Until the End of Time

Here I sit in California where there is a (partial) lock down of its citizens' activities for the purposes of "social distancing" in order to (partially) reduce the impact the COVID-19 epidemic.

The toll the virus is having is bad. While merely hundreds of people have died in California as I write this, many thousands have died in New York (mostly in and around the city) and more than 10,000 have died in the United States.

The toll from the lock down is not insignificant. Many have encountered or are facing economic devastation from which they will never recover. Mental health issues including domestic abuse (from going stir crazy), depression, and suicide are likely to be much high than usual. Other adverse health impacts (for example from not being able to exercise since parks and gyms are closed) and life impacts (marriages and things like court cases being substantially delayed) are increasing by the day.

Someone had to analyze the tradeoffs between the impact of the virus and the adverse effects of a lock down. Because of the federal structure of the United States, this responsibility falls primarily to the governors and mayors of the country (states and localities).

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC), state governments, and not the federal government, have most of the power to place people in isolation or quarantine under certain circumstances.

I don't envy those who have had to analyze such tradeoffs and make decisions based on that analysis. It's definitely a lose-lose situation and it's impossible to know with the limited and erroneous data available at the moment what overall impact a given decision will have.

The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, shut down New York state in the face of exponentially increasing deaths from COVID-19. All-in-all, I personally thought he did a good job in both making and communicating his decisions.

In the press conference where he announced the lock down, he said a couple things that I think are notable. The first was "I take full responsibility for this decision [to lock down New York]." I applaud that and that statement is part of the public record so he owns it and will own it in the future.

However, I found one of his statements quite frightening: "if everything we do saves just one life, I'll be happy." The reason I find this frightening is I've been wondering just what the threshold is in order to justify extreme measures such as a lock down.

Approximately 1,000 people die every year in New York from influenza or resulting complications. There's no doubt a yearly winter long social distancing lock down would save at least one life. Could that justify an annual lock down? A permanent lock down? If not, why not? What is the threshold in lives that justifies it? Did that threshold get lower now because of COVID-19?

There is little doubt that governments at all levels have broad powers that pretty much trump the constitution when there is a state of emergency. But defining an emergency is a subjective thing. About 3 million people die from all causes in the United States every year. If draconian measures are taken, that number could be reduced substantially. Is anything that causes significant death sufficient to declare a state of emergency? If not, why not?

Some estimates of the COVID-19 impact were millions dead in the United States. However, those numbers came from models that were based on terribly incomplete and probably extremely erroneous data. Are worst case numbers based on bogus data sufficient to declare a state of emergency? That's pretty much what happened in this case. Those numbers might turn out to be correct but that's very unlikely. But we'll never know since we don't have an alternate universe in which to test different courses of action (including doing nothing).

I find the issue of punishing everybody to protect the few interesting as well. A healthy 20-year-old has very little (or at least much less) to fear from the virus. To restrict and harm a whole and very large class of people (young) in order to benefit other people (older folks like me) without any sort of compensation seems wrong to me. The psychology of that may backfire at some point - 20-year-olds may eventually say "enough" and ignore the lockdowns.

I'm also concerned that giving police extraordinary powers is often a really bad idea because it gives a great deal of authority to people who like power and authority and often aren't terribly thoughtful or responsible. For example, yesterday police arrested a man paddleboarding in the middle of the ocean for violating California's lock down laws. They got two boats in order to chase him down, forced him to shore, handcuffed him, and took him to the nearby Sheriff's station to book him.



I guess the thinking is that if they allow one guy to paddleboard in the middle of the ocean by himself, then everybody's gonna paddleboard in the middle of the ocean by themselves and, uh, and, well, I'm not sure what the problem would be with that. Indeed, it seems to me that the police were abusing their authority and not using common sense and wasting resources.

In full disclosure, I've been sneaking on to the beach (all the beaches are closed along with the ocean) in the middle of the night in order to run because my knees only can withstand running on very soft surfaces such as deep sand. So I might also end up in the slammer like the paddleboarder. I would stick to bicycling but they've also closed all the bicycling trails. They've also closed all the gyms. So I can either sit around and get fat and out-of-shape and unhealthy or I can break the laws of this state of emergency.

But it's not just people playin' in the parks:

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti has announced plans for a spying program to look for businesses that are open. He announced this week that he has already shut off the water and power to eight businesses that he didn't deem "essential."

Essential? Essential to whom? That's another subjective term. In Vermont, clothing seems to be considered non-essential:

...retailers such as Target, Walmart and Costco are now required to limit the sales of nonessential items in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

The directive was announced by the Agency of Commerce and Community Development on Tuesday. The agency hopes it will reduce the overall number of people going into stores to purchase items such as clothing...

Yet I imagine if someone goes to the grocery store naked, the police would decide that clothing was indeed essential!

Where does it end? COVID-19 may be with us forever now. It may or may not be susceptible to a vaccine (other corona viruses are just colds and nobody has come up with a vaccine for them yet). It may or may not ever be reliably treatable (perhaps anti-virals will work to some degree but they probably won't be completely effective). People are still arguing over whether or not masks will help significantly (I personally am absolutely convinced masks will help).

So keeping the lock down going forever may always save one more life and give Cuomo and others the reason they need to keep New York and much of the rest of the country locked down until the end of time.

The Precarious Future of Jobs

When someone quotes a dubious statistic in conversation, I often reply by interjecting the somewhat humorous, "Did you know that 47% of all statistics are made up on the spot?" I always use 47% as the made up number - it's a nice prime number and has a good ring to it in my opinion.

So I almost always chuckle when someone puts forth 47 percent as an actual statistic. In this case:

...a now-famous Oxford University analysis forecasted that 47 percent of all jobs are threatened in the United States [by robots and automation].

Yup, that definitely elicited a chuckle. Yet while the exact percentage of jobs that are threatened is of course completely unknown and the statistic is meaningless in any case without a timeframe associated with it (threatened by next week? Next year? A million years?), the concept is serious and perhaps deadly serious.

As a roboticist, I do see automation based on AI and increasingly intelligent and flexible computing accelerating. For example, autonomous vehicles alone could replace several million workers within ten years (maybe more, maybe less, who knows?).

I predict my company of 4 people will eliminate thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of jobs in agriculture over the next 5 years. And the problem is that as workers move to new jobs, we'll end up automating those too, making it difficult for them to ever get back to a stable job situation. That's potentially different than in the past. Sure, buggy whip workers lost their jobs once upon a time but then went on to work in the automobile industry which was stable for the rest of their careers. Maybe new industries and opportunities will develop as old jobs are automated away, but it looks to me like the destruction of jobs in Schumpeter's Creative Destruction process will far outpace the creation, especially the creation of lower to middle skilled occupations.

While automation could promise ever more plentiful availability of goods, it's possible that we'll face widespread poverty as more and more workers find it impossible to land stable and reasonably well-paying jobs. One straightforward way of mitigating that is the Universal Basic Income where all citizens get a fixed monthly stipend, no strings attached. That would at least keep people from starving in the streets. And if so much is automated and there's so much wealth being produced, the UBI would be easily affordable.

But what about work itself? Can humans live without working? Or is work part of what humans need to be fulfilled? Are idle hands the devil's workshop? Will opioid and other drug addiction become even more widespread? Will all these things lead to the collapse of civilization?

Or will we all become barbershop quartet singers (I'm the guy on the right) and live happily ever after?

