This is a continuation of my discussion with John Holbo...Crooked Timber Liberals do Not Advocate Selling Votes ...and here is his original article over at the Crooked Timber blog...Selling Votes
*****************************************************
John Holbo
“ok, you’re right that I should bear the burden of proof. Why should citizens be in the driver’s seat?”
No, the question is not why – the why is obvious. The question is how. The burden of proof on you concerns the how, not the why. How do you propose to put citizens in the driver’s seat? (An admirable place for them to be, we all agree.) Don’t say: by letting them sell their votes. The question is: how will letting them sell their votes help put them in the driver’s seat? Because, as I keep saying, it doesn’t look to me as though that will have the desired effect. Rather, it will result in the rich wielding disproportionate political power. And you’ve given me no reason to think 1) that it won’t do that; or 2) that, if it does, that won’t be a problem. Do not tell me I must be suffering the fatal conceit of faith in congress’s wisdom or any other thing that it’s not really very likely I am suffering from. And if it wasn’t clear before, it is now: I hereby formally disavow, abjure, and stamp into the dust belief in congress’ omniscience. Place is a mess. Now: why your plan is better?
“But if you can see citizens as consumers then you’ll understand that we don’t need representatives to adequately express our own interests and preferences.”
I can see citizens as consumers. And I get that somehow we’ve moved past the virtues of just selling votes at this point. But I don’t understand how it’s going to work. What are you imagining? That, in addition to having the right to sell your vote, everyone has the right to specify what portion of their taxes goes to every program? Can people then choose not to pay taxes at all? If so, won’t everyone choose not to pay anything. We’ll have anarchism as a straight function of what is basically a free-rider problem? On the other hand, if people are forced to pay taxes – which seems an arbitrary infringement of their rights as consumers, by the terms of this scheme – why will it go better if everyone allocates their tax money privately? We’ll have a huge coordination problem, no? You seem to be advocating not an efficient market but a giant pot luck dinner, with all the hazards of too much potato salad that entails. But with aircraft carriers instead of potato salad. What am I missing?
Shifting angles:
“the demand for public goods should determine the supply of public goods. It’s really as simple as that.”
This seems like a recipe for bloated government. If someone wants a Social Security check, they get it. If they want a bigger check, they get it. Who’s going to pay for this? I suspect you are going to say that the demand to PAY for public goods, to be distributed to other people, will determine the supply. But now we are back to everyone setting their own tax rate. And I take it people will settle on 0% and try to free ride on any suckers who put down for more than that. If this is not the plan, then what?
Your point about the Rolls Royce/private jet economy seems to me a fallacy for the following reason: the rich would have both means and motive to buy up enough votes to make it the case that they were disproportionately represented. The rich do not have means or motive to buy up every Honda Civic on the road, to prevent their falling into the hands of the poor (is that the idea?) If they tried, Honda would just make more. Supply and demand. Can’t do that with votes. Typically, although not always, there is no barrier to people selling stuff to the rich – as much as they want to buy – and also selling stuff to the poor. But there would be a barrier to the rich buying up all the votes they wanted, disproportionately, and the non-rich being represented, proportionately.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, here's a not so brief synopsis of my post on The Dialectic of Unintended Consequences. At the height of the unions' power in the 50s and 60s it became economically feasible for manufacturing companies to move overseas. Labor costs are one of the most important factors in determining a factory's location or relocation. So the factories relocated to some countries with extremely low labor costs...such as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.
At that time the large majority of people in those countries were primarily engaged in subsistence agriculture. When they were given the option to work in the new factories...many chose to do so rather than continue to engage in subsistence agriculture. They learned new skills and quite a few left to start their own factories. The demand for labor increased...while the labor supply stayed constant...so wages started to rise.
When my hero, Deng Xiaoping, opened China up to foreign investment in the 80s...many factories from the four Asian Tigers relocated to China in order to take advantage of what seemed to be an endless supply of cheap labor. The pattern repeated itself....people chose working in the new factories rather than continue to engage in subsistence agriculture...they learned new skills...many started their own factories...and wages very gradually started to rise.
The other day when Obama gave his state of the union address he said that it was becoming expensive to do business in China. Just amazing. Prior to Deng Xiaoping...Chairman Mao had attempted to impose on the entire country what he felt to be the most efficient allocation of resources. The result? Thirty million people starved to death as a direct result of state induced famine. When Deng Xiaoping took over he gave people a choice between manufacturing and agriculture. The result? Millions and millions of people were lifted out of poverty within one generation.
You have trouble seeing how giving citizens a choice to sell their votes would put them in the driver's seat...and I have trouble seeing how it wouldn't. We would be giving citizens a choice that they currently do not have. Anytime we give people a choice that they currently do not have we are giving them that much more control over their lives. Whether it's a good choice for them to sell their votes wouldn't be up to me to decide. Along those same lines...it would be very presumptuous for me to tell people whether they should choose working in a sweatshop over subsistence agriculture. Another example...even though I served in the military it would be very presumptuous for me to tell somebody whether it would be a good idea for them to sign up for the military. In all three cases though I strongly advocate that people be given the choice.
That being said...regarding people directly allocating their taxes...because of the free-rider problem...people shouldn't be given a choice whether they paid taxes and individuals shouldn't be able to choose their tax rate. Those debates are useless without first establishing the proper scope of government. It would be like somebody asking me how much I'm going to pay them without first establishing what their skills are. Regarding too much potato salad...people wouldn't generally allocate their taxes to a government organization that doesn't need more money...and it would be completely subjective to say whether somebody is spending too much money on infrastructure, public education/transportation/housing/healthcare, cancer research and various other public goods. If you get a chance read my last response to Henri Vieuxtemps. It offers an example of trying to establish whether the public or private sector should publish your book.
*****************************************************
Henri Vieuxtemps
I’d love to be able to allocate my taxes. Seriously, I would. It’d be difficult to organize this on a high granularity level, though; I imagine everything would get of whack, as I probably have no information on how other people allocated theirs. So, to start with, I would suggest just a couple of categories, like, say, ‘the military’ and ‘everything else’.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
Henri Vieuxtemps, how about a third category…say, ‘the war on drugs’?
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Well, at least now I understand what you are proposing, although I am very far from buying. Here’s something to think about.
“You have trouble seeing how giving citizens a choice to sell their votes would put them in the driver’s seat…and I have trouble seeing how it wouldn’t. We would be giving citizens a choice that they currently do not have. Anytime we give people a choice that they currently do not have we are giving them that much more control over their lives.”
The thing to realize is that this is false, strictly speaking. Take the most literal driver’s seat case of all: traffic lights. If you abolished rules about go-on-green/stop-on-red you would give citizens a choice they currently do not have. But you would not, thereby, in any meaningful way, be giving them more control over their lives. The opposite would be the case.
Basically your proposal sounds like that to me. A giant coordination problem. You now say that this stuff won’t work unless we first establish the proper scope of government, but earlier you said this stuff would help us establish the proper scope of government. I’m pretty sure that’s how it will go. Re: publishing my book. That’s not such an interesting case because there it’s clear how the market can do the job. What I want to know is how we can have a functioning market to determine the size of government people want. At first you said we could have one. Now you are retreating a bit in the face of coordination and free-rider problems. I think you have to retreat, so that’s good. But is there any point at which you can stop having to retreat? Probably. But I’m not seeing it.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
“Regarding too much potato salad…people wouldn’t generally allocate their taxes to a government organization that doesn’t need more money”
Why wouldn’t they? And how do you know? It seems obvious to me that the results would inevitably be extremely ill-assorted, in an ill-luck potluck sort of way. And it seems to me that you are obliged to say not that this wouldn’t happen (how could you know that?) but that any bizarre answer is, by definition, the right answer. We don’t second-guess the market. That’s the whole point: there is no right answer hidden beyond or behind what the market says. If we end up with 12 new nuclear aircraft carriers and some weird and painful shortfall in basic services – maybe not enough infrastructure to service so many carriers, long-term, so they all rust and sink; or so the spent nuclear fuel can’t be processed properly – then that’s what we ‘wanted’, odd though that sounds. No other answer is remotely consistent with your general line. So bite the bullet.
The general problem here is that the market, in the book case, only needs everyone to express what they want, individually. Their self-regarding preferences. Do I want the book or don’t I? People are the best judges of their own desires, in that regard. But people’s preferences about government aren’t like that. You have to make an intelligent judgment, not about what you want personally, but about what everyone wants and needs/should get. A new aircraft carrier? or more school lunches for poor kids? These judgments require everyone to take a vain stab at the knowledge problem. So what we get is not one aggregate, good answer but an enormous mountain of bad answers, not adding up, in the aggregate, to a good answer.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, as a reader of my blog, Lupis42, mentioned...selling votes is a completely voluntary transaction between two consenting adults. Can you offer any other examples of completely voluntary transactions between two consenting individuals that do result...or would result...in traffic collisions?
Regarding allowing people to directly allocate their taxes. You're far from buying it? But you're the one that's selling it to me. A while back I knew just enough about how the Invisible Hand worked to find this hypothetical question really interesting. So I went around asking people what they thought would happen if taxpayers could directly allocate their taxes.
Their concerns helped me see enough of the Invisible Hand to understand why taxpayers should be allowed to directly allocate their taxes. If you get a chance you should take a look at this post...Unglamorous but Important Things.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Crooked Timber Liberals Do Not Advocate Selling Votes
It's true! But I sure did get tricked! The Crooked Timber Liberal, John Holbo, recently posted this fascinating blog entry on selling votes.
Here was my response...and then his response...and then my response...and...?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, I literally did a double take when I saw this in my google reader. I was like..."What...is this really coming from the Crooked Timber website?" When I was reading your article I kept waiting for the..."Now here's why this would destroy society as we know it..."
My point is...you have my vote...which I wouldn't sell for anything less than $10,000 dollars.
The goal of voting is to determine which side cares the most. It surely wouldn't make sense for the side that could care less to win. People get confused though and think that just because one side has more numbers it automatically means that they care more. Yet...it's fairly reasonable to say that one person who would sell his/her kidney for an additional vote obviously cares more about the issue than one person who would sell his vote for only $1.
That's why limiting campaign contributions would be as counterproductive as limiting how many hours people could volunteer for a cause that they care about. Time is money.
So the question shouldn't be: Do you care about an issue? Rather...it should be: How much do you care about an issue? That's why we have the common expressions..."put your money where your mouth is" and "actions speak louder than words". It's one thing to just "like" a cause on facebook and it's another thing to volunteer for that cause in real life.
Not too long ago Jason Brennan wrote a book on the ethics of voting. In his book he argues against "bad" voting. Of course..."bad" voting for a libertarian isn't necessarily the same thing as "bad" voting for a liberal...and vice-versa. Here's my comment on his BHL blog entry (you have to sort the comments from oldest to newest). In my comment I argue why it's perfectly reasonable for people to sell their votes.
Also, here's my 10 topic Self-Ownership Survey where I juxtapose the issue of campaign contributions with children's suffrage, procreation licenses, consensual slavery, etc. in order to encourage people to evaluate where they stand with regards to self-ownership.
The bottom line is...if it was easy for people to think objectively about voting then we would have embraced universal suffrage from the get-go. As it is...people automatically evaluate voting issues in terms of the outcomes that they desire.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica: “My point is…you have my vote…which I wouldn’t sell for anything less than $10,000 dollars.”
I’m not surprised, nor horrified, that some people actually think it makes sense, my little scheme. I would be surprised if some propertarian-libertarian hasn’t worked out the details long ago.
But just to be clear: I strongly disapprove of this scheme. But I think it wouldn’t actually be much worse – if at all – that the system we’ve got. I do think this is a big mistake: “Yet…it’s fairly reasonable to say that one person who would sell his/her kidney for an additional vote obviously cares more about the issue than one person who would sell his vote for only $1.”
This is reasonable, but willingness to spend large amounts of money is not a good indication of intensity of preference if some people are very poor and others very rich.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, well...you broached the topic in a well thought out manner...so you still have my vote. But...I'm going to have to drop my selling price to $500.
Sure, it's a given that people have different levels of disposable time/money. But are you truly going to argue that you can generalize other people's values based on how much disposable time/money that they have? If so...do you have any evidence to support your generalization? Many many many people have claimed that a correlation exists between wealth and values but none have been able to substantiate their claims.
"This is reasonable, but willingness to spend large amounts of money is not a good indication of intensity of preference if some people are very poor and others very rich."
Are you familiar with the Bible story of the widow's mite? Many small sacrifices can certainly equal a few large sacrifices. Otherwise...Obama probably wouldn't have been elected. This the long-tail concept. We're not looking at averages here...we're looking at totals. In terms of voting the question is..."which side cares the most?"...not..."which side on average cares the most?".
If opportunity costs are not a good indication of intensity of preference...then what are the alternatives? What are the opportunity costs of completely foregoing an integration of intensity? How can we determine the best possible use of limited resources unless we allow people to choose one thing that they value over another thing that they value?
Would you be fine giving your kidney to somebody with two perfectly healthy kidneys? That is an example of the inefficient allocation of limited resources. If it doesn't make sense on the individual level...why would it make sense on the national level?
Now, would it make sense for me...a completely stranger...to decide for you how you can best use your kidney? Can resources truly be efficiently allocated by proxy?
Speaking of kidneys...during the C-Span lesser known New Hampshire presidential candidate debate....Vermin Supreme stood up and lifted up his shirt to show everybody the scar he received from having donated his kidney to his mother. While doing so he preached why everybody should donate their kidneys. Because...it's all about convincing. For a real dose of of poignancy mixed with humor...check out his blog entry where he talks about giving his kidney to his mother rather than his friend who also needed one. It's all about opportunity costs.
The hard part to convey is that if we allowed people to directly allocate their individual taxes then the outcome might be a viable form of socialism. Once we integrate intensity (reveal preferences) then we would solve the incentive problem and the problem of allocative inefficiency. The incentive problem would be solved because a government organization's revenue would be directly tied to its productivity. Nobody would choose to waste their hard-earned taxes anymore than you would choose to waste your kidney. The allocative inefficiency problem would be solved given that taxpayers would consider the opportunity costs of their tax allocation decisions. The result would be a taxpayer division of labor.
*****************************************************
Latro
I find it interesting that we focus a lot on the freedom/right/duty to vote and not on the freedom/right/duty? of being able to present your platform and yourself as alternatives in the political process.
The whole “you cant ban donations and all that, thats against freedom of speech”. What about the freedom of having your ideas about how to run the country taken as seriously, as it should be your right as a citizen, as the ones of the mega-rich-backed candidates?
In short, why dont we (everywhere, I’m not American but the problem is similar everywhere), give to each candidate – defined as whoever wants to be one – and party – same – the same means of communication, the same alloted time, the same OBLIGATORY presence in debates, and all that, as to ensure all voices get the same, equal treatment and the deciding citizens can vote fully informed?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
Latro, guess you missed the the C-Span debates on the Lesser Known New Hampshire candidates? Sure, I'd want Vermin Supreme to receive the same amount of exposure as Obama and Ron Paul...but for me to advocate changing the process would reflect my inability to consider the process objectively.
