Domestic Policy

The limits of campaign finance reform

Erik Kain 26 Comments

Matt Yglesias makes a number of good points about campaign finance reform, money, and free speech:

My starting point is that the “money isn’t speech” mantra clearly has some real problems with it. It’s true that a law saying “Noam Chomsky can’t publish anymore books” isn’t the exact same thing as a law saying “Nobody can pay money to buy a Noam Chomsky book or donate money to non-profit institutions that employ Noam Chomsky.” But that’s still an effort to censor Noam Chomsky. Right? Money isn’t speech, but we’re talking about enacting regulations whose purpose is to limit people’s ability to disseminate Noam Chomsky’s ideas. Shifting the law to make it less Chomsky-focued makes it less unfair. We could have an even-handed rule prohibited the sale or financing of foreign policy commentary in general. But making the rule fair and agent-blind in that case also means it’s a more draconian censorship regime.

However,

I will say is that even though you can’t just waive away free speech objections by saying that “money isn’t speech” you can certainly restrict the permitted activities of certain kinds of corporate forms. Least controversially (for now) a non-profit organization that wants to be eligible for tax-exempt status can’t be primarily engaged in political activities. That’s fine by me. Publicly traded corporations are already required to engage in lots of different kinds of financial disclosure, and beefing up disclosure requirements about political spending would be a very reasonable extension of that.

It’s important to note that money will find a way into politics one way or another. Citizens United didn’t open the floodgates for unlimited corporate cash. Those gates were largely open to begin with – if you could afford to jump through a few legal hoops. A lot of small players couldn’t, and Citizens United in many ways actually leveled the playing field.

The real problem with all of this is lack of transparency. I see no reason why anonymity should be protected. Speech, sure, but if Target is donating large sums of money to a group that wants to quash gay marriage, don’t you think Target should have to disclose that? We’re talking about public policy, and while I think speech should be fully protected when it comes to politics – including speech that comes at a financial cost – I don’t think it should all be done in secret.

We need a transparent political process both before and after elections.

Deregulatory Capture

Erik Kain 1 Comment

Here’s Tim Lee:

Once a “private” company becomes deeply intertwined with the state, it can be difficult to ever fully separate them. Formally repealing state privileges may not fully undo the damage if the incumbent continues to enjoy the fruits of past favoritism. And incumbents can leverage their intimate knowledge of the regulatory process—and decades of political capital accumulated from past interaction with regulators—to twist facially neutral regulations into weapons against their competitors.

This means that deregulated incumbents like AT&T and Verizon may never become fully private entities. And so a truly free-market agenda requires more than just reflexively opposing all government interventions in the telecommunications market. The government is not monolithic. Sometimes (as with the AT&T breakup and theComputer Inquiries) one part of the government works to check the harmful policies of another.

This principle is complicated, and reasonable people are going to disagree about how best to apply it. But one of the most obvious ways to check the power of incumbents is by making sure they have plenty of competitors. Competitive markets make regulators’ jobs easier because they force companies to serve consumers well even when regulators aren’t watching. So if regulators see a nice, clean opportunity to preserve or expand competition, they should probably take advantage of it.

I’ve written about my concerns over “deregulatory capture” before, but I think Tim’s post sums those up much better. Read the whole thing.

I think this might also be a good case for breaking up the big banks. The political and financial capital they have accrued over the years makes them too impervious to both regulation and deregulation. Breaking them up would be a remedial step. The tough part is letting the competition flourish once it’s taken hold, and not succumbing to political pressure to implement new favoritism down the road.

What’s a Liberaltarian?

Erik Kain 1 Comment

That’s the latest question asked of Reason’s Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, the authors of the new libertarian manifesto, Declaration of Independents. They have an ongoing Youtube Q & A going on at Hit & Run.

They were also kind of enough to send me a review copy. It’s good so far, too! I’ll have more to say on it when I’m finished.

I think liberaltarianism is still the most likely political coalition going forward, or at least I hope so, as social conservatism fades, and free markets and technology continue to change the world for the better.

On So-Called “Public Service”

Erik Kain 12 Comments

Kevin Carson has a brilliant post up at the Center for a Stateless Society on the problems with public services and public-private cronyism. This is all in response to Steven Cohen’s defense of public service workers.

Here’s Kevin:

Let me start by saying I’ve fallen afoul of many libertarians by defending public sector employees like those in Wisconsin against reflexive charges of parasitism.  If they’re engaged in a legitimate function like teaching kids or delivering mail that would still exist on a voluntary basis even in a stateless society, and the state currently crowds out voluntary alternatives, they’re no more blameworthy than the workers in Soviet state-owned factories.

And I’ve argued that public sector unions frequently empower such workers against those at the top rungs of the state, and might be a useful tool for genuine privatization — i.e., Proudhon’s vision of devolving state functions into voluntary social relationships.  That means, instead of the right-wing “privatization” agenda of auctioning off government functions to crony capitalist corporations, mutualizing them as consumer cooperatives owned by the recipients of services. Anyway, I’ll proudly back a teachers’ union local against a superintendent of schools, any day of the week.

Nevertheless, the term “public service” really activates my gag reflex.  Like “statesmanship” and “reaching across the aisle,” it belongs in the kind of drinking game you play when you see managerial centrist hacks like David Gergen, Chris Matthews and David Brooks gathering to feed on a cable news talking head show.