Calling Harrison Bergeron

Because if you can't educate everybody, it's bad to educate anybody:

The University of California, Berkeley, will cut off public access to tens of thousands of video lectures and podcasts in response to a U.S. Justice Department order that it make the educational content accessible to people with disabilities.

Bug or Feature?

Congrats to Betsy DeVos, confirmed as the Secretary of Education by literally the narrowest margin possible (Vice-President Pence had to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate).

One of the charges leveled against her was that she's completely unqualified to be the Secretary of Education and utterly clueless about what it takes to keep the education bureaucracy afloat.

I can't say I disagree. But is that a bug or a feature?

To me it seems like the entire education edifice is in catastrophically poor condition with kids not being very well educated and/or prepared for life as an adult even though funding has hugely increased over the last few decades. Perhaps a truly incompetent secretary of education will damage the system enough that it simply collapses and then it can be rebuilt from scratch. Especially with online and other tools improving at a rapid rate, catastrophic destruction of the whole thing may be the best way to ultimately improve it.

So, as I say, congrats, but I'm not sure if I wish her good luck or bad luck. A little incompetence coupled with some bad luck may be just what we need right now!

Shocked by Those Shocked by Trump Win

It looks to me like New York Times readers were especially surprised by Trump's win. It seems that the paper really hadn't prepared them for the possibility. Of course, that's because the Times itself was caught completely off-guard. Many internal and external criticisms have followed. Here's an excerpt of an internal one by Liz Spayd, the Times Public Editor:

The red state America campaign coverage that rang the loudest in news coverage grew out of Trump rallies, and it often amplified the voices of the most hateful. One especially compelling video produced with footage collected over months on the campaign trail, captured the ugly vitriol like few others. That’s important coverage. But it and pieces like it drowned out the kind of agenda-free, deep narratives that could have taken Times readers deeper into the lives and values of the people who just elected the next president.

Funny she mentions "agenda" and "narratives." Because Michael Cieply, an editor who worked for the Times up until July wrote:

[At the Times] by and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line. [...] 

...one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. ... 

I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?” 

The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper’s daily Page One meeting: “We set the agenda for the country in that room.”

To summarize, they come up with a narrative, then find stories to fit it. That's journalism? This is the venerable Grey Lady, the paper of record? Really?

When I first read this via a link from Instapundit, I thought it was satire or a hoax or something. After all, if the Times was really doing their reporting backwards by coming up with the narrative first, we would have heard about it long ago, wouldn't we? Isn't that a rather important detail? Wouldn't some Times journalist or Times ex-journalist happen to mention that, perhaps inadvertently, to the world?

It might still be a hoax, but right now it doesn't look like it to me. Many other clearly legitimate media organizations have now quoted this story. If it was a hoax, I think someone would've pointed it out by now.

But what's further bewildering me is that the other organizations' attitudes seem to be something like, "yeah, sure, no surprise that's what the Times does, and really, no biggie." Okay, well, good to know it's no biggie, because otherwise I might've been outraged. No, wait! I am kinda outraged! The Times is trying to tell the country what to think. And they're succeeding for much of their readership. A readership that is fortunately dwindling. A readership that is absolutely baffled about the Trump phenomenon, mostly thanks to the Times (and the rest of the Main Stream Media).

I've been skeptical of the Times for a long time. Now I'm gonna have trouble believing anything I read in that paper.

Response to "Open Letter to Commenter Bret Wallach"

Hi Don,

You asked the following in your Open Letter to me:

Do you, in short, believe that you have an ethical right to grow your own tomatoes with your own resources if you choose – a right that trumps other tomato-growers’ insistence that you instead buy your tomatoes from them?

I've never had tomatoes thrown at me before in a debate, even figuratively, so this is a first. I'm sure it beats being hit with actual tomatoes. :-)

But I wonder if you've asked yourself that very question? And I wonder what your answer to yourself would be?

I wonder that because you seem to be a strong supporter of patents. If so, consider the following. I'm happily and honestly growing my tomatoes using only my own and all completely legal resources. As they're growing away, some tomato DNA from an adjacent field of tomatoes grown from Monsanto tomato seeds blows into my field and inadvertently contaminates the tomatoes that I've planted for next year's seed stock. Unfortunately for me, Monsanto's patent protection on the DNA disallows me from planting and selling tomatoes next year using my own seed stock. These Monsanto patent rights that prohibit me from growing my own tomatoes have been upheld by the Supreme Court:

The US Supreme Court upheld biotech giant Monsanto’s claims on genetically-engineered seed patents and the company’s ability to sue farmers whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with Monsanto materials.

Of course, other tomato-growers who use Monsanto's seeds will be quite happy that I'm stuck buying tomatoes grown by them instead of growing my own. I assume that as a supporter of patent rights that you side with the Supreme Court and Monsanto on this one and you, in short, do NOT believe that I have an ethical right to grow my own tomatoes with my own resources if I choose. At least not an inherent right - Monsanto's patent right trumps any rights I might have to grow my own tomatoes.

Or am I mistaken? Perhaps you're going to tell me that the DNA that trespasses onto my property is not my resource? Perhaps, but then neither is the sun that falls on my crops nor the CO2 that the tomatoes need to grow that blows through my fields nor the earthworms that migrated from adjacent fields nor the rain that falls from the sky, etc. If you follow that line of reasoning, I'm therefore not able to grow tomatoes with solely my own resources and so your question becomes meaningless. Or perhaps I could grow them in an airtight greenhouse with only artificial lights and sterilized topsoil purchased elsewhere rejuvenated by microbes I buy elsewhere, etc., but such tomatoes would have no chance to be commercially viable making your question still mostly meaningless.

Or perhaps you're a strong supporter of patents except in this case? And cases like it?

Do you support precluding an inventor from using a method he invented independently (and possibly before anybody else) with the sweat of his brow risking his own capital simply because he filed his patent application a nanosecond after someone else filed a patent application for more-or-less the same invention (also invented independently)? This happens quite frequently (though there's usually a bit more than a nanosecond between the applications) and is quite a severe restriction on the freedom and even life of the very slightly slower-to-file inventor.

But that's all well and good: them's the rules and them's the breaks. We've collectively, via the State, decided that patents benefit the collective in aggregate and if some folks are deprived of the fruits of their labors and possibly severely damaged because of that, tough luck - the freedom to use what you've developed is trumped by what benefits the collective. And you support that, right?

To me, a patent is a GOLEM (Government Originated Legally Enforced Monopoly) and GOLEMs are a subset of GOLERTs (Government Originated Legally Enforced Restrictions on Trade). Your support of patents makes you perfectly okay with GOLEMs and therefore at least that type of GOLERT. To paraphrase an old joke, now that we've identified that you're perfectly happy and supportive of the collective placing some restrictions on trade, all that's left is to haggle over the details. :-)

Oh, I have no doubt you'll find some way to rationalize it. Perhaps you'll say "BUT IT'S PROPERTY!" Okay, but then why isn't it property for the other guy who invented it (perhaps he even invented it first, he was just slower to file)? Why isn't it property after 20 years? Or is it property but then it's okay for the State to take it away after 20 years? In which case why wouldn't it be okay for the State to take away any property if it benefits the collective? And if inventions are property, why were they not generally described as property prior to the 1960s, the decade when the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was founded (with the purpose of getting everybody to think of inventions as property)? Etc.

