A Cure Slightly Better Than the Disease
Posted: October 19, 2012 Filed under: Politics | Tags: anarchy, fast and furious, politics 1 CommentI have to admit, I’m more than a little confused these days by the apparent complacency among most people towards the failures in government that seem to be coming more fast and furious than ever. It’s not like these are small mistakes or minor rounding errors that are occurring; these are major, ongoing issues, and it’s not just in our own country. If private companies were to make mistakes or (worse) engage in cover-ups of this magnitude, there would be an immediate outcry for investigations and government oversight. But who watches the watchmen? (Well, okay, I did. Great film. But that’s beside the point.)
The counter I usually get from friends and colleagues when I bring these issues up is that “there are other branches of government that are investigating.” Oh, good. That makes me feel ever so much better. Because I certainly would have trusted BP to investigate after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and if there were any doubts about private contractors in Iraq I feel quite confident that Halliburton would have gotten to the bottom of it and let us all know the facts right away. They both have internal divisions for checking into that sort of stuff. All major companies do. And they have nothing to gain from gaming the system, right?
The source of my doubt and cynicism is the logical fallacy of it all. Even granting for the sake of argument that each branch of government is independent, that each department is independent, and there’s no amount of favor-trading or back scratching going on, there are still problems. Fact: the cause for the investigation is corruption or ineptitude in a government agency. Fact: the investigators are coming from a government agency. Assertion: we have nothing to be concerned about, because the government will fix it. Does anyone else see the problem here?
The worst violators of this, and I am not pointing at either the left or the right because they both do it, are the ones who demand the most government “oversight” of the free market. Whether it is in manufacturing, finance, or any other field, it seems there is no limit to the amount of regulations, restrictions, and controls they want to impose. And to what purpose? To ensure that nobody does anything wrong. But something always goes wrong, bad things happen, and people always find a way to game the system, for three simple reasons.
The first is that criminals are creative, and where there is money to be made they will find a way to make it. Too hard to import drugs? They’ll start cooking their own. Make it too difficult to get the common stuff they need, they’ll find other ways. Meanwhile, the companies that are being regulated are lobbying Capitol Hill to make sure that the laws are as generous as possible for them and as hard as possible on their current competition as well as any new entrants. The people who end up getting hurt most by these laws are usually the ones inconvenienced by them day in and day out, paying more in money and time for law abiding activities. But hey, anything to prevent 1% of the population from doing something bad, right?
The second reason is that technology marches on. Laws move at the speed of legislation, which (thankfully) is not nearly so fast as the speed of innovation. Every time a new technology hits the market, it has the potential to change the way we live our lives and make existing laws obsolete. This is most often a good thing, but it has its downsides. Fifty years ago nobody ever heard of computer crime, and “identity theft” was when somebody forged your name on a check. But legislators try to make new laws that keep up with the times, rather than understanding that for the most part, the existing laws still work just fine; identity theft is fraud, computer crime usually involves some kind of theft, and we really don’t need new powers to delineate what can or should be done about it.
Finally, sometimes people get hurt because of the law of unintended consequences. Whether it’s because somebody thought they found a new way to make money that everybody bought into with good faith and it turned out the market wasn’t there for it, or maybe there was a government program that was meant to alleviate poverty and instead it perpetuated it for generations (hypothetically). We have imperfect knowledge, and we cannot know the results or far-ranging ramifications of our actions until after they occur; to assume otherwise is the height of hubris. To press on without acknowledging this is simple folly.
So what is the nature of government that sets it apart from other human institutions? In the private sector, if there is corruption, or bad judgment, or even a simple failure to deliver on enough of the promises that have been made to your audience, the price that is paid is that your company loses value, and eventually will go under. In government, the price of these things is… more government. That would make as much sense as rewarding bad management at companies with more money to continue their bad management.
I’m not advocating for a complete absence of government. There needs to be some outside force that does punish the wicked, but there needs to be an understanding as well that government is not always the answer, and not even the first answer. Government should be the answer of last resort, the cure that is only slightly better than the disease. Approached that way, perhaps then we will see a little less of the rampant growth of government, as well as fewer attempts to buy the government we have.
The Market Won’t Provide: How Libertarians Get It Wrong
Posted: October 12, 2012 Filed under: Politics | Tags: advice, anarchy, philosophy, politics 3 CommentsEver since I was a kid, I wanted a flying car. I know I’m not alone in this, since roughly everyone since ever has wanted a flying car. Cars have been around for over a hundred years, and people have been talking about delivering a flying car for at least half that time, so if as I hear so often “the market will provide”, where’s my damn flying car?
