Alternatives to birthright citizenship

Read Will Wilkinson here and here.

The trajectory of tolerance

Will Wilkinson gathers two heartening pieces of news, and shares this map:

Will Wilkinson wants men to be more like Will Wilkinson

I join Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry in disagreeing with him, for once. Cultural socialism, indeed.

Game theory on innovation

Angus writes:

Class, repeat after me:

1. Green jobs are NOT a zero sum game where nations are competing for a fixed number of them.
2. If China or Germany or anyone develops “innovative energy technology”, that is NOT bad for us.  It is in fact *awesome* for us, as we can then adopt it and use it.

People, ideas are public goods. That is the whole basis of new growth theory. If China is now doing cutting edge R&D, that is an unmitigated blessing for everyone on the planet.

Wilkinson adds:

This is why it ought to be an embarrassment to exclaim in horror that the U.S. may be “falling behind” in the development of green technology. It is rather more illuminating to see government subsidies to research and the development of speculative technology as contributions to a collective global effort to explore the space of technological possibility.

The expected return to the average German taxpayer from German state science and technology subsidies is probably negative. But the global citizen’s expected return to global investment is probably positive. And the more others invest, the more positive the expected return is.  If some Taiwanese firm makes an enormous breakthrough, everyone will get to internalize the benefit of this new technology. We just don’t know in advance if the Germans or the Taiwanese or the Canadians or the Americans or whoever will make the discovery.

This kind of global cooperation sounds nice, doesn’t it? But we know all about games like this, don’t we? If Canada, say, puts an end to all state subsidies for science and tech, this really won’t much affect the probability of a major efficiency-enhancing discovery somewhere or other. Which implies that the average Canadian taxpayer, now paying for no national R&D subsidies, would see her expected return from international R&D subsidies go up. (And the greater the extent to which subsidies tend to go to the best subsidy-seekers rather than to the best innovators, the less taxpayers should worry about the downside of withdrawing their state’s support from the global effort of discovery.)

As a general rule, if nothing bad will happen to you if you free ride, it’s smart to free ride. Worrying that other countries are pulling ahead is like worrying that the other oarsman in your boat will beat you to the destination if you’re lazy. You’re in the same boat! The smart thing is to goad everyone else into going as fast and hard as they can. For a good while now, America has been a dim kid with ape strength happy to carry half the world as long as he gets to fist-pump, flex his pecs, and chant U.S.A.! U.S.A.! in the mirror each night. It’s a darn good deal for the rest of the world. America’s just too dumb to feel exploited. And too idiotically vain to enjoy a free ride.

Commenter nickbacklash goes further:

Worth noting though that, according to a fairly quietly released OECD study, state R&D subsidies don't make any net contribution to technological innovation, explained in this talk by Terence Kealey.

Science is not a standard public good. Not that this invalidates your wider point, there is just an even better reason for not [publicly] investing in R&D.

Climategate

Will Wilkinson:

I’ve waited a bit on this one to see how it would shake out. The hacked/leaked emails and data seemed to me like prime fodder for motivated cognition. My expectations were pretty much met. Many alarmists have inappropriately minimized the importance of the evidence of a shameful conspiracy to enforce what is clearly an ideological party line among climate researchers. Many skeptics have gone too far in using the revelations as grounds for casting doubt on the entire scientific case for AGW. But, clearly, the thrust of the scandal vindicates the skeptics’ claims that the science of climate change is conducted in an ideologically charged atmosphere, that there really are coordinated attempts to suppress or marginalize studies and scholars out of step with the favored narrative, and that there really are coordinated attempts to make evidence in favor of the favored narrative look better than it really is.

The scientific implications of the Climategate files are probably small, but the political implication is certainly large–because of the politicized nature of climate science confirmed by the files. Verification of the existence of conspiring enforcers of orthodoxy weakens the strongest rhetorical weapon in the alarmist arsenal. The idea that the science behind predictions of potentially catastrophic warming is rock solid and that the putative scientific consensus reflects the rock solidity of the science licenses the inference that there is no scientifically respectable excuse for skepticism of or disagreement with the consensus. That is a big stick to thump people with. But the Climategate files strongly suggest that at least some of the science is not rock solid and that the scientific consensus is at least in part the product of silencing or marginalizing those who might upset it. The files have made “How can we be sure that you did not fudge your data” and “How do we know that dissenting voices have been given a fair hearing?” questions that we now must ask rather than questions skeptics can be effectively shouted down for asking. The files show that suspicion is warranted. That’s a big deal.

