent lefty: helping the actual poor people now only delays the end state leftism.

Piglet @ 51 – ‘Social Security Reform’ means ‘destroy Social Security, loot it, and leave us all FUBAR’.

Consumatopia, at the ballot box he weighs the good of everyone’s money against the bad of just his money, or everyone else’s money as well? Your hypothetical leftist doesn’t get a pass on his using other people just because he does so through government

He weighs the good of the poor receiving the aid, the bad of the taxpayer paying the tax, and the bad of himself paying the tax. Because he’s a leftist, the first outweighs the second–possibly by enough that it’s worth it for him to pay the tax. (By selfish, I mean that he values his own utility disproportionately, not that he doesn’t value anyone else’s utility at all.)

On the other hand, when he’s considering his own donations, he weighs the good done by his donations alone against the bad of himself making the donation. The good done by his own donation is much smaller than the good (he believes) is done by the redistribution policy.

To put the point more sharply: if it takes the fear of the government to compel you to give, that means that is legitimate to force you to give. But that means there is a moral obligation to give irrespective of whether you are forced to.

I’m not sure I understand. The leftist assumes from the beginning that it is legitimate for voters to force taxpayers to pay for projects the voters like. In the absence of the voter’s will, it’s not legitimate for the government to force taxpayers to give up the money.

Corey Robin has a pretty good reply, so go read Corey.

Sound advice.

Sure, but I don’t think he would be a consistent lefty: helping the actual poor people now only delays the end state leftism.

Absolutely. All consistent lefties are only interested in forwarding their ideology and actually caring about the folks you advocate for is intellectually dishonest.

My thoughts on the presignation in case anyone cares-

Note that Sanchez’s argument isn’t about whether the Koch’s contractural property rights exist or are good/bad. It’s about, and I quote, exercising those rights as they seemingly intend to.

The Koch’s have stated that they have no intent to takeover Cato and turn it into (more of) a GOP propaganda arm. They have clearly stated that their intent is for Cato to continue being the staunch defender of freedom and liberty (for those who can afford it) that it has always been. Exactly as Sanchez wants. That despite the fact that Julian Sanchez does not buy into the Koch super-villain caricatures that are trotted out whenever the Koch’s want to do anything that doesn’t directly impact Julian Sanchez – the Koch’s are now lying and acting with deeply nefarious ulterior motives.

Anyways, that bit of apparently-not-ironic-in-the-least-bit filler aside, his argument isn’t that the Koch’s shouldn’t be allowed to do this – just that it’s a bad idea.

Why? Because it’ll reduce the credibility of Cato? I’m of the opinion that that ship sailed a long time ago, but even if we entertain Sanchez’s delirium that Cato is widely considered an objective and respected institute – it still doesn’t make any difference. How is taking over going to be a “bad idea” for the Koch’s? Julian Sanchez might value the idealized dream institute he thinks he works at, but no one else has to – not even the people who apparently own it lock, stock and barrel.

Unless of course, he means that the Koch’s would benefit more from Cato pretending to be independent while shilling for their wealthy owners like the mad hacks they are (IOW, the status quo).

Consumatopia, I think democracy confers legitimacy only within certain bounds. I’m still not convinced by the argument presented: he’s treating himself differently from all the other people paying the tax, and I’m not sure that’s justified in the moral reasoning being employed.

The problem isn’t the legitimacy of agreeing to use democracy and the state to solve particular problems of collective action, it’s that there have to be benefits that come with the state being involved to make the difference between taxation being a prudent idea and charity not.

What may also be inconsistent is making fun of poor propertarian’s inconsistencies, while defining a ‘lefty’ as someone who cares about all kinds of things.

Except in this case, I’m defining the inconsistent lefty as only really caring about reducing the suffering of the poor. I suppose that “all sorts of things” do fall into that category but there is some sort of consistency to it. And I suppose too that the poor propertarian is totally consistent if you just add the caveat that “property rights” mean his property rights – but I suspect that’s not what you’re trying to argue.

” even the people who apparently own it lock, stock and barrel”

The Kochs do not own a majority stake in Cato.

The dispute is about what should happen to the shares of a deceased original shareholder.

The current non-Koch shareholders claim that the widow of the original shareholder should own the shares. There is a clause in the by-laws to the effect that if a shareholder wants to sell his shares he should first offer to sell to Cato or the individual shareholders. Presumably the Kochs want to outbid the other shareholders. However, the clause does not make provisions for what happens to the shares in the case of the death of a shareholder. So they all go to court.

