Madeleine Albright’s Confusion
Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright writes in Parade magazine that 20 years after the Berlin Wall, “We Must Keep Freedom Alive.” A commendable sentiment, but the article is a bit confused, notably in that it seems to use “freedom” and “democracy” interchangeably. But as Fareed Zakaria and Tom Palmer, among others, have demonstrated, they’re not the same thing. Freedom is the right and ability of individuals to make the important decisions about their lives. Democracy — especially constitutional democracy, with separation of powers, the rule of law, and constraints on government — can be the most effective way to protect liberty. But democracy isn’t liberty, and we shouldn’t confuse the relationship.
Albright writes:
democracy is a prerequisite to economic growth.
That seems clearly, spectacularly wrong. Consider some historical cases of great economic growth: Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan grew rapidly in recent decades without being democracies. (And I would say that that growth led to Taiwan’s becoming a democracy.) Beyond that, look at the United States and Great Britain during the unprecedented growth of the 19th century; neither was a democracy by modern standards. And of course China has been experiencing rapid growth in the past 30 years without democracy.
But look at Albright’s complete sentence:
In fact, democracy is a prerequisite to economic growth, which only flourishes when minds are encouraged to produce, invent, and explore.
That is a much stronger hypothesis. Indeed economic growth flourishes “when minds are encouraged to produce, invent, and explore.” And the condition in which that happens is actually called freedom, not democracy. So perhaps the problem is just that Albright is using the terms “freedom” and “democracy” loosely. And if by democracy she means the modern Western conception of a system of individual rights, private property, and market exchange protected by a limited constitutional government featuring divided powers, an independent judiciary, and free and independent media, then it would be true that that kind of “democracy” is a solid foundation for economic growth — though not a prerequisite, as the examples above demonstrate.
The relationships between the rule of law, popular participation in government, constraints on government, protection of property, the market economy, and economic growth deserve serious study, and that study should start with conceptual clarity.
Credit Card Dementia and Boundary Cases
The most interesting libertarian-related conversation I’ve read today comes from Rortybomb, by way of Andrew Sullivan, with commentary by Megan McArdle. Here’s a challenge to libertarians from Rortybomb, aka Mike Konczal:
I want to pitch to the credit card and financial industry a new innovative online survey. It is targeted for older, more mature long-time users of our services. We’ll give a $10 credit for anyone who completes it. Here is a sense of what the questions will look like:
- 1) What is your age?
- 2) What day of the week are you taking this survey?
- 3) Many rewards offered are for people with more active lifestyles: vacations, flights, hotels, rental cars. Do you find that your rewards programs aren’t well suited for your lifestyle?
- 4) What is the current season where you live? Are any seasons harder for you in getting to a branch or ATM machine?
- 5) Would rewards that could be given as gifts to others, especially younger people, be helpful for what you’d like to do with your benefits?
- 6) Would replacing your rewards program with a savings account redeemable for education for your grandchildren be something you’d be interested in?
- 7) Write a sentence you’d like us to hear about anything, good or bad!
- 8 ) How worried are you you’ll leave legal and financial problems for your next-of-kin after your passing?Did you catch it? Questions 1,2,4,7 are taken from the ‘Mini-mental State Examination’ which is a quick test given by medical professionals to see if a patient is suffering from dementia. (It’s a little blunt, but we can always hire some psychologist and marketers for the final version. They’re cheap to hire.) We can use this test to subtly increase limits, and break out the best automated tricks and traps mechanisms, on those whose dementia lights up in our surveys. Anyone who flags all four can get a giant increase in balance and get their due dates moved to holidays where the Post Office is slowest! We’d have to be very subtle about it, because there are many nanny-staters out there who’d want to coddle citizens here. . .
I smell money — it’s like walking down a sidewalk and turning a corner and then there is suddenly money all over the sidewalk. One problem with hitting up sick people, single mothers, college kids who didn’t plan well and the cash-constrained poor with fees and traps is that they’re poor. Hitting up people with a lifetime of savings suffering from dementia is some real, serious money we can tap as a revenue source.
Clearly, only an evil person (or a libertarian!) would allow a scam like this one. Megan responds, I think rightly:
I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a hard question for libertarians. I mean, I might argue that preventing people from ripping off the marginally mentally impaired would, in practice, be too difficult. Crafting a rule that prevented companies from identifying people who are marginally impaired might well be impossible — I’m pretty sure that if I wanted to, I could devise subtler tests than “What day of the week is it?” And while the seniors lobby is probably in favor of not ripping off seniors, they’re resolutely against making it harder for seniors to do things like drive or get credit, which is the result that any sufficiently strong rule would probably have.