Applying this to growing tomatoes, perhaps the invention that I invented first using only my own resources but was slightly slower-to-file than someone else was a new-fangled super-duper tomato transplanting system (since I'm a roboticist who develops agricultural automation products, I actually bid on developing exactly such a system a few weeks ago). Assuming the other inventor got the patent, it would be illegal to use my invention to grow my own tomatoes. However, I could probably prevent anyone from proving that I was doing so (since I simply wouldn't allow them on my property) and could use my invention without fear of punishment. Would that be unethical? Immoral? Would it matter whether or not I sold the tomatoes?

In thinking about one small aspect (patent considerations) of your seemingly simple question of whether or not I should be able to grow stuff (tomatoes) on my own property using my own resources without any interference from the collective (the State) or subsets of the collective (other growers), more than a dozen questions have already come to mind. That's because your question is not simple. Everything that everybody does affects everybody else and nothing that involves large numbers of people is simple.

My answer to your seemingly simple question of whether or not I should be able to grow stuff on my own property without any interference from others is "it depends."

Sincerely,
Bret Wallach
President
Vision Robotics Corporation
San Diego, CA

P.S. If you excerpt any of the above, please also provide a link to this page (http://greatguys.blogspot.com/2016/10/response-to-open-letter-to-commenter.html) so readers can see the full context of what I've written.

Response to Don Boudreaux - Rough Draft

Hi Don,

You asked the following in your Open Letter to me:

Do you, in short, believe that you have an ethical right to grow your own tomatoes with your own resources if you choose – a right that trumps other tomato-growers’ insistence that you instead buy your tomatoes from them?

I've never had tomatoes thrown at me before in a debate, even figuratively, so this is a first. I'm sure it beats being hit with actual tomatoes. :-)

But I wonder if you've asked yourself that very question? And I wonder what your answer to yourself would be?

I wonder that because you seem to be a strong supporter of patents. If so, consider the following. I'm happily and honestly growing my tomatoes using only my own and all completely legal resources. As they're growing away, some tomato DNA from an adjacent field of tomatoes grown from Monsanto tomato seeds blows into my field and inadvertently contaminates the tomatoes that I've planted for next year's seed stock. Unfortunately for me, Monsanto's patent protection on the DNA disallows me from planting and selling tomatoes next year using my own seed stock. These Monsanto patent rights that prohibit me from growing my own tomatoes have been upheld by the Supreme Court:

The US Supreme Court upheld biotech giant Monsanto’s claims on genetically-engineered seed patents and the company’s ability to sue farmers whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with Monsanto materials.

Of course, other tomato-growers who use Monsanto's seeds will be quite happy that I'm stuck buying tomatoes grown by them instead of growing my own. I assume that as a supporter of patent rights that you side with the Supreme Court and Monsanto on this one and you, in short, do NOT believe that I have an ethical right to grow my own tomatoes with my own resources if I choose. At least not an inherent right - Monsanto's patent right trumps any rights I might have to grow my own tomatoes.

Or am I mistaken? Perhaps you're going to tell me that the DNA that trespasses onto my property is not my resource? Perhaps, but then neither is the sun that falls on my crops nor the CO2 that the tomatoes need to grow that blows onto my fields nor the earthworms that migrated from adjacent fields nor the rain that falls from the sky, etc. If you follow that line of reasoning, I'm therefore not able to grow tomatoes with solely my own resources and so your question becomes meaningless. Or perhaps I could grow them in an airtight greenhouse with only artificial lights and sterilized topsoil purchased elsewhere rejuvenated by microbes I buy elsewhere, etc., but such tomatoes would have no chance to be commercially viable making your question still mostly meaningless.

Or perhaps you're a strong supporter of patents except in this case? And cases like it?

Do you support precluding an inventor from using a method he invented independently (and possibly before anybody else) with the sweat of his brow risking his own capital simply because he filed his patent application a nanosecond after someone else filed a patent application for more-or-less the same invention (also invented independently)? This happens quite frequently (though there's usually a bit more than a nanosecond between the applications) and is quite a severe restriction on the freedom and even life of the very slightly slower-to-file inventor.

But that's all well and good: them's the rules and them's the breaks. We've collectively, via the State, decided that patents benefit the collective in aggregate and if some folks are deprived of the fruits of their labors and possibly severely damaged because of that, tough luck - the freedom to use what you've developed is trumped by what benefits the collective. And you support that, right?

To me, a patent is a GOLEM (Government Originated Legally Enforced Monopoly) and GOLEMs are a subset of GOLERTs (Government Originated Legally Enforced Restrictions on Trade). Your support of patents makes you perfectly okay with GOLEMs and therefore at least that type of GOLERT. To paraphrase an old joke, now that we've identified that you're perfectly happy and supportive of the collective placing some restrictions on trade, all that's left is to haggle over the details. :-)

Oh, I have no doubt you'll find some way to rationalize it. Perhaps you'll say "BUT IT'S PROPERTY!" Okay, but then why isn't it property for the other guy who invented it (perhaps he even invented it first, he was just slower to file)? Why isn't it property after 20 years? Or is it property but then it's okay for the State to take it away after 20 years? In which case why wouldn't it be okay for the State to take away any property if it benefits the collective? And if inventions are property, why were they not generally described as property prior to the 1960s, the decade when the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was founded (with the purpose of getting everybody to think of inventions as property)? Etc.

Applying this to growing tomatoes, perhaps the invention that I invented first using only my own resources but was slightly slower-to-file than someone else was a new-fangled super-duper tomato transplanting system (since I'm a roboticist who develops agricultural automation products, I actually bid on exactly such a system recently). Assuming the other inventor got the patent, it would be illegal to use my invention to grow my own tomatoes. However, I could probably prevent anyone from proving that I was doing so (since I simply wouldn't allow them on my property) and could use my invention without fear of punishment. Would that be unethical? Immoral? Would it matter whether or not I sold the tomatoes?

In thinking about one small aspect (patent considerations) of your seemingly simple question of whether or not I should be able to grow stuff (tomatoes) on my own property using my own resources without any interference from the collective (the State) or subsets of the collective (other growers), more than a dozen questions have already come to mind. That's because your question is not simple. Everything that everybody does affects everybody else and nothing that involves large numbers of people is simple.

My answer to your seemingly simple question of whether or not I should be able to grow stuff on my own property without any interference from others is "it depends."

Sincerely,
Bret

Don Throws Tomatoes at Me

Here's a post from today at Cafe Hayek (I assume that since it's an "Open Letter" to me that I have every right to reprint it verbatim):

=======================================================================

Open Letter to Commenter Bret Wallach
by DON BOUDREAUX on OCTOBER 19, 2016


Bret Wallach

Mr. Wallach:

I close my recent “Elemental Case for Free Trade” with the following ethical argument: “if you work and earn income honestly, that income is yours to use as you choose.  You may use it to buy tomatoes from your neighbor or to buy tomatoes from a farmer in Mexico.  It’s your money.  It belongs neither to the state nor to any domestic producer.  Yet protectionist arguments rest on the premise that your tomato-growing neighbor has some positive claim on your income.  If you are prohibited from buying tomatoes from Mexico, or – more commonly today – penalized with a tariff for doing so, the state is insisting that domestic tomato growers have an ethical claim on part of your income.”

