I love it when economists show up sociologists. Alex points to a seemingly good example: why do different cultures have different attitudes toward punctuality? The sociologists’ explanation appeals to “national personality,” religion, etc. The economists’ explanation relies on simple game theory. Arrival-time behavior is a kind of coordination game: you want to arrive at the same time the other guy does, and he wants to arrive at the same time you do. In this kind of game, there exist multiple equilibria, all of them viable (though not necessarily all desirable). Alex’s analogy to left-versus-right-side driving is excellent: both left-side driving and right-side driving are equilibria of the system, so there’s no particular reason to predict one equilibrium over the other.
Economists: 1
Sociologists: ½
Why am I willing to give the sociologists half a point? Because Alex’s analogy also illustrates a problem with the pure game-theoretic explanation. Although it explains why we can observe different equilibria, the theory tells us very little about why one equilibrium happens and the other does not. Why do the British and Japanese drive on the left, while Americans and French drive on the right? Yes, both left and right are equilibria, but why did some cultures end up in one and some cultures in the other? Random chance is one explanation, but legislative decree (as in Alex’s Swedish example) is another. So the antiseptic game theory model tells us just enough to indicate more historical and cultural research may be required. And the same goes for punctuality: the game theory explains why it makes sense that we’d observe different norms, but it doesn’t tell us why the punctuality norm occurred in the places that it did. Random chance might explain the pattern – it was just an accident that Latin American countries happened to evolve a lateness norm – but then again, maybe something else was at work. Maybe influential people at some point in Spanish history had a propensity for lateness, and their activities created the focal point around which others’ expectations formed. In short, an economic theory that predicts multiple equilibria doesn’t shut the door to sociological explanations – it opens it.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Theories of Punctuality
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Old Yeller
Radley approvingly posts a letter he found in the Washington Post, which says among other things:
The Feb. 14 editorial "Focus on Red-Runners" mentioned a Fairfax City study that apparently showed a 44 percent drop in one year in red-light running at five intersections with cameras. But it did not mention the results of a 2001 analysis by the National Motorists Association of a Fairfax County intersection. That organization found that red-light violations dropped 96 percent at the intersection when yellow light time was increased from 4 seconds to 5.5 seconds.The implication, of course, is that the government should extend the length of yellow lights. Apparently something is “special” about the difference between 4.0 and 5.5 seconds, which makes those added 1.5 seconds especially useful in avoiding accidents.
A 1998 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety also found that 80 percent of red-light entries occur within the first second of the light turning red, indicating that inadequate yellow time is the major cause of red-light entries.
I don’t buy it. The 96% reduction in red-light violations was almost assuredly a temporary effect, brought on by the fact that people adjust their driving behavior to the expected duration of yellow lights. People are willing to go through a yellow if they think it will last just long enough to get them about halfway through the intersection before it turns red. If the duration were permanently raised to 5.5 seconds, people’s unconscious timers would gradually readjust, and they would start blowing through yellows that under the 4.0 regime would have seemed stale.
And then, if someone performed another study on the effect of increasing the duration of yellows from 5.5 to 7 seconds, I’ll bet it would have the same effect: a dramatic but temporary reduction in red light violations, which could be used by the credulous to justify another increase in the yellow light time.
UPDATE: Radley responds, pointing out some studies that apparently show the driver adjustment effect I’m talking about is small. Unfortunately, the studies are unavailable on the web. Radley also gives more details about the 96% reduction:
In 2001, the National Motorists Association persuaded the Virginia DOT to lengthen the yellow light at one particularly egregious intersection in Fai[r]fax by 1.5 seconds -- from 4.0 seconds to 5.5. A camera installed at the intersection monitored the number of infractions. About 70 days after the yellow was increased, infractions fell from 52.1 per day [to] less than one per day -- or about 96%.I’m still skeptical, because this could easily be the result of the change having been made at a single traffic light. My “internal timer” is not so finely tuned that it knows the typical length of all the different traffic lights, even the ones I go through regularly. I assess the expected length of a yellow light by reference to all the yellow lights I deal with. So it doesn’t surprise that extending the yellow on a single intersection might result in a substantial reduction in red-light infractions at that one light. But it doesn’t follow that extending the duration of yellows at all the intersections would have a similar effect, because people would then get used to the longer yellows. The conclusion that does follow is that extending the yellow at especially notorious intersections might be an effective strategy, because it makes use of internal timers that have been calibrated on the basis of shorter yellows.