1. The market can’t defy the laws of physics. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the kind of naysayer who looks at an airplane and says “that thing will never fly”. Of course I understand that man will continue to push past the boundaries of the present, and I fully believe the free market is the best motivator to allow the best ideas to flourish and make their way to the top. But I too often hear libertarians make impossible (for today) wishes, and when you call them on it, they just say, “the market will provide” as if that’s some kind of answer. Yeah, maybe it will someday, but today’s not the day, and tomorrow doesn’t look too good either.
2. The market might provide, but not in the way you think. Actually, my father-in-law has been behind the wheel of a flying car more than once. He has a pilot’s license. I’m not even talking about those big, giant private jets (which are the stretch limos of flying cars), I’m talking a Piper Cub and the ilk. It may not be the flying car everyone envisions, but that’s how I’ve been taught markets work: when you can’t get exactly what you want, they provide a more reasonable alternative. But when most libertarians say “the market will provide” they usually mean it as a blind faith assumption that they can get what they want – somewhere. Which leads to…
3. The market might provide, but not at a price you want to pay. There’s a term I’ve become very familiar with of late: “market clearing price.” It goes like this: say someone actually does invent a flying car. And say they start selling them for, oh, one million dollars. Guess what I won’t be buying anytime soon? And neither will anyone I know, despite the fact that we all want a flying car. The demand is there! It’s there, I tell you! In fact, I’m demanding a flying car right now. And yet I can demand it all day and I still won’t get one until I pony up the cash, because there will be enough people who do.
That’s what a market clearing price is. Even if they could make them cheaper, there’s no incentive to. Same with anything else; as long as people will buy at the price they set, there’s no incentive to lower the price. “But wait!” cry the libertarians, “the free market means someone else can make another flying car at a lower price! Competition, that’s the answer!” Fair enough. But competition will only bring the cost down just so low before it’s no longer the best use of their time and money before they have another, better way to make money. That’s how free markets work, remember?
4. The market only provides to meet demand. Yes, I want a flying car. Yes, I know a lot of other people who want flying cars too. I also know a lot of people who want adult-sized Underoos (no, I am not one of them, no matter what my sister tells you). That doesn’t mean the market will start providing them tomorrow, even if it could meet the engineering feat, and considering the size of some of these people I really hope it can’t. Why? Because there’s just not enough money to be made. Money is just a proxy for demand, which tells us the best use of resources, and quite frankly I don’t ever see adult size Underoos being a good use of resources. For anyone. Ever. And just because everyone I know wants a flying car, or claims they do, doesn’t mean there is enough real market demand for them, because I don’t know everyone. That’s what economists call a knowledge problem. That’s kind of what markets are there to solve, and sometimes the solution is you don’t get your flying car (or Underoos).
It’s time to think in new ways, and hopefully some of the libertarians I know will think about some of the things I’ve written here and lose some of the utopian idealism they have about markets. Markets aren’t perfect. They are the best system we have in an imperfect world to achieve very specific objectives, but there are some things they can’t do. They can’t provide the perfect product at the perfect price in the perfect time frame. More often markets are about finding the best compromise with the resources at hand in the time you have. Or as my mechanic used to say, “we have three options: good, fast and cheap. Pick two.”
So what am I driving at here? Am I trying to tell libertarians to throw in the towel, stop worrying and learn to love the government? Far from it. What I am saying is that faith-based arguments only work when you are preaching to the choir. For everybody else, a little humility can go a long way. Acknowledge the weaknesses of the market, and then point out a few things. Things like the government can’t defy physics either, that government services often cost more than private solutions, and that government options are often more limited than free market solutions when they exist at all.
The false dichotomy of “perfect government solution” vs. “pie in the sky by and by” is a loser every time. But once you start putting real world options next to each other, admitting that each has something to offer but each has inherent weaknesses, you start a meaningful dialogue. The result of that dialogue, hopefully, is that by treating the person you are speaking with as an intelligent person they will offer you the same courtesy, and you can give them a new perspective and something to think on. You may not make a convert out of them, but you won’t make an enemy either, and you might at least get them thinking in new ways.