The process is one of survival of the fittest ideas. I obviously have my own hare-brained ideas regarding changes we need to make. Would I like to see them discussed on C-Span and CNN? Of course I would...because I don't believe that my ideas are truly hare-brained. But why should C-Span or CNN spend their limited time discussing topics that have not been vetted by bloggers? It's an issue of opportunity cost.
On my blog entry on Vermin Supreme...in the second youtube video...here's what Dan Rather had to say about giving air time to Vermin Supreme...
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Getting back to xerographica: “You certainly aren’t the first to suggest that there is a correlation between wealth and values…but you would certainly be the first if you were able to substantiate your claim.”
I’m not sure I fully understand this. (I did click through for a quick look.) Presumably if you study income and party affiliation and so forth you can find some meaningful correlations. Probably the Pew values survey would be a good place to look. But my argument and attitude doesn’t depend on any particular social science results. Consider three ways of allocating votes.
You get more votes the longer you are willing to sit in a chair in a room for hours on end with nothing but nothing to do.
You get more votes the longer you are willing to do the downward-facing dog.
You get more votes the more you pay.
These are all potential methods of measuring intensity of preference. In some ways they are all better than the system we have got, because they all attempt to measure intensity at all, whereas one person-one vote does not. That said, they are all obviously flawed. The first will skew voting to people who don’t have jobs or things they really need to do that keep them from sitting in a boring room doing nothing. The second will skew voting to yoga practitioners. The third will skew voting to rich people. Now do I know for sure that, say, yoga practitioners have different values than everyone else has, so that this skew will be a problem? No. If I had to guess, yoga skews left. But maybe that’s totally wrong and there is no correlation between being good at the downward-facing dog and any kind of political value that anyone might be called upon to express with a vote. All the same, I’m not inclined to adopt a system that gives a group disproportionate representation, for an irrelevant reason, even if that disproportion does not clearly create a problem. The basic equality proposition underlying one person-one vote, and also the pragmatics of it, suggest that you should not be giving someone more votes than someone else gets for an obviously irrelevant reason.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, have you read this article by the progressive Cait Lamberton...Your Money, Your Choice? In the article she makes a case for tax choice.
Would allowing people to sell their votes skew the results to the left or to the right? Would allowing children to vote skew the results to the left or to the right? Did allowing women to vote skew the results to the left or to the right? Did allowing minorities to vote skew the results to the left or to the right?
Do you want an accurate reflection of interests...or do you want equality of representation? If you want equality of representation then why not write a blog entry on the benefit of giving each social group one vote? In your post you could consider the following questions...
Do gay people and atheists think it's fair that Christians can engage in tyranny of the majority? Do minorities think it's fair that white people can engage in tyranny of the majority? Do young people think it's fair that old people can engage in tyranny of the majority? Do rich people think it's fair that poor people can engage in tyranny of the majority? Do smart people think it's fair that dumb people can engage in tyranny of the majority?
You're either going to have tyranny of the minority or tyranny of the majority. It's not fair...but tyranny is an inherent feature of voting. One group is always going to impose its interests onto another group. The question is...who should do the imposing...the group that cares most...or the group that cares less?
Just like we should support free-speech even when it has an unfavorable skew....we should not let the possibility of an unfavorable skew diminish our support for people's right to try and protect their interests. As a nation we shouldn't be afraid to take a close look in the mirror. What's kind of funny is that each side is concerned that the reflection will be skewed to the other side. As individuals we have trouble fathoming something as complex as the values of an entire nation...which is why we developed the left/right heuristic.
As a pragmatarian I have no desire to try and shift our nation's spending priorities in any one direction. My goal is for our spending priorities...aka supply... to accurately reflect interests...aka demand. Just like it doesn't make sense for you to give your kidney to somebody with two perfectly healthy kidneys....it doesn't make sense for our nation to purchase more guns when there's a demand for more butter.
The selling votes concept, combined with pragmatarianism, would have a much narrower application. People's tax allocation decisions would determine the scope of government and their votes would determine social issues. There would be no need to vote on guns vs butter because the allocation of public goods would accurately reflect exactly how much society values those public goods. Instead, we would vote on things like whether polygamy should be legal.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica: “That being said…I don’t get the feeling like you’ve made a real case…or any case…for equality…in the sense that it trumps revealing intensity. That’s kind of the equivalent of a libertarian that holds “liberty” as argument enough.”
It’s true that I haven’t made the case for equality, but that’s because if you don’t accept the basic proposition that people should be given equal political rights and equal representation, I don’t see why you want to devise a better democratic voting scheme at all. Democratic voting only makes moral sense on the assumption that, basically, we want equality for citizens. Attempts to reveal intensity of preferences are not alternatives to valuing equality, in my sense. Such attempts only have a coherent motive as refinements – not replacements of – attempts to realize basic political equality, plus liberty. You want to give the people what they want. And you are starting from a baseline of equality of persons.
You write about ‘efficiency’. It is more efficient if we can measure intensity of preference better? But efficiency for what? Why do you want to measure this stuff? Presumably because you want to have a more refined, nuanced sense of what ‘most people really want’. But why would you care about that unless you think that what most people really want is morally important? And why would you think that unless you think that, given that everyone is equal, what most people really want is what we need to go for, in most cases.
I mean, if you are a divine right of kings monarchist-type, you won’t believe any of this equality guff, but then you won’t care about revealed preferences of anyone but God and the king either. Just for example. So what gives?
You give the rich more votes if you think the rich deserve more political power, for being rich. Just like you give more votes to yoga practitioners, if you think doing yoga makes you a spiritual aristocrat more deserving of wielding political power. You don’t do either of these things, ideally, if you don’t believe these things. Even if you think it would be politically harmless – a wash at the ballot box – you don’t go generating random aristocracies. It’s just bad design, at best.
A simple question: do you think that selling votes, as a scheme, is superior in any way to the more votes for more downward-facing dog scheme? If so: why?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, I just purchased your book...Reason & Persuasion: Three Dialogues by Plato...for $32.50 from Amazon. And I intentionally kept your Amazon tag in the above link. Rather than just thinking of it as me "purchasing" your book...let's think of it as me "voting" for you...and Amazon...and Pearson Education...and...
Take a few moments to trip out on that. Right here we see Bastiat's opportunity cost concept...and Hayek's partial knowledge concept in action. We see allocative efficiency...and the invisible hand...and pragmatarianism...all in action. I just voted for you.
Wealthy people are wealthy because many people voted for them. When I purchased your book on Amazon we both voted for Jeff Bezos. Why should Jeff Bezos be able to buy 10,000 more votes than we ever could? Because we...and millions of other people...voted for him.
If you didn't like how Jeff Bezos was voting with his money...then you would be able to boycott Amazon and encourage others to do the same. If you were allowed to directly allocate your taxes...then you would be able to boycott any war that we ever engaged in. On the other hand...conservatives and libertarians would be able to boycott the government's war on poverty. Then again...liberals would be able to boycott the government's war on drugs.
The eternal question has been...what should the government do? What is the proper scope of government? What are the proper duties of government? What should the responsibilities of government be? The answer to this fundamental question is simple. The government should do what we pay it to do.
Why did I purchase your book? Well...because we're having this discussion...because you're seriously considering an idea that I really value...because you're exceptional among Crooked Timber Liberals for doing so...because I should read more Plato...
Now...my blog, which is dedicated to allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes, only has 4 followers (errr...now 5). Does that mean that pragmatarianism isn't a valuable idea? It's very well possible. I could certainly have wasted many hours barking up the wrong tree.
Did the people behind the Magna Carta ever stop and wonder if they were barking up the wrong tree? I mean...they were challenging the divine right of kings. The thing is, we've been challenging authority ever since Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (see my post on the Devil's Advocate for Public Goods).
I don't want to just keep replacing kings...I don't want to just keep replacing presidents...I don't want to just keep replacing congresspeople. I want to directly integrate everything you know...and everything I know...and everything Jeff Bezos knows...into determining exactly what the government should do. Along those same lines...I want everybody to be able to boycott anything the government does that they believe it should not be doing.
So to answer your simple question...selling votes is superior to the downward facing dog scheme because you and I voted for the people who can buy votes.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Thanks for buying the book! I hope you like it.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
“selling votes is superior to the downward facing dog scheme because you and I voted for the people who can buy votes.”
OK, I’ll respond quickly to this. It seems to me circular. In a world in which people have been downward-facing dogging (on behalf of) the candidates for some time, the people to whom (for whom) one downward-face are also the people to whom (for whom, one behalf of whom) one has downward-faced in the past. Just as the people who buy votes are the people who bought votes in the past, ex hypothesi. But ‘we’ve always done it this way before, so it must be a good way of doing it’ is not an argument, especially not when we are arguing hypothetially about things we actually haven’t done before. (If this is not your argument, then I don’t see what you your argument is.)
The only difference, it seems to me, is that there is no market in selling instances of performance of the downward-facing dog. Whereas you can sell votes. But there is no particular reason why that should making selling preferably. Our interest in settling an optimal voting system is not a desire to create a commercial industry, per se.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, your argument is that it's not fair for the founder of Amazon.com...Jeff Bezos...to be able to purchase more votes than you or I would be able to. My counter argument was that you "voted" for Bezos by selling your book on Amazon and I "voted" for Bezos when I purchased your book on Amazon.
We didn't literally "vote" for Bezos given that he is not running for office. We figuratively voted for him by making him that much more wealthy.
The question is...would you still have sold your book on Amazon if you knew that Bezos was going to use your money to purchase literal votes that were against your interests? We can see that the beauty of your idea is that it would establish a culture of ethical consumerism.
Like pragmatarianism, your idea would allow us to objectively discern the proper scope of government. There's no need to debate the proper scope of Jeff Bezos. Why is that? It's simply because we've all used our money to figuratively vote for exactly what it is that Jeff Bezos should be doing...running Amazon.com.
If we allow people to sell their votes...and directly allocate their taxes....then the government would simply do what we pay it to do. Would you pay the government to do something that it was bad at doing? No...nobody would We would all only pay the government to do what it was good at doing.
If anybody disagrees with something that the government is doing then they would have the freedom to engage in ethical consumerism by boycotting that government organization. If you support the concept of ethical consumerism in the private sector...then why wouldn't you support applying the same concept to the public sector? Wouldn't you value the freedom to boycott unnecessary wars?
*****************************************************
Alex
*****************************************************
Xerographica
Alex, how is that the logical conclusion? The context of my statement is the current system. It refers to people spending their time and money to try and modify the current system. With the current system what you described is illegal (well...at least in terms of the private sector).
If you want what you described to be legal...then even though it's against my interests...I wouldn't want to limit your right to spend as much time/money as you wanted to try and protect your interests.
Just to be clear...my issue isn't the taxing...it's the spending. I could care less if there was 100% public ownership of the means of production...as long as 1. taxpayers were allowed to directly allocate their taxes and 2. people were allowed to sell their votes.
Socialism really could work...as long as we solved the incentive problem and the partial knowledge problem. By allowing 1. taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes and 2. people to sell their votes we would definitively solve both those problems.
Would the outcome be socialism...or anarcho-capitalism...or somewhere in between? I have no idea...nobody could truly know the outcome. That being said...what I'm fairly certain of is that if there was a shift...then the shift would benefit our country as a whole...completely irrespective of the direction the shift took.
*****************************************************
Mike Huben
Xerographica (@98) wrote:
“There’s no need to debate the proper scope of Jeff Bezos. Why is that? It’s simply because we’ve all used our money to figuratively vote for exactly what it is that Jeff Bezos should be doing…running Amazon.com. ”
No, it is because we have long ago decided the proper scope of businessmen like Bezos, and decided that they should not be able to compete coercively: we don’t need mafias. By centralizing and democratizing government, we prevent wasteful combative competition that would lead to positive feedback.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
Mike Huben, last year on your blog entry...What is Libertarianism?...I provided specific examples to refute your arguments.
Sure...I agree that we don't need mafias...but you're going to have to offer some specific examples of how Jeff Bezos would have anything to do with mafias. How is Bezos offering to buy your vote in the same league as mafia extortion? Is he going to send thugs to your house to beat you up if you didn't want to sell him your vote? Would he really risk going to jail for one vote?
Would legalizing the sale of kidneys help or hurt the black market for kidneys? Would legalizing drugs help or hurt the illegal drug trade? Did ending prohibition help or hurt the mafia?
Was it easier to corrupt a king or corrupt congress? Would it be easier to corrupt congress or corrupt millions and millions of taxpayers and/or voters? The more centralized that power is...
1. the easier it is for the corrupter...given that all the eggs are in one basket
2. the greater the likelihood for corruption...given that there will be many many many offers
3. the greater the negative impact of corruption...given that all the eggs are in one basket.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
“My counter argument was that you “voted” for Bezos by selling your book on Amazon and I “voted” for Bezos when I purchased your book on Amazon.
We didn’t literally “vote” for Bezos given that he is not running for office. We figuratively voted for him by making him that much more wealthy”
The big problem here is that we didn’t vote for Bezos, literally or figuratively, for office, by making him more wealthy. The reason we didn’t vote for him for office, in virtue of our purchase, has nothing to do with the fact that he’s not running for office. (He could have been, and we still wouldn’t have been.) By buying a product from Amazon, we reveal a preference for the product, not for Bezos in office.
So your counter-argument is really a counter-premise, like so: wealthy people are, in virtue of their wealth, inherently more deserving of wielding political power. Period. End of story. That’s fine, insofar as that makes clear where the rest of us get off the bus: namely, with this first step.
Making the point from another angle …
Suppose we change my downward-facing dog case around a bit: everyone gets votes to the extent that are musicians who sell dance records. By buying their records, you ‘vote’ for them. The problem here – which is precisely analogous to the Bezos problem – is that it’s simply false to say that, literally or figuratively, you vote for them FOR OFFICE by buying their records. At most you vote for them as being pretty good dance music creators. By buying from Amazon I may, figuratively, vote for Jeff Bezos as the guy most likely to sell me what I want for a reasonable price (this is already a stretch, but let it go.) But there is a long way to go between this and Jeff Bezos FOR SENATE, or whatever office he may seek.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo...how is it a problem that Bezos isn't running for office? You figuratively voted for Jeff Bezos to be one of America's Best Leaders. Another leader on that list is Jeffrey Sachs...what difference does it make whether Sachs is a professor or a senator? What difference does it make that Lady Gaga and Bono aren't politicians?
They either do...or they don't...represent a portion of your interests. Do you have any idea how many different people represent some portion of your interests on a daily basis? That's why I really struggle with the idea that one congressperson can effectively represent the interests of half a million people. That's a joke...which is why it was funny when the comedian Daniel Tosh said, "The idea that any of these candidates represent my interests is absurd."
It's perfectly fine though if you believe that congresspeople do an excellent job at functioning as our personal shoppers for public goods. Maybe Daniel Tosh, myself...and nearly everybody else I know...are extremely exceptional. If that's truly the case though, then why would you be hesitant to allow consumers to figuratively vote for congress?
One of your interests is clearly to try and protect the interests of those who are unable to protect their own interests. But is your interest in this area so exceptional that nobody else would figuratively vote to protect it? Do you think that just because conservatives are skeptical of the government's ability to truly help people in need that it means that they don't care? Isn't it possible that perhaps people are more complex than that?