That was three years ago. NMA reports that infractions at that intersection have remained at about .80 per day in the three years since.
I’ll concede (as I did in the comments box) that there might be an optimal duration for yellow lights, but I still stand by my argument that this experiment is very far from proving it. I also agree with Radley's broader point, which is that local governments seem more interested in maximizing revenue than preventing traffic violations.
Can This Be Right?
Eugene posts the following New York statute, and I want to know if I’m reading it correctly:
If any clergyman or other person authorized by the laws of this state to perform marriage ceremonies shall solemnize or presume to solemnize any marriage between any parties without a license being presented to him or them as herein provided or with knowledge that either party is legally incompetent to contract matrimony as is provided for in this article he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not less than fifty dollars nor more than five hundred dollars or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year.The statute is suddenly relevant because the mayor of New Paltz has been performing marriages of gay couples (who don’t have marriage licenses). But as written, this statute would apply to clergymen as well.
Now, suppose that I’m a minister, and as such I am authorized by the state to perform marriage ceremonies. And suppose that I officiate for a marriage ceremony without a marriage license, and with no pretense of this marriage having the state’s sanction. Everyone involved understands this to be a religious marriage, with no more legal significance than the state should choose to grant it. Notice that I haven’t specified the sexes of the participants. My actions would seem, under a commonsense definition of “solemnize” and a strict reading of the text, to fit within the statute’s language and therefore constitute a crime. If so, then the statute would also pretty clearly constitute a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of speech, association, and free exercise of religion. Does anyone know if “solemnize” has a more specific statutory meaning of which I’m not aware?
Monday, March 01, 2004
Federalism Cuts Both Ways
Eugene (who tentatively favors same-sex unions) says the following Constitutional amendment would be defensible on federalist grounds:
No part of this Constitution shall be interpreted as requiring any state, or the federal government, to recognize or allow same-sex marriages.I agree. But if we’re going to insert a new amendment purely for the purpose of safeguarding federalism, why not add the following?
Nor shall any part of this Constitution be interpreted as prohibiting any state, or the federal government, from recognizing or allowing same-sex marriages.This addendum would assure the correct federalist interpretation. Now, I suppose it might be superfluous, because the “part of this Constitution” that might conceivably be interpreted to require recognition of same-sex marriages is the Full Faith and Credit clause, and no plausible interpretation of that clause would prohibit a state from recognizing another state’s authorized same-sex marriages. Still, there’s nothing wrong with a little redundancy in defense of principle and clarity. Furthermore, tacking on this extra bit would force conservatives who oppose it to admit their disagreement with the federalist principles to which they so often pay lip-service.
Regulating Healthcare = Regulating Religion
Libertarians often emphasize that the distinction between personal liberties and economic liberties is a phantom one, because restrictions on economic liberty inevitably affect the personal sphere. Here’s an outstanding example: The California Supreme Court has ruled that the Catholic Church must provide birth control in its employees’ health plans.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) 3.1.04, 11:50a -- A Catholic charitable organization must include birth control coverage in its health care plan for workers even though the nonprofit is morally opposed to contraception, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.When the state starts meddling with the terms of contracts, as it does when it dictates the contents of health plans, entanglement with personal liberties, including freedom of religion, is sure to follow. The state can either (a) treat religious enterprises just like other enterprises, as the California high court has done, or (b) make a special exemption for religion, which puts the state in the position of deciding what a religion is and what its defining doctrines are (e.g., is opposition to contraception really inseparable from Catholic doctrine?). I'm curious to know whether abortion coverage is also required under state law.