It is not surprising to see a “Move along! Nothing to see here!” response from alarmists, but there is certainly something to see. Though I’m sure some ideologues will merely amp up their armtwisting thug tactics to protect the fragile perception of consensus they had achieved (precioussssssss!), I predict that the overall response from the scientific community will be healthy and invigorating. Climate science will become more transparent and more rigorously by-the-book because climate scientists are becoming more fully aware that the impulse to jealously protect a public perception of consensus can undermine itself by producing questionable science and a justifiably skeptical public.

Word. See also Clive Crook.

In praise of a pre-9/11 world

What Wilkinson said.

It really says something that the Glenn Becks of the world are celebrating 9/12, doesn't it?

Quote of the Day

By insisting that politicians are motivated by considerations no different than businessmen or anybody else, public choice economists have helped slay the pernicious myth that politicians are generally warmly other-regarding public servants. But the economist’s assumption of motivational uniformity fails to capture that politicians do in fact seem to be really odd people who don’t seem to be primarily motivated by the same considerations that motivate most of us most of the time. The incentives of the political process create a kind of filter that selects for individuals extraordinarily fixated on power and status and extraordinarily motivated to keep it. If this is right (anyone know of personality studies of politicans?), then the problem with standard public choice is that it gives too much credit to politicians by assuming they’re like everyone else and therefore it fails to capture just how exceptionally prone politicians are to narcissism, motivated cognition, self-deception, and brazen lying.

—Will Wilkinson

How to improve health-care without spending other people's money

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, offers 8 ways to improve healthcare, with no effect on the deficit:

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

1. Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).

2. Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.

3. Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.

4. Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.

5. Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

6.  Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.

7. Enact Medicare reform.

8. Revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Ezra Klein is dismissive and wants to talk about the effectiveness of subsidies. Done properly, subsidies are useful for making sure the poor have some minimal level of care, but I fail to see how they would improve care for the vast majority of (non-poor) people.

Which is probably why, as Wilkinson points out, Ezra doesn't normally spend a lot of time talking about expanding Medicaid in the context of reform, because it's a separate issue.  The problem of poverty, while important, does not bear on the problem of reforming care for the rest of us--which is also important.

Three pieces worth reading on health-care innovation

Will Wilkinson and two gathered by Megan McArdle.

Debating health-care

Wilkinson:

Keep an eye out for the following dynamic in the debate. (1) Republicans push hard on the idea that a public option is a “trojan horse” or “back door” to single-payer. (2) Democrats loudly deny with exasperated, eye-rolling annoyance that the public option has anything whatsoever to do with backing into single-payer. (3) Republicans say, Well, okay. Then I guess you won’t mind structuring the public plan in a way that will help ensure that it competes with, but can’t use implicit and explicit government subsidies to crowd out, private plans. (4) Democrats freak out about a “neutered” or “watered-down” public plan. It just so happens, they say, that in order to work–to improve the quality of care and keep costs from rising–a government-run plan has to be set up in exactly the way you’d want to set it up if you were trying to crowd out the rest of the market. But we aren’t trying to do that!!! (5) Republicans: Are too! (6) Democrats: Are not! (7) Republicans: Are too! (8) Democrats: Are not!

Free* government money!

* we'll tax you later

Heading to Canada might actually become a good option...

Hating politics

Wilkinson sums up my feelings of late:

God, I hate politics. It really does make people stupid, especially those whose tribe is out of power. When Sonia Sotomayor was nominated, I knew nothing relevant about her judicial philosophy or, much more importantly, about her actual record as a judge. You’d think you’d wait to learn something about this before saying something about her, but no. People just proceeded to go crazy on cue.