If you don't want to disproportionately empower the rich...then you can't just get off the bus. That's not where this story ends. You need to stay on the bus long enough to understand where your money is going and how it is being used. Like I said....that is the beauty of your pseudo-proposal. It doesn't allow you to dissociate yourself from the indirect consequences of your consumption decisions.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica, I am afraid I just don’t get it. Obviously I get the idea that the current system has problems. My objection to what you are proposing is not based on the assumption that the current system is excellent, or that the people running it are unusually excellent at their jobs. But what I don’t get is why Bezos and Gaga are peculiarly suited to overcome existing problems, simply because they are rich. Their riches would allow them to buy votes. Fine. But why is it valuable to enable them to do that? Why are we more concerned to reveal the political preferences of Bezos and Gaga than the man on the street?
“Do you have any idea how many different people represent some portion of your interests on a daily basis?”
I would assume: a lot. A huge number. But why is this relevant?
“why would you be hesitant to allow consumers to figuratively vote for congress?”
Well, I would need to be told why it is supposed to be a good idea. Again, doesn’t it just come down to a kind of axiom: wealthy people are more worthy of wielding political power. Obviously if that’s true, then consumerism plus selling votes becomes a kind of glorious engine of political virtue. Because it makes some people rich, ergo makes them worthy of wielding political power, while at the same time making them politically powerful. But why should I buy the main premise?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, we are not more concerned to reveal the political preferences of Bezos and Gaga than the man on the street. The concept that I'm failing to convey is how the political preferences of Bezos and Gaga reflect a portion of the preferences of the people on the street. If we want correct political answers then we need to integrate everybody's social and economic preferences. Politics is simply a reflection of economic and social preferences. The more accurate the reflection the more accurate the answers.
Let's consider the question of what the private sector should produce. How many different people does it take to come up with this answer? It takes every single one of us. If we took your preferences out of the equation then would the answer still be correct? No...it wouldn't be. It would be extremely close to being correct but it would still be wrong. Each person we take out of the equation the more incorrect the answer becomes.
This is the basic premise of why socialism fails. Socialism is resource allocation by proxy. Unlike capitalism...it only allows you to indirectly communicate your preferences. If it was just a 1 to 1 ratio it wouldn't be so bad. For example...I would give you all my money...and communicate my preferences to you...and you would buy me what I wanted. The economy wouldn't work as well but it probably wouldn't fail. But what about a 1 to 2 ratio? Or a 1 to 3 ratio? Or a 1 to 100,000 ratio?
Everybody has some information but nobody has all the information. This is not a new concept. Socrates said, "...it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know." Buddha expressed this in terms of the blind men each feeling different parts of an elephant. More recently...Hayek referred to this as the "Fatal Conceit". You don't have to agree with this concept...but it helps at least to understand it...given that it's the very foundation of conservatism and libertarianism. The irony is that conservatives and libertarians do not realize how they are nearly as guilty of this "Fatal Conceit" as liberals are. For more on this see my post on a taxpayer division of labor.
If we understand that it takes every single one of us to correctly answer the question of what the private sector should produce...then it shouldn't be much of a stretch to understand that it would require every single one of us to correctly answer the question of what the public sector should produce. That in no way implies that we should all be forced to literally vote...it simply conveys the value of allowing people to directly communicate their preferences via the selling of their votes and the direct allocation of their taxes.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica,
I guess I fail to see the relevance. I understand why it would be nice if election and voting revealed voter preference in richer fashion. But, given that people have unequal economic endowments, it won’t work. All you are doing is revealing, disproportionately, the preferences of those with lots of money. It’s as bad as the downward-facing dog scheme. It’s a measure of preference-intensity, but obviously badly skewed. This was the point of the post. It’s every bit as bad as the system we’ve got. And surely any utopia we devise ought to be less bad than that!
” The irony is that conservatives and libertarians do not realize how they are nearly as guilty of this “Fatal Conceit” as liberals are.”
I would say the irony is that they are guiltier, but we can let it go, for argument purposes. Granted, we’ve got a knowledge problem. The existing system tries to deal with it with one man-one vote. Your system seems to me no better because although it is more sensitive, in a sense, it is badly skewed. So the sensitivity all goes to waste, in effect.
We are, actually, recapitulating old debates. It has standardly been argued that the rich are more politically virtuous and should disproportionately wield power. (You are playing theme and variations on this timeless line.) The poor shouldn’t vote because they are too dumb and uninterested and uneducated about general issues. One of the main arguments against that is that is that the poor may not know a lot of things, but they know one thing. What bothers them. If you strip them of the franchise, their grievances will be neglected and will fester and that’s bad. Likewise, if you let them sell their vote, you are – as likely as not – actually making the knowledge problem worse. It’s now harder, not easier, to get information about what the poor want, in a political policy sense.
At this point you could argue that we are still getting information from the sale of votes. And that’s true. But the signal is thinner than it has to be. And the system is set up in such a way that the signal will be ignored, not attended to, by those with political power. So, to repeat, I don’t see how you have proposed any solution to the knowledge problem. You keep saying: the Buddha thing. Yeah, I get it. (When you get your copy of the book you’ll see that I actually drew a cartoon elephant to illustrate the parable. The concept is stock and familiar.) But now what?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, do we have different interpretations of the parable of the blind men and the elephant? My interpretation is that we all have unique but extremely limited perspectives. Based on my interpretation of the parable it would be counterproductive to group people together based on their net worth. Yet, your argument seems to indicate that all the rich people are touching the elephant's left ear while all the poor people are touching the elephant's tail.
Am I misinterpreting the parable or is there a disparity between the parable and your argument? If we all have unique perspectives...how would allowing us to directly communicate our perspectives skew the outcome towards any arbitrary grouping of people? In my opinion...allowing people to directly communicate their perspectives would skew the outcome towards reality. In other words...it would correct the skew of misrepresentation.
In terms of our argument...the elephant represents the proper scope of government. We argue over the scope of government like blind men arguing over what it is that they are touching. It's conceited for one blind person to think they can "see" more than another blind person. This conceit is the basis of socialism...and dictatorships...and monarchies. It requires humility for me to accept that maybe I'm wrong and maybe you're right. This humility is a two way street that leads us towards political tolerance. In other words...while I might disagree with who you sold your vote to...or how you allocated your taxes...I would strongly support your right to do so.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
“My interpretation is that we all have unique but extremely limited perspectives.”
That’s pretty much it. My concern is that your proposal deals poorly with this state of affairs, but you seem to think your proposal deals well with it.
“Yet, your argument seems to indicate that all the rich people are touching the elephant’s left ear while all the poor people are touching the elephant’s tail.”
No, the problem is that I’m a bit more skeptical than you about whether we can know a thing like that. You are assuming we know that rich and poor are more or less equally distributed around the elephant. Law of averages. They aren’t clumped or clustered in any way, preferences and interests and values-wise. I say we don’t know that. How could we?
I guess maybe it comes down to this: you think there can’t be any harm in disproportionately enfranchising the rich because, after all, there are rich men and women, and Republicans and Democrats and so forth. I think there perfectly well could be. There’s one study, linked above, suggesting as much. But my point doesn’t depend on being convinced by that one study. The abstract problem is this: I’m basically handing over political power to a minority. Do I know that this minority will represent everyone’s interests and preferences optimally? No, I think I don’t know that. (Nor do you. You are sizing up the elephant and you figure the rich are pretty well distributed over it’s surface. But, again, what makes you so special that you can see the whole beast?) So the proposal is unattractive. It’s a bold shift to a new system that … doesn’t seem any better than the old system. No worse, maybe, but no better. It’s not worth a bold revolution to meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
I think we’ve actually come full circle now, which feels like a conclusion (at least to me). You started by saying (once you realized we disagreed): “You certainly aren’t the first to suggest that there is a correlation between wealth and values…but you would certainly be the first if you were able to substantiate your claim.”
You took me to be on the wrong side of the knowledge problem because of this. But to me that gets the evidential presumption wrong. It’s your job to prove that there isn’t such a correlation, not my job to prove that there is one. So you are actually the one on the wrong side of the knowledge problem.
Why is it your job, not mine? Well, you’re trying to engineer a robust machine for revealing preferences here. It’s the job of the engineer to give reasonable assurances that it won’t blow up. It’s not good enough for the engineer to say that no one has yet proven that it will blow up.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, every day you have no choice but to consider the costs of the things you want...yet for some reason the burden is on me to prove to you that voters should be forced to consider the costs, as well as the benefits, of the things that they want from government.
A while back Obama's favorite analogy was how the Republicans drove the "car" into the ditch. Do you really think it's simply a matter of which party is behind the wheel? How can one party know our preferences more than the other party? Without knowing our preferences they might as well be driving while blindfolded.
If you want proof...then see how long you can make it without looking at price tags. The fact of the matter is that opportunity costs are just as essential in the public sector as they are in the private sector.
Also...in terms of handing political power over to a minority...can you do me a favor and tell me more about this political power that you have in the first place? Personally I have no political power...so being able to sell my vote...or directly allocate my taxes...would be a positive gain for me...and nearly everybody else.
Our gain would of course represent somebody else's loss...specifically...538 congresspeople. How small a minority are they? I don't know them...they don't know me...yet I'm supposed to expect that they will represent my interests better than I can? I think not. If I had to choose between 150 million taxpayers each representing their own interests or 538 congresspeople trying to represent the interests of 300 million people...it wouldn't even be a contest. Everybody would benefit from A) 150 million people considering the price tags on all the public goods that they want and B) 300 million people considering the price tags on their votes.
Speaking of price tags...your book arrived yesterday. I think it's well worth the $30...but my girlfriend did not. Eh...she's more into the beat poets than philosophy. What is the value of your book to society? It's simply the revenue that your book generated. What is the value of any public good? It's simply the revenue that it would generate if people were allowed to directly allocate their taxes. We all benefit by considering the price tags on the things we want...and we all stand to lose by ignoring those price tags. The only people that benefit when the "car" ends up in the ditch are the politicians in the opposite party. How perverse is that. I wonder how many more times the keys will have to pass back and forth before people start noticing a pattern.
*****************************************************
reason
“Speaking of price tags…your book arrived yesterday. I think it’s well worth the $30…but my girlfriend did not. Eh…she’s more into the beat poets than philosophy. What is the value of your book to society? It’s simply the revenue that your book generated….”
No this is not true. This argument ignores consumer surplus and externalities. Think about water or air. Their value far exceeds their price.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
reason, the overall point though is that it wouldn't make any sense if we allowed 538 congresspeople to decide how many copies of John's book should be printed. There's absolutely no logical basis for believing that resources can be efficiently allocated by proxy. It just doesn't work for any resource.
I'm sure you would vote for John's book...but whether you'd actually purchase his book offers an infinitely more accurate reflection of your own unique and valuable perspective. If you haven't purchased his book it means that you have better things with greater positive externalities that you could spend that $30 on. If you have purchased his book it means you were willing to forgo those other things that you value. The greater the quantity of unique and valuable perspectives that determine the answer...the more accurate the answer will be.
How many copies of John's book should be printed? How much money should be allocated to public education? How much money should be allocated to national defense? How much money should be allocated to public transportation? How much money should be allocated to everything that Rachel Maddow wants? How much money should be allocated to all those awesome things that Obama listed in his state of the union address?
All those questions should not be answered by 538 congresspeople. Instead...they should be answered by millions and millions of consumers each with their own valuable and unique perspectives. It's a fatal conceit for 538 congresspeople to think that they can answer any of those questions more accurately than our entire nation can. Don't get me wrong...if you're happy with congress's answers then I wouldn't try and stop you from giving them your taxes any more than I would try and stop you from believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or God. But if I'm going to concede that maybe you're right and maybe I'm wrong...it's going to cost you the same exact concession. Once we both make that same concession then we would each allocate our own taxes and sell our own votes according to our own unique and valuable perspectives.
None of us knows what the exact outcome would be of allowing people to sell their votes or directly allocate their taxes...but it would defy everything we know to argue that our country as a whole wouldn't positively benefit from the efficient allocation of limited resources.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, quite frequently I'm really envious of people with great illustration skills such as yourself. Here's what I would draw if I had your skills...
Obama, Romney and Ron Paul would all be blindfolded and fighting over the keys to a car (which would be in the background). A fourth person, representing the American public, would be standing there without a blindfold on. The illustration's caption would read..."Aren't you tired of being a passenger? How many more times will you have to push the car out of the ditch before you decide to take the keys?"
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica,
“It’s a fatal conceit for 538 congresspeople to think that they can answer any of those questions more accurately than our entire nation can.”
Yes, but it’s not MY conceit, so its fatality – which I grant, for sake of argument – is by the by.
We keep coming back to the same point. You keep suggesting that the reason I should accept your proposal is that it would be so much better of we could, as you say, put the citizens themselves in the driver’s seat. But my objection is not that this is undesirable but that I do not have any particular reason to believe your proposal would tend to bring this about. It looks to me like you are selling me a blender on the grounds that I need a refrigerator.
“John Holbo, every day you have no choice but to consider the costs of the things you want…yet for some reason the burden is on me to prove to you that voters should be forced to consider the costs, as well as the benefits, of the things that they want from government.”
The burden is on you, just as the burden is on someone who proposes, say, a dictatorship of the proletariat, as a solution to the problem of how to reveal everyone’s preferences.
The analogy is apt. The idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat is that this one group, only a subset of the citizenry, will be optimally expressive of the interests of the whole population. Your idea is sort of the same on the other end of the income scale: not a dictatorship of the rich, but a promise that one group – the rich – which is only a subset of the citizenry – will, if given predominant political power, adequately express the interests and preferences of the whole citizenry.
Both idea have been tried. Various communist revolutions. The history of aristocratic representative government in Europe. (Historically, your proposal is the norm, in representative government. Only those with money – with property/land – wield political power.) The track record is poor in both cases. So, yes, the burden is on you, as it is on the communist, to show how and why the next time will be better.
There is another problem, incidentally. Market forces can ‘decide’ that the iPhone is awesome: everyone buys it. But market forces cannot design and build iPhones. For that you need designers and engineers and so forth. Probably that’s 500 people at least. And now we are back to the fatal conceit. How can 500 people presume to think they know what everyone wants? Well, they do and they don’t. It’s a fatal conceit in many cases. Companies go bust. Still, the solution is not to have millions of consumers each contribute some small bit of the engineering design and etc. process.
Now we go back to politics as usual. 500 people – congresscritters – are supposed to ‘build a product’ – i.e. a piece of legislation. They hope that it, like the iPhone, will be popular not unpopular. If it isn’t, they will be voted out … is the idea (though not the sordid reality, we may grant). Now what are you proposing, to change this? Somehow we can eliminate the middle-man of representative government? The millions of citizens themselves will write the legislation themselves? But that doesn’t seem practical. No more so than it would be practical for Apple to fire its designers and engineers and replace them with its consumer base, in some diffuse way (thereby presumably greating saving on design costs.) So what are you proposing?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, ok, you're right that I should bear the burden of proof. Why should citizens be in the driver's seat? Because they know what they want. Are they capable of expressing their wants? Yes, they clearly express their wants in the for-profit sector and in the non-profit sector.