In essence, this is a dispute about where the property line between two neighbors (and associates) should be.

Apparently, there is a long and complicated story that links property line disputes to the moral imperative that libertarians should give more money to the poor of sub-Saharan Africa.

I’m afraid I don’t follow that story, so I don’t see any higher principle behind the various manifestation of schadenfreude.

It seems weird how much time leftist spend worrying about libertarians, who are not now and don’t seem likely to be in power any time soon,

Yeah. It’s kind of an Internet phenomenon. Whatever anyone thinks is wrong with US policy, I can pretty much guarantee it’s the fault of Republicans or Democrats. But the libertarians got to Usenet early and pissed everybody off and now they get treated like a big deal on the Internets.

@ Alex K well Cato prez Ed Crane’s rhetoric is all about bemoaning a possible hostile takeover and how Mr. Koch’s actions in Kansas court yesterday represent an effort by him to transform Cato from an independent, nonpartisan research organization into a political entity that might better support his partisan agenda.

That doesn’t sound like him talking about where the property line is drawn. Surely a Libertarian can’t be complaining about hostile takeovers? And given the libertarian glib reply of “just quit and find another job if you don’t like it” when confronted with the idea of employer abuse of employees it’s a bit rich to be whining that the Kochs might interfere in the running of Cato if they get their way. I mean couldn’t he just quit and find a new job/found a new hacktank if he didn’t like it?

Plus there’s the amusement arising from his characterisation of the Cato Institute as “nonpartisan”.

“If there were no court intervention, the Koch’s would have a majority ownership in Cato, right?”

No, that’s false.

” Cato prez Ed Crane’s rhetoric is all about bemoaning a possible hostile takeover”

So? If I own Apple stock and Microsoft initiates a hostile takeover, then I can complain as much as I want about the “dangerous change of direction” in Apple — whether I’m a libertarian, socialist, or a member of the United States Marijuana Party.

@71: a patient’s medical prognosis should not depend on her wealth. [Likewise], people who have worked hard and saved money and played by the rules for their whole lives shouldn’t be economically wiped out because they have the misfortune to suffer a serious accident or some random disease requiring expensive treatment

Would any libertarians who may be tuned in care to endorse, reject, or qualify this formulation?

@Watson Ladd

I’m not saying the selfish leftist is moral, I’m saying the selfish leftist is rational. They’re making both their charitable contributions and their votes with selfish intent.

Maybe numbers will help. The selfish leftist values his own pleasure ten times more than he values other people’s pleasure. He believes in diminishing marginal utility of income, so if he donates to the poor, the poor will receive twice as much pleasure as he sacrifices. That’s not good enough–10x is more than 2x, so he keeps the money.

Now the he steps into a voting both. There’s a proposal to tax everyone, including the selfish leftist, and give the money to the poor. Assume a population of 1000. The selfish leftist values that loss at 999 for everyone else, plus 10 for himself, for a total of 1009. He also values the gain by the poor at 2000. So he supports the tax.

The phrase “I can complain” is distinct from “I can make a reasonable appeal to ethical grounds for complaint that are coherently and directly derived from my political philosophy.”

A worker’s cooperative engaged in the dissemination of socialist ideas would have members with the same problem as Julian Sanchez — the members that would be outvoted as to the direction of the worker’s cooperative.

What are their grounds of complaint that are coherently and directly derived from their philosophy?

a patient’s medical prognosis should not depend on her wealth. [Likewise], people who have worked hard and saved money and played by the rules for their whole lives shouldn’t be economically wiped out because they have the misfortune to suffer a serious accident or some random disease requiring expensive treatment

Would any libertarians who may be tuned in care to endorse, reject, or qualify this formulation?

