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In my latest essay, I try to list the major points I'm aware of that puncture the progressive narrative on economics, without trying to directly touch on the Culture War's social fronts.
Reality Has a Poorly Recognized Classical Liberal Bias
I think most people here have enough exposure to libertarianism that they are at least aware of these issues (even if they don't agree with them). If you think I missed one or I'm somehow dead wrong please do indicate so.
Very reasonable and straightforward. Markets work well for many economic tasks.
But Classical Liberals don't have a monopoly on markets. China makes good use of markets in their authoritarian nationalist capitalist model. They're not liberal. The Romans had a pretty laissez-faire attitude to markets but supplemented them with aggressive imperialism.
Marketism and laissez-faire works best in economics. Classical liberalism and libertarianism are poor politics because of their openness and inability to develop a strong power base. Say you have a classical liberal state. Who gains? Everyone. But they can all see ways to make more gains by weakening the system. Big business wants to bring in cheap labour, privatize gains in labour price while socializing costs in welfare. They also want to protect domestic markets from foreign competition. Poor people want money from the rich. Middle class people want cozy sinecures. Trade unions want regulations on business and to prevent mechanization. Foreign lobbies want expensive adventurism. Nimbies want nothing to be built. Greens want industry dismantled.
So I don't disagree but if the proposal is more 'classical liberalism' then there has to be some way of developing a classical liberal power base. It doesn't seem to be very stable as an equilibrium, with so many forces with incentives to undermine it. Christianity also has many virtues but we observe it on the decline in the West, see Sunday trading, abortion rules, treatment of adultery, marriage, homosexuality... I can imagine a reasonable, justified argument that Christianity is good, shared faith makes many things easier. But without the 'here's why Christianity is declining and how this trend can be reversed' the call to action seems incomplete.
Of course this is a very big and hard problem. I can't see a way to make classical liberalism work reliably without getting captured by various interests. And a huge party-state to compel obedience like China brings with it new problems.
It seems like there are two not-quite-identical problems being identified here. The first is overtly named "developing a classical liberal power base", while the second is not explicitly named, I think it has significant overlap if not being identical to "crony capitalism".
Some natural questions arise. What is a "power base"? What is necessary for it; what is sufficient? It is the "power" to do what? A natural concern is that, depending on how one views that power/power base, and the necessary conditions for it, perhaps it inherently contains a sufficient "amount of power" with suitable orientation so as to be inherently suspect vis a vis crony capitalism.
This is essentially the starting point of 'state capacity libertarianism', but some might say that it's also the starting point for constitutionalism and limited government to begin with. The question of the adequacy of those tools devolves quickly into many offshoots, each which contains its own version of, "Yeah, but how do you get the power to do that?" As I've observed here before, often times, that's sneaking in some bullshit goalposts. For if one could outline a simple set of steps to be done, one other could always respond, "Then why haven't you done it yet?" Yet history marches on, and despite some claims that nothing ever happens, while nothing happens much of the time, some things do happen and change over time.
But enough about real things; let's be silly! Let's go full Great Man Theory and assume we could elect a variant of Donald Trump. Trump has already made some moves toward reducing things to what is required by statute and the Constitution. He's also made some moves, uh, opposite of that. But he has shown how you can sort of just boldly go in and do stuff, forcing the system to adapt around you. What are some of the most hilarious things our variant President could do to drive the system in the direction we want? I'll throw out a good starting one; it's even got the sort of 'hardball negotiating' sense that Trump tries to put off. Our variant President tells the American people that his hands are tied. He's read the Constitution. He saw what it says, and lots of people are talking about it. The Constitution just doesn't authorize an Air Force (or a Space Force, for that matter). Obviously, he doesn't want to abolish the Air Force. It is yugely important for the power and prestige of America. But the Constitution is the Constitution, so unless Congress and the States pass an amendment to the Constitution in the next 90days, he's regrettably going to have to shut the whole thing down.
You start here specifically because it is one of the most absurd places, where technically-proper formalism has not been followed, but everyone gives in and shrugs their shoulders because they prefer power instead. Nobody will have any real argument against formalizing the Constitutionality of the Air Force, either, so it'll probably get done. And that sends a message, giving you political cover. "Now that everyone has agreed that it's important to strictly follow the Constitution and formally authorize any deviations from its very limited grant of power, I'm going to start shutting everything down that isn't properly authorized unless you can get sufficient supermajorities to save it." You could probably take a nice slice out of much of the cronyism. Probably won't get all of it. Could you actually restore a norm of Constitutionalism and limited government? Maybe. Maybe for a while. But then I think we're probably nearing another goalpost that I think is probably also mostly bullshit. Not only "how do you get your policy preferences implemented", but "how do you keep your policy preferences in place forevermore"? That's essentially an unsolvable problem, and it's unsolvable for essentially every political position, not just classical liberalism. It would be an isolated demand for rigor to require it of that political position alone.