You disagree with my argument.  That is, you apparently believe that the state acts ethically if, in its efforts to increase sales made by existing domestic tomato growers, it penalizes you for using your own income to buy foreign-grown tomatoes.  Do you, then, also believe that the state would be acting ethically if, in its efforts to increase sales made by those same domestic tomato growers, it penalized you for using your own income to buy potting soil, fertilizer, and tomato seeds that you use to grow your own tomatoes?

If you believe that there’s nothing ethically objectionable about Uncle Sam penalizing you for spending your income in ways that cause the sales of some domestic producers to be lower than otherwise, surely you then have no objection to Uncle Sam penalizing you for growing your own tomatoes.  Nor must you object if Uncle Sam were to penalize you and other Americans for buying used rather than new cars (or, indeed, for putting off buying new cars by keeping your existing cars in good repair) – or for buying previously owned rather than newly build homes – or for growing beards rather than shaving daily (think of all the sales that Gillette loses because more men today wear facial hair!) – or for recycling aluminum cans and plastic cartons – or, indeed, for doing anything with your own resources that Uncle Sam judges to wrongfully reduce sales made by its favored domestic producers.

Do you, in short, believe that you have an ethical right to grow your own tomatoes with your own resources if you choose – a right that trumps other tomato-growers’ insistence that you instead buy your tomatoes from them?  If so, how do you square this belief with your insistence that it is ethically acceptable for the state to penalize you and others for spending parts your incomes on the purchase of imports?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA  22030

=======================================================================

I'll (most likely) respond to Don in the next few days.

The gross simplification of Don's philosophy is "BUT FREEDOM!" where freedom to do as you see fit, as long as it's peaceful and voluntary for all parties, trumps (nearly) all other considerations. The gross simplification of my philosophy is "WHEN IN DOUBT, CHOOSE FREEDOM!" and that means that I basically believe that some ends can sometimes justify some means that might restrict peaceful, voluntary freedom, but the case for doing so has to be really strong. I think there's a lot of overlap, but I think that the hairs we split are important to some degree.

Science, Faith and Little Gods

In my opinion, many relevant questions and problems are so complex, often containing mountains of conflicting, orthogonal, and only partially relevant information, that no human or group of humans can or will ever be able to understand the problems, much less "solve" them. One large class of such problems are those which involve the interaction of science (especially "soft" sciences like social science and the "dismal science" that is economics) with politics/policy. Even if the science produces knowledge with a high degree of accuracy and confidence, how that knowledge affects the 7+ billion people inhabiting earth and how to optimize policy to take into account their dreams, desires, preferences and fears is an insurmountably difficult task.

I often cringe when I hear folks say things like, "because scientists/economists/experts say so, we should enact certain policies and anybody who disagrees is clearly stupid, ignorant and/or a denier of science." One of the most famous quotes along those lines is by Richard Dawkins:

It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).

Science has been used to amass the evidence and knowledge upon which theories of evolution have been built. Those theories in turn, are works in progress, like most scientific knowledge, and will continue to be updated and refined over time. Evolution is a good example of the scientific method in action and may even be closely related to the actual explanation of the trajectory of the biosphere during the existence of life on this planet. But that isn't enough for Dawkins - I'm required to "believe in" evolution and I simply don't.

Now I want to introduce a term (from dictionary.com):

scientism/ˈsaɪənˌtɪzəm/
noun
the uncritical application of scientific or quasi-scientific methods to inappropriate fields of study or investigation

I'm also going to add my (non-standard) definition and assume when I use the word below that I'm referring to this definition:

the belief that a large percentage of all personal and collective decisions should be based on science and/or analyses of empirical evidence

Note that the two definitions are not in conflict.

Evolution provides a good example. It's science to build theories like evolution. It's scientism to insist that people "believe in" the theory or even that this particular theory ought to be taught in schools. I realize that the latter half of the previous sentence is a very contentious statement, but ask yourself this: given that only a tiny fraction of useful science is taught in school (there's simply not enough time to teach it all), why is it so important that that particular bit of science be taught to the exclusion of something else? And note I'm not talking about DNA, RNA, genetic encoding of information and inheritance, and all of the other knowledge that's loosely related to evolution, I'm only talking about evolution, which, by itself, really isn't particularly useful for much of anything at all.

It's science to explore the relationship between the diffusion of various isotopes of oxygen and the diffusion of heat in ice cores from Antarctica in order to be able to put error bars on the historical temperature record in that locale. It's scientism to create laws that restrict people from discussing skepticism regarding the impact of global warming. It's also scientism to tell people how to live in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

It's science to understand genetic inheritance via DNA. It's scientism to decide to create a eugenics program in order to improve human genetics as has been done in the past.

It's science (sort of) to create models that retroactively can predict economic trends and events. It's scientism to craft policies with wide impact based on those models.

In other words, scientism is a quasi-religious view that takes scientific knowledge and strives to make it the basis of societal organization. Remember those dreams, desires, preferences, and fears I mentioned above? Nuh uh, not allowed or at least heavily discounted by scientismists (those that use scientism) as the basis for their outlook. Of course, I rather suspect that whatever the scientismists' preferences are just happen to align with that which they happen learn from science.

Since these problems are complex beyond human capacity for comprehension, scientism can be thought of as sort of a "folk-science" that relies on networks of people with similar beliefs:

There are many religious views that are not the product of common-sense ways of seeing the world. Consider the story of Adam and Eve, or the virgin birth of Christ, or Muhammad ascending to heaven on a winged horse. These are not the product of innate biases. They are learned, and, more surprisingly, they are learned in a special way. 

To come to accept such religious narratives is not like learning that grass is green or that stoves can be hot; it is not like picking up stereotypes or customs or social rules. Instead, these narratives are acquired through the testimony of others, from parents or peers or religious authorities. Accepting them requires a leap of faith, but not a theological leap of faith. Rather, a leap in the mundane sense that you must trust the people who are testifying to their truth. [...] 

Many religious narratives are believed without even being understood. People will often assert religious claims with confidence—there exists a God, he listens to my prayers, I will go to Heaven when I die—but with little understanding, or even interest, in the details. The sociologist Alan Wolfe observes that “evangelical believers are sometimes hard pressed to explain exactly what, doctrinally speaking, their faith is,” and goes on to note that “These are people who believe, often passionately, in God, even if they cannot tell others all that much about the God in which they believe.” 

People defer to authorities not just to the truth of the religious beliefs, but their meaning as well. In a recent article, the philosopher Neil Van Leeuwen calls these sorts of mental states “credences,” and he notes that they have a moral component. We believe that we should accept them, and that others—at least those who belong to our family and community—should accept them as well. 

None of this is special to religion. Researchers have studied those who have strong opinions about political issues and found that they often literally don’t know what they are talking about. Many people who take positions on cap and trade, for instance, have no idea what cap and trade is. Similarly, many of those who will insist that America spends too much, or too little, on foreign aid, often don’t know how much actually is spent, as either an absolute amount or proportion of GDP. These political positions are also credences, and one who holds them is just like someone who insists that the Ten Commandments should be the bedrock of morality, but can’t list more than three or four of them. [...] 

Many scientific views endorsed by non-specialists are credences as well. Some people reading this will say they believe in natural selection, but not all will be able to explain how natural selection works. (As an example, how does this theory explain the evolution of the eye?) It turns out that those who assert the truth of natural selection are often unable to define it, or, worse, have it confused with some long-rejected pre-Darwinian notion that animals naturally improve over time.

But much of what’s in our heads are credences, not beliefs we can justify—and there’s nothing wrong with this. Life is too brief; there is too much to know and not enough time. We need epistemological shortcuts.