In other words...the demand for public goods should determine the supply of public goods. It's really as simple as that.
Historically my proposal has been the norm? During what part of history have consumers ever been in the driver's seat? First the king was in the driver's seat...but then some barons took the keys away from him when he kept driving the country into war. After a while the barons became parliament and then parliament became congress.
Like I mentioned to "reason"...I'm not proposing to eliminate congress any more than I'd propose to dissuade people of their belief in Santa Claus or God. What I'm proposing is that believers show tolerance for us non-believers. If they believe that congress knows their interests better than they do...then so be it...they can give all their taxes to congress. Personally, I'm highly skeptical that congress can know my interests despite never even having met me. In other words...I'm skeptical that congress is omniscient. What I'm proposing is simply that people have a choice to sell their votes and directly allocate their taxes.
"a promise that one group – the rich – which is only a subset of the citizenry – will, if given predominant political power, adequately express the interests and preferences of the whole citizenry."
The challenge is to see citizens as consumers. If we applied your argument to the private sector then we would expect that transportation options would only consist of private jets and Rolls Royces...which would reflect a failure for the rich to adequately represent our interests. But if you can see citizens as consumers then you'll understand that we don't need representatives to adequately express our own interests and preferences.
Consumers would have a choice which government organizations received their taxes and they would have a choice if and who they sold their votes to. If you weren't happy with other people's choices then you would bear the burden of convincing them why your choices were better. Why should you have to convince them? Because maybe they are right and maybe you are wrong. That's the biggest challenge...for people to accept the possibility that they might be wrong. This humility is essential to foster a culture of political tolerance.
To summarize...consumers would be coerced into paying taxes...but they would have a choice which government organizations received their taxes and they would have a choice whether to sell their votes or not...and if you disagreed with their choices then it would be up to you to convince them otherwise.
*****************************************************
Henri Vieuxtemps
"it wouldn’t make any sense if we allowed 538 congresspeople to decide how many of John’s book should be printed"
This example doesn’t sound very convincing. True, it would be difficult for the congresspeople to guess how many copies need to be printed, but by selling the book for $30 you’re not going to arrive at the right number either. Presumably, you need to print as many copies as many people might be interested in reading or browsing the book, and the $30 pricetag (an equivalent half-day labor at the minimum wage) is a serious distortion.
Arguably, the congresspeople could administer a poll and come up with a better number, no?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
Henri Vieuxtemps, for me the question is whether the public sector and/or the private sector should supply John's book. Let's imagine that taxpayers could directly allocate their taxes...
In order for the public sector to supply John's book there would have to be a Department of Literature (DoLit). The DoLit wouldn't sell books...it would just give them away based on an income qualification. This income qualification would be determined by how many taxpayers allocated how much of their taxes to the DoLit. The more revenue that the DoLit received the higher the income with which you could qualify to receive your X amount of books per week/month/year.
Let's say though that your income was well above the income qualification so you wouldn't be able to receive any books. Would you still allocate any of your taxes to the DoLit? Well...that would depend on how much you valued increasing the accessibility of good literature to lower income families.
The people who worked at the DoLit would want to keep their jobs...so their goal would be to keep taxpayers satisfied. Would they publish John's book? I don't know...their jobs would be at stake though so it would behoove them to engage in due diligence. Would John want the DoLit to publish his book? It might depend on how much money they offered him...or maybe he would just want to get his name out there...or maybe he would just want to donate his book to help support the DoLit.
As a pragmatarian...I don't have a personal preference for the public or the private sector...as long as taxpayers are allowed to directly allocate their taxes. If taxpayers are not allowed to directly allocate their taxes then if I was going to err it would be on the side of the sector where people strive to keep their jobs.
From the above example though...we can see that everybody would benefit from John having the opportunity to decide whether he wanted the public and/or private sector to publish his book.
From this perspective we can then ask...what value would congress bring to the table? As a society we either do...or we do not...value increasing the accessibility of good literature to low income families. If we do value it then we are the best judges of whether the public and/or private sector should be responsible for supplying books to low income families. If we do not value it then the public sector shouldn't be spending our taxes on something we do not value.
*****************************************************
This discussion is continued here...John Holbo's Critique of Pragmatarianism
Here was my response...and then his response...and then my response...and...?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, I literally did a double take when I saw this in my google reader. I was like..."What...is this really coming from the Crooked Timber website?" When I was reading your article I kept waiting for the..."Now here's why this would destroy society as we know it..."
My point is...you have my vote...which I wouldn't sell for anything less than $10,000 dollars.
The goal of voting is to determine which side cares the most. It surely wouldn't make sense for the side that could care less to win. People get confused though and think that just because one side has more numbers it automatically means that they care more. Yet...it's fairly reasonable to say that one person who would sell his/her kidney for an additional vote obviously cares more about the issue than one person who would sell his vote for only $1.
That's why limiting campaign contributions would be as counterproductive as limiting how many hours people could volunteer for a cause that they care about. Time is money.
So the question shouldn't be: Do you care about an issue? Rather...it should be: How much do you care about an issue? That's why we have the common expressions..."put your money where your mouth is" and "actions speak louder than words". It's one thing to just "like" a cause on facebook and it's another thing to volunteer for that cause in real life.
Not too long ago Jason Brennan wrote a book on the ethics of voting. In his book he argues against "bad" voting. Of course..."bad" voting for a libertarian isn't necessarily the same thing as "bad" voting for a liberal...and vice-versa. Here's my comment on his BHL blog entry (you have to sort the comments from oldest to newest). In my comment I argue why it's perfectly reasonable for people to sell their votes.
Also, here's my 10 topic Self-Ownership Survey where I juxtapose the issue of campaign contributions with children's suffrage, procreation licenses, consensual slavery, etc. in order to encourage people to evaluate where they stand with regards to self-ownership.
The bottom line is...if it was easy for people to think objectively about voting then we would have embraced universal suffrage from the get-go. As it is...people automatically evaluate voting issues in terms of the outcomes that they desire.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica: “My point is…you have my vote…which I wouldn’t sell for anything less than $10,000 dollars.”
I’m not surprised, nor horrified, that some people actually think it makes sense, my little scheme. I would be surprised if some propertarian-libertarian hasn’t worked out the details long ago.
But just to be clear: I strongly disapprove of this scheme. But I think it wouldn’t actually be much worse – if at all – that the system we’ve got. I do think this is a big mistake: “Yet…it’s fairly reasonable to say that one person who would sell his/her kidney for an additional vote obviously cares more about the issue than one person who would sell his vote for only $1.”
This is reasonable, but willingness to spend large amounts of money is not a good indication of intensity of preference if some people are very poor and others very rich.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, well...you broached the topic in a well thought out manner...so you still have my vote. But...I'm going to have to drop my selling price to $500.
Sure, it's a given that people have different levels of disposable time/money. But are you truly going to argue that you can generalize other people's values based on how much disposable time/money that they have? If so...do you have any evidence to support your generalization? Many many many people have claimed that a correlation exists between wealth and values but none have been able to substantiate their claims.
"This is reasonable, but willingness to spend large amounts of money is not a good indication of intensity of preference if some people are very poor and others very rich."
Are you familiar with the Bible story of the widow's mite? Many small sacrifices can certainly equal a few large sacrifices. Otherwise...Obama probably wouldn't have been elected. This the long-tail concept. We're not looking at averages here...we're looking at totals. In terms of voting the question is..."which side cares the most?"...not..."which side on average cares the most?".
If opportunity costs are not a good indication of intensity of preference...then what are the alternatives? What are the opportunity costs of completely foregoing an integration of intensity? How can we determine the best possible use of limited resources unless we allow people to choose one thing that they value over another thing that they value?
Would you be fine giving your kidney to somebody with two perfectly healthy kidneys? That is an example of the inefficient allocation of limited resources. If it doesn't make sense on the individual level...why would it make sense on the national level?
Now, would it make sense for me...a completely stranger...to decide for you how you can best use your kidney? Can resources truly be efficiently allocated by proxy?
Speaking of kidneys...during the C-Span lesser known New Hampshire presidential candidate debate....Vermin Supreme stood up and lifted up his shirt to show everybody the scar he received from having donated his kidney to his mother. While doing so he preached why everybody should donate their kidneys. Because...it's all about convincing. For a real dose of of poignancy mixed with humor...check out his blog entry where he talks about giving his kidney to his mother rather than his friend who also needed one. It's all about opportunity costs.
The hard part to convey is that if we allowed people to directly allocate their individual taxes then the outcome might be a viable form of socialism. Once we integrate intensity (reveal preferences) then we would solve the incentive problem and the problem of allocative inefficiency. The incentive problem would be solved because a government organization's revenue would be directly tied to its productivity. Nobody would choose to waste their hard-earned taxes anymore than you would choose to waste your kidney. The allocative inefficiency problem would be solved given that taxpayers would consider the opportunity costs of their tax allocation decisions. The result would be a taxpayer division of labor.
*****************************************************
Latro
I find it interesting that we focus a lot on the freedom/right/duty to vote and not on the freedom/right/duty? of being able to present your platform and yourself as alternatives in the political process.
The whole “you cant ban donations and all that, thats against freedom of speech”. What about the freedom of having your ideas about how to run the country taken as seriously, as it should be your right as a citizen, as the ones of the mega-rich-backed candidates?
In short, why dont we (everywhere, I’m not American but the problem is similar everywhere), give to each candidate – defined as whoever wants to be one – and party – same – the same means of communication, the same alloted time, the same OBLIGATORY presence in debates, and all that, as to ensure all voices get the same, equal treatment and the deciding citizens can vote fully informed?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
Latro, guess you missed the the C-Span debates on the Lesser Known New Hampshire candidates? Sure, I'd want Vermin Supreme to receive the same amount of exposure as Obama and Ron Paul...but for me to advocate changing the process would reflect my inability to consider the process objectively.
The process is one of survival of the fittest ideas. I obviously have my own hare-brained ideas regarding changes we need to make. Would I like to see them discussed on C-Span and CNN? Of course I would...because I don't believe that my ideas are truly hare-brained. But why should C-Span or CNN spend their limited time discussing topics that have not been vetted by bloggers? It's an issue of opportunity cost.
On my blog entry on Vermin Supreme...in the second youtube video...here's what Dan Rather had to say about giving air time to Vermin Supreme...
But as a reporter, I am under no obligation to pay any attention to him. We've got a very valuable, small amount of air time at abc-news...I wish we had more. And that air time ought to be devoted to bringing to the public the plans, the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations, the qualifications of people who are serious about it. And people who if they get to be president of the United States may do something for this country. I should spend our time on Vermin Surpreme? Not a chance.Do I disagree with Dan Rather's assessment? Certainly...but that's part of the process. Our current system works to vet ideas. As Milton Friedman said...."If we can't persuade the public that it's desirable to do these things, then we have no right to impose them even if we had the power to do it."
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Getting back to xerographica: “You certainly aren’t the first to suggest that there is a correlation between wealth and values…but you would certainly be the first if you were able to substantiate your claim.”
I’m not sure I fully understand this. (I did click through for a quick look.) Presumably if you study income and party affiliation and so forth you can find some meaningful correlations. Probably the Pew values survey would be a good place to look. But my argument and attitude doesn’t depend on any particular social science results. Consider three ways of allocating votes.
You get more votes the longer you are willing to sit in a chair in a room for hours on end with nothing but nothing to do.
You get more votes the longer you are willing to do the downward-facing dog.
You get more votes the more you pay.
These are all potential methods of measuring intensity of preference. In some ways they are all better than the system we have got, because they all attempt to measure intensity at all, whereas one person-one vote does not. That said, they are all obviously flawed. The first will skew voting to people who don’t have jobs or things they really need to do that keep them from sitting in a boring room doing nothing. The second will skew voting to yoga practitioners. The third will skew voting to rich people. Now do I know for sure that, say, yoga practitioners have different values than everyone else has, so that this skew will be a problem? No. If I had to guess, yoga skews left. But maybe that’s totally wrong and there is no correlation between being good at the downward-facing dog and any kind of political value that anyone might be called upon to express with a vote. All the same, I’m not inclined to adopt a system that gives a group disproportionate representation, for an irrelevant reason, even if that disproportion does not clearly create a problem. The basic equality proposition underlying one person-one vote, and also the pragmatics of it, suggest that you should not be giving someone more votes than someone else gets for an obviously irrelevant reason.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, have you read this article by the progressive Cait Lamberton...Your Money, Your Choice? In the article she makes a case for tax choice.
Further, taxpayers’ allocations reveal a strong preference for more butter and fewer guns. Thus, allowing taxpayers some choice in where their taxes go may slowly shift the nation’s spending priorities toward more socially productive investments.Do you think she still would have written the article if the taxpayers' allocation decisions had been skewed to the right...as in more guns less butter?
Would allowing people to sell their votes skew the results to the left or to the right? Would allowing children to vote skew the results to the left or to the right? Did allowing women to vote skew the results to the left or to the right? Did allowing minorities to vote skew the results to the left or to the right?
Do you want an accurate reflection of interests...or do you want equality of representation? If you want equality of representation then why not write a blog entry on the benefit of giving each social group one vote? In your post you could consider the following questions...
Do gay people and atheists think it's fair that Christians can engage in tyranny of the majority? Do minorities think it's fair that white people can engage in tyranny of the majority? Do young people think it's fair that old people can engage in tyranny of the majority? Do rich people think it's fair that poor people can engage in tyranny of the majority? Do smart people think it's fair that dumb people can engage in tyranny of the majority?
You're either going to have tyranny of the minority or tyranny of the majority. It's not fair...but tyranny is an inherent feature of voting. One group is always going to impose its interests onto another group. The question is...who should do the imposing...the group that cares most...or the group that cares less?
Just like we should support free-speech even when it has an unfavorable skew....we should not let the possibility of an unfavorable skew diminish our support for people's right to try and protect their interests. As a nation we shouldn't be afraid to take a close look in the mirror. What's kind of funny is that each side is concerned that the reflection will be skewed to the other side. As individuals we have trouble fathoming something as complex as the values of an entire nation...which is why we developed the left/right heuristic.
As a pragmatarian I have no desire to try and shift our nation's spending priorities in any one direction. My goal is for our spending priorities...aka supply... to accurately reflect interests...aka demand. Just like it doesn't make sense for you to give your kidney to somebody with two perfectly healthy kidneys....it doesn't make sense for our nation to purchase more guns when there's a demand for more butter.
The selling votes concept, combined with pragmatarianism, would have a much narrower application. People's tax allocation decisions would determine the scope of government and their votes would determine social issues. There would be no need to vote on guns vs butter because the allocation of public goods would accurately reflect exactly how much society values those public goods. Instead, we would vote on things like whether polygamy should be legal.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica: “That being said…I don’t get the feeling like you’ve made a real case…or any case…for equality…in the sense that it trumps revealing intensity. That’s kind of the equivalent of a libertarian that holds “liberty” as argument enough.”
It’s true that I haven’t made the case for equality, but that’s because if you don’t accept the basic proposition that people should be given equal political rights and equal representation, I don’t see why you want to devise a better democratic voting scheme at all. Democratic voting only makes moral sense on the assumption that, basically, we want equality for citizens. Attempts to reveal intensity of preferences are not alternatives to valuing equality, in my sense. Such attempts only have a coherent motive as refinements – not replacements of – attempts to realize basic political equality, plus liberty. You want to give the people what they want. And you are starting from a baseline of equality of persons.