It's perfectly legal to have an air force. Surely it would be better to go after all those silly extensions of interstate commerce first.
The real problem is that there are structural reasons why states get bigger, I think it's mostly due to technology. Everything a small community can wield, a state can also command. They have small arms, molotov cocktails and mobile phones but also tanks, satellites, huge offices full of bureaucrats. As technology develops, there are more capital-intensive technologies that only states can manage efficiently. The earliest states formed where there was a need to manage irrigation and agriculture in Mesopotamia and other river delta areas. As tech advances, the power of the individual shrinks in the face of the collective and institution.
It may be an unsolvable problem but there is still stronger and weaker, just like how some men endure old age well while others are sickly. Liberalism has a weak immune system because it is naturally liberal and open to new ideas, including illiberal ideas (queue tired Popper paradox of intolerance meme).
Liberalism isn't rooted in anything tough and reliable like religion or race or patriotism. We see them in all times and places over the world.
When liberalism gets snuffed out (as in ancient Athens, Rome, early modern Poland) it never re-emerges naturally. It only rarely emerges in the first place. Liberalism today is really an Anglo thing, spread by the British who were the most successful country on the most successful continent. If it weren't for British money and troops, later American money and troops, the world would be ruled by profoundly illiberal forces.
There are significant concerns with such a flippant reading. The Constitution goes on to explicitly grant particular ways that such a thing can be done. One must read those clauses out of the Constitution in order to take such a broad reading here. A couple examples just to give you a sense of some of the gymnastics that are required. It's pretty clearly motivated reasoning, saying, "I really think we should have an Air Force; how do I torture the Constitution (and my own interpretive system) in order to get the result I want?"
I thought that was actually the crony capitalism business. Crony capitalists want growth of the administrative state and presidential power... so long as they feel they have a decent handle on their ability to steer it to their benefit.
This seems counter to the actual world in which non-states are efficiently managing extremely capital-intensive technologies.
I think this is confusing what it means to be a Classical Liberal.
The average man on the street would surely think that it's fine for a state to have an air force, it's basically like a navy or an army (or a force of underground tunnelling vessels were such things invented). Nothing about the US constitution is opposed to air forces on a values level. Whether the air force is a branch of the army or not is really an organizational bureaucratic matter rather than constitutional interpretation. Legislators are allowed to make laws on it.
It's not like the right to bear arms or free speech vs hate speech. If you want to make constitutional arguments, make the strongest arguments that are most easily believable and inspire the most support. Who is going to get energized for the cause of making the air force subordinate to the army?
Corporations develop them but states manage them. States don't like human cloning, it's banned. States want to keep nuclear technology secret, it's secret. The EU decides that we need to click through pop-ups about cookies, millions of man-hours are wasted... The US allocates GPU access around the world, there are tiers of who can and who cannot have them.
If there are problems with implementing and sustaining an ideology (and there are problems with all ideologies), surely that's relevant in discussing its merits?
...is wrong about Constitutional stuff all the time.
...uh, which one? The Constitution gives different rules for them, so which set of rules apply?
This doesn't sound like "management". It sounds like States ban stuff.
Sure... but I think you've just mistaken what it is in starting this analysis.
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Yes, this. The Army Air Force was originally part of the Army, and everything was clearly fine with the Constitution. Then the National Defense Act of 1947 changed some names for the Army Air Force and the rest-of-the-Army and hybridized the organizational structure of the Army and Navy, but how does that cause Constitutional problems?
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I don't consider this gymnastics. It's like saying that freedom of the press applies to television. The founders didn't have television and the Constitution doesn't say anything about television. But you can guess that if someone had magically told them about television, they, or at least a substantial portion of them, would have said that television counts. So you read "press" as including television. Likewise, you should read "army" or "navy" as including the Air Force.
It's true that the Air Force can do things that the army and navy don't, but it's also true that television can do things that printed newspapers can't. That's not really a reason to say that television doesn't have freedom of the press. Also, the exact terminology is irrelevant; if we had by happenstance of language called the Air Force the Flying Navy, that wouldn't change anything.
(Notice that "if they had heard of it, would they count it?" is not the same as "they hadn't heard of it".)
There is significant interpretive difference between individual rights recognized in the Bill of Rights, due to the background of natural/retained rights tradition, as compared to enumerated, limited powers of government. In fact, much jurisprudence actually roots rights WRT television in the free speech clause. Whether or not that is accurate, and whether there should be more of a revival of the free press clause, is above my pay grade (though I have thoughts). But the entire interpretive framework is significantly different from the first step.