Given my day job, I know something about psychology and associated sciences, but if you press me on the details of climate change, or the evidence about vaccines and autism, I’m at a loss. I believe that global warming is a serious problem and that vaccines do not cause autism, but this is not because I have studied these issues myself.

It is because I trust the scientists.

And there's the rub. I'm an extremely untrusting person and I don't trust scientists either. I especially don't trust people advocating for various policies and as soon as a scientist or group of scientists do that, I simply don't trust anything they say. In other words, I have no "faith" in them.

That's not to say I don't ever rely on experts. As Arnold Kling points out, we are all hugely dependent on expertise in this day and age:

I have faith in experts. Every time I go to the store, I am showing faith in the experts who design, manufacture, and ship products. 

Every time I use the services of an accountant, an attorney, or a dentist, I am showing faith in their expertise. Every time I donate to a charity, I am showing faith in the expertise of the organization to use my contributions effectively. 

In fact, I would say that our dependence on experts has never been greater. It might seem romantic to live without experts and instead to rely solely on your own instinct and know-how, but such a life would be primitive.

Once again, the problem is when expertise is linked to politics and power:

Expertise becomes problematic when it is linked to power. First, it creates a problem for democratic governance. The elected officials who are accountable to voters lack the competence to make well-informed decisions. And, the experts to whom legislators cede authority are unelected. The citizens who are affected by the decisions of these experts have no input into their selection, evaluation, or removal. 

A second problem with linking expertise to power is that it diminishes the diversity and competitive pressure faced by the experts. 

A key difference between experts in the private sector and experts in the government sector is that the latter have monopoly power, ultimately backed by force. The power of government experts is concentrated and unchecked (or at best checked very poorly), whereas the power of experts in the private sector is constrained by competition and checked by choice. Private organizations have to satisfy the needs of their constituents in order to survive. Ultimately, private experts have to respect the dignity of the individual, because the individual has the freedom to ignore the expert.

Because of the power, I call scientismists with access to political power "Little Gods." Most have at least a bit of a "Savior Complex," that is the need to change society to help people. That sounds like a good thing but there are some inherent problems with it. The first problem is that there is a fine line between he who helps people who may not even be particularly interested in that help and a meddlesome busybody. But the main problem is that they are playing god.

There is no policy ever that helps everybody. There are always winners and losers with every change and the Little God therefore actively creates losers. The Little God decides that hurting one person or group to help another is worth it and that is a position of great responsibility and power - in other words, the power of a Little God.

When they do so "Because Science!" they've turned science completely into a religion in service of being a Little God.

Data Driven Versus Preference Driven

I'm a numbers kind of guy, so you might guess that empirical observations and results would be important to me. And they are, to some extent, in things like robotics and the hard sciences.

As far as living my life, though, I'm totally preference driven and very subjective. Here is a little analogy to help make my position clear:

I strongly dislike the color pink (this is actually true). If I'm around a lot of pink I get irritable and tend to feel claustrophobic. 

Let's say for sake of discussion, that numerous studies had been done that proved that pink was, beyond a doubt, the best color and it promoted happiness, stimulated positive brain activity, increased productivity, promoted harmony, enhanced compassion, and on and on and on. And everybody agreed that the studies were well done and the results statistically significant beyond a shadow of a doubt. Perhaps if I bothered to look at these studies, I would also agree that they were accurate. 

The first thing to consider is that I probably wouldn't even bother looking at or considering the studies. Because they wouldn't really have anything to do with me. No matter what they said, I still wouldn't like pink. It would still make me feel kinda sick and definitely irritable. So yes, I would simply ignore the data and that would mean I'm essentially ignoring this bit of reality. Why wouldn't I? 

So now let's say the government, based on the excellent scientific evidence, decides that painting the country pink is a desirable policy and it has the support of a solid majority of the voters. Pink is now everywhere; there are pink houses and pink buildings and pink cars and pink roads and pink airplanes and so forth. This pink reality has been foisted upon me and I have no choice but to live with it. So what would I do? I would, of course, do my best to ignore it. I would wear blue sunglasses whenever possible, for example. Again, I would do my best to ignore reality.

So now people tell me I'm deluded to ignore reality because reality is getting pinker and better all of the time and everything's really wonderful and thank heavens that scientists were able to prove wrong those charlatans who had the outrageous audacity to claim a few years back that blue was the better color! 

At this point, I can only hope to not be sent to the Pinko Archipelago for color behavior reconfiguration.

As most people who know me are aware, I much prefer small, very limited, non-intrusive government. This is a subjective preference and I'm not claiming there's necessarily any objective reason for my preference. I was involved in an email exchange where I think the other person was frustrated that I wouldn't engage him particularly seriously on an empirical level. He had a seemingly unending number of claims (most of them seemed kinda bogus to me) about how wonderful government is (well, at least the democrat portion of it; republicans are, of course, the root of all evil) and how government has made life oh-so-wonderful for everybody, including me.

But just like the pink story above, you could prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that big governments were the best thing ever, and at best, my response would be, "yeah, okay, whatever," because it doesn't really apply to me. I'm still not going to like a big, intrusive government and I still am not going to be particularly happy living under one. My solution is to just ignore it the best I can and hope that it doesn't step on me too hard. In other words, my solution is to basically ignore reality.

Delusion can be you friend.

Why RWR is such a fun topic for me

The recent passing of Nancy Reagan was for me, an interesting reminder of the past.  I was at the time still what the late Andrew Breitbart would call a default liberal.  Left leaning, not the classical kind, but without being a true believer.  Some time during Reagan's second term, I started to think that he got many things right in comparison to his critics.  I had already been looking beyond conventional notions about many things for over ten years by then even though I wasn't yet 30 years old.  Even media and pop culture sources begrudgingly changed from portraying him as an amiable dunce to a bit of an over the top version the other way as in the SNL mastermind skit.

First, thinking of that time and how the media  treated her:

Mrs. Reagan was hated because President Reagan was hated. There wasn’t a great deal to hate about Nancy, and so such vices and foibles as she had — quaint, in retrospect — were exaggerated to unrecognizable proportions. Spend any time around politics, and you’ll quickly understand that the lie lives forever...

Yes, she was likely far more decent and intelligent...

In an interview with Larry Elder Nancy shared these thoughts:

Reagan: Well, I think his legacy was making the country feel good about itself again, making people feel good. There was a whole optimism that he exuded.

Elder: And is that the quality about Ron Reagan that you most admire -- his optimism?

Reagan: Well, that's one of the things that I admire. There are lots of things that I admire about him. That's one of them.

Elder: Tell us what some of the others are, his qualities.

Reagan: Oh, his kindness, his ability to be a great communicator, to communicate with people -- all kinds of people, all different ages, it didn't make any difference. He just connected with them. He was a very romantic man, as those letters he wrote show. A wise man. I could go on and on. How long have we got? (Laughter)

Elder: The thing that people most misunderstand about Ron Reagan.

Reagan: Well, I don't think it's true any more, since they've published the speeches that he wrote, the letters that he wrote, but it used to be that people thought, well, he didn't know anything -- they just handed him things -- but he didn't know anything. Now, with the publication of all the speeches that he wrote, I mean, it shows that way, way back, he had his philosophy firmly in place. He knew what he was doing.