You write about ‘efficiency’. It is more efficient if we can measure intensity of preference better? But efficiency for what? Why do you want to measure this stuff? Presumably because you want to have a more refined, nuanced sense of what ‘most people really want’. But why would you care about that unless you think that what most people really want is morally important? And why would you think that unless you think that, given that everyone is equal, what most people really want is what we need to go for, in most cases.
I mean, if you are a divine right of kings monarchist-type, you won’t believe any of this equality guff, but then you won’t care about revealed preferences of anyone but God and the king either. Just for example. So what gives?
You give the rich more votes if you think the rich deserve more political power, for being rich. Just like you give more votes to yoga practitioners, if you think doing yoga makes you a spiritual aristocrat more deserving of wielding political power. You don’t do either of these things, ideally, if you don’t believe these things. Even if you think it would be politically harmless – a wash at the ballot box – you don’t go generating random aristocracies. It’s just bad design, at best.
A simple question: do you think that selling votes, as a scheme, is superior in any way to the more votes for more downward-facing dog scheme? If so: why?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, I just purchased your book...Reason & Persuasion: Three Dialogues by Plato...for $32.50 from Amazon. And I intentionally kept your Amazon tag in the above link. Rather than just thinking of it as me "purchasing" your book...let's think of it as me "voting" for you...and Amazon...and Pearson Education...and...
Take a few moments to trip out on that. Right here we see Bastiat's opportunity cost concept...and Hayek's partial knowledge concept in action. We see allocative efficiency...and the invisible hand...and pragmatarianism...all in action. I just voted for you.
Wealthy people are wealthy because many people voted for them. When I purchased your book on Amazon we both voted for Jeff Bezos. Why should Jeff Bezos be able to buy 10,000 more votes than we ever could? Because we...and millions of other people...voted for him.
If you didn't like how Jeff Bezos was voting with his money...then you would be able to boycott Amazon and encourage others to do the same. If you were allowed to directly allocate your taxes...then you would be able to boycott any war that we ever engaged in. On the other hand...conservatives and libertarians would be able to boycott the government's war on poverty. Then again...liberals would be able to boycott the government's war on drugs.
The eternal question has been...what should the government do? What is the proper scope of government? What are the proper duties of government? What should the responsibilities of government be? The answer to this fundamental question is simple. The government should do what we pay it to do.
Why did I purchase your book? Well...because we're having this discussion...because you're seriously considering an idea that I really value...because you're exceptional among Crooked Timber Liberals for doing so...because I should read more Plato...
Now...my blog, which is dedicated to allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes, only has 4 followers (errr...now 5). Does that mean that pragmatarianism isn't a valuable idea? It's very well possible. I could certainly have wasted many hours barking up the wrong tree.
Did the people behind the Magna Carta ever stop and wonder if they were barking up the wrong tree? I mean...they were challenging the divine right of kings. The thing is, we've been challenging authority ever since Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (see my post on the Devil's Advocate for Public Goods).
I don't want to just keep replacing kings...I don't want to just keep replacing presidents...I don't want to just keep replacing congresspeople. I want to directly integrate everything you know...and everything I know...and everything Jeff Bezos knows...into determining exactly what the government should do. Along those same lines...I want everybody to be able to boycott anything the government does that they believe it should not be doing.
So to answer your simple question...selling votes is superior to the downward facing dog scheme because you and I voted for the people who can buy votes.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Thanks for buying the book! I hope you like it.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
“selling votes is superior to the downward facing dog scheme because you and I voted for the people who can buy votes.”
OK, I’ll respond quickly to this. It seems to me circular. In a world in which people have been downward-facing dogging (on behalf of) the candidates for some time, the people to whom (for whom) one downward-face are also the people to whom (for whom, one behalf of whom) one has downward-faced in the past. Just as the people who buy votes are the people who bought votes in the past, ex hypothesi. But ‘we’ve always done it this way before, so it must be a good way of doing it’ is not an argument, especially not when we are arguing hypothetially about things we actually haven’t done before. (If this is not your argument, then I don’t see what you your argument is.)
The only difference, it seems to me, is that there is no market in selling instances of performance of the downward-facing dog. Whereas you can sell votes. But there is no particular reason why that should making selling preferably. Our interest in settling an optimal voting system is not a desire to create a commercial industry, per se.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, your argument is that it's not fair for the founder of Amazon.com...Jeff Bezos...to be able to purchase more votes than you or I would be able to. My counter argument was that you "voted" for Bezos by selling your book on Amazon and I "voted" for Bezos when I purchased your book on Amazon.
We didn't literally "vote" for Bezos given that he is not running for office. We figuratively voted for him by making him that much more wealthy.
The question is...would you still have sold your book on Amazon if you knew that Bezos was going to use your money to purchase literal votes that were against your interests? We can see that the beauty of your idea is that it would establish a culture of ethical consumerism.
Like pragmatarianism, your idea would allow us to objectively discern the proper scope of government. There's no need to debate the proper scope of Jeff Bezos. Why is that? It's simply because we've all used our money to figuratively vote for exactly what it is that Jeff Bezos should be doing...running Amazon.com.
If we allow people to sell their votes...and directly allocate their taxes....then the government would simply do what we pay it to do. Would you pay the government to do something that it was bad at doing? No...nobody would We would all only pay the government to do what it was good at doing.
If anybody disagrees with something that the government is doing then they would have the freedom to engage in ethical consumerism by boycotting that government organization. If you support the concept of ethical consumerism in the private sector...then why wouldn't you support applying the same concept to the public sector? Wouldn't you value the freedom to boycott unnecessary wars?
*****************************************************
Alex
Just like we should support free-speech even when it has an unfavorable skew….we should not let the possibility of an unfavorable skew diminish our support for people’s right to try and protect their interests.If we’re to take this principle to its logical conclusion, presumably you would have no objection if e.g. impoverished people hired your neighbours to come redistribute your property. After all, they’re only trying to “protect their interests”.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
Alex, how is that the logical conclusion? The context of my statement is the current system. It refers to people spending their time and money to try and modify the current system. With the current system what you described is illegal (well...at least in terms of the private sector).
If you want what you described to be legal...then even though it's against my interests...I wouldn't want to limit your right to spend as much time/money as you wanted to try and protect your interests.
Just to be clear...my issue isn't the taxing...it's the spending. I could care less if there was 100% public ownership of the means of production...as long as 1. taxpayers were allowed to directly allocate their taxes and 2. people were allowed to sell their votes.
Socialism really could work...as long as we solved the incentive problem and the partial knowledge problem. By allowing 1. taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes and 2. people to sell their votes we would definitively solve both those problems.
Would the outcome be socialism...or anarcho-capitalism...or somewhere in between? I have no idea...nobody could truly know the outcome. That being said...what I'm fairly certain of is that if there was a shift...then the shift would benefit our country as a whole...completely irrespective of the direction the shift took.
*****************************************************
Mike Huben
Xerographica (@98) wrote:
“There’s no need to debate the proper scope of Jeff Bezos. Why is that? It’s simply because we’ve all used our money to figuratively vote for exactly what it is that Jeff Bezos should be doing…running Amazon.com. ”
No, it is because we have long ago decided the proper scope of businessmen like Bezos, and decided that they should not be able to compete coercively: we don’t need mafias. By centralizing and democratizing government, we prevent wasteful combative competition that would lead to positive feedback.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
Mike Huben, last year on your blog entry...What is Libertarianism?...I provided specific examples to refute your arguments.
Sure...I agree that we don't need mafias...but you're going to have to offer some specific examples of how Jeff Bezos would have anything to do with mafias. How is Bezos offering to buy your vote in the same league as mafia extortion? Is he going to send thugs to your house to beat you up if you didn't want to sell him your vote? Would he really risk going to jail for one vote?
Would legalizing the sale of kidneys help or hurt the black market for kidneys? Would legalizing drugs help or hurt the illegal drug trade? Did ending prohibition help or hurt the mafia?
Was it easier to corrupt a king or corrupt congress? Would it be easier to corrupt congress or corrupt millions and millions of taxpayers and/or voters? The more centralized that power is...
1. the easier it is for the corrupter...given that all the eggs are in one basket
2. the greater the likelihood for corruption...given that there will be many many many offers
3. the greater the negative impact of corruption...given that all the eggs are in one basket.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
“My counter argument was that you “voted” for Bezos by selling your book on Amazon and I “voted” for Bezos when I purchased your book on Amazon.
We didn’t literally “vote” for Bezos given that he is not running for office. We figuratively voted for him by making him that much more wealthy”
The big problem here is that we didn’t vote for Bezos, literally or figuratively, for office, by making him more wealthy. The reason we didn’t vote for him for office, in virtue of our purchase, has nothing to do with the fact that he’s not running for office. (He could have been, and we still wouldn’t have been.) By buying a product from Amazon, we reveal a preference for the product, not for Bezos in office.
So your counter-argument is really a counter-premise, like so: wealthy people are, in virtue of their wealth, inherently more deserving of wielding political power. Period. End of story. That’s fine, insofar as that makes clear where the rest of us get off the bus: namely, with this first step.
Making the point from another angle …
Suppose we change my downward-facing dog case around a bit: everyone gets votes to the extent that are musicians who sell dance records. By buying their records, you ‘vote’ for them. The problem here – which is precisely analogous to the Bezos problem – is that it’s simply false to say that, literally or figuratively, you vote for them FOR OFFICE by buying their records. At most you vote for them as being pretty good dance music creators. By buying from Amazon I may, figuratively, vote for Jeff Bezos as the guy most likely to sell me what I want for a reasonable price (this is already a stretch, but let it go.) But there is a long way to go between this and Jeff Bezos FOR SENATE, or whatever office he may seek.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo...how is it a problem that Bezos isn't running for office? You figuratively voted for Jeff Bezos to be one of America's Best Leaders. Another leader on that list is Jeffrey Sachs...what difference does it make whether Sachs is a professor or a senator? What difference does it make that Lady Gaga and Bono aren't politicians?
They either do...or they don't...represent a portion of your interests. Do you have any idea how many different people represent some portion of your interests on a daily basis? That's why I really struggle with the idea that one congressperson can effectively represent the interests of half a million people. That's a joke...which is why it was funny when the comedian Daniel Tosh said, "The idea that any of these candidates represent my interests is absurd."
It's perfectly fine though if you believe that congresspeople do an excellent job at functioning as our personal shoppers for public goods. Maybe Daniel Tosh, myself...and nearly everybody else I know...are extremely exceptional. If that's truly the case though, then why would you be hesitant to allow consumers to figuratively vote for congress?
One of your interests is clearly to try and protect the interests of those who are unable to protect their own interests. But is your interest in this area so exceptional that nobody else would figuratively vote to protect it? Do you think that just because conservatives are skeptical of the government's ability to truly help people in need that it means that they don't care? Isn't it possible that perhaps people are more complex than that?
If you don't want to disproportionately empower the rich...then you can't just get off the bus. That's not where this story ends. You need to stay on the bus long enough to understand where your money is going and how it is being used. Like I said....that is the beauty of your pseudo-proposal. It doesn't allow you to dissociate yourself from the indirect consequences of your consumption decisions.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica, I am afraid I just don’t get it. Obviously I get the idea that the current system has problems. My objection to what you are proposing is not based on the assumption that the current system is excellent, or that the people running it are unusually excellent at their jobs. But what I don’t get is why Bezos and Gaga are peculiarly suited to overcome existing problems, simply because they are rich. Their riches would allow them to buy votes. Fine. But why is it valuable to enable them to do that? Why are we more concerned to reveal the political preferences of Bezos and Gaga than the man on the street?
“Do you have any idea how many different people represent some portion of your interests on a daily basis?”
I would assume: a lot. A huge number. But why is this relevant?
“why would you be hesitant to allow consumers to figuratively vote for congress?”
Well, I would need to be told why it is supposed to be a good idea. Again, doesn’t it just come down to a kind of axiom: wealthy people are more worthy of wielding political power. Obviously if that’s true, then consumerism plus selling votes becomes a kind of glorious engine of political virtue. Because it makes some people rich, ergo makes them worthy of wielding political power, while at the same time making them politically powerful. But why should I buy the main premise?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, we are not more concerned to reveal the political preferences of Bezos and Gaga than the man on the street. The concept that I'm failing to convey is how the political preferences of Bezos and Gaga reflect a portion of the preferences of the people on the street. If we want correct political answers then we need to integrate everybody's social and economic preferences. Politics is simply a reflection of economic and social preferences. The more accurate the reflection the more accurate the answers.
Let's consider the question of what the private sector should produce. How many different people does it take to come up with this answer? It takes every single one of us. If we took your preferences out of the equation then would the answer still be correct? No...it wouldn't be. It would be extremely close to being correct but it would still be wrong. Each person we take out of the equation the more incorrect the answer becomes.
This is the basic premise of why socialism fails. Socialism is resource allocation by proxy. Unlike capitalism...it only allows you to indirectly communicate your preferences. If it was just a 1 to 1 ratio it wouldn't be so bad. For example...I would give you all my money...and communicate my preferences to you...and you would buy me what I wanted. The economy wouldn't work as well but it probably wouldn't fail. But what about a 1 to 2 ratio? Or a 1 to 3 ratio? Or a 1 to 100,000 ratio?
Everybody has some information but nobody has all the information. This is not a new concept. Socrates said, "...it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know." Buddha expressed this in terms of the blind men each feeling different parts of an elephant. More recently...Hayek referred to this as the "Fatal Conceit". You don't have to agree with this concept...but it helps at least to understand it...given that it's the very foundation of conservatism and libertarianism. The irony is that conservatives and libertarians do not realize how they are nearly as guilty of this "Fatal Conceit" as liberals are. For more on this see my post on a taxpayer division of labor.
If we understand that it takes every single one of us to correctly answer the question of what the private sector should produce...then it shouldn't be much of a stretch to understand that it would require every single one of us to correctly answer the question of what the public sector should produce. That in no way implies that we should all be forced to literally vote...it simply conveys the value of allowing people to directly communicate their preferences via the selling of their votes and the direct allocation of their taxes.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica,
I guess I fail to see the relevance. I understand why it would be nice if election and voting revealed voter preference in richer fashion. But, given that people have unequal economic endowments, it won’t work. All you are doing is revealing, disproportionately, the preferences of those with lots of money. It’s as bad as the downward-facing dog scheme. It’s a measure of preference-intensity, but obviously badly skewed. This was the point of the post. It’s every bit as bad as the system we’ve got. And surely any utopia we devise ought to be less bad than that!
” The irony is that conservatives and libertarians do not realize how they are nearly as guilty of this “Fatal Conceit” as liberals are.”
I would say the irony is that they are guiltier, but we can let it go, for argument purposes. Granted, we’ve got a knowledge problem. The existing system tries to deal with it with one man-one vote. Your system seems to me no better because although it is more sensitive, in a sense, it is badly skewed. So the sensitivity all goes to waste, in effect.
