Detailed Abstractions

I guess to start any post about this, I should start with why people think I am.  The main reason I tend to side with Republicans is because of their stance towards free markets and smaller government.  I think they are overly concerned with porn, violence in video games & on tv (censorship leanings shared with the Democrats), stem cell funding (though as a libertarian I don’t think any research necessitates government involvement), and a number of other things.

Like most I suspect, I pick the one I dislike the least… though it’s a little more than that as the Democrats don’t even discuss economic freedom, only economic redistribution.

To my main point – the reason I’m not a Republican is because even in the last sentence, the Republicans may talk about economic freedom, relaxing overbearing regulations, moving towards smaller government, but all I’ve seen is a slower movement towards lesser freedom from the Republicans than the Democrats.

Case in point – in MO (here):

JEFFERSON CITY — Smoking would be banned in many public places statewide under legislation proposed Monday by two St. Louis-area legislators.

The bill, which has not yet been assigned to a committee, would ban smoking in restaurants, bars, shopping malls and gambling facilities, among other public places.

“We’re on three sides surrounded by no smoking states,” said Rep. Walt Bivins, R-St. Louis, the bill’s primary sponsor. “I just think it’s time we pass this for the health of all of us.”

Bivins and Rep. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, hammered out the specifics of the legislation with support from the American Lung Association and American Cancer Society, who have, in the past, opposed bans at the city and county level because they were too lax for the groups’ liking….

The article goes on to tell us that a few years back someone sponsored a similar bill that failed to get a hearing, but this one is likely to pass due to the overwhelming support of these types of bans.

So there you have it – take President Bush’s overwhelming need to increase social spending, the size of the government, and increased federal control (IE – NCLB), add it to this idiot’s complete misunderstanding of the basic RNC Platform (here):

…That is an urgent task because economic freedom – and the prosperity it makes possible – are not ends in themselves. They are means by which families and individuals can maintain their independence from government, raise their children by their own values, and build communities of self-reliant neighbors.

Economic freedom expands the prosperity pie; government can only divide it up. That is why Republicans advocate lower taxes, reasonable regulation, and smaller, smarter government. That agenda translates to more opportunity for more people. It represents the economics of inclusion, the path by which hopes become achievements. It is the way we will reach our goal of enabling everyone to have a chance to own, invest, and build….

I guess the State Senator forgot that part of economic freedom means that if I’m willing to invest a few hundred thousand to build a restaurant, hire people, deal with all the regulations associated with hiring/firing, food preparation, and the rest…then it should mean that I can control the legal actions which are permissible in my private establishment.

Just like the government has no right to tell me whether I can smoke legal tobacco in my home – neither should they have the right to tell me whether I can allow smoking in my private establishment.

The idea that somehow, by allowing the general public on my private property, therefore means I’m suddenly at the voter’s whims to what I can do with that property after I’ve purchased and invested in it, is nothing more than tyranny of the majority.

The simple fact those that support this legislation are usually unwilling to admit any possibility of the paraphrased truism: the government that can ban smoking can tomorrow become the government that can force smoking.

& there you have another genius that lied within our founding fathers.  A democracy, they understood, is nothing more than allowing 50.1% of the population to destroy 49.9% of the population for the former’s benefit.  So they made, a representative constitutional republic, where the main founding documents allowed free men to subvert any government which subverted their natural rights and setup a government constitution which didn’t empower the government, but limited it.

This wasn’t a social contract whereby citizens gave up their rights for security, but a social contract in which citizens allowed a monopoly on force so long as that force never subverted their freedoms.   They knew the government was needed for a common defense, international treaties, and other things, but also knew the tendency of government was always to grow more powerful, to control more, to subvert the rights & freedoms of their citizenry, all for their own ends… intention good or bad, it was historical reality.

Just like the iPod (trivially), which is beautiful in its simplicity because of the constraints on its design, the Constitution and the United States government is beautiful because it didn’t state what should be – but only what shouldn’t be.

