Month: July 2011

Gary Johnson comes out against Family Leader Pledge

Erik Kain 30 Comments

Just another reason to support Gary Johnson in 2012:

July 9, 2011, Las Vegas, Nevada – Presidential candidate and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson charged today in a formal statement through his campaign that the Family Leader “pledge” Republican candidates for President are being asked to sign is “offensive to the principles of liberty and freedom on which this country was founded”.  Governor Johnson also plans to further state his position against the Family Leader pledge this afternoon in Las Vegas, NV at a speech he will deliver at the Conservative Leadership Conference.

Johnson went on to state that “the so-called ‘Marriage Vow” pledge that FAMILY LEADER is asking Republican candidates for President to sign attacks minority segments of our population and attempts to prevent and eliminate personal freedom.   This type of rhetoric is what gives Republicans a bad name.

“Government should not be involved in the bedrooms of consenting adults. I have always been a strong advocate of liberty and freedom from unnecessary government intervention into our lives. The freedoms that our forefathers fought for in this country are sacred and must be preserved. The Republican Party cannot be sidetracked into discussing these morally judgmental issues — such a discussion is simply wrongheaded. We need to maintain our position as the party of efficient government management and the watchdogs of the “public’s pocket book”.

“This ‘pledge’ is nothing short of a promise to discriminate against everyone who makes a personal choice that doesn’t fit into a particular definition of ‘virtue’.

While the Family Leader pledge covers just about every other so-called virtue they can think of, the one that is conspicuously missing is tolerance. In one concise document, they manage to condemn gays, single parents, single individuals, divorcees, Muslims, gays in the military, unmarried couples, women who choose to have abortions, and everyone else who doesn’t fit in a Norman Rockwell painting.

The Republican Party cannot afford to have a Presidential candidate who condones intolerance, bigotry and the denial of liberty to the citizens of this country. If we nominate such a candidate, we will never capture the White House in 2012. If candidates who sign this pledge somehow think they are scoring some points with some core constituency of the Republican Party, they are doing so at the peril of writing off the vast majority of Americans who want no part of this ‘pledge’ and its offensive language.

Why progressives should be more libertarian

Erik Kain 46 Comments

Matt Zwolinski has a really good piece up in the Daily Caller on why he’s a bleeding-heart libertarian, and why progressives should be more libertarian themselves. He lists seven reasons, and concludes:

[P]olitical disagreement does not always, or even usually, imply an irreconcilable conflict of fundamental values. Progressives and libertarians should realize that they share many more values in common than they probably think, and that their different political prescriptions are less the product of an epic battle of good vs. evil and more a function of reasonable disagreement regarding how to prioritize and realize their common goals. Even if disagreement persists, bearing this point in mind should make that disagreement a more civil and productive one.

It’s too bad, in a sense, that Matt didn’t get this published in The Nation or some other progressive outlet. But it’s a good liberaltarian piece, and you should read the whole thing.

See also, Steve Horwitz on libertarianism and power – a topic that’s gotten quite a lot of play in the comments at the main blog yesterday and today.

Quote of the day

Erik Kain 30 Comments

“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.” ~ from a pledge signed by Michele Bachmann

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

We could parse the facts here, or discuss the implicit racism in the notion that by sheer dint of skin color, Barack Obama is responsible for the fate of the black family. We could also interrogate the meaning of "two-parent household" when you, your parents and their home are all property.

We could also note that a slave born into the 1820s had a thirty percent chance of being parted from his parents, not by divorce, but by the auction block. Or we could have a hearty existential debate on the complex interplay of liberty, freedom and happiness in an era of original light.

But it seems to me that we should be compassionate and put this in a dialect which the white populists of America might, if haltingly, understand: Jazz was a lot better under Jim Crow, and before women could vote no one worried about Michelle Bachmann.

To hell with people writing pledges to ‘protect family’ and to hell with people who use slavery for political gain. And to hell with any stupid politician who has the gall to sign something like this. And to hell with pledges in general. There’s one damn pledge that each of our politicians takes and that’s a pledge of allegiance. We don’t need anti-tax pledges, racist pledges, or anti-gay pledges. We will know you by your deeds.

Keynes and Hayek revisited

Erik Kain 4 Comments

 

I’ve been thinking about this video lately, which is really quite excellent, and it struck me that the two economist-rappers are essentially not arguing at all – they’re simply talking past one another.

Keynes is talking specifically about what to do in an economic recession. Hayek is talking much more broadly about the economy itself. Keynes isn’t really arguing for central planning so much as he’s advocating an increase public spending to make up for the downturn in private spending. Hayek, on the other hand, is describing why central planners inevitably fail, and that government policies aimed at hitting full employment, for instance, might have unintended consequences.

These don’t strike me as exactly competing narratives so much as different narratives. Hayek doesn’t really answer the question about what he’d do to get out of the recession, he just moves back to the broader subject of the economy. And while I think the Hayekian take on the broader economy is correct, I’m left feeling short-changed on any ideas Hayek may have to actually spark recovery.

Why you should be excited about ‘Brave’

Erik Kain

brave-pixar ~

I’m excited about Pixar’s upcoming movie, Brave. I’m almost as excited as Amanda LePergola, but not quite.