We are, actually, recapitulating old debates. It has standardly been argued that the rich are more politically virtuous and should disproportionately wield power. (You are playing theme and variations on this timeless line.) The poor shouldn’t vote because they are too dumb and uninterested and uneducated about general issues. One of the main arguments against that is that is that the poor may not know a lot of things, but they know one thing. What bothers them. If you strip them of the franchise, their grievances will be neglected and will fester and that’s bad. Likewise, if you let them sell their vote, you are – as likely as not – actually making the knowledge problem worse. It’s now harder, not easier, to get information about what the poor want, in a political policy sense.
At this point you could argue that we are still getting information from the sale of votes. And that’s true. But the signal is thinner than it has to be. And the system is set up in such a way that the signal will be ignored, not attended to, by those with political power. So, to repeat, I don’t see how you have proposed any solution to the knowledge problem. You keep saying: the Buddha thing. Yeah, I get it. (When you get your copy of the book you’ll see that I actually drew a cartoon elephant to illustrate the parable. The concept is stock and familiar.) But now what?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, do we have different interpretations of the parable of the blind men and the elephant? My interpretation is that we all have unique but extremely limited perspectives. Based on my interpretation of the parable it would be counterproductive to group people together based on their net worth. Yet, your argument seems to indicate that all the rich people are touching the elephant's left ear while all the poor people are touching the elephant's tail.
Am I misinterpreting the parable or is there a disparity between the parable and your argument? If we all have unique perspectives...how would allowing us to directly communicate our perspectives skew the outcome towards any arbitrary grouping of people? In my opinion...allowing people to directly communicate their perspectives would skew the outcome towards reality. In other words...it would correct the skew of misrepresentation.
In terms of our argument...the elephant represents the proper scope of government. We argue over the scope of government like blind men arguing over what it is that they are touching. It's conceited for one blind person to think they can "see" more than another blind person. This conceit is the basis of socialism...and dictatorships...and monarchies. It requires humility for me to accept that maybe I'm wrong and maybe you're right. This humility is a two way street that leads us towards political tolerance. In other words...while I might disagree with who you sold your vote to...or how you allocated your taxes...I would strongly support your right to do so.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
“My interpretation is that we all have unique but extremely limited perspectives.”
That’s pretty much it. My concern is that your proposal deals poorly with this state of affairs, but you seem to think your proposal deals well with it.
“Yet, your argument seems to indicate that all the rich people are touching the elephant’s left ear while all the poor people are touching the elephant’s tail.”
No, the problem is that I’m a bit more skeptical than you about whether we can know a thing like that. You are assuming we know that rich and poor are more or less equally distributed around the elephant. Law of averages. They aren’t clumped or clustered in any way, preferences and interests and values-wise. I say we don’t know that. How could we?
I guess maybe it comes down to this: you think there can’t be any harm in disproportionately enfranchising the rich because, after all, there are rich men and women, and Republicans and Democrats and so forth. I think there perfectly well could be. There’s one study, linked above, suggesting as much. But my point doesn’t depend on being convinced by that one study. The abstract problem is this: I’m basically handing over political power to a minority. Do I know that this minority will represent everyone’s interests and preferences optimally? No, I think I don’t know that. (Nor do you. You are sizing up the elephant and you figure the rich are pretty well distributed over it’s surface. But, again, what makes you so special that you can see the whole beast?) So the proposal is unattractive. It’s a bold shift to a new system that … doesn’t seem any better than the old system. No worse, maybe, but no better. It’s not worth a bold revolution to meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
*****************************************************
John Holbo
I think we’ve actually come full circle now, which feels like a conclusion (at least to me). You started by saying (once you realized we disagreed): “You certainly aren’t the first to suggest that there is a correlation between wealth and values…but you would certainly be the first if you were able to substantiate your claim.”
You took me to be on the wrong side of the knowledge problem because of this. But to me that gets the evidential presumption wrong. It’s your job to prove that there isn’t such a correlation, not my job to prove that there is one. So you are actually the one on the wrong side of the knowledge problem.
Why is it your job, not mine? Well, you’re trying to engineer a robust machine for revealing preferences here. It’s the job of the engineer to give reasonable assurances that it won’t blow up. It’s not good enough for the engineer to say that no one has yet proven that it will blow up.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, every day you have no choice but to consider the costs of the things you want...yet for some reason the burden is on me to prove to you that voters should be forced to consider the costs, as well as the benefits, of the things that they want from government.
A while back Obama's favorite analogy was how the Republicans drove the "car" into the ditch. Do you really think it's simply a matter of which party is behind the wheel? How can one party know our preferences more than the other party? Without knowing our preferences they might as well be driving while blindfolded.
If you want proof...then see how long you can make it without looking at price tags. The fact of the matter is that opportunity costs are just as essential in the public sector as they are in the private sector.
Also...in terms of handing political power over to a minority...can you do me a favor and tell me more about this political power that you have in the first place? Personally I have no political power...so being able to sell my vote...or directly allocate my taxes...would be a positive gain for me...and nearly everybody else.
Our gain would of course represent somebody else's loss...specifically...538 congresspeople. How small a minority are they? I don't know them...they don't know me...yet I'm supposed to expect that they will represent my interests better than I can? I think not. If I had to choose between 150 million taxpayers each representing their own interests or 538 congresspeople trying to represent the interests of 300 million people...it wouldn't even be a contest. Everybody would benefit from A) 150 million people considering the price tags on all the public goods that they want and B) 300 million people considering the price tags on their votes.
Speaking of price tags...your book arrived yesterday. I think it's well worth the $30...but my girlfriend did not. Eh...she's more into the beat poets than philosophy. What is the value of your book to society? It's simply the revenue that your book generated. What is the value of any public good? It's simply the revenue that it would generate if people were allowed to directly allocate their taxes. We all benefit by considering the price tags on the things we want...and we all stand to lose by ignoring those price tags. The only people that benefit when the "car" ends up in the ditch are the politicians in the opposite party. How perverse is that. I wonder how many more times the keys will have to pass back and forth before people start noticing a pattern.
*****************************************************
reason
“Speaking of price tags…your book arrived yesterday. I think it’s well worth the $30…but my girlfriend did not. Eh…she’s more into the beat poets than philosophy. What is the value of your book to society? It’s simply the revenue that your book generated….”
No this is not true. This argument ignores consumer surplus and externalities. Think about water or air. Their value far exceeds their price.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
reason, the overall point though is that it wouldn't make any sense if we allowed 538 congresspeople to decide how many copies of John's book should be printed. There's absolutely no logical basis for believing that resources can be efficiently allocated by proxy. It just doesn't work for any resource.
I'm sure you would vote for John's book...but whether you'd actually purchase his book offers an infinitely more accurate reflection of your own unique and valuable perspective. If you haven't purchased his book it means that you have better things with greater positive externalities that you could spend that $30 on. If you have purchased his book it means you were willing to forgo those other things that you value. The greater the quantity of unique and valuable perspectives that determine the answer...the more accurate the answer will be.
How many copies of John's book should be printed? How much money should be allocated to public education? How much money should be allocated to national defense? How much money should be allocated to public transportation? How much money should be allocated to everything that Rachel Maddow wants? How much money should be allocated to all those awesome things that Obama listed in his state of the union address?
All those questions should not be answered by 538 congresspeople. Instead...they should be answered by millions and millions of consumers each with their own valuable and unique perspectives. It's a fatal conceit for 538 congresspeople to think that they can answer any of those questions more accurately than our entire nation can. Don't get me wrong...if you're happy with congress's answers then I wouldn't try and stop you from giving them your taxes any more than I would try and stop you from believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or God. But if I'm going to concede that maybe you're right and maybe I'm wrong...it's going to cost you the same exact concession. Once we both make that same concession then we would each allocate our own taxes and sell our own votes according to our own unique and valuable perspectives.
None of us knows what the exact outcome would be of allowing people to sell their votes or directly allocate their taxes...but it would defy everything we know to argue that our country as a whole wouldn't positively benefit from the efficient allocation of limited resources.
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, quite frequently I'm really envious of people with great illustration skills such as yourself. Here's what I would draw if I had your skills...
Obama, Romney and Ron Paul would all be blindfolded and fighting over the keys to a car (which would be in the background). A fourth person, representing the American public, would be standing there without a blindfold on. The illustration's caption would read..."Aren't you tired of being a passenger? How many more times will you have to push the car out of the ditch before you decide to take the keys?"
*****************************************************
John Holbo
Xerographica,
“It’s a fatal conceit for 538 congresspeople to think that they can answer any of those questions more accurately than our entire nation can.”
Yes, but it’s not MY conceit, so its fatality – which I grant, for sake of argument – is by the by.
We keep coming back to the same point. You keep suggesting that the reason I should accept your proposal is that it would be so much better of we could, as you say, put the citizens themselves in the driver’s seat. But my objection is not that this is undesirable but that I do not have any particular reason to believe your proposal would tend to bring this about. It looks to me like you are selling me a blender on the grounds that I need a refrigerator.
“John Holbo, every day you have no choice but to consider the costs of the things you want…yet for some reason the burden is on me to prove to you that voters should be forced to consider the costs, as well as the benefits, of the things that they want from government.”
The burden is on you, just as the burden is on someone who proposes, say, a dictatorship of the proletariat, as a solution to the problem of how to reveal everyone’s preferences.
The analogy is apt. The idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat is that this one group, only a subset of the citizenry, will be optimally expressive of the interests of the whole population. Your idea is sort of the same on the other end of the income scale: not a dictatorship of the rich, but a promise that one group – the rich – which is only a subset of the citizenry – will, if given predominant political power, adequately express the interests and preferences of the whole citizenry.
Both idea have been tried. Various communist revolutions. The history of aristocratic representative government in Europe. (Historically, your proposal is the norm, in representative government. Only those with money – with property/land – wield political power.) The track record is poor in both cases. So, yes, the burden is on you, as it is on the communist, to show how and why the next time will be better.
There is another problem, incidentally. Market forces can ‘decide’ that the iPhone is awesome: everyone buys it. But market forces cannot design and build iPhones. For that you need designers and engineers and so forth. Probably that’s 500 people at least. And now we are back to the fatal conceit. How can 500 people presume to think they know what everyone wants? Well, they do and they don’t. It’s a fatal conceit in many cases. Companies go bust. Still, the solution is not to have millions of consumers each contribute some small bit of the engineering design and etc. process.
Now we go back to politics as usual. 500 people – congresscritters – are supposed to ‘build a product’ – i.e. a piece of legislation. They hope that it, like the iPhone, will be popular not unpopular. If it isn’t, they will be voted out … is the idea (though not the sordid reality, we may grant). Now what are you proposing, to change this? Somehow we can eliminate the middle-man of representative government? The millions of citizens themselves will write the legislation themselves? But that doesn’t seem practical. No more so than it would be practical for Apple to fire its designers and engineers and replace them with its consumer base, in some diffuse way (thereby presumably greating saving on design costs.) So what are you proposing?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
John Holbo, ok, you're right that I should bear the burden of proof. Why should citizens be in the driver's seat? Because they know what they want. Are they capable of expressing their wants? Yes, they clearly express their wants in the for-profit sector and in the non-profit sector.
In other words...the demand for public goods should determine the supply of public goods. It's really as simple as that.
Historically my proposal has been the norm? During what part of history have consumers ever been in the driver's seat? First the king was in the driver's seat...but then some barons took the keys away from him when he kept driving the country into war. After a while the barons became parliament and then parliament became congress.
Like I mentioned to "reason"...I'm not proposing to eliminate congress any more than I'd propose to dissuade people of their belief in Santa Claus or God. What I'm proposing is that believers show tolerance for us non-believers. If they believe that congress knows their interests better than they do...then so be it...they can give all their taxes to congress. Personally, I'm highly skeptical that congress can know my interests despite never even having met me. In other words...I'm skeptical that congress is omniscient. What I'm proposing is simply that people have a choice to sell their votes and directly allocate their taxes.
"a promise that one group – the rich – which is only a subset of the citizenry – will, if given predominant political power, adequately express the interests and preferences of the whole citizenry."
The challenge is to see citizens as consumers. If we applied your argument to the private sector then we would expect that transportation options would only consist of private jets and Rolls Royces...which would reflect a failure for the rich to adequately represent our interests. But if you can see citizens as consumers then you'll understand that we don't need representatives to adequately express our own interests and preferences.
Consumers would have a choice which government organizations received their taxes and they would have a choice if and who they sold their votes to. If you weren't happy with other people's choices then you would bear the burden of convincing them why your choices were better. Why should you have to convince them? Because maybe they are right and maybe you are wrong. That's the biggest challenge...for people to accept the possibility that they might be wrong. This humility is essential to foster a culture of political tolerance.
To summarize...consumers would be coerced into paying taxes...but they would have a choice which government organizations received their taxes and they would have a choice whether to sell their votes or not...and if you disagreed with their choices then it would be up to you to convince them otherwise.
*****************************************************
Henri Vieuxtemps
"it wouldn’t make any sense if we allowed 538 congresspeople to decide how many of John’s book should be printed"
This example doesn’t sound very convincing. True, it would be difficult for the congresspeople to guess how many copies need to be printed, but by selling the book for $30 you’re not going to arrive at the right number either. Presumably, you need to print as many copies as many people might be interested in reading or browsing the book, and the $30 pricetag (an equivalent half-day labor at the minimum wage) is a serious distortion.
Arguably, the congresspeople could administer a poll and come up with a better number, no?
*****************************************************
Xerographica
Henri Vieuxtemps, for me the question is whether the public sector and/or the private sector should supply John's book. Let's imagine that taxpayers could directly allocate their taxes...
In order for the public sector to supply John's book there would have to be a Department of Literature (DoLit). The DoLit wouldn't sell books...it would just give them away based on an income qualification. This income qualification would be determined by how many taxpayers allocated how much of their taxes to the DoLit. The more revenue that the DoLit received the higher the income with which you could qualify to receive your X amount of books per week/month/year.
Let's say though that your income was well above the income qualification so you wouldn't be able to receive any books. Would you still allocate any of your taxes to the DoLit? Well...that would depend on how much you valued increasing the accessibility of good literature to lower income families.
The people who worked at the DoLit would want to keep their jobs...so their goal would be to keep taxpayers satisfied. Would they publish John's book? I don't know...their jobs would be at stake though so it would behoove them to engage in due diligence. Would John want the DoLit to publish his book? It might depend on how much money they offered him...or maybe he would just want to get his name out there...or maybe he would just want to donate his book to help support the DoLit.
As a pragmatarian...I don't have a personal preference for the public or the private sector...as long as taxpayers are allowed to directly allocate their taxes. If taxpayers are not allowed to directly allocate their taxes then if I was going to err it would be on the side of the sector where people strive to keep their jobs.
From the above example though...we can see that everybody would benefit from John having the opportunity to decide whether he wanted the public and/or private sector to publish his book.
From this perspective we can then ask...what value would congress bring to the table? As a society we either do...or we do not...value increasing the accessibility of good literature to low income families. If we do value it then we are the best judges of whether the public and/or private sector should be responsible for supplying books to low income families. If we do not value it then the public sector shouldn't be spending our taxes on something we do not value.
