| Muck and Mystery Loitering With Intent |
blog - at - crumbtrail.org |
Leftists often have buyer's remorse.
What's going on here? Most of us used to be good liberals. Are we getting conservative in our old age?Again. Reagan started as a Democrat but the party moved away from the values he and many others held. The left isn't turning pushy, it has always been so. Indeed, that is their deepest, longest held reputation. They are the quintessential lunatic fringe.I'd say it's the opposite. We're what we were five or 10 years ago: skeptics and fact-mongers with a bias for personal freedom. It's the left that's turning conservative. Well, not conservative, but pushy. Weisberg put his finger on the underlying trend: "Because Democrats hold power at the moment, they face the greater peril of paternalistic overreaching." Today's morality cops are less interested in your bedroom than your refrigerator. They're more likely to berate you for outdoor smoking than for outdoor necking. It isn't God who hates fags. It's Michael Bloomberg.
This isn't conservatism, but it is also a mistake to call the Democrats - or leftists in general - liberal. They are not, and never have been. They are exceedingly illiberal, something like a religious cult that demonizes behaviors that they don't practice as sin, and feel justified by that judgement in persecuting heretics.
To justify taxes on unhealthy food, the lifestyle regulators are stretching the evidence about obesity and addiction. . . Liberals like to talk about a Republican war on science, but it turns out that they're just as willing to bend facts. In wars of piety, science has no friends. . .It's not socialism, it's a perversion of socialism and every other secular system. It's Ordnung or Sharia or Kosher: religious dietary fetish with no basis in science. Science is twisted and abused in simplistic arguments, but that's just a debate tactic, not the basis of the law. It's pure superstition coupled with a zealot's need to control others. There's nothing novel in this, but one should be quite clear that no liberal could possibly support any of it.If you're trying to sink health care reform, this is a good way to do it: Show everyone how subsidized health insurance will entitle other people to regulate your eating habits. . .
I'll leave the socialism question to the rest of you. My real interest is in the authors' third basis for regulation: market failure that
results from time-inconsistent preferences (i.e., decisions that provide short-term gratification but long-term harm). This problem is exacerbated in the case of children and adolescents, who place a higher value on present satisfaction while more heavily discounting future consequences.Wow. This isn't socialism. It's sheer paternalism. It applies even if you cover every cent of your medical expenses. You buy and drink soda because you want the "short-term gratification." Later, you regret this purchase because of its "long-term harm." This, according to the authors, is a market failure that justifies taxation to alter your behavior, totally apart from its impact on public health costs.This is what worries me about the crackdown on death sticks and edible crap. There's no end to its ambitions. We'd better start applying some brakes.
There are comparable zealots on the right. When either cult has too much power then liberalism is a casualty. We really do need to balance the government. The next opportunity is the congressional elections, and if we have any sense at all we'll elect a whole lot of Republicans. It is only divided government that has any chance of being good government. If either faction gets control then we the people suffer.
Update: Said another way . . .
During the Bush years, we constantly heard the refrain, pushed especially by Paul Krugman, that the government was doing incompetent and corrupt things because conservative Republicans "don't believe in" government. Put the government in the hands of true-believing liberal Democrats, and incompetence and corruption will virtually disappear.This always struck me as foolish, in part because the problems with government competence and integrity are structural, not individual, and in part because it required one to believe Krugman's fantasy that the Republican elite during the Bush years was dominated by wild-eyed libertarians intent on drowning the government in a bathtub, or something like that. . .
It's amusing to get accused of anti-Democrat "partisanship" in the comments for a post whose theme is that when given power the Democrats are just as corrupt and incompetent as the Republicans.
Acute and incisive rants lately. Is it radio or spectrum you seek?
Posted by: Brian Hayes at September 22, 2009 07:46 PMIt's just drive by posting. I'm really busy, tired and sore from hard sweaty work, too drained to think so I just dash off some stuff that restates old thinking. I won't have rest until November.
Posted by: back40 at September 22, 2009 09:11 PMYou do not like government "paternalism"? If you believe individuals should have the power to choose, then I imagine you advocate the legalization of drugs too. The war on drugs has cost the American taxpayer a lot of money. Widespread decriminalization would achieve both your goals for greater consumer choice and less government expenditure.