A libertarian would perhaps point out that the asymmetric information problems are not so large as to justify the cutting out of consumer choice from the market for medical services. Certainly there are no theorems that eliminate the possibility that there exist well targeted regulations which alleviate the problem, while keeping consumer choice in the system. (e.g Massachusetts has a “lemon law” which allows a car buyer to return the bought car if he discovers significant defects, which alleviates an asymmetrical information problem)

A libertarian may also point out that the absence of much of a price system in medical services (a consequence of the elimination of consumer choice) leads both to inflated prices (there is no reason why any consumer would choose to pay more than one hundred dollars for a blood sample extraction, nor are there any significant informational asymmetries that would justify eliminating the consumer’s right to choose where to have his blood extracted) and to weird shortages (there is a significant shortage of various generic drugs, because the prices for those drugs are set by some sort of committee, and it’s not profitable for drug companies to make the drugs at those prices)

Except in the imagination of general equilibrium fetishists and perhaps in the imagination of some market socialists, you can not substitute the trial and error price setting of a market with prices set by a committee.

And any libertarian in agreement with what Hayek says on healthcare would be able to fit just fine into his ideology some state provision for medical care both for the poor and for various cases that somehow fall through a more market-oriented system.

Back in the 80s, there was a smog problem in Dublin, because people were burning cheap smoky coal. Some people seemed to think that you could only bitch about the smog if you were paying the extra for smokeless fuel, but I never saw it.

This was a large scale problem: me blowing my cash on smokeless fuel couldn’t help the problem in any measurable way, it needed a regulatory solution. In 1990, the minister made an order banning the sale and distribution of smoky coal in the city, and the problem disappeared.

I never saw anything strange or hypocritical about burning the cheaper smoky fuel at exactly the same time as bitching about the smog and supporting Government regulations to get rid of it.

Shorter Henri: There’s nothing wrong with being inconsistent. You must admit this, on pain of inconsistency!

Norwegian guy: no, they are about the rational, legitimate interests of ‘common people’.

Tedra had another of these recently, where she wants better public schools, but doesn’t want to subject PK to the current crappy local ones.

Likewise, it’s perfectly reasonable to advocate that the Government should tax and spend on health, but keep your wallet in your pocket when someone collecting for a new hospital wing buttonholes you.

Alex K. @82

A libertarian would perhaps point out that the asymmetric information problems are not so large as to justify the cutting out of consumer choice from the market for medical services. Certainly there are no theorems that eliminate the possibility that there exist well targeted regulations which alleviate the problem, while keeping consumer choice in the system….

…A libertarian may also point out that the absence of much of a price system in medical services (a consequence of the elimination of consumer choice) leads both to inflated prices… and shortages.

Yes, absolutely. The fact that there is a market failure does not mean the only alternative is c0mmunism. It just means that some form of government intervention is required. Ideally, this will take the form of (intelligent) regulations and/or (minimal) public provision, while still keeping the market as private and competitive as possible.

Personally I favor a system where health-care and health insurance are provided by largely private and competitive markets (with suitable regulations), but where everyone receives a voucher from the government which is sufficient to purchase a minimally acceptable health insurance plan. The minimal plan might involve co-pays or deductibles (to encourage consumers to use the system efficiently). It might also include financial incentives for cost-effective preventive measures (e.g. vaccinations, regularly scheduled checkups). What exactly should be covered by this minimal plan is obviously a reflection of society’s values, and should be decided democratically (with some guidance from health-care experts). Presumably it will cover the treatment of serious or life-threatening illnesses, but not necessarily cover cosmetic surgery. It may or may not cover astronomically expensive heroic measures to incrementally extend the life of terminally ill patients. Ultimately, these are trade offs which must be decided by social consensus. Of course, patients are always free to pay extra money (on top of the voucher) to purchase more comprehensive care.

(e.g Massachusetts has a “lemon law” which allows a car buyer to return the bought car if he discovers significant defects, which alleviates an asymmetrical information problem)

Except I don’t think a lemon law would work for health-care, because by the time you realize that you have been screwed by your insurer or health-care provider, you are usually either bankrupt or dead. (The American solution to this problem —a multibillion dollar industry of malpractice lawsuits —creates more problems than it solves, by requiring doctors and hospitals to buy huge amounts of malpractice insurance (which ultimately is paid for by their patients), while performing a lot of unnecessary tests and interventions to preemptively deflect any accusation of malfeasance. In the end, the only winners are the lawyers. As usual. This is part of the reason why American health-care is so idiotically expensive, compared to most other industrialized countries.)