*****************************************************
This discussion is continued here...John Holbo's Critique of Pragmatarianism
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The Opportunity Cost of Libertarianism
If you only have $100 to spend on promoting liberty...how should you divide that $100 between libertarianism and pragmatarianism? To answer that question let's consider one of Newton's Laws of Motion...
For every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.
***************************
Action: Matt Zwolinski writes an article (Libertarians: Stop Worrying About Ron Paul) arguing that libertarians should spend their limited resources supporting the Institute for Humane Studies rather than supporting the Ron Paul campaign. Matt was basically making an opportunity cost argument. If you only have $100 to spend promoting liberty...then you should spend nearly all of it on the IHS.
Reaction: Brian Doherty, over at Reason, wrote this response... Ron Paul: He's Got the Kids, and He's Got the Numbers, and He's Furthering the Spread of Libertarianism Clearly, if Brian Doherty only had $100 to spend promoting liberty...then he would spend nearly all of it on the Ron Paul campaign.
Reaction : Matt Zwolinski writes this response Libertarianism, Political Action, and Cultural Change
***************************
Action: Ron Paul's campaign generates national interest.
Reaction: Jeffrey Sachs writes this article in the Huffington Post...Libertarian Illusions...
***************************
Action: Steve Walker, the Wisconsin Governor, champions a law that restricts the collective bargaining rights of public employees.
Reaction: The Crooked Timber Liberal Harry Brighouse writes Goodbye Walker?
Action: You spend $100 to try and narrow the scope of government
Reaction: A liberal spends $100 to try and counterbalance your contribution
***************************
Here's one of the questions asked at the end of the Tea Party Movement and Government discussion on C-Span...
***************************
Action: You spend $100 asking whether resources can be efficiently allocated by proxy.
Reaction: Some liberals recognize the value of some tax choice...Your Money, Your Choice
Reaction: How will congress react when libertarians, conservatives and even some liberals support the idea of more tax choice?
For every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.
***************************
Action: Matt Zwolinski writes an article (Libertarians: Stop Worrying About Ron Paul) arguing that libertarians should spend their limited resources supporting the Institute for Humane Studies rather than supporting the Ron Paul campaign. Matt was basically making an opportunity cost argument. If you only have $100 to spend promoting liberty...then you should spend nearly all of it on the IHS.
Reaction: Brian Doherty, over at Reason, wrote this response... Ron Paul: He's Got the Kids, and He's Got the Numbers, and He's Furthering the Spread of Libertarianism Clearly, if Brian Doherty only had $100 to spend promoting liberty...then he would spend nearly all of it on the Ron Paul campaign.
Reaction : Matt Zwolinski writes this response Libertarianism, Political Action, and Cultural Change
***************************
Action: Ron Paul's campaign generates national interest.
Reaction: Jeffrey Sachs writes this article in the Huffington Post...Libertarian Illusions...
Yet the error of libertarianism lies not in championing liberty, but in championing liberty to the exclusion of all other values. Libertarians hold that individual liberty should never be sacrificed in the pursuit of other values or causes. Compassion, justice, civic responsibility, honesty, decency, humility, respect, and even survival of the poor, weak, and vulnerable -- all are to take a back seat.Reaction: Steve Horwitz writes this response Why Libertarianism Needs our Adjective, Jeff Sachs Version
***************************
Action: Steve Walker, the Wisconsin Governor, champions a law that restricts the collective bargaining rights of public employees.
Reaction: The Crooked Timber Liberal Harry Brighouse writes Goodbye Walker?
Prediction: once the Dems get a candidate this will be the most vicious, highest spending, election in Wisconsin history. I’ll provide links for non millionaire out of staters to help counterbalance the contributions of multi millionaire out of staters when the time comes.***************************
Action: You spend $100 to try and narrow the scope of government
Reaction: A liberal spends $100 to try and counterbalance your contribution
***************************
Here's one of the questions asked at the end of the Tea Party Movement and Government discussion on C-Span...
...seeming to claim that this is a major historic moment and that what we are going to see is almost a permanent national commitment towards limited government. Um, I'm skeptical, and I'd like you to perhaps review what you think, Mr. Bell, since Mr. Tapscott is gone, is the key evidence that proves that a corner has been turned. And the reason that I am asking...the reason why I am skeptical is that you could look at Teixeira and Judis thesis, I think it was around 2005, when they were predicting a permanent progressive majority. You can look at some articles in 2003 after the first Bush mid term election arguing that there is a permanent Republican majority. You can go back all the way to 1912 when Taft drove out the progressives from the Republican Party and see that pro-limited government...pro-state activist government have been going at it all this time for almost 100 years now and it seems that one side periodically gains the upper hand and then the other side periodically gains the upper hand and each side, when they periodically gain the upper hand, claims a permanent victory. You can see these claims often. And then they go down in flames. So I'm wondering why you think that at this time the conservative limited government movement has won after 100 years of this and that the progressive state activist side has lost.
***************************
Action: You spend $100 asking whether resources can be efficiently allocated by proxy.
Reaction: Some liberals recognize the value of some tax choice...Your Money, Your Choice
Reaction: How will congress react when libertarians, conservatives and even some liberals support the idea of more tax choice?
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Self-Ownership Survey SOS
Let's have more political parties! Here's how this experiment works.
1. Abortion should be illegal - DNA allows us to differentiate between where your fist ends and somebody else's nose begins. If you invite somebody onto your property it doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them. If somebody is forced onto your property it still doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them. (A/D)
2. Consensual slavery should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to partially or fully sell yourself. You should have the right to sell your labor, your sex, your kidneys and your entire body. You should be able to sell yourself to anybody else for any amount of time as long as you fully agree to the terms of the contract. (A/D)
3. Polygamy should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to enter into a marriage contract with as many people as you so choose. (A/D)
4. Business owners should be allowed to discriminate. - Your business is your property. You should be able to do whatever you want with your property as long as your decisions do not violate the property rights of other people. If other people disagree with your business practices then they can express their disapproval by engaging in ethical builderism. In essence, business owners should have the right to shoot themselves in the foot if they so choose. If they want to send potential customers and/or potential employees to their competitors then that is their prerogative. (A/D)
5. Drugs should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to harm yourself in any way that you so choose. (A/D)
6. There should be a licence to procreate - You should have the right to be raised by people who were willing to take, and able to pass, a test based on a Parenting for Dummies textbook. It's a violation of your property rights to be raised by people who do not know the basic nutritional, health, safety, emotional, and educational needs of children. (A/D)
7. Children of any age should be allowed to vote (children's suffrage) - Everybody should have the right, completely irrespective of all other factors, to try and protect their interests. By restricting any individual's right to try and protect their interests we are legitimizing the idea that one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests. If one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests then it's reasonable for congress to take our money and spend it in our best interests. (A/D)
8. Campaign contributions should not be restricted - Everybody should have the right to try and protect their interests. By restricting somebody's right to try and protect their interests you are saying that you know for a fact what's in their best interests. How would you respond if somebody told you that they know for a fact what's in your best interests? Would you believe them? (A/D)
9. Taxpayers should be allowed to directly allocate their taxes (pragmatarianism) - We all have a debt to society but no two people have benefited from society in exactly the same way. Therefore, you are the only one that can truly know how you can best repay your debt to society. Voters should determine the functions of government and taxpayers should determine which functions to fund. (A/D)
10. Taxes should be abolished (anarcho-capitalism) - Your property is an extension of yourself. Nobody has a right to take your property. Somebody stealing one penny from you is as morally wrong as somebody stealing your kidney. (A/D)
What is your party's unique ID? Which SOS parties do you predict will be the most/least popular?
You're welcome to debate the topics...but the primary objective of this experiment is to facilitate finding others who share your same set of views with respect to self-ownership.
Here are some of the forums where I posted this survey...
- Decide whether you Agree/Disagree (A/D) with the 10 arguments in the following Self Ownership Survey (SOS)
- Combine your A/D responses in order to create a unique identifier (ID) for your party. Prefix the unique ID with "SOS". For example, here is my party's unique ID... SOSDAAAAAAAAD
- Reply to this post with your party's unique ID.
- Create a google alert to receive a notification when a new webpage contains your party's unique ID.
- Create a facebook page, blog, wikipedia entry, website, etc. dedicated to your party in order to make it easy for other people to find and join your party.
- If your party has enough members then vote on a user friendly name. You'll still want to attach your party's unique ID to all relevant pages in order to make them easy to find via google searches/alerts.
1. Abortion should be illegal - DNA allows us to differentiate between where your fist ends and somebody else's nose begins. If you invite somebody onto your property it doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them. If somebody is forced onto your property it still doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them. (A/D)
2. Consensual slavery should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to partially or fully sell yourself. You should have the right to sell your labor, your sex, your kidneys and your entire body. You should be able to sell yourself to anybody else for any amount of time as long as you fully agree to the terms of the contract. (A/D)
3. Polygamy should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to enter into a marriage contract with as many people as you so choose. (A/D)
4. Business owners should be allowed to discriminate. - Your business is your property. You should be able to do whatever you want with your property as long as your decisions do not violate the property rights of other people. If other people disagree with your business practices then they can express their disapproval by engaging in ethical builderism. In essence, business owners should have the right to shoot themselves in the foot if they so choose. If they want to send potential customers and/or potential employees to their competitors then that is their prerogative. (A/D)
5. Drugs should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to harm yourself in any way that you so choose. (A/D)
6. There should be a licence to procreate - You should have the right to be raised by people who were willing to take, and able to pass, a test based on a Parenting for Dummies textbook. It's a violation of your property rights to be raised by people who do not know the basic nutritional, health, safety, emotional, and educational needs of children. (A/D)
7. Children of any age should be allowed to vote (children's suffrage) - Everybody should have the right, completely irrespective of all other factors, to try and protect their interests. By restricting any individual's right to try and protect their interests we are legitimizing the idea that one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests. If one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests then it's reasonable for congress to take our money and spend it in our best interests. (A/D)
8. Campaign contributions should not be restricted - Everybody should have the right to try and protect their interests. By restricting somebody's right to try and protect their interests you are saying that you know for a fact what's in their best interests. How would you respond if somebody told you that they know for a fact what's in your best interests? Would you believe them? (A/D)
9. Taxpayers should be allowed to directly allocate their taxes (pragmatarianism) - We all have a debt to society but no two people have benefited from society in exactly the same way. Therefore, you are the only one that can truly know how you can best repay your debt to society. Voters should determine the functions of government and taxpayers should determine which functions to fund. (A/D)
10. Taxes should be abolished (anarcho-capitalism) - Your property is an extension of yourself. Nobody has a right to take your property. Somebody stealing one penny from you is as morally wrong as somebody stealing your kidney. (A/D)
What is your party's unique ID? Which SOS parties do you predict will be the most/least popular?
You're welcome to debate the topics...but the primary objective of this experiment is to facilitate finding others who share your same set of views with respect to self-ownership.
Here are some of the forums where I posted this survey...
- Libertarian Forum SOS
- Mises Forum SOS
- Ron Paul Forums SOS
- Stefan Molyneux's Forum SOS
- Debate Politics Forum SOS
Here was my original post...If You Don't Own You...Then Who Does?
Sunday, January 15, 2012
A Defense and Critique of Austrian Economics
My comment on Matt Zwolinski's blog entry Libertarianism, Political Action, and Cultural Change...
Here's my criticism of the Austrian Econ approach...but let me first begin with a defense of the approach. Let's start off taking a look at Adam's definition of economics..."When I use the word "economics" I am referring to the academic discipline of "economics" which you will find in "economics departments" at many universities."
Economics is simply the study of scarcity..."don't you know matches is scarce on this island" (Rabbitson Crusoe). If all our resources were unlimited then the field of economics wouldn't exist. The most important economic question is...how can we guarantee the best possible use of limited resources? Well...Matt's article in question offers a perfect example of the solution.
"Libertarians, like everyone else, have limited time, money and other resources. And if we want to advance the cause of liberty, we should use those resources in the way that has the highest expected return. The Paul campaign is not it."
The economic term for this concept is "opportunity cost". Matt wants all Ron Paul supporters to consider the opportunity costs of the time/money that they spend on Paul's campaign. In order to maximize the return on your investment you should consider what you are going to forego/sacrifice as a result of your spending decisions. In other words...a dollar that you spend on Paul's campaign can't also be spent supporting the IHS.
What the Austrian Econ approach has completely correct is that you can't efficiently allocate resources by proxy. Why is that? Because there's no way of truly knowing whether Matt is correct that the Paul campaign does not offer the highest return on our investment. In other words...it's entirely possible that Matt might be wrong. Of course, it's entirely possible that Paul's supporters might be wrong as well.
Now, what many of the academic disciplines at the "economic departments" are trying to do is to create models that can accurately predict whether Matt is right or wrong. Is it possible to create a model that accurately computes the myriad of possible factors? Sure. Are we even vaguely close to being able to create such models? Obviously not.
Matt can't truly know whether Paul's campaign does not offer the highest expected return because he, like the rest of us, only has partial knowledge...
"The problem is thus in no way solved if we can show that all the facts, if they were known to a single mind (as we hypothetically assume them to be given to the observing economist), would uniquely determine the solution; instead we must show how a solution is produced by the interactions of people each of whom possesses only partial knowledge. To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind in the same manner in which we assume it to be given to us as the explaining economists is to assume the problem away and to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world." - Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society
That's my defense of the Austrian approach. Here's my criticism...
What the Austrian Econ approach has completely wrong is the belief that there is no third solution. Just because we can't efficiently allocate resources by proxy does not automatically imply that we should reduce the scope of government. It just implies that we should have the option to directly, rather than indirectly, allocate our taxes.
Just like it's a good thing for people to consider the opportunity costs of donating to the Ron Paul campaign...it would also be a good thing for people to consider the opportunity costs of their tax allocation decisions. We would benefit as a country if each and every taxpayer was given the freedom to try and maximize the return on their tax investment.
This invisible hand approach to the scope of government...aka pragmatarianism...would allow us to hedge our bets.
Here's my criticism of the Austrian Econ approach...but let me first begin with a defense of the approach. Let's start off taking a look at Adam's definition of economics..."When I use the word "economics" I am referring to the academic discipline of "economics" which you will find in "economics departments" at many universities."
Economics is simply the study of scarcity..."don't you know matches is scarce on this island" (Rabbitson Crusoe). If all our resources were unlimited then the field of economics wouldn't exist. The most important economic question is...how can we guarantee the best possible use of limited resources? Well...Matt's article in question offers a perfect example of the solution.
"Libertarians, like everyone else, have limited time, money and other resources. And if we want to advance the cause of liberty, we should use those resources in the way that has the highest expected return. The Paul campaign is not it."
The economic term for this concept is "opportunity cost". Matt wants all Ron Paul supporters to consider the opportunity costs of the time/money that they spend on Paul's campaign. In order to maximize the return on your investment you should consider what you are going to forego/sacrifice as a result of your spending decisions. In other words...a dollar that you spend on Paul's campaign can't also be spent supporting the IHS.
What the Austrian Econ approach has completely correct is that you can't efficiently allocate resources by proxy. Why is that? Because there's no way of truly knowing whether Matt is correct that the Paul campaign does not offer the highest return on our investment. In other words...it's entirely possible that Matt might be wrong. Of course, it's entirely possible that Paul's supporters might be wrong as well.