…
The high court said Catholic Charities is no different than other businesses in California, which is one of 20 states that require company-provided health plans to include contraception coverage. In California, "religious employers" such as churches are exempt from the requirement.
In an earlier post, I argued that, when it comes to subsidies for education and other activities, the state ought to adopt a neutral policy that does not require it to decide what is religion and what is not. But in this case, we are not talking about the provision of a benefit by the state, but the imposition of a regulatory burden with the potential to interfere with free exercise. Forced to choose the lesser of two evils, I would reluctantly take option (b) above, as it provides at least a limited opportunity for people to escape the state’s regulations when they conflict with conscience. But it is the state’s unjustified regulatory policy that generates the need to choose between evils.
Stale Jackson Joke Makes Comeback
Look where Michael Jackson’s been shopping:
Michael Jackson was pulled over by police and asked to identify himself after shopping at a Wal-Mart while wearing a ski mask.Yep, he must’ve heard little boys' pants were half-off.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
A Constitution Is Not a Dictionary
Here’s the best thing I’ve seen written on the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage – and I found it on a linguistics blog.
Go ahead, make my day (as Dirty Harry used to say): if they want a wedge issue, bring it on. Let them go ahead and try to pass, for the first time in the history of our country, a constitutional amendment aimed at taking rights away from a proper subset of the people. (The prohibition amendment was an ill-advised subtractive social amendment of similar type, but at least it took away the specified rights from all of the people. It was a big mistake, anyway, and soon had to be repealed.) But don't let them try to tell me they are revising a definition. It's nothing to do with defining the word "marriage". Webster's has done that perfectly well. It's about a denial of rights. The idea is that if you fall in love with a lesbian and want to marry her and live with her forever and share your life and property with her and be with her until you sit by her side at the hospital when she dies, that's O.K., but your rights will be subject to a limitation: you will be permitted all this under the sanction of the institution of marriage if you are male, but denied such permission if you are female. To add an insistence on that point in the constitution would be an act of discrimination, not of definition, so let's call things the way they are.RTWT.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
We Won't Punish You, We'll Just Reward Everyone Else
The blogosphere is awash with discussion of the Supreme Court’s Davey decision, which essentially said the state can create a blanket education subsidy that specifically excludes religious education. I won’t rehash all the arguments – instead, I’ll link to both Amy and Eugene, both of whom get it exactly right. So does Justice Scalia’s dissent: “No field of study but religion is singled out for disfavor in this fashion.”
I will make one argument that I haven’t (yet) seen on anyone’s blog. This decision validates the notion that the state can draw a line between religion and non-religion, thus allowing it to fund the latter while denying funds to the former. The problem is that no such line exists. There is no unambiguous way to distinguish spiritual from secular ethical belief systems. Where, for instance, does Scientology lie on the spectrum from religion to non-religion? Originally, the Scientologists did not call their organization a “church”; they changed their tune when they realized they could get the benefits of First Amendment protection plus tax exemptions by going the full-on religion route. But there is nothing in the Scientologists’ belief system (so far as I know) that implies the existence of a deity or even a supernatural realm. Although the Scientologists chose to go in the secular-to-religious direction, it would certainly be possible for other groups to go the opposite direction in light of the Davey decision and policies like those of Washington state. Even if very few groups alter their creeds at the margin to exploit the state’s definition of religion, there will exist groups that sit near the arbitrary borderline, and these groups will be treated differently for essentially arbitrary reasons. Rather than put the state in the position of deciding what's religion and what's not, I would have the state adopt a neutral stance that requires no definition of religion.
No One Expects the Spammish Erudition
The last time I raised a puzzle about spamming strategies, a reader solved it in the comments box. So here’s another: What’s up with bogus sender names like the following?
Aristocracy O. SpenglerNaturally, spammers can’t give their real names. But why pick such bizarre fake ones? Do some people’s spam filters filter out normal names? Is some kind of random word generator being used? (If so, why not just use random letter sequences?) Does curiosity induce recipients to open more emails with unusual sender names?