A Not So Modest Proposal
Posted: October 5, 2012 Filed under: Politics, Satire | Tags: A Modest Proposal, health care, humor, Jonathan Swift, kidney transplant, organ donation, politics, satire, Supreme Court Leave a commentIt has recently come to my attention that the kidney transplantation committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing has issued a proposal to change the way in which donated kidneys are distributed to those who are currently waiting for kidneys. Apparently the current system is as much of a lottery as… well, the lottery, only the winners in this lottery receive a few more years of life, while the losers receive a lovely floral arrangement. The new system looks to improve this by extending the total number of years of life saved, and perhaps even reduce the number of lost donations.
While I understand this is an admirable goal, I feel it is incumbent upon myself, your humble public servant, to point out the logical fallacy in this plan. While they are at least considering improving the efficient use of the resources at hand, they are not in fact addressing the core issue: the scarcity of viable kidneys, and by extension the further scarcity of other organs, tissues, and various donations that up to this point have only been left behind by that handful of Good Samaritans who are willing to sacrifice for the greater good.
Now, far be it from me to suggest something so vulgar as to taint the system by introducing monetary recompense for the donors. Certainly the doctors, the hospitals, and others involved along the way need to have their palms greased with filthy lucre in order to entice them to participate in what would otherwise be a noble calling, but the very idea of incentivizing people to participate in organ donation after they pass on is so far beyond the pale as to not deserve further mention. Even if it would relieve the burden on the system and enrich some few souls along the way, life itself is far too precious a commodity to put a price tag on, unlike something common like food, shelter, or health insurance.
No, I believe the answer is instead to appeal to the better nature of our fellow citizens, and instead follow in the path of our recent Supreme Court decision regarding health care. If it is mandatory that we all participate in the health care of our nation by carrying health insurance, surely it is no great leap to suggest that we make it compulsory to participate in organ donation? Just think of the benefits! No more long waiting lists, no more years desperately hoping for a match; just one bad pile-up on the highway and everyone is a winner (well, except maybe the poor souls on the highway, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs).
I understand there may be a few initial objections to my plan, but they can all be easily addressed. After all, our country has a long and distinguished history of compulsory service in the military for young men, and that’s hardly ever given us any trouble. For those who may have religious objections, while I can understand their hesitation, I’m afraid we simply cannot oblige. In days of yore when a corpse was no more than the husk of a departed soul the disposition of such was irrelevant, but science moves ever forward, and while there may have been a time when we could indulge quaint flights of fancy and superstitious notions, those days are long gone. For those who would claim a “right to privacy”, I say the body public has a use for the body private and it must not be denied.
If you think my solution unjust, if you believe my methods unfair, I ask you: is it just to leave people on machines for years on end, hoping against hope to beat the odds? Is their suffering worth nothing? Do we, as a society, not care? What other alternative do we have? A few extra years is not enough; why save one when we can save them all?
In summary, I leave you with a paraphrase of the great John F. Kennedy: “Think not what your country can do for you, think what your organs can do for your country.”
Anarchy X: The Second Commandment
Posted: October 3, 2012 Filed under: Anarchy X, Culture, Politics | Tags: Anarchy X, culture, idolatry, religion, Second Commandment, Ten Commandments Leave a comment“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”
I don’t really have much to say about this one, since it pretty much covers idolatry, and I have very little for or against that. It really doesn’t come into the laws of the country, which is what this whole series is about, so no harm, no foul.
Weeeeeell, except for one or two things.
First we have the whole issue of what exactly idolatry is. Let’s take a quick look at the idea of it, shall we? “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”. Seems to me like that pretty much rules out any sort of symbol that people put stock or faith in, particularly the kind that seems to generate religious zeal. Like say the American flag. If we can’t burn it because it counts as “desecration”, I think we can also pretty well say you were engaging in idolatry. So who sinned first, my good man?
Then there’s the bald eagle. That would be a “likeness of any thing that is in heaven above” last I checked. So why exactly do we have them all over our money, our federal buildings, and just about everywhere else last I checked?
Oh and hey, are we still allowed to make films and cartoons that mock major religious figures and icons? I know that “Piss Christ” seems to have gotten by without the artist getting arrested yet, but the week isn’t over yet.
My reading of the Second Commandment is deep and complex, but I’ll try to break it down with as little sarcasm as I’m capable of and then circle back to these issues.
First, God is immaterial. Not in the colloquial “irrelevant” sense, but rather in the old-fashioned “insubstantial” sense. Non-embodied. There’s no there, there. The disembodied nature of the divine represented here makes it a lot harder for most people to focus their minds on, so naturally we search for something material to relate to, but then we often make the leap from using the material object as a way of focusing on the divine spirit to thinking of the material object as the divine spirit. This Commandment exists to circumvent that process happening in the first place by outright banning those material affectations.