If you doubt the he knew much, I would simply direct you to read  Reagan, In His Own Hand.
He clearly demonstrates a solid understanding of important ideas about the world:

Scrupulously edited and presented, this book assembles and excerpts scores of his handwritten works, mostly from radio commentaries Reagan wrote in the late 1970s. The collection recovers the most powerful elements of Reagan and Reaganism, such as the depth and clarity of Reagan's principles and his fundamental optimism.

More than 50 years from the time of choosing speech, it is still quite a solid exposition of principles of liberty. (transcript)

A source for some of the material that Reagan studied in refining the explanations of what he believed was FEE, The Foundation for Economic Education:

Another person who got hooked on FEE’s materials was a middle-aged actor named Ronald Reagan. The story is fascinating, as detailed in the 2006 book The Education of Ronald Reagan, by Thomas Evans.

From 1954 to 1962, Reagan worked as the host of CBS’s top-rated General Electric Theater and served as General Electric’s official spokesman. For weeks at a time he would tour GE’s 139 plants, eventually meeting most of the 250,000 employees in them. Reagan himself estimated that he spent 4,000 hours before GE microphones giving talks that started out with Hollywood patter but ended up as full-throated warnings about Big Government. “GE tours became almost a post-graduate course in political science for me,” he later wrote. “By 1960, I had completed the process of self-conversion.”

Aside from having formulated his views with real diligence, Reagan was a successful two term governor of California.  Yet, far more often than not the media referred to him as a B level actor.

The blind partisanship demonstrated by demonizing opponents as well as forgetfulness of admirers in not remembering how hard he battled the establishment in getting elected and pursuing his agenda also come to mind.  The U.S. with leadership and vision provided by RWR liberalized economic policy and led the way amongst developed economies in the economic resurgence of the 1980s.  If you want an appreciation for what that was like:

...the presidency that was by far the most analogous to Barack Obama's in terms of the miserable economic conditions inherited was that of Ronald Reagan. And comparing the Gipper's 1986 address to Obama's 2014 was a startling exercise in contrast, illustrating the wide gulf between their competing economic recoveries.

Beyond being open minded enough to appreciate what I was observing, I took the opportunity to read the works of several authors who were instrumental to providing ideas relevant to this great resurgence.  Jude Wanniski,  Art Laffer, Robert Mundell, George Gilder and John Rutledge all had valuable insights to contribute.  Anyone can learn a tremendous amount by reading their papers and books.

As a reminder, the four pillars of Reaganomics that were so effective in revitalizing the economy were: sound money, reduced taxation, limited regulation and freer trade.  Yes, it really did work.

(As an aside, David Goldman who worked with the late Jude Wanniski at his firm Polyconomics  has an interesting observation:  Ted Cruz is intellectually arrogant, like Ronald Reagan)


I think you can see why Ronald Wilson Reagan is a fun topic for me.  But Reagan being Reagan with a terrific sense of humor, I think the best way to end this post is with a joke:

UPDATE:

Just to make clear - I did not vote for him.  Although far from perfect, he got a lot right.

Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts:

In terms of personal character and ideological seriousness, Trump and Reagan could not be more different. Reagan was one of the most dignified politicians of the 20th century, one who turned his cheek to vicious attacks, refused to use profanity, and rarely showed an angry side. Meanwhile, Trump’s crude and vengeful streaks virtually define the man.

Reagan’s ideological principles were derived from decades of reading, speaking, and debating. Trump, meanwhile, is winging it.

“I don’t think he has an ideology,” Pat Buchanan told the Washington Post. “He very much is responding to the realities that he has encountered and his natural reactions to them. It’s not some intellectual construct.”

Here lies both the irony and farce of the cult-like effort to anoint Trump as the second coming of Reagan. The one meaningful similarity between the two men is that they can both be seen as authentic responses to their times. The difference? Reagan was the right response.

A book review titled: The Gipper Wins Another One 

Remarkably, Weisberg dispenses with the ideological bias that has afflicted the authors in this series, and presidency scholars in general, for he has produced a genuinely fair and somewhat admiring book about Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

This is a nuanced account, detailing Reagan’s hatred of nuclear weapons and his somewhat unique assessment that the Soviet Union was doomed.
...
Weisberg’s assessment of Reagan’s effort to trim the size and reach of the welfare state is also quite balanced. He argues, contrary to the hysterical rhetoric of Reagan’s critics then and now, that “Reagan didn’t succeed in eliminating a single major program, which illustrates the truth of his adage about eternal life and government bureaus.” He does note that Reagan’s deregulatory drive “halved the thickness of the Federal Register, which complies new regulations.”
...
And speaking of evil, American liberals hated Ronald Reagan when he was President, although it has become gospel among some of them that Reagan was liked on both sides of the aisle. He wasn’t. Tip O’Neill, arguably the most partisan House Speaker of the 20th century, declared that Reagan, not the Soviet Union, was the focus of evil in the modern world.
...
Weisberg rejects this vicious and vacuous assessment, for Reagan was one of the few public figures to embody “the idealized national character,” with his elements of “simplicity, innocence, and personal modesty.” These qualities are, as Weisberg rightly notes, rare in public life and hard to fake. This book is a rarity as well, and one that hopefully portends more balance in the future from the American Presidents Series.

Like I said, a fun topic for me.

Is it really asking too much…?

Blogger Lorenzo has some relevant thoughts about the conflict between moral sensibilities and modernity for some groups of people:

So, religions do not only matter as generators of rituals and doctrines, they also matter in the way they deeply influence moral sensibilities, attitudes to time, ways of looking at the world; and do so even without regular attendance to the rituals or strong adherence to doctrines. The sensibilities, temporal orientations and other framings can remain after belief and participation has departed.

…

Of the existing civilisations sharing this planet, only one is prominently having an extended temper tantrum about modernity; an extended temper tantrum with a distinctly homicidal edge.

The West essentially invented modernity, Japan has long since embraced it; China et al are very much up for it (the Beijing regime would just like to indigenise a congenial-to-it version); Russia et al ditto; Latin America is trying to get there (despite an unfortunate institutional legacy and outbreaks of really bad policy ideas); sub-Saharan Africa is struggling under bad boundaries and poor institutions but is also trying.

It is only Islam that is producing significant murderous insurgencies against modernity (and especially against the egalitarian cosmopolitanism which is such a strong strain within modernity--there is nothing like attacking schools, universities, cafes, soccer matches, rock concerts, along with beheadings, crucifixions and killing bloggers while re-introducing slavery to say "we hate modernity").

…

One needs to be aware the Salafism comes in various flavours (quietist, activist, jihadi) which overlap with Saudi Wahhabism but are not identical (pdf). Moreover, its "quietist" tradition is quite hostile (pdf) to Islamism (especially its takfiri tendencies) and its prioritisation of political engagement. While Islamism--political Islam--has Salafist versions. Islamism also comes out of the later C19th but does not reach much in the way of organised form until the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. This confusing welter of responses is itself a sign of the difficulties modernity poses for Islam as religion and as a source of normative framings.
…

A reasonable estimate for Islamists is about 10-15% of Muslims. There are about 1.6bn Muslims, so that suggests 160m to 240m Islamists (most of whom are Salafis, Wahhabis or Deobandis). Thus, Christian revivalist movements have considerably more adherents than Muslim revivalist movements (revivalism whether as purification or as political activism). But the Christian revivalism goes largely unremarked and un-newsworthy because Christian revivalism does not have remotely the homicidal edge Islamic revivalism does. For what one is attempting to return to, makes a difference.