Pique I. Prorating
Acanthus E. Dragooning
Pricy B. Hijacker
Corpulence P. Ecology
Book Me
Other libertarian bloggers who take the “What book are you?” Quiz have turned out to be Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But me, I turn out to be the freakin’ dictionary. Maybe that’s why their blogs get more traffic than mine.
You're The Dictionary!
by Merriam-Webster
You're one of those know-it-all types, with an amazing amount of knowledge at your command. People really enjoy spending time with you in very short spurts, but hanging out with you for a long time tends to bore them. When folks really need an authority to refer to, however, you're the one they seek. You're an exceptional speller and very well organized.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Bigots for Religious Tolerance
An audiotape with the voice of an Al Qaeda officer threatens more terrorist attacks – and criticizes France’s ban on Muslim head scarves in public buildings:
Two audiotapes purportedly of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant were broadcast on Arabic TV stations, one taunting President Bush and threatening more attacks on the United States, the other criticizing France's decision to ban Islamic headscarves in schools. ...The irony is rich. A leader of Al Qaeda, an organization dedicated to the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy in the Middle East, champions the Western value of religious tolerance. France’s policy is, of course, abominable. But isn’t this a case of the cast-iron pot calling the tarnished-copper kettle black?
The audiotape aired by Dubai-based al-Arabiya criticized France's decision to ban religious symbols in public buildings, including headscarves worn by Muslim women. The law is expected to go before the French Senate early next month.
"The decision of the French president to issue a law to prevent Muslim girls from covering their heads in schools is another example of the Crusader's malice, which Westerners have against Muslims," the recording said.
Monday, February 23, 2004
Quote of the Day
Alex Tabarrok, on the topic of excessive security measures: "It seems to me that the price of eternal vigilance is liberty."
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Dissing the Disinfopedia
Will draws attention to the newly created Disinfopedia. It’s like a Wikipedia for information on interest groups, think tanks, and other potential sources of disinformation. But as Will notes, the site is explicitly ideological in nature; the idea is to show just how beholden such organizations are to the wealthy and powerful. The Wiki format, which allows readers to freely edit the text, does not seem ideally suited to the ideological goal. Says Will: “Wikipedia works because of its ethos of neutrality on contentious issues. If somebody writes something biased, somebody comes along and balances it out. It will be interesting to see if an overtly ideological wiki can survive.”
I was surprised that Will didn’t point out the double entendre of Disinfopedia’s name. It’s supposed to be an encyclopedia on sources of disinformation – but the more natural interpretation is that the site itself is a source of disinformation.
In the “think tank” entry, in which Will inserted a minor edit just for fun, I found the following passage:
Of course, some think tanks are more legitimate than that. Private funding does not necessarily make a researcher a shill, and some think-tanks produce worthwhile public policy research. In general, however, research from think tanks is ideologically driven in accordance with the interests of its funders.Now, think tanks’ positions do have an uncanny tendency to reflect the interests of their funders. But the implicit conclusion that causality runs in the funding-to-viewpoints direction does not follow. If the think tank is operated by committed supporters of some ideology, and they go out in search of funding, they are most likely to attract the support of those whose interests will be advanced by the ideology in question. Other sources of funding will withhold their funding and go elsewhere. As a result, we will observe a correspondence between funding and viewpoints, but with causality in just the opposite direction: from viewpoints to funding.
I’m not claiming that the choices of think tanks (and other non-profits) are never influenced by the desires of their financial supporters. If making a marginal change in a think tank’s position on a single issue could ease the job of attracting funds, even ideological managers might be tempted to do so, on grounds that gains in other areas from greater funding will outweigh the losses on a single issue. We could even imagine a slippery slope process that runs from a marginal decision like this one to wholesale changes in the think tank’s ideology, by way of personnel changes induced by the seemingly small position shifts. Moreover, the equilibrium number and size of think tanks presumably will have something to do with the general availability of funds for different positions. Nonetheless, the nefarious “guns for hire” implication of the Disinfopedia blurb does not seem justified. The interaction between funds and viewpoints is assuredly a two-way street.