But maybe you do not advocate decriminalization of drugs, in which case you are as paternalistic as the "lunatic fringe" left you rail against.
Really, the "lunatic fringe" and yourself only differ in what you consider dangerous.
The "lunatic fringe" are all for consumer choice, except that it must be *informed*. You can not expect every consumer to research every food ingredient of every meal to see if the long term effects will maximize over life pleasure. Assuming it takes only hour to research a food additive, and there are only 1000 different compounds/additives in our food, and the average hourly wage is $17/hour: We get $5.1trillion dollars of effort investigating the benefits of food additives.
The "lunatic fringe" are suggesting that analysis can be done cheaper by the government: Government and implement outright bans on additives that are highly dangerous, government can also reduce the consumption of potentially, and mildly dangerous additives, by taxing them. This way the consumer can do a rough cost/benefit analysis easily: Balance the benefit of yummy food over the determent of cost, cost that is proportional to how unhealthy it is.
So, how is the nation-wide optimization “lunatic”?
Read the blog, even just this first page. No need to even dig into the archives. I have spoken against drug laws. Reading for comprehension seems to be a lost skill.
To converse usefully it is necessary to listen to what others say and think about their points, rather than spinning in confusion listening only to your internal dialogue while you wait for your turn to speak again.
Posted by: back40 at September 25, 2009 08:13 AMIt is good to know that you believe "ending drug wars [...] help". But I am not so sure that methamphetamines, or other hyper-addictive drugs, should be legalized. But I do commend you on being consistent.
From my last comment, I hope you see that there is a cost for the consumer freedom you advocate. I am sure my calculations are wrong, after all who would want to spend 1000 hours researching food additives? Maybe those people save on time, but they may accidentally eat something poisonous. My point is that freedom has a cost, and it can be estimated. We can weigh the costs of freedom to the costs of implementing rules, and do a cost-benefit analysis. Of course, everyone will not agree, after all there are people that make good money selling meth.
These analysis have been done on a variety of subjects to see if government regulation will provide a more efficient system overall. For example, more gun regulation reduces government expenditure because the incarceration time for less-lethal attacks are lower. On the other hand, less regulation (decriminalization) of marijuana will also reduce government expenditure.
When it comes to heath, the government may have a method of reducing expenditures by spreading them out over time. I hope you can agree that $10/year over 50years is better than $12.50/year over 40years, if only because of the time-value of money. Governments can do this by making people healthier, extending lifespans and extending their productive years. Some “lunatics” think that making people healthy is a good goal in of itself, but I think the cost-benefit analysis better appeals to you.
I personally do not want my neighbour drinking and smoking in excess, dying early, and leaving me with the tax bill. Even though I pay more taxes to regulate my neighbours food intake, I will be paid back when he contributes taxes over a longer lifespan.
It is all about community and state optimization. The more efficient states will prevail because they will have more spare resources to innovate. Some individual rights are lost to benefit the community. I am not advocating big government, I am only advocating efficiency. Some efficiencies require central coordination.
Your disagree with “taxes on unhealthy food”, but that is inconsistent with your desire to decrease overall taxes and government expenditure. Please explain how you see these two positions as consistent. Specifically, there is a road outside my house that needs maintenance over the next 40years of my life. Tell me how letting my neighbours leave the workforce early, because they ate unhealthy, saves me money in the last few years of my working life. Furthermore, tell me how NOT taxing unhealthy food will INCREASE budget pressure on governments and INCREASE my taxes.
Thanks
My apologies for not have read all (x thousand) lines of your blog, I have only started reading recently, and I find this blog quite prolific. It must be satisfying to know that none of your readers can have comment until they have read your “book”. If you want to shutdown a conversation, please turn off your comments feature.
Don't be a jerk Kyle. It isn't a shut down of comments to zing some drive by troll for not even reading the front page to see if his accusations hold water. A simple word highlight/search will help even those with reading or vision problems.
Posted by: back40 at September 25, 2009 09:58 AMThanks for your time.
It was unfortunate that you did not want a discussion, and unfortunate that a couple of “zings” (both ways mind you) had you running for the hills. I was hoping for something more in depth.
He says as he scampers away, still having said nothing apposite to the subject of the post.
Posted by: back40 at September 25, 2009 01:56 PM