I should also point out that your response doesn’t address one of the other major problems with private health insurance, which is inadequate risk-pooling due to adverse selection and cherry picking. Adverse selection means that, given a choice, healthier people (who anticipate fewer health problems) will buy less (or no) insurance, while sicker people will purchase more. This drives up the expected costs for insurance companies, causing them to raise their premiums, which further increases the tendency of healthy people to drop out of the system, which further drives up costs, etc. (This is the reason for the much-reviled universal mandate). Cherry picking means that, given a choice, insurance companies will prefer to exclude people with identifiable health problems (or charge them much higher premiums). Ideally, insurance companies would like to only insure people who will never get sick. Both adverse selection and cherry picking undermine the basic purpose of insurance, which is risk pooling. It is situation where more freedom (for consumers and providers) leads to less efficiency. Government intervention is required.

And any libertarian in agreement with what Hayek says on healthcare would be able to fit just fine into his ideology some state provision for medical care both for the poor and for various cases that somehow fall through a more market-oriented system.

This may be true, but unfortunately I have met very few libertarians like this. In my experience, most libertarians assert that:

1. People should be 100% responsible for paying their own health-care costs. If poor people suffer and die because they can’t afford treatment, that is because they deserve it, because they are stupid and lazy. If hardworking middle-class people are financially wiped out and have to remortgage their house because they didn’t read the fine print on p.153 of their insurance contract which said that it didn’t cover certain supplemental costs in the treatment of adenoid cystic carcinoma, then that is their own stupid fault for not performing due diligence.

2. Medicine should be completely deregulated. Anyone should be allowed to hang a shingle on their house and claim they are a doctor. Anyone who wants to can put a chemical in a bottle and claim it is an effective drug. Because the market is perfectly efficient, consumers will quickly and easily sort out who is providing high-quality care and who is just a crackpot.

3. Because freedom.

I grant you that this caricature does not cover all self-described libertarians. (Libertarian is a somewhat amorphous category. In particular, this caricature probably doesn’t cover Julian Sanchez, who I have always thought is a pretty thoughtful and intelligent guy.) But it covers a lot of them.

If hardworking middle-class people are financially wiped out and have to remortgage their house because they didn’t read the fine print on p.153 of their insurance contract which said that it didn’t cover certain supplemental costs in the treatment of adenoid cystic carcinoma, then that is their own stupid fault for not performing due diligence.

This is one of those viewpoints that makes the CATO brouhaha so amusing for us non-libertarians. If you are one of those libertarians who think contracts are the answer to pretty much every problem then CATO is an instructive case study. Even the superawesome libertarians at CATO are running into problems due to not carrying out enough due diligence/lack of foresight when the thinktank was created.

One piece I wanted to add to the hypocritical/inconsistent lefty/righty discussion.

Didn’t Hayek himself move to the US in order to get publicly provided healthcare?

When libertarians do it they are monsters.

I don’t think it’s monstrous to slip on a banana peel. Unless you’re a monster slipping on a banana peel.

when our lives make us seem to bend our principles

Maybe I’m the obtuse one – but is this “bend our principles” thing the same as the criticism that lefties are somehow being inconsistent when they act like bleeding heart liberals? Because that doesn’t seem to make much sense.

Also too, re: lock, stock and barrel. Patrick handled the “irony” part of it, but I just want to clarify something. Sanchez conceded the ownership point in his post – I was addressing him based on the parameters he outlined. But even still – even if we return Sanchez the favour and consider the case where Ed Crane’s position wins out – so what? That the Koch’s only control 50% of Cato’s shares… Uh, yeah that totally changes things.

Sebastiah @95

LOL. OK, you had a shot to take and you took it.

But let’s make a distinction between individuals and institutions. I find myself sympathetic to the travails of the former. Nonetheless, when I get the letter from Cato saying, “I may have been wrong,” I promise to lower the schadenfraude level and be gentle in my agreement.

(dreaming)
Yes, you were wrong, Cato! But you’re not a hypocrite because you’re changing your view. Now let us slay the fatted calf. . .

(I awake to a cold splash of lucre)

“Didn’t Hayek himself move to the US in order to get publicly provided healthcare?”

No, he did it so he could get a quick divorce and remarriage.

Did Tedra’s post actually support vouchers?

On the issues relevant to the Cato situation, Libertarians have gotten their way. They argued that the influence of the Kochs wasn’t so bad–well, now they have even more. They argued that money in politics should be unregulated, even that there should be more money in politics. Now we have Citizens United and more money than ever.

They could even call the result the Care Act to Trump Obama, if they wanted to be cute about it. Thanks, Hayek!