Hey, maybe I should go insert all the above in the Disinfopedia entry and see what happens.
Friday, February 20, 2004
Inflation via Medicaid
Alex Tabarrok explains, briefly but lucidly, how Medicaid drives up prescription prices for everyone – and why the severity of the problem grows as Medicaid’s share of the market increases. I suspect the argument could be generalized to cover other markets in which government is a large-scale buyer.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
More on Publicly Funded Expression
Jack Balkin has responded to my post below. I won’t try to reply to all of his arguments, in part because Sasha Volokh and Juan Non-Volokh have already replied to some of them. But I do want to make a couple of points.
First, Jack overstates my position, thereby creating a strawman. He says, among other things:
But Glen overstates his case when he assumes that use of subsidies and provision of public goods is always suspicious and tyrannical in the same way that the use of criminal fines and penalities is suspicious and tyrannical. I think there is a big difference between throwing a person in jail for being a communist and deciding to create a public library so that children and adults can have books to read. There is a big difference between preventing all demonstrations on the town green and requiring that all schools that receive public funding teach reading and mathematics. There is a big difference between the local sheriff giving parade permits only to Democrats but not to Republicans and the local university deciding that it will offer courses on microbiology but not astrology. Glen has run together a wide variety of different activities under the simple rubric of government tyranny. [emphasis added]I never said that public funding of viewpoints is just as deplorable as the penalties and fines for the expression of particular views. It is not. I agree with all of the comparisons Jack makes (e.g., that it’s better to fund a public library than to jail a communist). But saying program A is preferable to the clearly awful program B does not imply the desirability of program A.
Second, in focusing on my final comment about the danger of having government try to distinguish good from bad ideas, Jack misses the primary argument of my post: that ideas create both positive and negative externalities. For that reason, his economic justification for public funding of the “ideas infrastructure” doesn’t stand up, because it rests on the implicit assumption that the positive externalities outweigh the negative ones at the margin. Jack focuses on the benefits of the public subsidy, without much consideration of the costs. I’ll point out just two examples of how state subsidy for particular forms of expression creates problems: (a) The Office of National Drug Control Policy spends lots of money funding anti-drug commercials that muddy the policy waters with bogus claims (e.g., by suggesting that drug users are funding terrorists) and gin up greater support for the immoral and destructive war on drugs. (b) Science funding that excludes politically unpopular areas of research, such as cloning and fetal stem cells, diverts resources and research programs away from those areas and into other areas likely to produce smaller benefits (such as adult stem cells).
Third, this is not just a First Amendment issue. I don’t claim that the First Amendment invalidates all forms of government-supported expression (hence, there is no constitutional requirement to “blow up” the Washington Monument). Some forms of government action are constitutional but still unjustified or undesirable, and that is my position on most, though perhaps not all, forms of public subsidy for expression.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Market Failure in the Marketplace of Ideas
In a response to David Bernstein, Jack Balkin defends public universities on economic grounds: he claims that free expression creates positive externalities, and therefore private markets will underproduce opportunities for it:
For me, freedom of speech involves important infrastructural elements in technology and institutions that undergird and enrich the system of free expression, produce an educated citizenry and give them the tools and the practical opportunity to participate in the growth and development of culture. … Put in economic terms, the infrastructure of free expression is a public good that markets will underinvest in.Juan Non-Volokh takes apart the economic argument, pointing out that (a) the existence of positive externalities at most justifies subsidized universities, not government-run universities; (b) the prospect of government failure often outweighs market failure; and (c) government provision tends to crowd out private provision of public goods.
I wish to add one more response. As I’ve argued before (and I think Ronald Coase made the same point), ideas produce both positive and negative externalities. There is no discipline of profit-and-loss to assure the weeding out of the bad ideas and the retention of the good ones. As a result, the economic theory of market failure offers as much support for taxing and restricting expression as for subsidizing and promoting it. It is strange indeed that liberals who have nothing but contempt for product markets voice such confident support for the marketplace of ideas, even though the latter are subject to potential failures that are arguably much greater.