Like Damon Root , I’m in favor of libertarian judicial activism. But I know that Barack Obama is no libertarian, and I knew he wasn’t going to nominate Kozinski or Posner. Too bad! So I was hoping for a relatively centrist liberal who sees some merit in libertarian arguments, especially about the protection of economic rights. As far as I can tell, there is nothing especially worrying about Sotomayor. She’s obviously super-qualified. And from what I’ve read, she seems like a highly competent, fairly moderate liberal who sticks pretty close to the law (which nobody really likes when they don’t like the law!) and is perfectly willing to side with Republican-appointed judges when that seems to her the right thing to do. What are people going batshit crazy over? I don’t get it. And I really don’t get why many Republicans have taken this opportunity to reinforce the already widespread impression that they are morally odious morons. God, I hate politics.

Hence why my posting has died down—I'm not reading much political fare and don't know how soon I'll want to start again.

The last two cycles (2006, 2008) were exhilarating in a "throw the bums out" kind of way. And Obama was probably the most amazing presidential candidate ever, so following the primaries, general, and his first few months in office has been pretty interesting.

But I think the novelty has passed. He's The Man now—unlikely to foul things up nearly as badly as his predecessor—and covering the day-to-day insanity of the party out power is becoming repetitious.

Just remember Jane's Law:

The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

I'd say it's standing up pretty well, what with Democrats' new spend-o-rama and the right's lunatic flailings.

Meanwhile the WSJ wants Republicans to play grown up.  If only...

For Memorial Day

Via Wilkinson:

I don’t trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it’s always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades … we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows’ weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

Good discussion at LewRockwell.

Link blag

I endorse Will Wilkinson's ramblings on libertarian democraphobia.

Daily Beast looks back at the wackiest moments of Michele Bachmann, batshit crazy extraordinaire. Spoiler: She sees this as her divine calling!

Also, a manifesto for young voters.

TPM: Et tu, DeMint? Cato has more thoughts.

(video) Obama gets more respect from the press than Bush did. My guess is reporters stood for Bush during his first term. After 2005, not so much. I'll further speculate it's in part because they'd grown very accustomed to him by 2008, he seldom had anything bright to say, and at this point by any reasonable standard his presidency was a terrible failure.

Criticizing Obama shuts down conversations? I guess it's like how those of us who objected to Bush's policies when they were popular were said to hate America, etc.

WSJ: Meet Desirée Rogers, keeper of the Obama brand.

Ordinary Mark Thompson is serious about American exceptionalism, in a good way. William Brafford objects to the term.

It's official: The Obama administration loves MSNBC.

Support religious freedom. Support gay marriage.

Via Wilkinson, Jason Kuznicki comments:

Couldn’t have said it better. If you take taxpayers’ money, you should have to treat all taxpayers equally. If you’re privately funded, you should be free to do as you like. Want to discriminate? Fine. Just don’t take tax money to do it.

And… if you support discrimination laws that touch purely private interactions and that benefit yourself, then you can hardly complain when others want those same benefits for their groups, too.

Modus tollendo tollens

Andrew Sullivan posted this under the heading "Incomprehensible Christianism Watch."



Tagline: "If you don't matter to God, you don’t matter to anyone."

Huh? I echo Wilkinson's thoughts:

As it happens, I matter to my Grandma. So, by modus tollens, I matter to God. Good news. But WTF?

Link blag

Will Wilkinson: Libertarian Ideal Theory as Silent Complicity...

Few say, “There should be no regulation, and so I, as a libertarian, have no opinion about how it should be carried out.” Yet I hear again and again that, since the state should not be in the business of marriage, one should not, as a libertarian, have an opinion about how this business is to be carried out. Increasingly, I find this an obnoxious and shameful form of moral recusal. One cannot use an ideological image of perfect justice to excuse or ignore an obvious injustice within the actual imperfect system. That these injustices could not arise within one’s vision of the best society does not mean that they have not in fact arisen. That a debate would not occur in an ideal world does not mean that it is not occuring or that nothing morally hangs on its conclusion. To decide to sit out the debate, with an eye on utopia, is not a way to keep one’s hands clean.

Christopher Buckley: Showdown at Notre Dame...