Yes, because the Obama plan — forged under the constraints of a dysfunctional political system, within the legacy of a monstrous health-care system and in the shadow of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression — has an excellent chance to be optimal point in the enormous space of possible health-care systems.

I’m a little sympathetic to Sanchez, myself. Rights is one thing, integrity is another – to ask that Koch respect the integrity of a think tank that represents a belief system he obviously doesn’t have doesn’t strike me a contradictory.
On the other hand, let’s face it, when you compare the libertarian party platform of 1972, or of 1980 (Eugene McCarthy addressed the libertarian convention in 1979), you can see the distance that the libertarians have travelled. It hasn’t been a good thing. On issue after issue they’ve retreated or caved in pursuit of a constituency that has taken them over. Libertarians used to make the case for abolishing the government monopoly given to doctors to prescribe drugs – and now they make the case against the free use of malpractice suits to whack doctors. Regulating suing is like the end of libertarianism. And then there were the glibertarian groups that endorsed Bush’s war on terror.
I don’t find it ironic so much as sad. I think there are a lot of libertarian ideas from 1972 are still fresh – like dejailing America. The libertarians of 1972 didn’t think that the Warren court went far enough in curtailing police power. For instance, back in 1972, the libertarians believed that if the state prosecuted you for some crime and you were declared innocent, the state should pay you damages – contrast that with libertarians now. Ask them whether they think OJ Simpson, for instance, should have collected damages from the state. They’d be astonished at the very idea…
Koch’s takeover is shameful, but then again, Cato has been shameful for decades.

Is it really true that libertarians are nothings and nobodies and don’t matter at all

I heard somewhere that there was actually one writing for the Atlantic, but that must have been an urban legend.

@ Alex K

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Medicare the most efficient part of the US healthcare arena? Certainly more efficient than private insurance according to the CBO. If you’re going to address inefficient health provision in the US why would you voucherize Medicare and make it more like the most inefficient bits of the system?

@ Alex K – I was thinking of the CBO letter to Paul Ryan:

“Medicare’s current payment rates for providers are lower than those paid by commercial insurers, and the program’s administrative costs are lower than those for individually purchased insurance. Beneficiaries would therefore face higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare…”

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10851/01-27-ryan-roadmap-letter.pdf

p12

Your table includes uninsured and people helped by other government programs in “other”.

@bexley
Your table includes uninsured and people helped by other government programs in “other”.

When the _total_ increase is lower than the Medicare increase then you can not argue that Medicare is more efficient.

We would benefit from a more detailed analysis of the claim that similar benefits have lower costs in Medicare — but this does not seem to be a good criticism of a voucher system. (perhaps it does apply to the Ryan plan)

If that is indeed the case, then the vouchers would be all spend on the Medicare (or similar) program.

This is presumably why the CBO says “the differences in excess cost growth between Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care spending should not be interpreted as meaning that Medicare or Medicaid is less able to control spending than private insurers”

Which I have not done. I merely argued that the growth in costs numbers do not support your position that Medicare is the most efficient system of them all.

The point I was originally making was that without cost control reforms in health-care –in both private and public systems– there is no chance of having a sustainable system. I also suggested some reforms along roughly libertarian lines.

Though I’m not sure why you brought the table up in the first place since it’s basically irrelevant to the question.

Paul Krugman seems to think that cost increases are relevant in judging relative efficiency — only he brought forward tables that are not adjusted for age increase. I thought you were arguing along similar lines.

And clearly there is a huge difference from saying that you can not conclude directly from the tables that private insurance are more efficient to saying that the tables are uninformative on the question.

Even Singapore (which has a lot more cost sharing than many countries) has a lot of Government intervention in the form of forcing people to save for healthcare, price controls and subsidising care.

Healthcare spending in Singapore in about 4% of GDP and the government share in that spending is around 20%. Forcing people to save is not very libertarian, but when you get government spending on health care down to around 1% of GDP, then all libertarian ears should be promptly perked.

I’m pretty sure that Medicare/Aid isn’t a high point of efficiency since it already spends as great a percentage of the GDP as Canada/UK and more than France but only covers old people in the US.

Alex K. @105

Now it’s true that Michael Cannon only wants this voucher system for a part of the population—but when a mainstream libertarian ends up with the same plan as you for a critical part of the population, then perhaps you should reconsider your caricatures of what a libertarian is or is not.