If the government could distinguish between the good and bad ideas, then it could subsidize only the good ones. But I have little or no confidence in government’s ability to make such distinctions wisely, and the blanket subsidization of public universities assures funding of both the good and the bad. The strongest case for freedom of expression, I would argue, rests not on economic efficiency but on the inherent danger in giving a coercive government the power to decide what’s good and bad in the realm of ideas. From that perspective, David Bernstein’s position makes a great deal of sense: having public universities ipso facto puts the government in the position of having to make distinctions that it has no business making.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Economics of the Afterlife
Religious visions of reward-and-punishment in the afterlife fall into two basic categories. One category consists of what I will call “precipice” regimes, in which there are just two afterlife outcomes: heaven and hell. If you commit more than some threshold number of sins (possibly just one), you go to hell; otherwise you go to heaven. Many Protestant faiths seem to fall in this category. The other category consists of what I will call “gradient” regimes, in which there is a range of afterlife outcomes lying between sheer torment and pure bliss. In Mormonism (or so I am told), there are many different levels of heaven, and which one you reach depends on your behavior in this life. In Catholicism, how much you’ve sinned in this life determines the amount of time you spend in Purgatory. In Hinduism, your behavior now determines what kind of creature or class of person you’ll become upon resurrection.
Assuming that afterlife regimes are designed to deter bad (sinful) behavior, what beliefs about people’s preferences and choice mechanisms are implied by each type of regime? Let’s say you’re a deity who currently presides over a gradient regime, and you’re considering a switch to a precipice regime. Doing so will induce some individuals, who would have committed some number of sins under a gradient regime, not to commit any sins at all (if the hell-threshold is one sin) or to commit just under the threshold number of sins. That’s the upside. The downside is that individuals who have already passed the threshold will have no incentive to behave well. Since they’re already going to hell, they might as well commit all the sins they want. In addition, people sufficiently far below the threshold will have no incentive not to commit additional sins (unless there’s uncertainty about where the threshold lies). Thus, there’s a trade-off involved in the choice of regimes, and individual preferences and choice mechanisms will determine which regime is the more effective in deterring sins.
I hypothesize that precipice regimes are appropriate if you think that the utility of committing sins is relatively constant over time, whereas gradient regimes are appropriate if there will be occasional opportunities for sinning that are of such high utility that they cannot be resisted by many people regardless of punishment. The downside of a precipice regime is particularly high in the latter case, because many people will succumb to large temptations and then, figuring their souls are lost anyway, commit many more transgressions. On the other hand, if there are few super-sized temptations and many small-to-medium ones, the precipice regime might be more successful in deterring them, because people under a gradient regime will balance each additional sin against the minor reduction in afterlife status that will accompany it, and some medium-sized sins will be enjoyable enough to be worth it.
A precipice regime might also be more effective in preventing addictive sins, defined as sins with increasing marginal utility of commission: the more of the sin you’ve committed, the greater is your desire to do it again. Under a gradient regime, people who commit their first addictive sin will have an increasing inclination to do so repeatedly (unless the gradient becomes steeper and steeper as the number of sins rises). A precipice regime could not prevent the additional sinning, but it would stand a better chance of inducing people not to commit the very first sin.
Next up: mixed regimes, in which some sins are treated with a gradient and others with a precipice.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Barbecue Day
A student sent this letter to Jolene Koester, the president of my university, and for some reason I was CC’ed (along with two other people). I figure it’s an open letter, but just in case it’s not, I’m leaving out the student’s name.