The founding fathers, reflected in the document itself, never assumed they had the answers.  They only knew, through belief and faith, of what should never be.  No man shall ever be above another.  No leader shall ever be above the law.  To secure these things, freedom, justice, the opportunity for life, we propose a government which can not restrain speech, religion, association, press, expression, right to bear arms… and it cannot unnecessarily seize private property, remove an individual’s rights (incarceration) without trial, fair and impartial…

Yes – it was flawed.  The black man was 3/5 a person and couldn’t vote.  Neither could a woman.  It Pennsylvania you had to be a Quaker to be a resident.  Thank you William Penn, our founder of freedom of religion…

But I think somewhere, maybe, the founding fathers that really wanted to stamp out slavery in the constitution itself (Benjamin Franklin was the head of the first anti-slavery group), knew that to impart the true ideals of freedom that quickly would mean the end of the idea itself.

So they wrote the words – we are all created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights – knowing they might have rang hypocritically hollow, but hopeful for the future that could be.

So Mr. Bivins and even Ms. Schupp, don’t call yourselves anything more than you are – big government statists, neither of you deserve any other designators.

Anyone remember when Halloween was about running around the neighborhood, staying up late, and eating too much candy?  Remember when selling lemonade was easy?

Well, thanks to how enlightened we’ve become, things like that are no longer allowed… by law in some places.

In Bellvile, IL the law encompasses ages of those allowed to trick-or-treat, whether children over 12 should be allowed to wear masks at all, and of course the all important curfew.

I don’t know about you, but it’s odd to me that this many ordinances are required for a fake holiday.  Even the explanation shows how little the mayor grasps what a police state this is becoming (@Fox2News):

…Mayor Eckert said “We had listened for many years to our residents, particularly seniors and single moms who said it was kind of scary many times when high school aged kids, people who are as tall as you and me, 6-feet tall, coming to their door late at night.”

“We firmly believe that trick or treating is for children, and when they get to be an age, if their parents aren’t sensible enough to tell them they’re getting too old, you’re getting too big, then we feel that the ordinance is in tact for our police officers to not have to tap them on the shoulder telling them to knock it off,” explained Eckert….

With all due respect to the mayor, I don’t honestly care what you “firmly” believe about Halloween.

Honestly, I tend to agree that 16 year olds running around for candy is stupid.  But I’m not sure that if parents allow their kids to do things I “firmly believe” are stupid equates to a government attempt to micromanage behavior on Halloween.

It’s instructive that the mayor doesn’t even seem to grasp the long term consequences of these actions.  Maybe someone should ask, “What if you firmly believed Halloween was evil?  Would you ban it altogether?”

Of course since they’re all busy dealing with youth crime, maybe they don’t have the time to answer.

It’s not kids and Halloween messing things up, but kids & unlicensed businesses.  It’s so bad in some places, that neighbor’s are calling the cops  (whole thing here):

…Juveniles, seven of them, on a quiet residential street, selling an uncontrolled substance: lemonade. A neighbor had dimed them out, and a Haverford Township police officer responded in a hurry. When he arrived at the two-story brick house on Maryland Avenue, he dutifully informed Dana Kleinschmidt, mother of four of the reputed offenders, who included 5-year-old triplets, that they were violating the law. They were selling lemonade without a permit….

Which in and of itself is dumb enough, but wait… after scaring little kids, it turns out what they were doing actually wasn’t against the law at all.  Enter John Viola, Deputy Chief of Police, to explain things:

…The responding officer – who was unavailable, whom Viola would not identify, and whose name and badge number were blacked out of the police report – invoked a township ordinance against vending without a permit. What the officer didn’t realize, Viola said, is that the law doesn’t apply to anyone younger than 16…

So there you have it – the War on Kids just had an innocent casualty due to a simple misunderstanding.  It’s just another  training opportunity really.

Or at least that’s as it appears.  In a stunning admission by the Deputy, he explains how they will continue to harass anyone they want, even if it’s not really illegal.  Seriously – how are they supposed to know the law?

…“The police officer would have no way of knowing this on the street,” Viola said. “He acts on information he has available.”…

It seems obvious to me, that if cops aren’t required to know the laws they are enforcing, we might have a problem, but I admit I’m not a cop.  I do recall something from school about ignorance being no defense, but I guess that’s only if you are charged with a crime, not if you’re being harassed for breaking a non-law.