Second, it’s a way of scooping followers away from the other historical religions in the area at the time the Commandments came down. Consider the avatars of most (if not all) other pantheons local to where Judaism (and by extension Christianity) originated. If “any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” doesn’t cover them, I don’t know what does.
Finally, I know I’ve had this argument before (see the comments from my discussion of the First Commandment), but I’m still not convinced from this passage or many others that at this point in time or any other there was a serious declaration that “I the Lord thy God” was intended to mean “I, the Lord, thy God, and by thy God I mean all the people of Earth, not just the ones I am speaking to right now who have a major hate on against lots of other tribes for many and sordid good reasons and aren’t even aware of 75% of the world I created or the people in it.”
So looping back around to the modern political implications (which makes this a very long loop indeed), and yes, I’m going to bring up hanging the Commandments in court houses again, but only because it’s directly relevant, I promise. At what point does an image of the Ten Commandments itself become a “graven image”? Seeing as how some people treat them as holy law and worship them rather than simply obeying them, treating the very idea of not displaying them as more of an offence than breaking any of them it seems to be more than a bit ironic.
Then there’s the issues I mentioned above. Why are there attempts to ban desecration of the American flag? Because it is a symbol of our country, yes, I get that. But do we bow down ourselves to it, or serve it? We certainly pledge allegiance to it, and how is that different? How is it not a graven image? And why is it that the same politicians who are most adamant about pressing forward with anti-flag desecration legislation are often the same ones pushing prayer in schools and displays of Commandments in public places?
I’m not trying to call into question the sincerity or devoutness of the many people of faith who believe in both Judeo-Christian values and the idea that we should honor the symbols of our nation. What I am calling into question is whether there isn’t a disconnect between the stated nature of those two sets of beliefs (which are not inherently contradictory) and the attempts to restrict the behavior of others or push those beliefs into the public sphere.
Campaign Silence Reform
Posted: September 28, 2012 Filed under: Politics | Tags: America, campaign finance reform, Citizens United, freedom of speech, politics 5 CommentsThis has been a particularly loud year for the “get money out of politics” crowd. Certainly the Citizens United decision didn’t do much for them, but I have to admit I’ve never understood the big push to get money out of politics in the first place. Setting aside jokes about an honest politician being one who stays bought, the reasoning behind trying to get money out of politics seems to be, as I understand it, that rich people will simply buy influence and we lesser folk will simply be ignored.
I’d like to explore how that works two ways. First, let’s consider a world in which we don’t allow anyone to donate at all to political campaigns. After all, money doesn’t equal speech, right? So no need to let anyone donate to any candidate. But then does that mean candidates only get to spend their own money? How does that stop rich people from just buying elections directly? Unless we want to stop them from spending their own money to express their own personal views, and that’s a case where I don’t think I’m conflating money with speech, I’m conflating “speech” with “speech”.
And what about the newspapers? Do we silence them as well? Do the editorial boards get to keep endorsing the candidates of their choice? Or do they have to rely on silly work-arounds, perhaps offering “report cards” for each candidate on the issues, making it clear that one candidate gets straight “A”s and another nothing but failing marks, but we’re not endorsing anyone! Either way, what’s to stop the wealthy or corporations from buying the newspapers and TV networks (like they haven’t already) and pushing the agenda of their choice (sounds like a pretty foxy idea, wish I had thought of that…)?
So if we can’t shut out the rich and the news, do we only shut out “the lower classes”? That’s what we’ve been trying to avoid, isn’t it? Then perhaps the alternative is to simply allow anyone who wants to donate to contribute as much money as they want, but we put it all into one big pot of money, and then the money gets distributed evenly to anyone who wants some. Aside from the question of “who’s a legitimate candidate” (that’s like defining legitimate rape), even if you managed to answer that you’d end up with money from a dedicated feminist supporting Todd Akin and money from a neo-Nazi going to support Al Sharpton. Public financing of campaigns is basically the same idea only worse: people don’t even get to decide if they want to play (or pay) at all.