I will not be attending class today. This day is a national holiday set aside to honor the presidents of the United States of America, especially George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. These men showed uncommon courage and leadership in successfully leading our country through some of the most difficult times in history. I could elaborate, but there are volumes of historical information about these and all the other US presidents.My first reaction was to snort; I figure this student is less concerned about honoring freedom and democracy than attending a backyard barbecue. But then I thought, what’s wrong with that? Lucky for me, I don’t teach on Mondays, so I’ll be attending a barbecue myself – not because I admire the presidents (I can count the ones I truly admire on one hand), but because I like barbecue. And it is pretty bizarre that CSUN takes off Cesar Chavez Day but not Presidents’ Day. Setting aside the question of which day is more worth celebrating, there’s something to be said for the coordinating function of holidays: it’s easier to organize fun activities when everyone gets the same day off work. Given that most people in this country celebrate Presidents’ Day, not Cesar Chavez Day, CSUN’s calendar is just a little bit off.
In addition to the above-mentioned leaders, this “Presidents Day” holiday has been expanded to include honor to ALL the American presidents, regardless of political persuasion. And since this fine institution receives federal funding (approved by the president), it only seems consistent that the faculty, administration and students of Cal State Northridge acknowledge this day. I do hope that this scheduling error is corrected so that next year, we all will be able to reflect on this nation without whose leaders the world would not know the meaning of freedom and democracy.
Picking Fights with Libertarians
I enjoy Mark Kleiman’s blog, despite often disagreeing with it. But Mark does have an odd penchant for picking fights with libertarians even when we agree with him. This happened a year ago, on the subject of laws that allow health insurance companies to break their contracts (see my responses here and here, both reaching into topics we do disagree on). It happened again last month, when he skewered Bush’s risible moonbase proposal (see my response here). And now it’s happened again, in a post on the FDA’s decision on the morning-after pill. “Once again,” he writes, “we can expect a deafening silence from the libertarians, whose sincerity about personal liberty I keep doing my level best not to doubt.”
Weird. It’s true that libertarians haven’t said much on this specific issue, though some have – read this and this and this. But on the other hand, libertarians generally argue that the FDA should be either emasculated or abolished entirely; here's a page articles from Cato, and an entire website run by the Independent Institute. I’m pretty sure Mark would not support eliminating the FDA, but the point is that doing so would make the morning-after pill issue moot; as long as abortion remained legal for even the first three days of pregnancy, the morning-after pill would be readily available. (As an aside, I should point out that there are many pro-life libertarians, though I’m pretty sure they are in the minority.)
I’m guessing the bigger issue is that Mark wants to know why libertarians aren’t opposing Bush. But more and more, they are. I, for one, have stated my opposition to George Bush repeatedly on this site. Radley Balko has been so critical of George Bush that he had to declare a week off from Bush-bashing – a pledge that he’s been unable to keep. Indeed, Bush-bashing is a favorite activity on most every libertarian site I visit. From Cato, here is a scathing indictment of his fiscal performance, here's another, and here's another from two years ago, before it got popular; here is an article criticizing the civil liberties record of John Ashcroft, and here is page of links on civil liberties under the Bush administration. If the question is why libertarians aren’t flocking to the Democrats, Mark should know the answer to that one: it’s because the Democrats are awful, too, on almost every front, including civil liberties. Lest we forget, Democrats voted for the civil-liberties-violating Patriot Act, Democrats voted for the political-speech-restricting Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, Democrats voted for the nonpolitical-speech-restricting Child Online Protection Act, Democrats support hate speech laws, Democrats stand should-to-shoulder with Republican drug warriors. Even so, most libertarians I’ve spoken to are hoping a Democrat wins the next presidential election so that we can return to the glory days of gridlock.
UPDATE: In an update to his original post, Mark admits the silence has not been so deafening after all, posting a link to this post by libertarian Jacob Levy.
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Love Needs No License
I support gay marriage (at least until government gets out of the marriage business altogether), but this statement by one of California’s gay newlyweds gets it all wrong:
“Now we’re not second-class citizens; now we can have a loving relationship like every other married couple we know," [Nancy] Felixson said.Hey, you don’t need the state’s permission to have a loving relationship. That’s already legal. What’s at issue here is not love, but equal access to state-granted privileges like married tax status and medical power of attorney.