…

The jihadis are the most dramatic manifestation of the tension between Islam and modernity, yet they are far from the only manifestation thereof. The grounding of morality so thoroughly in revelation creates a profound gulf between believers and non-believers; between those who accept the revelations which are the only true grounding of moral judgement and those who do not. This is the basis of an Islamic supremacism or triumphalism that has seeped into the moral sensibilities of Muslims over the centuries. It is why, for example, there is so much persecution of religious minorities across the Muslim world; persecution which follows recurring patterns.

Attitudes that do not magically disappear simply by migrating to the West. Particularly when migration to the West cuts people off from the various evolved mechanisms for softening the harsher elements of Islam.

…

The US and Australia are unlikely to experience similar problems because their Muslim minorities are less than 2% of the population: at that level, it is rational for Muslim communities to cooperate with local security forces. There are still the problem of "lone wolf" attacks, as there is significant jihadi social media activity aimed as recruiting and grooming such. But, as the US in particular already has a home-grown mass shooter problem, that is a comparatively minor law-and-order issue.

Once Muslim minorities start heading towards 10% of the population, then enclave problems are much more likely to develop and cooperation with security forces is likely to be much patchier and resistance to the agents of the state is likely to develop. Accepting a Muslim minority of that sort of size is also, effectively, a decision to export one's Jews.

…

The notion that there are no issues specific to Muslim migration is nonsense on stilts. Of course there are: it is very different, religiously-defined civilisation with very different presumptions and framings. Yelling "racism" does not change that, although it does close down debate: so is precisely the sort of shouting polarising that is not in any way helpful.

No, it is not merely a matter of Islamic doctrine, though that has plenty of problematic aspects. It is also the effects of centuries (indeed, over a millennium) of Islamic doctrine, ritual and teaching on the moral sensibilities and framings, the cosmological outlook, of Muslims, of people of Muslim heritage: the notion that their religious identity is at once terribly important to people of Muslim heritage yet has no problematic content is nonsense--it is turning people into abstractions for moral points-scoring between Westerners.

As the experiences of Europe in its various difficulties with Muslim migrants and migrant communities demonstrate, you cannot just wish that heritage away and shouting at people because you don't wish it to be so may be satisfyingly childish but does not change anything except to make the development of intelligent, well-grounded responses that much harder and leave far more ground for political entrepreneurs to garner support from frustrated, concerned and angry voters left with nowhere else to go.

Even if a majority of Muslims are not supremacists there are still good reasons to take the matter seriously.  The search for identity and meaning are very powerful human motivations:

It's a commonplace to anyone who's studied the rise of fascism, of which Islamofascism is the most recent variety.  The main problem with democratic capitalism is that it's so successful, and therefore very boring.  A generation or two of European intellectuals bemoaned the great triumph of science and industry, which they portrayed as relentlessly stifling the human soul, burying us under a hill of material things.
...
 The 20th-century fascists were largely secular, substituting their own rituals for traditional religious ones;  Islamofascism turns it around, substituting religious rituals and beliefs for the largely secular ones that defined the "modern world."

This problem is likely to be with us for a long time.  Military action may be appropriate at some points, aiding others such as the Kurds may also help.  Our screening process needs meaningful improvement:

Our screening system is badly broken, and we have an administration that is more concerned with enforcing political correctness than protecting the American people. We know that terrorists use social media to spread propaganda, recruit operatives and plan attacks. Yet MSNBC reports that in 2011, officials in the Department of Homeland Security proposed a policy of scouring social media of visa applicants to look for terrorist ties. The proposal went through a year-long review and was about to be issued as official policy — when it was quashed by senior officials. 

 According to a retired DHS  employee, efforts to possibly prevent attacks were thwarted:

During my 13 years at the Department of Homeland Security, I worked tirelessly to identify and prevent terrorism in the United States. As a recognized “founding member” of DHS, it was among my responsibilities to raise concern, not only about the individuals primed for imminent attack, but about the networks and ideological support that makes those terrorist attacks possible.

I investigated numerous groups such as the Deobandi Movement, Tablighi Jamaat, and al Huda as their members traveled into and out of the United States in the course of my work. Many were traveling on the visa waiver program, which minimizes the checks and balances due to agreements with the countries involved. But the scrutiny we were authorized to apply was having results. This investigation could possibly have prevented the San Bernardino jihadist attack by identifying its perpetrators, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, based on their associations with these groups.

Almost a year into this investigation, it was halted by the State Department and the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. They not only stopped us from connecting more dots, the records of our targets were deleted from the shared DHS database. The combination of Farook’s involvement with the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque and Malik’s attendance at al Huda would have indicated, at minimum, an urgent need for comprehensive screening. Instead, Malik was able to avoid serious vetting upon entering the United States on a fiancé visa and more than a dozen Americans are dead as a result.

The investigation was not stopped because it was ineffective, it was stopped because the Administration told us the civil rights of the foreign nationals we were investigating could be violated. When did foreign nationals gain civil rights in the United States, especially when they are associated with groups we already know are involved in terrorist activity? Based on what I have seen in the Department of Homeland Security, I no longer have the confidence this administration can adequately vet or screen refugees or immigrants from Islamic countries.

That same retired employee, Philip Haney, provided a very good interview at The Daily Caller:

With nowhere else to turn, he went to Congress to see if they would listen. He became a “whistleblower” facing further consequences and investigations. Consequences he promises to tell later. He is optimistic that investigations in the House and Senate appear poised to be launched, and he stands ready to help in any way he can to protect this nation, and take the handcuffs off law enforcement.

Asked whether the motivation to stop his work was political correctness or something more nefarious, Haney said, “I think the players are pretty obvious at this point. Islamic-based influence groups definitely play a role in controlling the narrative. The administration side definitely plays a role in submitting to that narrative. And combined together they create a potent force that has shattered our ability to do our job.”

The administration and their supporters have complained about the irrational fear of terrorism voiced by some people in this country.  I would suggest that if they really wanted to quell those fears that they should take their national security responsibilities seriously.  Is that really asking too much?

Preserving Humanity

Let's say that we knew for a fact that in 200 years a large meteor or other heavenly object was going to strike Earth and blow it to smithereens and that there was nothing we could do to prevent the impact and that all life on Earth would die, including all humans on the planet.

What action should we, collectively, take if faced with this information?

My answer: we should collectively take no action at all.

I seem to be in a tiny minority who thinks that. Most others, it seems from my observations, would want to deploy a substantial part of humanity's resources to colonizing other planets (via Instapundit) in order to preserve humanity.

Why? I don't get it, being a "Dust in the Wind" kinda guy.



What is so important about the survival of this DNA based creature call homo sapiens? It seems that we're kinda nasty, brutish, and some of us are short. All currently living people will already be dead at the time of impact. Why should they make sacrifices for those unknown in the future? Does it objectively matter if we go extinct in 200 years or 200 million years? If so, why?

Smackdown

Phony moral posturing is such a mainstay of SJWs.  Dinesh D'Souza schools a student at Amherst College.  Worth the time.