Welcome to (NEW) America:  Home of the criminal, land of the state.

What are the odds that a government agency tasked with identifying research priorities, research performance management, and reviewing the impact of completed research will come up with a solution that doesn’t involve the government?

Today & tomorrow the EPA are meeting for just this reason (@eScienceNews):

…The goal of the meeting is to develop a collaborative framework to ensure future research and development dollars are spent wisely and in a coordinated manner….

Of course it doesn’t really matter what the answer is, because “spent wisely in a coordinated manner” is almost mutually exclusive to good R&D.  As should be expected by now, the EPA is wasting money on answering a question for which recent literature already exists.

Back in 2001, a Jack Welch underling, W. James (Jim) McNerney, Jr was hired as 3M’s CEO.  In the fanfare associated with being a protege of Mr. Welch, when Mr. McNerney joined 3M, investors had high expectations of pushing some of the GE magic onto the 3M culture.

One of the first and most prominent of these culture changes Mr. Mcnerney instituted was a heavy does of SixSigma.  From the beginning, leading business thinkers were asking whether pushing a very creative culture into the narrow focus of SixSigma might not work.  Or at least, it should not include the whole company.  Sure, use SixSigma for accounting procedures, but leave out R&D.

Of course proponents of SixSigma disagreed.  If it can help manufacturing and then be translated to service related products, why not R&D?

Regardless of the writing public, 3M went forward with implementing a SixSigma policy that included training all workers to a Green-belt level and use SixSigma methodology for every department, including R&D.  How’d it fare?

As you’d expect, the results are mixed.  But asking former 3M scientists, engineers, and the like?  Overwhelmingly they tend to agree it wen too far (@DesignNews):

…While 3M emerged financially stronger from the McNerney era, many long-time 3M researchers, engineers and scientists chafed under the strictures of Six Sigma. Critics argue that excessive metrics, steps, measurements and Six Sigma’s intense focus on reducing variability water down the discovery process. Under Six Sigma, the free-wheeling nature of brainstorming and the serendipitous side of discovery is stifled. Proponents contend such methodologies’ rules keep researchers on track and accountable for producing. Striking the right balance between the application of Six Sigma and unencumbered research is often seen as key….

In fact, a then board member and the former 3M scientist who developed Post-It Notes stated that he believes that in the SixSigma environment, Post-It Notes would simply never have been developed.

History is also rife with examples.  In the book, Sex, Science and Profits: How People Evolved to Make Money,  written by Terence Kealey (review @ Reason.com):

…Kealey shows in nearly every case the crucial inventions of the past two and half centuries were called forth by markets, not invented by scientists working from ivory towers. These include the steam engine, cotton gin, textile mills, railroad engines, the revolver, the electric motor, telegraph, telephone, incandescent light bulb, radio, the airplane—the list is nearly endless…

In fact, a government-funded research paper showed public money can hurt innovation.  Mr Kealey writing about it(@AllBusiness.Com):

…n fact, the evidence shows otherwise. In 2003, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published The Sources of Economic Growth in OECD Countries, reporting on a comprehensive regression analysis of the factors that might explain the different growth rates of the world’s 21 leading economies between 1971 and 1998. This indicated that only privately funded R&D led to economic growth, and that publicly funded R&D did not. Worse, the public funding of R&D crowded out private funding, and thus slowed economic growth…

No worries though, I’m sure the government will tell you, that this time is different.   Just ask them.  They completely understand it’s failed many times before, but what you (read: citizens) are too ignorant to understand, is that those failures were under other people and not the worldly, brilliant, omniscient, and yes, even death-defying leaders of today.

& if that doesn’t work for you, remember that it’s “Green”, which we all know are now established unqualified goods.  As such, regardless of how much money taxpayers have to spend to subsidize “green” stuff, the end results are worth it.

Last, but certainly not least, if both of these arguments don’t work to mitigate your concerns, welcome to the club: Disgruntled Americans Against Government Stupidity (DAAG)

Late last week, Michael F. Cannon @ Cato released a study entitled, Yes, Mr. President A Free Market Can Fix Health Care in response to a challenge made by President Obama in March 2009:

“If there is a way of getting this done where we’re driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate, and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I’d be happy to do it that way.”