The most prominent Catholic politicians are: Vice President Joe Biden; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; Sen. John Kerry; Gov. Bill Richardson; former mayor Rudy Giuliani; and fresh-from-the baptismal font Newt Gingrich.

What do they all—with the exception of the dripping-wet Newt—have in common: they’re all pro-abortion. Sorry, I meant “pro-choice.” For this, some bishops, who were rather silent whilst their priests were fondling the altar boys, have said they would refuse them the sacrament of communion. In a public debate, the Bishop of Rhode Island actually likened Giuliani to Pontius Pilate.

While researching this posting, I found myself wondering if the thrice-married Newt had weighed in on the controversy. Sure enough: “It is sad,” he said, “to see Notre Dame invite president Obama to give the commencement speech since his policies are so anti-Catholic.” Well, that didn’t take long.

What all this Sturm und Drang has guaranteed, is that this will be one heckuva commencement speech to watch. What do you want to bet that all three networks dispatch their anchors to South Bend on May 17, making it a four-ring circus.

Ezra Klein responds to Ponnuru's op-ed on the misguided case for universal coverage.

Bush advisor and economist Keith Hennessey examines how many people should get taxpayer assistance with their health insurance.

Washington Post: A 'Public' Fix for Health Care Need Not Abandon the Market

Philadelphia Inquirer: A terrible week for Republicans

Brothels in Nevada: please please tax us

Reason: The War on Pies

Tax records reveal Sasha made $136 in allowance money.

Conservatism, then and now

National Review in 1957:

"The axiom on which many of the arguments supporting the original version of the Civil Rights bill were based was Universal Suffrage. Everyone in America is entitled to the vote, period. No right is prior to that, no obligation subordinate to it; from this premise all else proceeds.

That, of course, is demagogy. Twenty-year-olds do not generally have the vote, and it is not seriously argued that the difference between 20 and 21-year-olds is the difference between slavery and freedom. The residents of the District of Columbia do not vote: and the population of D.C. increases by geometric proportion. Millions who have the vote do not care to exercise it; millions who have it do not know how to exercise it and do not care to learn. The great majority of the Negroes of the South who do not vote do not care to vote, and would not know for what to vote if they could."

And today:

"One still sometimes hears people make the allegedly “conservative” case for same-sex marriage that it will reduce promiscuity and encourage commitment among homosexuals. This prospect seems improbable, and in any case these do not strike us as important governmental goals...

Both as a social institution and as a public policy, marriage exists to foster connections between heterosexual sex and the rearing of children within stable households. It is a non-coercive way to channel (heterosexual) desire into civilized patterns of living. State recognition of the marital relationship does not imply devaluation of any other type of relationship, whether friendship or brotherhood. State recognition of those other types of relationships is unnecessary. So too is the governmental recognition of same-sex sexual relationships, committed or otherwise, in a deep sense pointless."

Or as Andrew's reader sums it up:

National Review in 1957: Blacks shouldn't be allowed to vote, of course, because 10-year olds aren't allowed to vote. And besides, it wouldn't do them any good to vote anyway.

National Review in 2009: Gays shouldn't be allowed to marry, of course, because brothers aren't allowed to marry. And besides, it wouldn't do them any good to marry anyway.

Andrew concludes:

I wonder how deeply National Review's editors considered the final sentence of their repellent editorial:

If worse comes to worst, and the federal courts sweep aside the marriage laws that most Americans still want, then decades from now traditionalists should be ready to brandish that footnote and explain to generations yet unborn: That is why we resisted.

Does Rich Lowry believe his magazine's position from 1957 should be held up similarly today as a prophetic warning? Was Barack Obama's election the awful consequence of giving the Negroes the vote they didn't know what to do with?

Maybe that was indeed why they "resisted." And maybe gay really is the new black.

I think the pattern in these quotes is a useful reminder of why I'll always be libertarian —or at least "socially liberal"— instead of conservative. National Review was founded in 1955, but had it existed 45 years earlier I bet you could have found essays against women having the right to vote. (Like this recent one, only more pointed and eloquent because the cause wasn't lost)

In a 1975 interview with Reason magazine, Ronald Reagan said:

"I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer, just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals . . . The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom"

This was arguably true once, only to be killed off by Karl Rove, George W. Bush, and his defenders. But even in Reagan's time that desire for individual freedom had limits. Conservatives are ever wary of expanding individual freedom to new, previously discriminated-against individuals.