He goes on to list the many problems with public servants including cops planting evidence, the fondling TSA and their captive “clientele”, and the prison guard and police unions and their efforts to sustain the Drug War; the politicians who start wars and the massive public-private partnerships that entrench many of the world’s largest corporations, sustain monopolies and duopolies, and the rentier class.

It’s not hard to be against the crony-capitalism, but it’s much thornier once you start talking about actual workers. Obviously even the police do a great deal of good, even if the system in which they work is heavily tilted to preserve privilege and keep the masses down. I think it’s good to differentiate between the workers and the system, as Kevin does with teachers. You don’t have to approve of the political force of the unions to understand that they’re in place to help protect workers against bureaucrats. Civil service laws were written to do the same thing.

But the system, the institutions, the cronyism – these all transcend the workers or the service being provided. Institutions seek self-preservation first and foremost. That’s why government and corporations team up to begin with. They scratch each other’s backs until the whole world bleeds.

Mark puts it well in the comments:

I think what Kevin is trying to get at is that the use of the phrase "public service" as a synonym for anything done in the name of the government winds up being a cover for all the things the government does that would be anything but a "public service" under any rational definition of the word.  Moreover, I think Carson would say, a true "public service" is not rendered as such solely by virtue of the employer signing the paychecks.

The phrase elevates government work as being somehow inherently more noble than so-called "private sector" work when in fact, I think Carson would say, it is really not inherently any different (this implies that so-called "private sector" work is also no more noble than government work).

High-Speed Rail ctd.

Erik Kain 5 Comments

An-Old-Time-LaFrance-Piston-Steam-Fire-Engine Ideally, in my perfect world, we’d never have had the massive fuel, road, car subsidies that led us to this predicament in the first place. In such a world, I would not bother to advocate spending on high-speed rail or lite rail or any other mass transit because I believe we would all drive a great deal less. We would all live a great deal closer to where we needed to be. Mixed zoning would be the norm rather than the exception. Suburbs would be a thing of fiction.

The problem as I see it is that we have invested in the burgeoning and destructive infrastructure that now exists and people and the economy have become quite dependent on roads, cheap gas, and cozy suburban lifestyles. When oil gets too pricey, the whole system starts to tremble and shake. Even if it should all come toppling down on us, there is not and never will be the political will to let that happen.

So we have to invest in something else, and mass transit seems like a good idea. Maybe high-speed rail will have limited use, but certainly expanding freight rail and lite-rail makes sense. If the electric car finally arrives maybe we’ll all just parade about in fancy electric cars until the coal runs out.

In any case, I basically think all subsidies of any form of transportation are a bad idea, but rail and other forms of mass transit strike me as a remedial investment, something to soften the landing of the very bad subsidization of a fossil fuel economy.

The War on Drugs Turns 40

Erik Kain 4 Comments

Conor has a good post up on the War on Drugs, and includes this handy chart:

dea budget

Of course, this is just the DEA budget. The expansion of police departments, S.W.A.T. forces and the numerous other agencies at the local, state, and federal level has been even more galling.

Fortunately for us, the War on Drugs has led to the end of drug abuse in America and a new era of sobriety, peace and prosperity not seen since the days of alcohol prohibition.

Scott Walker’s War on Beer

Erik Kain 10 Comments

ProhibitionPoster Everything Scott Walker has done up to this point was only a foreshadowing:

Tucked into Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) much-discussed budget was a little-noticed provision to overhaul the state’s regulation of the beer industry. In a state long associated with beer, the provision will make it much more difficult for the Wisconsin’s burgeoning craft breweries to operate and expand their business by barring them from selling directly to restaurants and liquor stores, and preventing them from selling their own product onsite.

The new provision treats craft brewers — the 60 of whom make up just 5 percent of the beer market in Wisconsin — like corporate mega-brewers, forcing them to use a wholesale distributor to market their product. Under the provision, it would be illegal, for instance, for a small brewer located near a restaurant to walk next door to deliver a case of beer. They’ll have to hire a middle man to do it instead.

But more noteworthy than the provision itself is how it was enacted. The provision was quietly slipped in the massive budget legislation without any consultation from independent craft brewers, who are justifiably outraged by it.

That’s via Radley Balko, who has more thoughts on the “Prohibition-era artifacts” that are wholesaler requirements.

It’s always weird for me to travel to states with bizarre alcohol laws. Some states only allow alcohol sales out of licensed liquor stores. Others require government-run liquor stores. Still others only allow beer sales in bars (where you buy single bottles to go) or by wholesalers.

This is simply ludicrous. This doesn’t prevent drinking and may indeed encourage drinking and driving. It does create monopolies and stifle competition, however. So if you have a deep and abiding fear of quality craft brews, Scott Walker is your man. Buy the man a nice, cold flavorless Budweiser.

We Should Invest in High-Speed Rail

Erik Kain 25 Comments

old-train-steam-locomotive

I’d like to see this calculator with theoretical rail included in the mix. A lot of libertarians argue against rail investment because they think it won’t be used enough and will need to be heavily subsidized. I think that the reason for this is largely due to the enormous subsidies given to fossil fuels, car companies, and roads. The playing field isn’t even to begin with.

Besides, as gas becomes more expensive, rail will become comparatively cheaper. Sure it will cost a ton upfront, but in the end it will be an economic saving grace, much as the freeway system has been.

P.S. I would also like to see more investment in freight and lite-rail. The more rail the better, especially as we reach peak oil.