This is very much a presumption based question, like “When did you stop beating your wife?”  It holds within an assumption the only plausible answer is one which uses the power of the government to control the market, and by extension individual citizens, with complete skepticism about any power of the free market.

While this seems to be the default assumption of many of my fellow citizens these days, I don’t know that I’ll ever understand how an objective look at market success versus an objective look at governmental success would lead one to believe the government is capable of much more than simple, repetitive tasks.

Having said that and even knowing the Democratic leadership and the White House is likely to ignore the answer, Mr. Cannon presents a pretty convincing case about a market solution (@Cato).  He explains:

how Congress can remove the impediments that currently prevent markets from doing so:

Whole thing here.

If you’re anything like me, you too are getting nauseous about the “public option” in the health care debate.  One day it exists, the next day it will never exist.  The day after, it’s required…

Well, apparently legislators might have a compromise to pass a bill including an “opt-out public option” (@theHill.com):

Democratic senators continued to remain bullish on the chances of creating a government-run public option as part of health reform….

…Schumer echoed the calls of several senators who this week said that Democratic negotiators has garned the 60 votes necessary to invoke closure on the measure. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) last week put it in even stronger terms, saying that Reid had 60 votes for a “robust” public option.

…According to Schumer, Reid “is leaning strongly” toward including a provision that would allow states to opt out of public health insurance if they want to keep private insurers.

Schumer added that the liberal senators are “able to live with” an opt-out public option under which states could decline to participate in a public program….

So there we are;  in a compromise between moderate and liberal Democrats only, a public option seems likely.  Not only has the White House and Democratic leadership dropped any pretense of working across the isle, but people at large seem unwilling to question the claims of their leaders.

One suc spurious claim, is that this option will result in increasing competition:

…”We need some competition for the insurance companies,” Schumer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” A government-run insurance plan would “have to play by the same rules as the insurance companies and it would negotiate rates with the providers,” Schumer said. Having a public option would bring competition to states that only have one or two insurance providers, Schumer said….

Proponents everywhere continue to take this stance, even though a public option is logically inconsistent with their stated goal of increase competition.

If Mr. Schumer and others truly wanted to add some competition for insurance companies, adding a new company would not be necessary.  In deed, removing the laws the disallow selling of insurance over state lines doesn’t cost the tax payers one single dime, yet increases competition dramatically, both in the total number of competitors and the speed at which they can begin competing.    Additionally, given the benefits a public option will have over its private competitors, this isn’t really competition.

As Michael Tanner wrote over @ Cato, this support for a public option isn’t likely what it seems (@Cato):

Cognitive dissonance is defined as holding two completely contradictory ideas at the same time.

That seems to be the case with the American public, with a new poll showing rising support for a so-called public option in health care, even as the public continues to oppose greater government control over the health care system….

All in all though, the Democrats hands seem to be very strong hand right now with recent polls showing 57% of the country expressing approval of a public option.   With uninformed voters, an uninformed and uninformative press, and politicians more worried about winning than engaging in honest debates, this compromise might soon become law.

That’s freedom for you – as unfortunate as it seems, whether most people truly understand what the public option entails is irrelevant.  So long as they are willing to approve things they know little about and skip any hard work necessary to critically analyze the problem and various solutions, this new government boondoggle will just continue going forward.

This morning, news outlets everywhere carried recent news out of the Treasury Department.  The Pay Czar, who is certainly living up to the moniker Czar, announced today (WallStreetJournal):

The U.S. pay czar will cut in half the average compensation for 175 employees at firms receiving large sums of government aid, with the vast majority of salaries coming in under $500,000, according to people familiar with the government’s plans.

As expected, the biggest cut will be to salaries, which will drop by 90% on average. Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department’s special master for compensation, also intends to demand a host of corporate governance changes at those firms….

Even without bothering with the fact that the government is not in any position to understand what kind of compensation any single employee should have, this is still a radical and arbitrary move that if continued can work to destabilize the economy.

Beyond that, this decision is an anathema to a free society breaking not only the contract rights of ordinary citizens, but also violating all individuals by pushing a blatant ex  post facto punishment.