But it’s pretty much standard libertarian theory that you shouldn’t take advantage of people who do not have the cognitive ability to make contracts. Marginal cases are hard not because we think it’s okay, but because there is disagreement over what constitutes impairment, and the more forcefully you act to protect marginal cases, the more you start treating perfectly able-minded adults like children.
The elderly are a challenge precisely because there’s no obvious point at which you can say: now this previously able adult should be treated like a child. Either you let some people get ripped off, or you infringe the liberty, and the dignity, of people who are still capable of making their own decisions.
I’d add two responses of my own.
First, I can’t believe there’s all that much money to be had here. Anyone who wanders into Tiffany’s and back out again without remembering what they bought is, generally speaking, a bad credit risk. Mildly irresponsible people — those who slightly overspend, then have to make it up later — those are probably great for creditors. Lesson learned: If you’re not demented, don’t be irresponsible. (If you are demented, you’re not going to follow my advice anyway.)
Second, I am always amazed at how border cases are dragged out, again and again, as if they proved something against libertarianism. Border cases — How old before you can vote? How demented before a contract doesn’t bind? — are a problem in all political systems, because all systems start with a presumed community of citizens and/or subjects. We always have to draw boundaries between the in-group and the outliers before we have a polity in the first place.
What makes the classical liberal/libertarian approach so valuable is in fact that it draws so few boundaries. Where other systems depend on class boundaries, race boundaries, religious boundaries, and so forth — with annoying boundary issues at every stop along the way — libertarians make it as simple as I think it can be. We presume that all mentally competent adults are worthy of liberty until they prove themselves otherwise.
The boundary cases are still there, but they are fewer and more tractable. Konczal just wandered into one of them. It proves much less than he thinks.
Weekend Links
- How to manufacture a climate consensus: “The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg.”
- Forecast for Copenhagen: “Cloudy with a chance of nothing.”
- A tale of how far modern “constitutional law” has taken us toward the executive state.
- How the president’s policies are holding back the economy: “Right now, the best thing Washington can do for our economy is to simply stop what it has been doing.”
- Podcast: “Liberty, Tradition and Values“
More to Be Thankful For
In a new study, Glen Whitman and Raymond Raad demonstrate that America leads the world in medical innovations that ease and extend our lives. And in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck details some of the health care advances that we should give thanks for this Thanksgiving Day:
• Fewer Americans died in traffic fatalities in 2008 than in any year since 1961, and fewer were injured than in any year since 1988, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began collecting injury data. One possible reason: Seat-belt use hit a record high of 84% nationally.
• Life expectancy in the U.S. reached an all-time high of 77.9 years in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available, continuing a long upward trend. (That’s 75.3 years for men and 80.4 years for women.)
• Death rates dropped significantly for eight of the 15 leading causes of death in the U.S., including cancer, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, accidents, diabetes, homicides and pneumonia, from 2006 to 2007. (Of the top 15, only deaths from chronic lower respiratory disease increased significantly.) The overall age-adjusted death rate dropped to a new low of 760.3 deaths per 100,000 people—half of what it was 60 years ago….
• Around the world, 27% fewer children died before their fifth birthday in 2007 than in 1990, due to greater use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets, better rehydration for diarrhea, and better access to clean water, sanitation and vaccines.…
• Twenty-seven countries reported a reduction of up to 50% in the number of malaria cases between 1990 and 2006.
Read it all. (I should note that Beck attributes more of this good news to government action than I would, and she counts the mere existence of smoking bans as a “health care advance,” despite the lack of evidence that they actually have any health effects. But that’s an argument we can save for next week. Today and tomorrow let’s just celebrate the good news.)
I wrote a couple of years ago about the good news of falling cancer death rates and falling heart disease death rates.
In his book The Improving State of the World, Indur Goklany examined, as the subtitle put it, Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet.
HRW: “New Castro, Same Cuba”
Human Rights Watch has just released a lengthy report detailing the constant and blatant abuses of human rights and basic individual freedoms in Cuba under the rule of Raul Castro.
Some hoped that the timid economic reforms announced by the “younger” Castro brother, when he assumed the official leadership of the geriatric regime, would constitute the opening salvos toward a more open and freer Cuba. However, a few of us spotted cracks in that fairy tale early on.