Despotism of the collectivists

George Will shares his thoughts on the distortions created by the administrative state:

As the administrative state distorts the United States’ constitutional architecture, Clarence Thomas becomes America’s indispensable constitutionalist. Now in his 25th year on the Supreme Court, he is urging the judicial branch to limit the legislative branch’s practice of delegating its power to the executive branch.… 

Particularly, it should prevent Congress from delegating to executive agencies the essentially legislative power of formulating “generally applicable rules of private conduct.” Such delegation, Thomas says, erases the distinction between “the making of law, and putting it into effect.” This occurs when Congress — hyperactive, overextended and too busy for specificity — delegates “policy determinations” that “effectively permit the President to define some or all of the content” of a rule of conduct.

This delegation of power to administrative agencies transfers power to unelected officials.  The linkage to accountability of the elected executive is much weaker than ever intended in our constitutional order. Experience with and knowledge of the problems emanating from such an approach exists.

This ties in nicely to the problem of soft despotism and more specifically the relevant thoughts of Walter Lippmann as expressed in Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift by Paul Rahe:

The progressives expressed great admiration for Abraham Lincoln, and they tended to justify their endeavor with an appeal to the American Founding Fathers and to speak of their aim as the achievement of Jeffersonian ends by Hamiltonian means.  But the truth is that Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann  ... John Dewey, and their associates aimed at the foundation of a new political regime, distinct from and, in certain critical respects, opposed to the one that had gradually taken shape in the period stretching from 1776 to 1789, which Lincoln later strove so mightily to defend.  To this end, they abandoned not only Jefferson but Hamilton and Lincoln as well, dismissing as outdated the concern with individual, natural rights that the three men shared; rejecting as wrongheaded and outmoded Jefferson’s argument for the virtues of political jealousy and his insistence that vigorous local self-government is essential to the maintenance of liberty; and substituting for Hamilton’s notion of statesmanship and for that of Lincoln an account—grounded in Hegel’s confidence in the inevitability of human progress, owing a great deal to his discussion of the civil service as a “universal class” in his Philosophy of Right, and informed by a truncated reading of Rousseau’s Social Contract – which was incompatible with the principle of limited government and closely akin in its practical aspects to the vision of rational administration once projected in France by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot any by the Physiocrats.  To America from Germany, the progressives brought an especially virulent strain of the French disease.  (pp. 245-6)


… “The old ‘rights of personal competency,’” valued by Jefferson, “the right to read, to think, to speak, to choose, and live a mode of life must be respected at all hazards,” but “property rights” would have to give way, for, he (TR) proudly announced, “the day of enlightened administration has come.” 

No one saw the consequences as clearly as did Walter Lippmann, for no one was as well-positioned as he.  Lippmann had been a leading progressive.  At Harvard College, he had dabbled in socialism.  Some four years after his graduation, he had joined Herbert Croly and Walter Weyl in founding The New Republic, and in 1914, he had published the influential progressive tract Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest.  For a brief time, during the First World War, Lippmann had been an advisor to Woodrow Wilson.  After the war, in which he witnessed the effectiveness of propaganda, Lippmann began to harbor doubts about the progressive conviction that popular sovereignty and governance by experts can easily be reconciled.  In Public Opinion, published in 1922, he called into question the capacity of ordinary citizens to discern what was going on; and in The Phantom Public, published five years later, he expressed doubts as to whether it made any sense at all to speak of the public interest in the manner in which the progressives did: as something radically distinct from and in tension with individual rights and the diverse private interests of the citizens. 

In 1932, thinking that there was no alternative, Lippmann voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  But by 1937 he had come to entertain grave misgivings.  He had noticed that, while, the partisans who are now fighting for the mastery of the modern world wear shirts of different colors, their weapons are drawn from the same armory, their doctrines are variations of the same theme, and they go forth to battle singing the same tune with slightly different words… 

Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives, and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion must by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come… The premises of authoritarian collectivism have become the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms, not only of all the revolutionary regimes, but of nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive. 

So universal is the dominion of this dogma over the minds of contemporary men that no one is taken seriously as a statesman or a theorist who does not come forward with proposals to magnify the power of public officials and to extend and multiply their intervention in human affairs.  Unless he is authoritarian and collectivist, he is mossback, a reactionary, at best an amiable eccentric swimming hopelessly against the tide.  It is a strong tide.  Though despotism is no novelty in human affairs, it is probably true that at no time in twenty-five hundred years has any western government claimed for itself a jurisdiction over men’s lives comparable with that which is officially attempted in totalitarian states… 

But it is even more significant that in other lands where men shrink from the ruthless policy of these regimes, it is commonly assumed that the movement of events must be in the direction.  Nearly everywhere the mark of a progressive is that he relies at last upon the increased power of officials to improve the condition of men.


What worried Lippmann the most – what had worried Coolidge, and what should worry us still – was the failure of those who considered themselves progressives to “remember how much of what they cherish as progressives has come by emancipation from political dominion, by the limitation of power, by the release of personal energy from authority and collective coercion.”  He cited “the whole long struggle to extricate conscience, intellect, labor, and personality from the bondage of prerogative, privilege, monopoly, authority.”  It was, he said, “the gigantic heresy of an apostate generation” to suppose that “there has come into the world during this generation some new element which makes it necessary for us to undo the work of emancipation, to retrace the steps men have taken to limit the power of rulers, which compels us to believe that the way of enlightenment in affairs is now to be found by intensifying authority and enlarging its scope.”
…
Americans were used to managing their own affairs by way of local and state governments; they had forged political parties for this purpose, and they were instinctively reluctant to cede control to a centralized administration dominated by a distant and patronizing intellectual elite. 

In fits and starts, however, under the influence of progressive political science, the administrative state began to take shape in the last decades of the nineteenth century and in the first two decades of the twentieth century – at first, locally, and, then, at the national level.   (pp. 253-5)

…
Our new masters have it in their power to deepen the economic crisis and worsen our distress in the manner of Hoover and the younger Roosevelt.  By instituting a second New Deal, as they very much like to do – by sharply raising taxes on fossil fuels, dividends, and capital gains; by targeting the earnings of the well-to-do; by pursuing protectionism, expanding the regime of programmatic rights, and forcing workers into labor unions – they can discourage investment, curb entrepreneurship, reduce foreign trade, and decisively slow economic growth, or even bring it to a lasting halt, while offering to those consigned to the dole thereby a dependence upon the generosity of an all—encompassing state.  Just how ruthless they will prove to be on this occasion, just how far they intend to hustle us down the path we tread, remains as yet undetermined. 

The only thing that is crystal clear is the direction of our drift and the nature of the threat we face.  Walter Lippmann’s warning is as apt today as it was in 1937 – for “the premises of authoritarian collectivism” are once again, as they were then, “the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms” behind “nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive,” and hardly anyone today “is taken seriously as a statesman or a theorist who does not come forward with proposals to magnify the power of public officials and to extend and multiply their intervention in human affairs.”  Like the younger Roosevelt, our new leader poses as a secular Messiah; his minions believe, as did the progressives of an earlier time, that there has recently come into the world “some new element which makes it necessary for us to undo the work of emancipation” achieved by our forebears and “to retrace the steps men have taken to limit the power of rulers”; and in the ranks of our compatriots they will find many prepared to sacrifice self-reliance and personal independence for a promise of security no government can keep.  The hour is, indeed, late. 

To those caught up in the maelstrom, recent developments may well seem dramatic, but, in truth, they serve merely to highlight the plight that we have been in for more than three quarters of a century.    (pp. 269-270)

Those of us who despise hard tyranny might want to consider the importance of resisting and even rolling back soft tyranny as well, lest it lead us someplace we have no wish to go.