At worst, preserving the status quo becomes a sort of moral fanaticism.

Robert Stacy McCain recently wrote in the American Spectator that opposing same-sex marriage is a hill conservatives should fight and die on. He opens by discussing a quote from William F. Buckley Jr., who founded National Review in 1955:

Back in the 1970s, [Buckley]. was invited to debate feminist author Germaine Greer at the Oxford Union, but found that he and Greer were unable to agree on the wording of the resolution to be debated. After a long exchange of trans-Atlantic telegrams, Buckley in exasperation cabled his final proposal: "Resolved: Give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile."

In that simple phrase, Buckley summed up a basic truth about the conservative instinct. Over and over, we find ourselves fighting what is essentially a defensive battle against the forces of organized radicalism who insist that "social justice" requires that we grant their latest demand.

So in being for same-sex marriage, am I abetting a group of organized radicals? Interesting. But Buckley also acknowledged in 2004 that:

"Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great."

He was writing about legalizing weed, but I think the point broadly applicable. Sadly it seems many conservatives have now delved head first into fanaticism "against the coming storm".

Update: Wilkinson has a good rebuttal of Stacy's post.

Quote of the day

My employer’s response to a column titled “I smoke pot, and I like it,” is to send it out to a list of thousands as a “Cato Daily Commentary.” —Will Wilkinson

Link blag

Carlos Miller:

In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.

Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment - which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.

Cato: School Strips Student Of Clothes, Rights...

School officials searched Savana’s backpack, finding no evidence of drug use, drug possession, or any other illegal or improper conduct. They then took the girl to the nurse’s office and ordered her to undress. Not finding any pills in Savana’s pants or shirt, the officials ordered the girl to pull out her bra and panties and move them to the side. The observation of Savana’s genital area and breasts also failed to reveal any contraband. [...] The Supreme Court granted the school district’s petition for review.

TIME: The G-20's Hidden Issue: A Global Trade Imbalance...

world leaders have been blaming the crisis on the immediate villains: banks, investors and derivatives traders who took on more risk than they could handle. A regulatory structure that failed to notice the problems. A global consumer delusion that the bubble could expand forever.

Largely left out, however, is the vital role that trade balances played in igniting the crisis in the first place. Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has been spending far more than it has earned, sending huge sums of capital overseas, a dynamic measured as the current account deficit.

Ezra Klein: AMATEUR HOUR FOR THE HOUSE GOP...

this budget demonstrates the difficulty of building a minority platform. Serious players who might introduce moderating pressures are not, after all, interested in expending resources to better a piece of off-year messaging. AARP would probably have a lot to say to John Boehner if he proposed voucherizing Medicare from the majority but will probably ignore the fact that it was in Paul Ryan's fake budget. The Chamber of Commerce would have a few concerns about the repeal of the stimulus package if they thought it might happen. But with all those groups ignoring it, the GOP's budget was influenced mainly by the party faithful even as it was delivered straight to the media.

Which gets to the real import of the budget: Something has really gone awry in the House GOP's political operation. They should not have released this document. They certainly shouldn't have released its inane predecessor. And they certainly shouldn't have scheduled their press conference for April Fool's Day.

More Ezra Klein: CAN WE LIMIT THE THREAT FROM BIG BANKS RATHER THAN THEIR SIZE?...

Kevin Drum, who's been skeptical about reforms to limit bank size, is intrigued by William Buiter's proposal to accomplish much the same thing by enacting regulations that increase capital requirements as banks grow in size. "This accomplishes two things," says Kevin. "(1) it puts natural downward pressure on bank size since higher capital requirements reduce leverage and profitability, and (2) if a bank gets big anyway, the higher capital ratio makes it less likely to fail and cause systemic problems."

Will Wilkinson smokes pot, and he likes it.

ThinkProgress: Ann Coulter April Fools

Our future robot overlords are already conducting scientific research on their own.

Customers who buy condoms also buy...