The other problem with the “big pot o’ money” approach is the issue of bundling for impact. Sure politicians care what you say, as long as your opinion comes wrapped in a check, and the bigger the check the bigger your opinion, which is what started us down the whole path in the first place. If you don’t believe that, then you should have no problem with rich people and corporations donating as much as they want to any politician at any time, because it doesn’t matter. If you do believe it, then you are faced with the issue of lots and lots of little people trying to get their voices heard individually… or gathering together as one to have some real impact. Sure, the rich people can do the same thing, but they don’t need to, or at least, they don’t have as much need to. So what you end up with is a classic Catch-22: either money doesn’t influence politics, in which case we don’t need laws to stop money from being in politics, or money does influence politics… in which case we don’t need laws to stop money from being in politics. When you hear a politician calling for “getting money out of politics”, it’s usually one of two major choices: an incumbent who benefits over challengers from “campaign finance reform”, or some “outsider candidate” who is having trouble raising money. Like anything else, check the incentives before you go thinking this is altruism or any sense of “for the public good”.
Ever since I can remember, money and politics have gone together like sex and teenagers: “it’s a problem”, “it’s an epidemic”, “it’s ruining our society”, and as far as I can tell from my own limited experience, it’s a non-issue. As best as I can tell the real fear isn’t that people will make a choice they didn’t want to make, or (like this never happened) an uniformed choice, the real concern is that people will make the wrong choice. By what standard? Well, that’s really a matter of opinion, isn’t it? When I hear someone calling for campaign finance reform, what I most often hear them really saying is “other people are idiots but I’m not.”
Anarchy X: The First Commandment
Posted: September 26, 2012 Filed under: Anarchy X, Culture, Politics | Tags: America, Anarchy X, First Commandment, religion, Ten Commandments 5 Comments“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
Before I get rolling on the whole Ten Commandments thing, I need to make a few clarifications and disclosures. First, for the record, I am not a member or believer in any Judeo-Christian religions or traditions. My personal beliefs (or lack thereof) are not relevant to the discussion at hand, except insofar as to establish that I am not speaking as a believer. Second, I was not raised “in the Church” as it were, but my parents didn’t keep me away from it either, and my sister and I did go to Sunday School whenever we wanted. My parents let us find our own beliefs, and I grew up with the King James Bible, so that’s the version of the Ten Commandments I’ll be looking at.
Now that I’ve gotten all of those provisos out of the way, let’s move on to the easy stuff, shall we? I mean, unlike the Bill of Rights the Ten Commandments are pretty straightforward, right? Well… actually no. Setting aside any controversy about their use, the Commandments themselves have a long and interesting history of not being as clear as they could be.
For this first commandment, what throws me is that I hear a lot of people try to defend the idea of “One True God” using this, even though a proper reading of this Commandment doesn’t lend itself to any such interpretation. Far from it; every reading I can make of it suggests multiple gods, in multiple possible configurations. If you are willing to completely abuse the English language I suppose you could make that reading, and I’ll include that one in order to let folks judge it for themselves, but I’d love to hear someone explain to me how you honestly get to a non-tortured version of “one god” from this.
So here’s what I’m reading: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”; sounds like an acknowledgement of other gods. How to interpret that in the context of Judeo-Christian belief? Like so:
Polytheism – Reading it as “there are many gods, I am just the most powerful and most deserving of worship.” You can actually envision a full pantheon of deities that includes one superior figure demanding to be held in full respect above the others quite easily. Odin All-Father, Zeus, or even Osiris (before that whole death-rebirth thing, but that’s a whole other Christian mythology comparison) could handily fit into this role, although in fairness I don’t see this being likely in the full context of the other writings and material around the Commandments.
Kathenotheism – Reading it as “there are many gods or spirits, I am just the most powerful/the others are simply aspects of my glory.” While it would take a little bit of stretching to get it within either the strictest bounds of the definition of kathenotheism or else the strictest interpretation of the Commandment, I still think it takes fewer mental gymnastics than the idea of using this to support monotheism. So imagine it with me: there are still gods or spirits of fields or seasons or what have you, but they are all subservient to the One True God. This isn’t strictly polytheism in that a migrating/herding culture would only worship one subservient spirit at a time and would still always be worshiping the highest deity as the supreme being. Another possibility would be seeing each of these lesser spirits merely as manifestations of the One True God, which takes us into functional monotheistic territory, but is still very different from what is typically described as the monotheism that is derived from the Ten Commandments.
Henotheism – Reading it as “Maybe there are other gods, maybe there aren’t, but I am YOUR god, and there aren’t any others worth bothering with.” This is the one that I think is most likely, and I think a lot of scholars have probably trod a lot of this ground already to be perfectly honest. Henotheism basically is the idea “I worship my god, you worship yours”. Henothesists don’t deny the existence of other gods (or at least the possibility of them), the just don’t particularly care. Considering the origins of Judeo-Christianity in a part of the world that had multiple other, older, much stronger pantheons in existence, I find it difficult to believe that any new religion would have evolved and declared right out of the gate “oh, and by the way, no god exists except for the one we worship, and it’s not the fantasy creatures you’ve been making sacrifices to, because seriously? Animal heads?” Having the stones to say “my god can beat up your god” when you’re on the wrong end of the slave lash is already pretty impressive.