Mea culpa. As I said, libertarianism is a rather amorphous category, and I admit that it might include some quite reasonable people who are libertarian not because they are selfish jerks, but perhaps because they sincerely (although naively, in my view) believe that unfettered free markets really do maximize social welfare, and might even recognize that this may require some degree of altruistic wealth redistribution (e.g. perhaps Cannon —although I think it is ethically indefensible to restrict these vouchers only to Medicare recipients). But I think you will admit that it the libertarian umbrella also includes rather a lot of people who are libertarian because they are selfish jerks and proud of it (e.g. Ayn Rand and followers), and people who not only aren’t interested in altruism or maximizing social welfare, but further deny that such concepts have any moral relevance (e.g. Robert Nozick). Perhaps it would be helpful if we had some finer terminology to distinguish between these groups.

As for the rest of your message: I think we are close to agreeing on many things.

Forcing people to save is not very libertarian, but when you get government spending on health care down to around 1% of GDP, then all libertarian ears should be promptly perked.

This I love. Tells one something about the principles (“principles”?) at play.

That this insider baseball bullshit subject – while hilarious – has gotten 126 posts in less than 24 hours says a lot about how unrepresentative the range of US political opinion online is. “Real libertarians” are, in general, uninfluential cranks, but online they’re Serious Players.

Sebastian @ 103

Libertarians qua libertarians may not have that much influence ( I don’t know, but let’s grant the point), but surely they are more powerful than Tedra Osell qua Tedra Osell.

But as you point out, Tedra has (perhaps coincidentally) joined voices with others that have been powerful.

Um.

Isn’t the whole point here that the libertarian camp, esp in its Cato manifestation, has joined voices with extremely powerful folks, often in an intellectually dishonest, cynical, or at least an opportunistic fashion? And now it is directly biting them in the petard?

Alex K @105

“Healthcare spending in Singapore in about 4% of GDP and the government share in that spending is around 20%. Forcing people to save is not very libertarian, but when you get government spending on health care down to around 1% of GDP, then all libertarian ears should be promptly perked.”

I think this is just silly. This is just an accounting issue. Does the government tax people than pay for their health care, or does it force people to pay for their own health directly through compusory saving. Is this 1% figure really meaningful?

Yes, libertarianism (libertarians themselves are indeed not scary) is an ideological, not an electoral, movement – the political equivalent of the Econ 101 mythology.

In that capacity it has been very influential, providing a set of abstract ideas and simplistic, folksy arguments and styles of argument (cf Watson Ladd with the Nozick-style stuff about charity v taxation) which have been adopted by the US right (many were there before of course – this stuff has roots in various traditions), as well as attracting followers who tend to come down on the R side at election time.

———–

@82 – you can not substitute the trial and error price setting of a market with prices set by a committee.

I’m very pleased to see the ‘trial and error’ nature of market price-setting being noted for once, rather than the version where ‘signalling’ goes on seemingly independent of what humans may or may not think about the matter. Worth noting too that (1) market prices are set by a ‘committee’ or department, ‘team’ etc., (2) if errors and correction (or dice re-roll) are good enough for the market, why aren’t they good enough under socialism?

—————

@90 The fact that there is a market failure…just means that some form of government intervention is required. Ideally, this will take the form of (intelligent) regulations and/or (minimal) public provision, while still keeping the market as private and competitive as possible.

Whatever the suitably non-committal, even wistful ‘ideally’ means here, I think it may be time to acknowledge that this is not by its standards an ideal world.

‘Market failure’ – even speaking the words is implicitly to reintroduce a public standard assessment of allocative outcomes, avoidance of which is the rationale for the whole Samuelson consensus black-box model of revealed pref., Pareto efficiency, price signalling hocus pocus.

‘We just need to tinker with the market a bit more’ is not working. (Indeed didn’t we until a few years ago hear constantly that meddling in market forces we cannot understand upsets the balance of nature and brings forth monstrosity, etc.) If the holistic mechanism of the market, which is supposed to operate by constant self-correction, doesn’t work, why suppose that some part of it, kept alive by constant (but minimal) intervention, is going to be a good idea?

@reason
This is just an accounting issue. Does the government tax people than pay for their health care, or does it force people to pay for their own health directly through compusory saving. Is this 1% figure really meaningful?