In a free society, within reason, individuals should be able to contract for any reason they want.  In this case, you have employees who have privately contracted with their employers for certain remuneration based upon their perceived worth to the company.

I say perceived work, because obviously not all hiring decisions work out for the company even if the employee does very well at their job.  Personality conflicts, culture conflicts, and even performance problems are some of the reasons why a new hire might not work out as expected.  Unless specifically stated in the employment contract, even in these cases the employer’s general resource is firing, not taking back pay.

Adding to this is the simple, real, true fact that this is by its very nature an ex post facto punishment for perceived mismanagement.  It has been a legal tradition for centuries, a that passing laws, which retroactively punish people, is against a free in democratic society.

In fact it’s in the US Constitution and universally recognized by a number of treaties including Universal Declaration of Human Rights and American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (from Wiki):

…no person be held guilty of any criminal law that did not exist at the time of offence nor suffer any penalty heavier than what existed at the time of offense. It does however permit application of either domestic or international law….

To be fair, there are some uses for ex post facto laws which have been recognized by our supreme court including allowing for Congress to grant administrative agencies the ability to do just this thing.  So legally speaking, this might be ok, however to anyone who proposes to value freedom, it should be obvious that even allowing administrative agencies this power was a massive failure of all branches of the government.  They are supposed to protect our freedoms, not remove them one at a time.

Either way – it’s intuitive that both contract rights & ex post facto laws are required for a free society.  If the government can interfere at will in private contracts and retroactively punish you for perceived wrongdoings, you have no ability to make relevant decisions for your life as you have no ability to be secure that those decisions will continue to hold true.

This insecurity is what creates instability in most third world countries today.  This lack of basic economic & legal foundation is what continues to plague most of the planet and yet we seem to be moving on the same path.

A week ago or so, a Democratic non-profit held a focus group of GOP members & Independents (here).  Among other interesting things they found, they noted how the GOP members opposed the President because they felt he was attempting to fundamentally move away from our founding principles.

They went further to note how this differed from Independents “underscoring the extreme disconnect of the conservative Republican base voters”.

I will say this move is absolute proof that the GOP members have it right.  If the administration allows this travesty, it is without a doubt a complete move away from not only our founding principles, but away from freedom in general.

In news that shouldn’t be necessary, but probably is, a Democratic group ran a focus group to see if racism was involved in the conservative opposition to President Obama’s policies (@Politico.com):

Racism is not a factor driving conservative opposition to President Barack Obama, according to the results of focus groups conducted by Democracy Corps, a Democratic organization, released on Friday….

It’s amazing they had to study that specifically as if studying the fact thirsty humans like water, but it’s a very good thing it was done and publicly reported.

Of course are this  is a political focus group, they continue:

…Nevertheless, members of the conservative base of the GOP said they believe the president is pursuing a “secret agenda” designed to push the country toward socialism.

“This is a pretty dominant view in the Republican Party,” said Democratic strategist James Carville, who worked on the report.

Rather than attributing their dislike of Obama to race, participants in the focus groups, which were a project of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, said that their disaffection was borne out of a sense that the president was orchestrating an effort to steer the country away from its “founding principles.”…

Notice how they seemingly conflate “socialism” with moving away from “founding principles”, but overall they are stating what most knew – the opposition is honestly and truly focused on ideas.

But it can’t stop there.  It goes on to say things like the GOP wants Mr. Obama to fail, which differs from Independents in that the GOP seems to have an ethical imperative to prevent the move away from the founding principles.   Because of this, the report states:

…“On virtually every point of discussion around President Obama and the major issues facing our country, these two audiences simply saw the world in fundamentally different ways — underscoring the extreme disconnect of the conservative Republican base voters,” the report’s authors wrote….

The idea there is an extreme disconnect is an interesting conclusion, but it’s not presented by any facts in the report. This doesn’t mean this conclusion is false, but from the data they are allowing us to see, it doesn’t prove it true.  In fact, over 1/2 the country is against the current health care reforms being pushed by the White House which seems to contradict their conclusion on at least one topic.