Monotheism – Reading it as “There are no other gods. I am the only one. Don’t notice the man behind the curtain.” As promised, I shall now explore this possibility. While as previously mentioned I find it difficult to believe any new religion would declare right out of the gate that everybody else’s beliefs are completely false, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before in history, so that’s not a complete stopper. The big issue I take with this interpretation is that it doesn’t make sense in terms of the text. If you drop the last clause entirely the Commandment becomes “thou shalt have no other gods”, which is what the assertion of monotheism is. The existence of that clause has to be accounted for, and it can only happen one of two ways, either temporally or through precedence. I’m fairly certain there is no one making the argument that the tribes that eventually became the people of Jerusalem had no religion of any kind before the events described in Exodus. So then the only remaining possibility (as I understand the proper use of the English language) is one of precedence. One does not have to acknowledge that other gods DO exist, only that if they did, they wouldn’t be worth bothering with (see Henotheism above).
I realize that invoking “the usage of the English language” in this case is pretty weak considering the number of translations that the source material has been through, but as long as people insist on using interpreted texts as the basis of their arguments and politics, I’m going to be a stickler. And that’s what it’s all about in the end for me: there are people in America who rely on the Bible to make political decisions, and even want to hang the Ten Commandments in public spaces. But these same people have radically different interpretations of what these texts mean, not just in terms of their personal beliefs but the public sphere as well.
Consider for example my most-likely interpretation of this, what may fairly be considered from a religious perspective the most important Commandment (hence why it comes first): the henotheistic perspective says there may or may not be other gods, but they aren’t worth worrying about. “I worship my god, you worship yours”. Sounds so perfectly American. Shoving your beliefs in the public square and insisting “that’s what America was founded on, and you should thank us for it”? Not so much.
Don’t Tell Me Not To Not Vote
Posted: September 21, 2012 Filed under: Culture, Politics, Uncategorized | Tags: America, politics, voter turnout, voting 5 CommentsIt’s that time again. Once every four years we see millions, nay, billions of dollars wasted on pageantry, spectacle, and foolishness. It’s not just the direct participants who throw their money away either, as every big corporation in the world wants in on this gravy train, even though the truth is most of them will never make their money back. But what the heck, the people do love their bread and circuses.
Oh wait, they made the Olympics every two years, didn’t they?
Well that’s okay, the people still get their Leap Year frivolity in the form of our presidential elections. Once again I am hard pressed to find much if any difference in the offerings on the left and the right, and I am astounded by the fervor with which others are approaching the coming election. I could sooner see for getting worked up over a table tennis match (that is still an Olympic event, isn’t it?) But that’s not what bothers me the most. What bothers me is when people find out I have no intention of voting and then they say something offensive like “if you don’t vote you can’t complain about the way things turn out.” Yeah, I said that’s offensive. Not just idiotic, but actually offensive, and I’ll explain why.
Consider what the average voter turnout is in our country these days, or even over the last twenty years (about as long as I’ve been voting.) Does it still hover in the mid-thirty percentile range? So roughly one-third of eligible voters are actually ready, willing, and motivated enough to go to the polls and let their voices be heard. And is it the responsibility of our civic leaders to inspire us to want to vote? Is it the duty of our elected officials and candidates to office to give us reasons to invest the time and effort, as little as it might seem to some? Is it perhaps the obligation of those who hold the power in the land to find a way to cut through the malaise and disillusionment and reach to the best part of each of us?
No. It seems that the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our politicians but in ourselves. If we don’t pull the switch and vote for either A or B, we don’t get to complain there was no option C. And even if there was an option C, if we aren’t satisfied with that one, we don’t get to complain about that unless we pull the handle for one of the above. And that’s the problem with the whole system and those who give that simplistic response. There is no option for “none of the above” (a la Brewster’s Millions). In this “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” scenario, you’re either part of the problem or you’re part of the problem.