It is very far from just an accounting issue. The majority of health-care costs are paid “out of pocked” — that is, out of the health savings account. The only redistribution allowed is between the members of a family (with some definition of what a family is).

The government has various subsidy levels, depending on the person’s income, and it runs a catastrophic insurance — this is where the 1% (today it is more like 1.3%) of government GDP goes.

The health-care market actually has prices (I’m not sure if the government forces or just encourages the publication of prices), a patient can choose between say, staying in a one bed room or in an eight beds room etc. Public hospitals are independent and compete with private hospitals. In other words, you can actually call the health-care market a market — with the exception of the typical Singaporean paternalism in how one should save and spend the health-care money.

So yes, both the 1.3% figure and the 4% figure are very meaningful.

looking at it another way. since the USA green party came into existence, its gotten a broadly equivalent level of support in presidential elections as the libertarian party. you might quibble and say that a lot of people sympathetic to libertarianism are voting republican tactically or because they think the organised libertarian party is full of cranks, which yeah, but then the same would also be true of democrats and greens.

now, obviously environmentalism has been an important political tendency in the last 30 years. but it is pretty clear to me that in the USA, libertarianism has kicked the shit out of it in any fight that has mattered, in that time.

http://reason.com/archives/1975/07/01/inside-ronald-reagan

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

The Reagan team also felt it was fine to say things about how much aggressive evangelical religion was central to conservatism, that doesn’t make a lack of distance between the two. Unless you think they were simultaneously holy rollers and libertarians.

I’m thinking of the actual Republican politics of the period. The ideology and political success of Republicans in the 1970 period was driven almost entirely by racial backlash and integrating the south into the party. The big issues were crime (committed by black people, in their opinion), urban decay/the underclass/welfare (guess who those people are?), affirmative action and its evils, and government programs for those leeches. In the 1980s you had the anti-libertarian rise of religion. There was some overlap there, but it sure as hell wasn’t driven people reading libertarian philosophy, or getting it out of the zeitgeist of elites reading it. Domestically, it was 90% racial politics.

As to libertarian influence, only in the last couple of years have actual libertarian policies and politics, driven by something other than reactionary racism, started to show up. The only thing Republicans voters and officeholders have unambigously in common with libertarians in the period is a hatred of regulation and tax cuts on the rich. On everything else they’re either doing it for wildly different reasons or disagreeing.

Tim, I wasn’t making the argument because I’m opposed to taxation to pay for public services or redistribution, but because I don’t think that “I payed taxes, so I already gave to charity” is a good argument, no matter what the tax rate is. What’s crucial to the hypothetical redistributionist being able to avoid the claim of being uncharitable is the equivalence between the two. Someone who doesn’t kill people just because its illegal isn’t a good person.

Jason McCullough: The Reagan team also felt it was fine to say things about how much aggressive evangelical religion was central to conservatism, that doesn’t make a lack of distance between the two. Unless you think they were simultaneously holy rollers and libertarians.

I’ve already said I don’t think the Reagan presidency was actually libertarian, and I also don’t think it was actually evangelical christian. But in fact, xian social conservatism and economic proprietarianism (‘libertarianism’) is about right, so far as the public ideology (rather than the unacknowledged, corrupt, motivations) of the post-1974 Reps is concerned. (I’d be interested to see what the Reagan presidency was willing to actually say about evangelical christianity, too, but I’m doing enough googling without doing yours for you.)

The causal/intellectual relationships are no doubt tangled, but the emergence of an ultra-free-market posture in Reaganism and Thatcherism was certainly bound up with the emergence of a new minimal-state libertarianism (in the bestselling Anarchy, State, and Utopia*, which provided a handy philosophy book to wave around (they could even read it), proving how all taxation (except to pay for bombs and batons) was strictly speaking illegitimate (so think yourselves lucky you get any other govt spending at all). It also contained little if any sex and drugs.

I’m really not sure where your conviction that all this is ridiculous comes from – I’d say that the first section of http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_dilettante/2011/06/the_liberty_scam.html is not far off (and a skim of the rest, on the philosophy, suggests it’s unusually good too):

The Times Literary Supplement ranks Anarchy, published in 1974, as one of the “100 Most Influential Books Since the War,” and that, I think, is underselling it. To this day, left intellectuals remember where they were when they first heard Nozick’s arguments against not just socialism but wealth redistribution of any kind. “It is no exaggeration to say,” the Telegraph wrote, after Nozick died in 2002, “that Nozick, more than anyone else, embodied the new libertarian zeitgeist which, after generations of statist welfarism from Roosevelt’s New Deal to Kennedy, Johnson and Carter, ushered in the era of Reagan and Bush, pere et fils.” Prior to Anarchy, “liberty” was a virtual synonym for rolling back labor unions and progressive taxation, a fig leaf for the class interests of the Du Ponts and the B.F. Goodriches. After Anarchy, “liberty” was a concept as worthy of academic dignity as the categorical imperative.