Additionally the comparison they are using between GOP voters and Independents seems week.  Not only do I need to understand more about the the specifics in relationship to answers & questions to properly analyze, but also need to understand what they define as “Independent” as self-described Independent voters aren’t a monolithic organization which can be easily used to make an easy comparison.

Not only that, but my understanding from political insiders, there aren’t near as many independent voters as there are people who tell us they are independent.  Most independents vote like everyone else.  They follow a pretty tight party line vote on their representatives because one party is closer to their beliefs than the other.   They might be more likely to switch, but they are almost as consistent as party members.

& honestly, being consistent shouldn’t be a true issue.  A true “independent” would seem to be a description of a wishy-washy kind of way of dealing with politics in general.  I’ll grant for those truly in this category, it’s much easier to watch the winds blow and point yourself in that appropriate direction than to honestly question the philosophical underpinnings of any administration or policy and stick to your beliefs, but it shouldn’t be held up as some standard of centric thought.

When talking to some of these people one gets the idea that they are simply conflict avoidant.  That some have a strange belief that having a specific philosophy only ends with a close-minded person incapable of compromise.

It’s the opposite though – having a philosophy doesn’t mean you have to be dogmatic in every single thing.  It does mean you have to work for logically consistent beliefs which agree with your values.  It also means, that if new facts are shown to prove one of your beliefs incorrect, you have to honestly rethink that position. & most importantly it means, you hold not only your opposition to those standards, but also your leaders.

With our society today however, it’s seems many of us are more comfortable simply saying “I’m for X and against Y, regardless of inconsistencies” than they are in doing the work required to build a true foundation of beliefs from which to work from.

What they miss, is that they have a philosophy by their very actions.  Observers will view others’ actions & decisions over time and can make true statements as to their basic set of beliefs, consistent or not.

The question therefore isn’t, what philosophy will I have, but will that philosophy be contained within a consistent framework based upon my values and views on morality, or will that philosophy only be based upon prevailing thoughts?

But I digress – there is still great news in the report.  The fact the Democratic leadership is learning what most of us already understood can only help current public debates.

NBER has recently produced a working paper titled Game Theory and Major League Sports asserting “Professionals Do Not Play Minimax: Evidence from Major League Baseball and the National Football League”.

By analyzing over 3 million baseball pitches & football over 125 thousand plays, they work to find out if the assumption of minimax holds true and if not, try be able to find any hidden strategies which are currently being used.  According to the research:

…Authors Kenneth Kovash and Steven Levitt find that: “Pitchers appear to throw too many fastballs; football teams pass less than they should.” They also find that the selection of pitches or plays is too predictable. The researchers conclude that “correcting these decisionmaking errors could be worth as many as two additional victories a year to a Major League Baseball franchise and more than a half win per season for a professional football team.”…

Minimax is an assumed strategy that rational players utilize when locked into a zero sum game.  It basically states that each player will attempt to minimize their loss.  For this research, baseball and football are zero sum games in that gaining yards or points, necessitates a loss on the other side (loss of an out or field position).

This might be seen as banal, even if interesting, but continued research using game theory will be able to provide insights into fundamental human behavior.  This additional understanding  has truly long range applications especially and hopefully in the dismal field which is economics.

Indeed one of the primary and justified criticisms of current economic policies as it relates to fat taxes and other things, is that it fails to deal with real world behavior.

For instance, from a straight economics standpoint, driving 30 miles to save $100 is a nobrainer regardless of the price of the item itself.    However in research, we find people would drive 30 miles to save that $100 on an item whose normal cost is $300, but almost no one is willing to travel the extra distance if the original price tag was $30,000.

This is the kind of real world actions that bug economists to no end.  Looking at the idea with only logic, it seems that driving 30 miles for $100 is a good idea based upon the $100 dollars, not the item being purchased.  However, intuitively we know that saving 1/3 of an item’s cost versus 1/3 of 1% has different values to the individual.

Why?  Well, the answer to this puzzle will differ greatly among individual economists, but the good news is the research itself.  The more science we can use to help strengthen our basic understanding of humans can lead us to policies more thoughtful and more likely to end in the intended results than past attempt.

At this point, I’d just be happy if the understanding we had was used to understand things such as “tax it more and they’ll use it less” isn’t a strategy to much of anything, but all things in time.