The message that these people, and our Most Beloved Leaders in both parties, aren’t getting is that there’s a lot of people who are dissatisfied with the entire system. I don’t mean to say they’re dissatisfied in the same way I am (that would be its own brand of hubris); rather they are, each and every one of them, dissatisfied in their own unique way. The only thing we all have in common is that we don’t like any of the options we’re being presented with well enough to vote for them, nor do we dislike them significantly less than the other options. Given a choice between a shit sandwich and shit soufflé, I’ll just go hungry, thanks.
But the system is rigged. There’s no way to step in the booth and say “a plague on both your houses.” The only options available both suck. The first is the one that is hinted at ever so obliquely by the people above, who don’t want to come out and say what they really mean because even they realize how terrible the truth sounds: “If you don’t vote you’re powerless. You don’t have a voice of any kind. Nobody in power takes you seriously. You may only get crumbs of what you want when you vote for the guys they offer, but if you don’t vote at all you get nothing.”
Option number two is to be out in the cold, ignored except as part of a statistic that is used by the nightly news and each party to bash each other over the head, when they’re not busy trying to shame all of America one generation at a time. “Why aren’t Americans voting? It’s a travesty! It’s a tragedy! It’s somebody’s fault who isn’t me!” “The young aren’t voting! The old aren’t voting! The [insert group that is more likely to vote for politician who is currently speaking] vote is being suppressed!”
Here’s a crazy idea. How about next time we decide to elect anyone for anything, we just have one election. One person, one vote. And we have it open for a week, twenty-four hours a day, so there’s plenty of time for voting. Only here’s the catch: there’s no pre-filled voting cards. No letters next to names. You step up and write down the name of the person you want to vote for. Get rid of the parties and see what happens.
I wonder.
Anarchy X: The Tenth Amendment
Posted: September 19, 2012 Filed under: Anarchy X, Politics | Tags: America, anarchy, Anarchy X, Bill of Rights, Commerce Clause, Constitution, James Madison, politics, states' rights, Supreme Court, tenth amendment 1 Comment“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
In many ways I consider this to be the red-headed stepchild of the Bill of Rights. Nobody really wants it except when they do, and the only time they want it is when they want to use it as a weapon against somebody else. It only exists as a means of quieting down people who were nervous about centralized power, and since then it’s done little to no good despite the lofty goals it was originally envisioned to provide for.
The original purpose of the amendment was, as James Madison phrased it:
[F]rom looking into the amendments proposed by the State conventions, that several are particularly anxious that it should be declared in the Constitution, that the powers not therein delegated should be reserved to the several States. Perhaps words which may define this more precisely than the whole of the instrument now does, may be considered as superfluous. I admit they may be deemed unnecessary: but there can be no harm in making such a declaration, if gentlemen will allow that the fact is as stated. I am sure I understand it so, and do therefore propose it.
Considering that within the twentieth century we were witness to Supreme Court cases that allowed the federal government to decide how much wheat you could grow on your own land for your own personal consumption (Wickard v Filburn), your house can be taken for private use (Kelo v City of New London), and the federales can kick in your door and snatch up your medicinal marijuana crops, even if it is legal to grow and use in your state (Gonzales v Raich). And these are all just abuses of the Commerce Clause, but I’ve harped on that one before. What I find far more interesting is the abuse of the other side of the equation.
The concern, as I see it, that was being addressed by the tenth amendment was not one of states being able to retain the powers they had enjoyed up to this point. Rather I think it is, as Madison points out, a continuation of the thread that runs throughout the Constitution and the rest of the Bill of Rights: people who had fought to free themselves from what they perceived to be an aggressive, oppressive regime and not wanting to re-create it in the new government they were now defining. One of the chief concerns and problems they had seen was that, being so far away from the seat of power, their concerns were not addressed and their complaints were ignored, and they believed that their local (and by extension state) governments would be more responsive in the event that government action would be needed at all (hence that little clause at the end “or to the people”).
This was never intended to be a carte blanche for state governments to violate the rights of citizens where the federal government couldn’t, and yet so many times that is exactly how some groups have attempted to interpret it. Waving the banner of “states’ rights”, they have tried to circumvent laws and statutes they didn’t like, usually ones that were intended to protect the rights of minority populations. While there are those who attempt to argue the historical implications of the North versus the South and economic issues that extend beyond slavery (some of which does have validity), the core of the issue was that Southern states wanted slavery and Northern states didn’t. This has come forward to us through the years as Jim Crow laws, “separate but equal”, and other forms of government imposed racism, which are times when federal power should intervene to protect the rights of minority populations against the will of the majority in a given area.