Nozick’s sloganistic state-of-nature theory also introduced a new beguilingly simplistic style of moralistic argumentation (that Slate article gets this quite well), which was perfectly suited to the needs of today’s busy propagandist. (Watson: I don’t consider “I’ve paid taxes, so I’ve already given to charity” a good argument either – but neither do I consider it of any interest.)

General point, in case it’s not clear – talk about the Libertarian Party or the Mises institute is beside the point; so far as the US is concerned (and libertarianism is not anomalously US-centric as a topic for CT, btw) it’s the proprietarianism within the Republican party and its electoral supporters that is relevant, e.g., randomly Googled, http://www.libertarianrepublican.net/ )

Also, Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, Paul père & fils etc. but that’s a rather different underpant of tropical fish.

*Let me Wiki that for you: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) is a minarchist book by the American political philosopher Robert Nozick. It won the 1975 U.S. National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion,[1] has been translated into 11 languages, and was named one of the “100 most influential books since the war” (1945–1995) by the U.K. Times Literary Supplement.[2]

btw re: ‘bestselling’. ASU has been described as ‘a runaway bestseller – for a philosophy book’ or words to that effect. I don’t know if it ever appeared on general bestseller lists. Meant to correct that before posting.

On consideration, I think this points out a better argument than I made. For the reasonable libertarians being discussed above, those two issues are one issue among many. For the vast bulk of “libertarians” out there, it’s true that they’re overwhelmingly dominating issues – but the two classes of libertarians have very little in common with each other.

All I’m saying here, I guess, is that Julian Sanchez is not remotely the kind of libertarian that has influenced the modern GOP, Reagan, or has that much in common with it ideologically in the first place. Neither is Cato, in general. So why does everyone spend so much time worrying about the ins and outs of their “movement”? They’re nice and will actually discuss things with you, unless the cranks and charlatans who actually matter?

“Prior to Anarchy, “liberty” was a virtual synonym for rolling back labor unions and progressive taxation, a fig leaf for the class interests of the Du Ponts and the B.F. Goodriches. After Anarchy, “liberty” was a concept as worthy of academic dignity as the categorical imperative. ”

Well, after Anarchy, was *still* a virtual synonym for rolling back labor unions and progressive taxation, a fig leaf for the class interests of the Du Ponts and the B.F. Goodriches.

Well, after Anarchy, was still a virtual synonym for rolling back labor unions and progressive taxation, a fig leaf for the class interests of the Du Ponts and the B.F. Goodriches.

Yeah, kinda – the idea though is that while it is still functionally tantamount to ‘rolling back..[etc]’, it has aquired a sense or mode of presentation that renders it more respectable. A less transparent figleaf.

Kim Stanley Robinson: “That’s libertarians for you–anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.”

“The current non-Koch shareholders claim that the widow of the original shareholder should own the shares. There is a clause in the by-laws to the effect that if a shareholder wants to sell his shares he should first offer to sell to Cato or the individual shareholders. Presumably the Kochs want to outbid the other shareholders. However, the clause does not make provisions for what happens to the shares in the case of the death of a shareholder. So they all go to court.”

It’s not nearly so simple. Niskanen was not an original shareholder. The Widow Niskanen is the executor and doesn’t get all of the stock. She only gets a third. One of the other thirds goes the Cato Institute, another third to the Cato Institute’s lawyers. Then there is the issue of dividing 16 by 3, So they all go to court.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that I (libertarian) give 80% of my charitable contributions to relief of the very poor and disadvantaged, and 20% to sources of institutional change in the U.S. (like EFF and Cato). I mean, if we adopted even a slightly more libertarian foreign policy (less bombing/invading) that seems like a huge win for the world’s poor, who tend to be on the receiving end. A decrease in the efficacy of institutions which push the U.S. in that direction seems like a bad thing for the world in the medium term.