Now, what many of the academic disciplines at the "economic departments" are trying to do is to create models that can accurately predict whether Matt is right or wrong. Is it possible to create a model that accurately computes the myriad of possible factors? Sure. Are we even vaguely close to being able to create such models? Obviously not.
Matt can't truly know whether Paul's campaign does not offer the highest expected return because he, like the rest of us, only has partial knowledge...
"The problem is thus in no way solved if we can show that all the facts, if they were known to a single mind (as we hypothetically assume them to be given to the observing economist), would uniquely determine the solution; instead we must show how a solution is produced by the interactions of people each of whom possesses only partial knowledge. To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind in the same manner in which we assume it to be given to us as the explaining economists is to assume the problem away and to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world." - Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society
That's my defense of the Austrian approach. Here's my criticism...
What the Austrian Econ approach has completely wrong is the belief that there is no third solution. Just because we can't efficiently allocate resources by proxy does not automatically imply that we should reduce the scope of government. It just implies that we should have the option to directly, rather than indirectly, allocate our taxes.
Just like it's a good thing for people to consider the opportunity costs of donating to the Ron Paul campaign...it would also be a good thing for people to consider the opportunity costs of their tax allocation decisions. We would benefit as a country if each and every taxpayer was given the freedom to try and maximize the return on their tax investment.
This invisible hand approach to the scope of government...aka pragmatarianism...would allow us to hedge our bets.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
If You Don't Own You...Then Who Does?
Update...decided to turn this into a survey after all...Self-Ownership Survey (SOS).
*****************
Eh, this has been sitting in my drafts section for a while. I would have liked to turn it into a survey... similar to my tax allocation survey...but other more pressing matters keep popping up so figured I'd just go ahead and post it. I was also motivated to post it by a couple of relevant articles that were recently published.
*****************
We all agree with the self-ownership principle to some degree. The question is...where do we draw the line? Here are 10 arguments with regards to the self-ownership principle. How many, if any, do you agree with? How ideologically consistent are you? In other words...where do you see yourself on the continuum ranging from pragmatism to dogmatism?
Abortion should be illegal - DNA allows us to differentiate between where your fist ends and somebody's nose begins. If you invite somebody onto your property it doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them. If somebody is forced onto your property it still doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them.
Consensual slavery should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to partially or fully sell yourself. You should have the right to sell your kidneys, your sex and your entire body. You should be able to sell yourself to anybody else for any amount of time as long as you fully agree to the terms of the contract.
Polygamy should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to enter into a marriage contract with as my people as you so choose.
Euthanasia should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to authorize other people to terminate your life.
Drugs should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to harm yourself in any way that you so choose.
There should be a licence to procreate - You should have the right to be raised by people who were willing to take, and able to pass, a test based on a Parenting for Dummies textbook. It's a violation of your property rights to be raised by people who do not know the basic nutritional, health, safety, emotional, and educational needs of children.
Children of any age should be allowed to vote (children's suffrage) - Everybody should have the right, completely irrespective of all other factors, to try and protect their interests. By restricting any individual's right to try and protect their interests we are legitimizing the idea that one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests. If one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests then it's reasonable for congress to take our money and spend it in our best interests.
Campaign contributions should not be restricted - Everybody should have the right to try and protect their interests. By restricting somebody's right to try and protect their interests you are saying that you know for a fact what's in their best interests. How would you respond if somebody told you that they know for a fact what's in your best interests? Would you believe them?
Taxpayers should be allowed to directly allocate their taxes (pragmatarianism) - We all have a debt to society but no two people have benefited from society in exactly the same way. Therefore, you are the only one that can truly know how you can best repay your debt to society. Voters should determine the functions of government and taxpayers should determine which functions to fund.
Taxes should be abolished (anarcho-capitalism) - Your property is an extension of yourself. Nobody has a right to take your property. Somebody stealing one penny from you is as morally wrong as somebody stealing your kidney.
Bonus 11th argument...
Business owners should be allowed to discriminate. - Your business is your property. You should be able to do whatever you want with your property as long as your decisions do not violate the property rights of other people. If other people disagree with your business practices then they can express their disapproval by engaging in ethical consumerism. In essence, business owners should have the right to shoot themselves in the foot if they so choose. If they want to send customers and/or employees to their competitors then that is their prerogative.
*****************
Eh, this has been sitting in my drafts section for a while. I would have liked to turn it into a survey... similar to my tax allocation survey...but other more pressing matters keep popping up so figured I'd just go ahead and post it. I was also motivated to post it by a couple of relevant articles that were recently published.
*****************
We all agree with the self-ownership principle to some degree. The question is...where do we draw the line? Here are 10 arguments with regards to the self-ownership principle. How many, if any, do you agree with? How ideologically consistent are you? In other words...where do you see yourself on the continuum ranging from pragmatism to dogmatism?
Abortion should be illegal - DNA allows us to differentiate between where your fist ends and somebody's nose begins. If you invite somebody onto your property it doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them. If somebody is forced onto your property it still doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them.
Consensual slavery should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to partially or fully sell yourself. You should have the right to sell your kidneys, your sex and your entire body. You should be able to sell yourself to anybody else for any amount of time as long as you fully agree to the terms of the contract.
Polygamy should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to enter into a marriage contract with as my people as you so choose.
Euthanasia should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to authorize other people to terminate your life.
Drugs should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to harm yourself in any way that you so choose.
There should be a licence to procreate - You should have the right to be raised by people who were willing to take, and able to pass, a test based on a Parenting for Dummies textbook. It's a violation of your property rights to be raised by people who do not know the basic nutritional, health, safety, emotional, and educational needs of children.
Children of any age should be allowed to vote (children's suffrage) - Everybody should have the right, completely irrespective of all other factors, to try and protect their interests. By restricting any individual's right to try and protect their interests we are legitimizing the idea that one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests. If one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests then it's reasonable for congress to take our money and spend it in our best interests.
Campaign contributions should not be restricted - Everybody should have the right to try and protect their interests. By restricting somebody's right to try and protect their interests you are saying that you know for a fact what's in their best interests. How would you respond if somebody told you that they know for a fact what's in your best interests? Would you believe them?
Taxpayers should be allowed to directly allocate their taxes (pragmatarianism) - We all have a debt to society but no two people have benefited from society in exactly the same way. Therefore, you are the only one that can truly know how you can best repay your debt to society. Voters should determine the functions of government and taxpayers should determine which functions to fund.
Taxes should be abolished (anarcho-capitalism) - Your property is an extension of yourself. Nobody has a right to take your property. Somebody stealing one penny from you is as morally wrong as somebody stealing your kidney.
Bonus 11th argument...
Business owners should be allowed to discriminate. - Your business is your property. You should be able to do whatever you want with your property as long as your decisions do not violate the property rights of other people. If other people disagree with your business practices then they can express their disapproval by engaging in ethical consumerism. In essence, business owners should have the right to shoot themselves in the foot if they so choose. If they want to send customers and/or employees to their competitors then that is their prerogative.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Vermin Supreme - A Pragmatic Anarchist for President
[UPDATE] - Vote for Vermin Supreme on Americans Elect
On C-Span I watched the lesser known candidates in the New Hampshire Presidential Primaries. For the most part the lesser known candidates offered the same boring garbage as the better known candidates. The only difference was that their performances weren't polished. However, there was one very notable exception in both regards...Vermin Supreme.
Vermin Supreme offered blatant garbage in a very polished fashion. What do I mean by blatant garbage? In my post on a taxpayer division of labor I discussed how Roger Koppl's ONE political lesson was that politicians tend to signal goodness rather than actually doing anything good. Unlike all the other candidates...Mr. Supreme signaled badness..."I offer lies for less".
Turns out that he's an anarchist but...perhaps a pragmatic one..."I believe that we can dismantle the government gradually if the citizens take up more of the slack."
Ron Paul says that the government should be drastically reduced in scope...period. He has faith that the private sector will take up the slack...despite a glaring absence of clear empirical evidence. If I had to choose between Ron Paul and Vermin Supreme I'd vote for Vermin Supreme because he offers that very realistic clause..."IF the citizens take up more of the slack". We shouldn't just assume that citizens will take up the slack...but we can provide them with the opportunity to flex their atrophied civic muscles in a very real way.
Which of course ties into pragmatarianism...allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes. Anybody that does not trust congress would have the opportunity to directly support the government organizations that they believe are actually doing good things...not just signalling goodness. Or...for those people that believe that the government only does bad things...they would have the opportunity to directly allocate their taxes to the government organizations that represent the lesser of evils.
For example...according to Gary Chartier..."But by far the worst thing governments do is to make war". While we don't have a time machine that would allow us to go back into time to kill Hitler...we do have the option to allow taxpayers to use their taxes to boycott any future wars. This was the point of my entry on the opportunity costs of war.
It all boils down to convincing. If I haven't convinced you to contribute your time/money to support Vermin Supreme's run for president...then so be it. It could be very well possible that I'm wrong...perhaps he wouldn't lead the country in the "right" direction. Along those same lines...if a president can't convince enough taxpayers to support a war...then so be it. It could be very well possible that the evidence he offered was not sufficiently conclusive and/or there are other ways of dealing with the problem. Pragmatarianism would facilitate heterogeneous approaches to problems. It would allow us to hedge our bets.
It requires humility for us to recognize the possibility that we might be wrong. That humility forms the basis of political tolerance. We have to recognize that while our perspectives are valuable in their uniqueness...they are extremely limited. Political tolerance and humility are the only cures for the "fatal conceit" that allows congress to decide for us which government organizations receive our taxes.
If you still need some additional evidence that Vermin Supreme should be our next president...then here are some videos. From the C-Span panel of lesser known candidates...
01:15:37 - Tooth brushing law
01:32:10 - Free pony platform
01:39:50 - Zombie energy
01:48:10 - Glitterbombs Randall Terry
Here are a couple of the videos that I found on Youtube...
Here's a partial transcript from this video...
On C-Span I watched the lesser known candidates in the New Hampshire Presidential Primaries. For the most part the lesser known candidates offered the same boring garbage as the better known candidates. The only difference was that their performances weren't polished. However, there was one very notable exception in both regards...Vermin Supreme.
Vermin Supreme offered blatant garbage in a very polished fashion. What do I mean by blatant garbage? In my post on a taxpayer division of labor I discussed how Roger Koppl's ONE political lesson was that politicians tend to signal goodness rather than actually doing anything good. Unlike all the other candidates...Mr. Supreme signaled badness..."I offer lies for less".
My name is Vermin Supreme. I am a friendly fascist. I am a tyrant that you should trust. And you should let me run your life because I do know what is best for you. Yes I'm a politician, I will promise you anything your little electorate heart desires because you are my constituents. You are the informed voting public, and because, I have no intention of keeping any promise that I make.Here are some of his campaign promises...
- A mandatory tooth brushing law. "We can no longer be a nation indentured, our very salivation is at stake. Together we must brace ourselves..."
- Ponies for everybody. We would be able to use the ponies as our own personal identification numbers. Here are two positive externalities that he offered... 1. the manure would help restore nutrients depleted from our farmlands and 2. we could use the methane from the manure as renewable energy.
- In order to further tackle the energy problem he would put zombies in giant hamster wheels/turbines and motivate the zombies to run by placing brains at the end of a stick.
- Time travel research. Specifically to go back into time and kill Hitler.
Turns out that he's an anarchist but...perhaps a pragmatic one..."I believe that we can dismantle the government gradually if the citizens take up more of the slack."
Ron Paul says that the government should be drastically reduced in scope...period. He has faith that the private sector will take up the slack...despite a glaring absence of clear empirical evidence. If I had to choose between Ron Paul and Vermin Supreme I'd vote for Vermin Supreme because he offers that very realistic clause..."IF the citizens take up more of the slack". We shouldn't just assume that citizens will take up the slack...but we can provide them with the opportunity to flex their atrophied civic muscles in a very real way.
Which of course ties into pragmatarianism...allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes. Anybody that does not trust congress would have the opportunity to directly support the government organizations that they believe are actually doing good things...not just signalling goodness. Or...for those people that believe that the government only does bad things...they would have the opportunity to directly allocate their taxes to the government organizations that represent the lesser of evils.
For example...according to Gary Chartier..."But by far the worst thing governments do is to make war". While we don't have a time machine that would allow us to go back into time to kill Hitler...we do have the option to allow taxpayers to use their taxes to boycott any future wars. This was the point of my entry on the opportunity costs of war.
It all boils down to convincing. If I haven't convinced you to contribute your time/money to support Vermin Supreme's run for president...then so be it. It could be very well possible that I'm wrong...perhaps he wouldn't lead the country in the "right" direction. Along those same lines...if a president can't convince enough taxpayers to support a war...then so be it. It could be very well possible that the evidence he offered was not sufficiently conclusive and/or there are other ways of dealing with the problem. Pragmatarianism would facilitate heterogeneous approaches to problems. It would allow us to hedge our bets.
It requires humility for us to recognize the possibility that we might be wrong. That humility forms the basis of political tolerance. We have to recognize that while our perspectives are valuable in their uniqueness...they are extremely limited. Political tolerance and humility are the only cures for the "fatal conceit" that allows congress to decide for us which government organizations receive our taxes.
If you still need some additional evidence that Vermin Supreme should be our next president...then here are some videos. From the C-Span panel of lesser known candidates...
01:15:37 - Tooth brushing law
01:32:10 - Free pony platform
01:39:50 - Zombie energy
01:48:10 - Glitterbombs Randall Terry
Here are a couple of the videos that I found on Youtube...
Here's a partial transcript from this video...
Vermin Supreme, I'm a real person. It's my real name. I live my real life. I'm here. I am trying to get votes. I am running a real campaign. Like I say, I mean, the platforms, are they reality based? Maybe not. The whole system's rotten. It stinks. The power concentration of the corporate influences in America is over the top. The ability of us as citizens and citizenry to really make a difference, to really control our lives has been compromised. My own real political personal beliefs do lean towards anarchism. I am an anarchist in real life. Um, I am a registered Republican but I believe that we don't need government to run our lives. I don't believe we need the government to tell us what to do, where to do it, when to do it and how much to do it.
But I also believe that in order for that to happen we also have to take the responsibility for ourselves. We have to take responsibility for others. We have to offer mutual aid and support and care to our fellow citizens. It's those two things. The libertarians, you know, are just about abolishing the government and letting shit fall where it may. But I believe that's a mistake. I believe that we can dismantle the government gradually, if the citizens take up more of the slack. It's all a certain Republican idea you know...taking the government down. But they offer no alternative to helping people other than charity. I mean...civics, citizenship...Americans don't know what it means to be a citizen any more. They aren't taught in school what it means and if they are then they are taught some very twisted and jingoistic fashion.
People are being lied to and that's why I offer lies for less. That's why my "joke humour" campaign is so important. There are real issues. We're in serious trouble and if the people don't wake up the planet is going to go down the frikn toilet...ie global warming, ie the evironment, ie the totalitarian fascist clamp down that's going on in our lives. You know I'm here, I'm running, my rights will be violated. I know this. Every campaign...I go out in the streets my civil liberties will be violated. This is a guarantee. They've been violated already. It's fucked. - Vermin Supreme
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)