Unfortunately this same sort of abuse flows downhill in many ways; states use their power to impose all sorts of laws on their people, such as smoking bans, labor laws, property usage laws, and other means of restricting the free use of property and control over one’s own body. These laws can be and often are popular in the localities where they are passed, or at least popular enough with a large enough majority of the citizenry for that given issue (hence the phrase “tyranny of the majority”). Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be as much of a groundswell from either the left or the right as yet to protect against these abuses.
I believe the original intent of the tenth amendment was to try to bring power closer to the people. The idea was that each state would have a limiting document similar to the Constitution (as I believe they all do) that was decided upon by the people of that state; by bringing power closer to the people, it would be more responsive, but also the limits on state power would have the same effect as the limits on federal power. This recursive limitation would flow down the chain of government power, so that ultimately the people would have power over themselves. Instead what we are finding is a constant tug of war between government actors at the state and federal level to determine who gets to make the decisions about our lives, whether any given action falls under ” powers … delegated to the United States by the Constitution” or those ” reserved to the States respectively”. Somewhere along the line the last bit about “the people” got edited out.
Anarchy X: The Ninth Amendment
Posted: September 12, 2012 Filed under: Anarchy X, Culture, Politics | Tags: America, Anarchy X, Bill of Rights, Constitution, culture, Federalists, freedom, Hobbes, leviathan, liberty, ninth amendment, philosophy, politics Leave a comment“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
At last we come to what I have to admit is my favorite amendment. If for no other reason, I love this amendment because it is the final answer to every question asked by most of the self-proclaimed “strict constitutionalists” I have met. In most cases these would be people who are looking for excuses to legislate their own petty meanness on the rest of the world, and when you call them on it, they have a standard fall back: their shield, their shelter, their raison d’étre almost universally seems to consist of “where do you find that right in the Constitution?”
Right here. Here it is. In the same way that the justice system lays the burden of proof on the prosecution, and for many of the same reasons, so too is the burden of proof that the government, that we the people have the right to take an action against other people. For my money this is the defining feature of the Bill of Rights, and in many ways the Constitution itself.
It is worth noting that the Ninth Amendment only exists in large part because of the debate about the Bill of Rights itself; by the very notion that there should be no need to specifically enumerate rights that would accrue to the people in a country where the powers of the government would be spelled out quite specifically, and the government would have no further or additional powers beyond those that had been granted to it by the very document that was being amended. It’s a nice thought. Any student of history, classical or modern, political or otherwise, should know it’s also a naïve one. So should anyone who has read Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.
Call me cynical if you must, but it is my belief born out of study and experience that any human system built for managing people will do two things: grow and accrue more power unto itself. It is not (necessarily) some corrupt plot, it is simply the spontaneous order of human systems. Governments are designed to govern; that is their purpose. They can only do that so long as they are either stable or growing. No system can remain viable if it is stagnant. Therefore, for a government to remain viable it must continue to grow, and the only way for a government to grow is to become more powerful, and thereby more intrusive.
Having delineated specific areas and ways in which the government can’t grow in the first eight amendments, there are two possibilities left. The first is the Federalist assertion of a sort of “gentleman’s agreement” of government, that the rights of the people would be implicitly protected simply by virtue of having delineated the powers the government has. Which has worked so well up to now. The second possibility is finding new and interesting ways to interpret the powers granted by the Constitution, including simply ignoring any rights people might reasonably expect to enjoy, including those grounded in the common law tradition from which the Constitutional government evolved.
The modern upshot of this is widespread. As society has evolved, we have changed in our expectations of what it means to be a part of that society; we have even (thankfully) changed in our attitudes and beliefs about what it means to be human. We have recognized and defended rights along the way that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, but that are grounded in the same tradition as the other rights that are. One example is the right to privacy, which is often assailed by the aforementioned “where do you find that right in the Constitution?”
Let me be clear: I believe that all the rights that are defended and provided for by the Constitution, regardless of what philosophical approach you may take to it, derive from the following:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.
That having been said, I see nothing that runs counter to a right to privacy. On the contrary, privacy in one’s person and effects seems to me to be eminently just, promotes tranquility, adds to the common welfare, and is one of the greatest blessings of liberty I can imagine. If you don’t believe me on that last point, throw wide the settings on your Facebook profile and wait five minutes.
Not everything people claim as a right truly is one; I get that. But to say that it must be spelled out to exist is absurd. The law is and always has been a lagging indicator of the culture at best, and a drag on the culture at worst. Far better to put the burden on those who would control us than on those of us who would be free.
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My Not So Humble Opinion 