The recent beatings of Yoani Sánchez and other independent bloggers (described here by my colleague Ian Vásquez) are a clear reminder that, in Cuba, it’s business as usual under the Castro brothers’ rule.
More on ‘Race to the Top’
Andrew Coulson has already touched on this, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents. “Race to the Top Fund” guidelines were released today and they should please no reformers. They are simultaneously too weak, and way too much.
They are too weak because they don’t require states to actually do anything of substance. Have plans for reform? Sure. Break down a few barriers that could stand in the way of decent changes? That’s in there, too. But that’s about it. And the money is supposed to be a one-shot deal – once paper promises are accepted and the dough delivered, the race is supposed to be over.
In light of those things, how is this more appropriately labeled the Over the Top Fund than the Race to the Top Fund? Because while not requiring anything, it tries to push unprecedented centralization of education power.It calls for state data systems to track students from preschool to college graduation. It calls for states to sign onto “common” – meaning, ultimately, federal – standards. It tries to influence state budgeting.
In other words, it attempts to further centralize power in the hands of ever-more distant, unaccountable bureaucrats rather than leaving it with the communities, and especially parents, the schools are supposed to serve — exactly what’s plagued American education for decades. And, of course, it does this with huge gobs of federal money taxpayers have no choice but to supply.
The Other Side Plays Dirty
On the day that we honor veterans for defending our freedom, I read this:
Community groups and Los Angeles Unified officials on Tuesday condemned an anonymous flyer handed to Latino parents that threatened them with deportation if they supported plans to convert their neighborhood school to a charter.
Calling it an escalation in a series of “scare tactics,” district officials and community advocates said distribution of the flyer was timed to weaken one of LAUSD’s boldest efforts to reform public education in Los Angeles.
A generation or two from now, when children are studying how school choice began to spread throughout America, they will read of such incidents and marvel at the depths to which opponents sunk.
If you’re a policymaker or opinion leader, on which side of that history will you want your name to appear?
Tea Party Conservatism and the GOP
This morning, Politico’s Arena asks:
Is Tea Party conservatism a help or a hazard for Republicans seeking a return to power?
My response:
Let’s start with some clarity: “Tea Party conservatism” stands for several things, but it is not the caricature one often finds in the mainstream media, to say nothing of the left wing blogs. It is a movement with deep historical roots, drawing its name and inspiration from the Boston Tea Party of 1773. As with that event, taxes brought it to the fore — on Tax Day, April 15. But taxes are simply the most obvious manifestation of modern government run amok, insinuating itself into every corner of life. Trillions of dollars of debt for our children, out-of-control government budgets, massive interventions in private affairs — the list of wrongs is endless, and under Obama has exploded. He stands for nothing if not for making us all dependent on the government he has promised us. That’s not America. That’s a foreign vision, which over the centuries countless millions have fled, searching for freedom.
To be sure, the Tea Party movement has its fringe elements, as did the revolt against British tyranny, which the establishment of its day disparaged. So too does the Obama administration, some of whom have already resigned. The basic question, however, is what does the movement stand for? What are its principles? And on that, the contrast with the Obama vision is stark: However much confusion there might be on specific issues, which is to be expected, the broad principles are clear. The Tea Party movement stands for limited constitutional government. At its rallies, on hand-written sign after sign, that was the message repeatedly seen. These are ordinary Americans – Republicans, Independents, and even Democrats — who want simply to be left alone to plan and live their own lives. They don’t want “community organizers” to help empower them to get more from government.
But they do need to be organized to bring that about — to get government off their backs. And the Republican Party should be the natural vehicle toward that end — the party, after all, that was formed to get government off the backs of several million slaves. But today’s Republican Party is a mixed lot: Some understand those principles; but others, as in the NY 23 race, are all but indistinguishable from their counterparts in the party of Obama. The problem in NY 23 was not that a third party entered the race. Rather, the party establishment botched things from the beginning, by picking a nominee who properly belonged in the Democratic Party, as her pathetic last-minute endorsement indicated, and that’s why a third party entered the race — with a novice of a nominee who nearly won despite the odds against him.
The question, therefore, is not whether Tea Party conservatism is a help or a hazard for Republicans seeking a return to power? To the contrary, it is whether the Republican Party is a help or a hindrance to the Tea Party movement? It will be a help only if it returns to its roots. The mainstream media, overwhelmingly of the Democratic persuasion, will continue to push Republicans to be “moderate,” of course – meaning “Democrat Lite” — to which the proper response is: Why would voters go for that when they can get the real thing on the Democratic line? If Tuesday’s returns showed anything, it is that Independents, a truly mixed lot, are up for grabs; but at the same time, they are looking for leaders who promise not simply to “solve problems” but to do so in a way that respects our traditions of individual liberty, free markets, and limited government. When Republican candidates stand clearly and firmly for those principles, they stand a far better chance of being elected than when they temporize. That is the lesson that Republicans must grasp — and not forget — if they are to return to power.