The founders did seem to think that there was a meaningful difference between Armies and Navies, naming them separately rather than some unified term and including entirely separate clauses addressing particulars of each. I also agree that if we called the Navy the Floating Army, it probably wouldn't turn the Navy into an Army for purposes of the Constitution. So, I guess my first question is... is the Air Force a Flying Army or a Flying Navy? Because I'm not sure which Constitutional clauses apply to it.
Sure, but that seems to substantially agrere with the person who was using "gymnastics".
If you aren't sure which one it comes under, that's different from not thinking it counts at all. It seems unlikely that the founders would think the Constitution doesn't allow for an air force at all just because you're not sure exactly which thing it's most similar to.
I like how you fail to quote the remainder of that paragraph. The criticism of such a position. But I would go further. The clauses which distinguish between Armies and Navies aren't really providing separate "powers"; that bit was mostly done already. There's some notion of "powers" here, but it's more that they're outlining substantially different modes of operation within the government, speaking even of constraints.
I mean, you're the one saying that it counts under one of them. Which one? Why? Do you think it's both somehow? How?
Not "just because". Primarily, it doesn't allow for it, because it's just not in there! It's nowhere to be found! Instead, you're trying to say, "Well... I think it's kinda like these other things... but I can figure out which one or how, what rules will apply, etc., because, well, it's not in there anywhere." The straining gets more obvious every time you try to patch the hole without actually amending the Constitution and patching the hole. Wouldn't it be vastly mentally easier to just amend the Constitution and patch the hole rather than try to continue juggling such epicycles in your head? A proposed amendment could even use more generic language that actually enables future military forces of
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The crazy thing about markets is that they work so well, even under adverse conditions. The Chinese made some necessary compromises and it worked out pretty well for them.
You do point out a very real challenge I am painfully aware of and what is the underlying motivation of why I would write such an essay. The erosion of (classic) liberalism by progressivism has happened; can we stop it? Or are we in the U.S. doomed to the same eventual fate as the UK?
I have made exactly the same argument you do against Christians saying we need to return to Christianity--if that led us here what good would it do to redo things, even if that were possible? (I'd argue the key difference between classic liberalism, at least the free market economics of it, and Christianity is that the latter is not based on a factual understanding of reality.)
In the U.S., classic liberalism got hammered pretty hard starting during the Great Depression for about 50 years on economics, then we had a few decades of half-decent neoliberalism in both parties, and now both parties are largely past neoliberalism for the indefinite future. MAGAfication on the right may actually negatively polarize the left into becoming more neoliberal again, if we're lucky. #silverlinings
And, though my essay is aimed at progressive failures, I figure my best shot of convincing MAGA types that perhaps they should care about market economics, as the GOP once did, is by trashing progressive failures, not Trump and present antimarket policies.
MAGA is not particularly anti-market, though? It’s anti fiscal conservative which brings its own set of issues but MAGA slashes regulations when it can.
Tariffs are very anti-market.
Trump is also fucking with the Fed, labor statistics, and is demanding drug prices be lowered.
These are all very bad things that will likely do great damage, more in the long run than in the short run.
Trump's drug price demands seem to be in response to anti-market demands from other countries. He's not wrong about other countries essentially demanding by law that their market freeloads on the American one.
When they do price fixing, it's bad. When Trump does price fixing, it's bad.
Trump's actions will make things worse, not better. He's not proposing something like I don't know we ban pharmaceutical exports to countries that refuse to pay market rates in order to make others pay their fair share. Imagine if he did that little bit of conflict theory! People would freak the fuck out and call him a mass murderer or something, but he'd be justified in threatening a trade war on that front such that America isn't paying for the bulk of innovation.
So this is a case where I think there is a Trumpian approach to perhaps make things actually better, but he's not doing that.
Trump is proposing the drug companies sell in the US for no more than they sell in other developed nations. As far as I can tell, the drug companies could refuse to sell to other price-controlled nations and retain their US pricing that way.
One weird trick diabetics hate.
But that would actually raise prices in the U.S., right, losing foreign sales, since it's typically not marginal cost of production that's the issue; it's the sunk cost of R&D.
So I'd prefer Trump take this issue on directly, and not make it harder for big pharma.
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It's anti-international trade.
MAGA is pro-positive balance of trade. Not anti-trade.
The options are to throw sand in the gears or to not do so. MAGA is in favor of the former. You cannot achieve a positive balance of trade with the methods Trump uses, especially not the particular ways Trump uses (Mercantilism doesn't work, but Trump isn't even doing mercantilism right)
In particular, a positive balance of trade requires negative net foreign investment in the United States by accounting identity. Trump continues to encourage foreign investment in the United States, and to discourage foreign investment by American companies.
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