She has twenty reasons you should be excited, too:

    1. It’s the first Pixar movie with a female protagonist.
    2. It was written by two women. Progress (for Pixar, anyway)! Keep on swimming, fellow ladies in the arts. Keep on swimming. Especially Brenda Chapman, who, despite co-creating the whole story of Brave and receiving a co-director’s credit, was fired halfway through production for nonelucidated “creative differences.”
    3. The trailer alone is better than all of Cars 2.
    4. The heroine, Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald), has curly red hair, which will hopefully not be straightened out in a hilarious makeover montage.
    5. The first time we ever see Merida, a princess in a Disney movie, she’s shooting a freaking bear. Yay!
    6. Also atypical of Disney princesses: no indication of a romantic interest. Oh, please let this be the first movie princess to not get paired off with anyone in the end. Please, oh, please, oh, please, oh please…
    7. Cars 2 is crap because Pixar spent all of their creative energy making Brave as brilliant as possible. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.
    8. OMG THERE’S A PONY!
    9. Emma Thompson is voicing a character called Queen Elinor. For those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Thompson, she went to college with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, wrote the best version of Sense & Sensibility that ever was and ever will be, and is professionally awesome.
    10. We also have the voices of Mrs. Weasley, Hagrid, Uncle Monty, Mr. Wick, or as I like to call them: “cast of the best cross-over fanfic ever”.
    11. This movie is probably going to be everything you’ve ever wanted from a Renaissance Faire without the worst parts of actually going to a Renaissance Faire.
    12. As of press time, no one at Pixar has confirmed that there will be a dragon…but then, no one at Pixar has not confirmed that there will be a dragon.
    13. And what are those blue glowing things? Are they fairies? If there are fairies in this movie, then all kinds of crazy magical shit is possible. Like dragons. Dragons, please.
    14. Look at it. Just…look at it.
    15. Seriously, the vistas are so gorgeous I can’t stand it. It almost breaks my heart that these magical, misty hills are only computer animated. Why can’t they be real?
    16. Who does not love a Scottish accent? Silly people, that’s whom. Since Braveheart is now officially unwatchable, we need a new movie that lilts with the guttural music of a Highland burr, and Brave promises to be that very movie.
    17. In fact, why don’t we just say that Brave is full-stop Braveheart done right? Just look at Lord MacIntosh. That’s all the Braveheart you need.
    18. Or, we could call it Game of Thrones without the doggy-style.
    19. By the time Brave opens we will have probably forgotten that Cars 2 ever happened.
    20. In fact, as of right now let’s never speak of Cars 2 again.

My only quibble is that Braveheart is not unwatchable. Other than that, I’m onboard. As far as I’m concerned, Pixar never made a sequel to Cars. Actually, I’m content with forgetting about the entire Cars franchise.

And yes, dragons please.

The Blade Itself

Erik Kain

The Blade Itself I’ve started reading The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie. It’s quite good so far, and a nice change of pace from politics. I’ve had trouble really getting into A Game of Thrones this time, mainly (I think) because I watched the show at the same time and really am just eager to get my hands on a copy of A Dance with Dragons. Which makes me realize that starting a new book right now, only a couple days before Dance comes out is not the most brilliant idea ever. But still, it’s a good book.

Further thoughts on DSK

Erik Kain 4 Comments

Maybe I’m not up-to-date enough on the whole DSK story, but I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with the new consensus that just because the ‘accuser’ (now it is accuser, rather than ‘victim’) is unreliable or a bad person that she could not have been raped. Or just because she turned tricks she could not have been raped (as though prostitutes are never raped!). We are conducting a trial of the woman in the court of public opinion that may result in no trial at all for the man who may have raped her. There is a lesson in this for rapists: so long as you rape those on the margins of society – immigrants and prostitutes and other people with shady backgrounds or connections – you will get away with it. Maybe he didn’t do it, maybe he did. I don’t know. I just don’t like the way that one set of assumptions have replaced another.

For-profits vs. non-profits

Erik Kain 7 Comments

Arnold Kling asks:

I am curious about the intuition that people have about non-profit work. The standard intuition is that going to work for a profitable company means that you are not serving people, only the profits of the company. On the other hand, working for a non-profit means serving the community. Do I have that right?

Of course, I think that profit-seeking enterprises serve the community, also. In fact, they do it in a way that is more sustainable and more accountable. It is more sustainable, in that the value of what they produce is greater than the cost of the resources (including labor) that they use. Otherwise, they would not make a profit. However, a non-profit can very well use more resources than the value of what it produces. A profit-seeking enterprise is more accountable, in that a profit-seeking business must satisfy consumers or else go out of business. Hence, it must provide something of value to its customers. On the other hand, if a non-profit fails to provide any benefit to its customers, it still might be able to obtain grants from the government or from donors.

Is my perspective valid? If so, why is the conventional intuition so pervasive?

I don’t think Kling is wrong when it comes to purely for-profit businesses. Where I start to see a conflict of interest with profit-making is when those profits rely entirely (or mostly) on government dollars. Take the for-profit college industry. One would imagine that the efficiencies of a for-profit firm would translate into a successful business model for educating students. But for-profit colleges rely almost exclusively on government money to be profitable. This doesn’t lead to the sort of innovation and efficiency one might see in the actual private sector. Rather, it leads to more and more creative ways to get prospective students to take out massive loans and then turn those loans into profits for the for-profit colleges, education be damned.

That’s where I start to become uncomfortable with the for-profits. The profit incentive isn’t bad until it morphs into corporate welfare. Then these firms become no better than government itself, and in many ways much worse with far less accountability.

Whether Kling is correct that non-profits have little accountability is something I’m not sure I can speak knowledgeably about. I do know that many non-profits have specific missions and that they are accountable to the people with the purse-strings. This creates similar incentives to the profit motive, though it’s not a perfect match.