‘Reefer Sanity’
Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post:
Arguments for and against decriminalization of some or all drugs are familiar by now. Distilled to the basics, the drug war has empowered criminals while criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens and wasted billions that could have been better spent on education and rehabilitation.
By ever-greater numbers, Americans support decriminalizing at least marijuana, which millions admit to having used, including a couple of presidents and a Supreme Court justice. A recent Gallup poll found that 44 percent of Americans favor legalization for any purpose, not just medical, up from 31 percent in 2000.
Read the whole thing. For more Cato work, go here.
Totalitarian Leftovers in Eastern Europe
The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago. A hideous symbol of the suppression of liberty, it should remind us of the ever-present threat to our freedoms. Even two decades later the legacy of repression continues to afflict many people in Eastern Europe. For instance, those in countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain still struggle with the knowledge that their friends and neighbors routinely spied on them.
Stelian Tanase found out when he asked to see the thick file that Romania’s communist-era secret police had kept on him. The revelation nearly knocked the wind out of him: His closest pal was an informer who regularly told agents what Tanase was up to.
“In a way, I haven’t even recovered today,” said Tanase, a novelist who was placed under surveillance and had his home bugged during the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime.
“He was the one person on Earth I had the most faith in,” he said. “And I never, ever suspected him.”
Twenty years ago this autumn, communism collapsed across Eastern Europe. But its dark legacy endures in the unanswered question of the files — whether letting the victims read them cleanses old wounds or rips open new ones.
Things have never been so bad here, obviously, but that gives us even more reason to jealously guard our liberties. Defend America we must, but we must never forget that it is a republic which we are defending.
A Russian Hero of Liberty Looks Back on Communism
Renowned Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky reflects on the legacy of communism 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall in today’s Cato podcast.
According to him, the failure of Russia to acknowledge the criminal nature of its communist past—as was rightfully done in the case of Nazism after its demise—in large part explains the return of authoritarianism in Russia. There don’t seem to be any celebrations of the fall of communism planned in Russia, and the West is currently consumed with major issues including how to deal with Iran, the global financial crisis, etc. But valiant efforts to remind the world of the horrors of communism include the compelling new documentary, The Soviet Story, which features Bukovsky and new evidence of Soviet complicity with the Nazis. Join us for a screening of the movie at the Cato Institute on November 2.
On What Larger Theory Is Neoconservatism Based?
There have been some interesting writings coming out of AEI’s new Center for Defense Studies recently. On Friday, Daniel Blumenthal offered some thoughts on China. In the course of making the case that Chinese leaders should realize that we are not trying to contain China, he wrote the following:
If countries acted in accordance with rational actor theories of political science, the Chinese would be pretty well assured that we are not going to contain it. We have made clear across administrations that we welcome China’s rise as a great power and urge it to act as a responsible one.
But countries do not act in accordance with political science theories.
Later in the piece, he wrote the following:
China is not the only country that is rising. So is India. But we do not worry about India’s rise. That is because India is a democracy. Almost everything it does is transparent to us. We share liberal values with India, including the desire to strengthen the post-World War II liberal international order of open trade and investment and the general desire among democracies to settle internal and external disputes peacefully and democratically. The fact that China is not a democracy matters greatly as it rises. It makes its rise more disruptive as countries have to divine its intentions and observe the gap between its rhetorical policy of a “Peaceful Rise” and some of its actions that are inconsistent with a peaceful rise.
He closed thusly:
Wouldn’t it be nice if China got on board with all the post-modern, feel-good notions about international politics put forth by the Obama Administration? In the 21st century, says the Obama team, all countries have common interests in confronting transnational issues like climate change and proliferation. Sorry guys, those who lead China think 21st century international politics will look more or less like it did in the past. They favor good old fashioned power politics. Unfortunately for Obama, that forces us to do the same.
There’s an awful lot of interesting stuff going on here. First, Blumenthal’s claim that “countries do not act in accordance with political science theories” is strangely incoherent. As his second and third quotes above make clear, Blumenthal has a political science theory–two actually.
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