On Inertia

[This is a long one, but I hope you'll enjoy reading it as it ties into my core beliefs about the state of our union today. --Jason]

Well, all that talk about liberalism really got the philosophy part of my brain spinning again.

(A quick note -- the class I mentioned in my previous post on the auto industry was about classic liberalism, which is entirely different from the term "liberal" in modern U.S. usage.)

I dug out my copy of Ludwig von Mises's Liberalism: The Classic Tradition this morning and read over some of my old pencil highlights made in 1997. A lot of it still provokes an internal sense of "rightness" in me: the advocation of individual freedoms, the private ownership of property, and even a sense of "socially conscious" capitalism:

It hardly occurs to anyone, when he forms his notion of a capitalist, that a social order organized on genuinely liberal principles is so constituted as to leave the entrepreneurs and the capitalists only one way to wealth, viz., by better providing their fellow men with what they themselves think they need (11).

Sign me up, Ludwig!

But obviously, capitalism as it lives today has had catastrophic failures. Devout followers of von Mises and the Austrian School of economics have argued that if we truly lived in a liberal society, none of this mess would have happened in the first place, and you can't blame laissez faire capitalism.

It's certainly a point worth discussing, but it doesn't do much to move us forward from here, and here's why: whining about not having a true laissez faire capitalist society will get us no where because it's never going to happen in the United States of America. For better or for worse, we are entrenched in a society where the government provides a LOT more than the police and defense force the classic liberal would have. Ideals are a beautiful thing, but the pragmatist in me also recognizes that the bigger our society, the greater the law of inertia demands that the programs we currently have in motion stay in motion. Or put another way, the state of the nation is at rest and remaining at rest.

I personally think that inertia is actually crippling us at the moment. When America was founded, there was very serious debate over whether or not a republic could work over such a large population covering such an immense land mass. But back then, America only had about four million people and the limitless west. And the writers of the Constitution established a system that was flexible and could adapt and flow easily. James Madison regarded the size of our republic as a blessing (FYI, read this link if you get a chance. "Federalist No. 10" is one of the most important documents in our founding.)

Keep in mind that in 1787, there were only a couple of successful republics in the history of civilization, and they were typically ancient and small. Very few people believed a republic could succeed at all, let alone one with seven million or more people spread out over the entire eastern seaboard. However, I think there is still some validity to the notion that a successful republic has a certain maximum size. Check out this quote from Montesquieu's (a French enlightenment philosopher who the founders adored and quoted frequently)The Spirit of the Laws:

It is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist. In an extensive republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too considerable to be placed in any single subject; he has interests of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy and glorious, by oppressing his fellow-citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country.

In an extensive republic the public good is sacrificed to a thousand private views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is more obvious, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have less extent, and of course are less protected.

"Men of large fortunes... oppressing his follow citizens" and "the public good is sacrificed to a thousand private views" ... sounds like corporate fatcats and special interests on a near prophetic level to me.

Maybe Montesquieu was right all along, but that the "extensive republic" he feared doesn't really kick in until you hit about 300 million people?

300 million people who don't really care about civics is a powerful resting force of inertia that is very, very difficult to move. Quite simply, the founders would be shocked that we haven't amended the Constitution more than we have. But heck, it seems like we used to from time to time. From the Bill of Rights to 1971, we amended the Constitution a little over once every 11 years. Over the past 38 years we've amended it once, and it was nothing more than a minor bureaucratic fix on how congressmen are paid.

I will say this much, the election of Barack Obama is certainly a strong sign that we may have overcome at least some of our fatass inertia. But even Obama understood that he wasn't going to get elected by advocating radical change (no matter what McCain/Palin tried to get you to believe). For example, he didn't run on a platform of socialized healthcare for all, he ran on a platform of government making healthcare more affordable -- the root system, warts and all, will still remain.

Unfortunately, I think this inertia with our economy and our politics is just anathema to actually fixing most of our problems. We are at a stage in our country's history when we must ask incredibly difficult questions, and should we find difficult answers, we must have the strength and will to move forward on those answers. Were it in my power, I would say we should write an entirely new Constitution (something Thomas Jefferson thought we should do every 19 years or so) where we ask ourselves questions such as, "Do we as a society wish to continue the unfettered right to bare arms, or do we fell there should restrictions on gun possesion?" "Do we as a society wish to regard healthcare as a right for all of its citizens?" "Do we wish to establish new rules and ideals in regards to the economic system that best fits a civilization of 300 million or more people?" "Do we need to strengthen the wall between church and state?" "Should our bill of rights include protections for sexual orientation?" And we should probably even ask questions such as, "Does personhood really begin at conception?"

I love our Constitution. I love the freedoms it protects. I love the genius and simplicity of its words and the checks and balances it establishes. Were I to be a member of a new Constitutional Convention, I would want to keep the grand majority of the document. Unfortunately, I feel we have shamed our founders because we have chosen to regard it as gospel rather than the fluid, flexible system of government it was meant to be: a document for the living, not the dead. And unfortunately, it now has the mass of 300+ million people split roughly 50/50 on any important question tied around its neck.

Inertia. What a bitch.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned From NPR

I've been thinking an awful lot about the economy lately, and I thought I'd share my two main sources of economic knowledge.

The first is, surprisingly enough, the public radio show, This American Life. Back in May they did an absolutely remarkable show about how the housing market exploded entitled "The Giant Pool of Money." In one hour, they break down how the entire mortgage crisis came to pass in clear, straightforward language. In the decades to come, I'll be asking my children to listen to this same episode if they really want to understand what happened during this critical moment in history.

Everyone who cares even one bit about what happened and why should listen to it here.

This American Life did a follow-up episode in October entitled "Another Frightening Show About the Economy" that dissects credit default swaps. The following episode, "A Better Mousetrap 2008," features a very salient discussion about how Republicans blaming Democrats and Democrats blaming Republicans is horribly silly, as it took everyone at the party to make this mess.

After getting rave reviews about their analysis, NPR started the Planet Money podcast. This is not a typical radio show about the economy. They don't give advice, they don't tell you what to buy or sell, they just report what's happening in the world of finance in simple language that anyone with a junior high education can understand. I highly reccommend the episodes during the last week of November that attempt to answer the question "What is Money?"

If getting horrible news about the world's financial health on your iPod isn't your thing, you can probably skip Planet Money, but the This American Life episodes should be required listening for every citizen in the nation.

The Auto Industry Makes Me Miss Being a Cocksure College Student

The auto bailout thing has really been giving me agita.

It wouldn't have 10 years ago. 10 years ago, I graduated from college, and one of my final courses was an honors course I got into via a computer accident on the Intellectual History of Liberal Thought taught by one of the nation's most respected professors. This was a class I did not need to graduate -- something I thought about regularly as I attempted to digest as much as possible the two entire books per week that the syllabus demanded of my time. Yet in the end, it was one of the most rewarding of my life.

Coming out of that class, having read F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, and Ludwig von Mises's Liberalism, and Wilhelm von Humboldt's The Limits of State Action, and the bloated but undeniably influential Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I came out of college so cocksure of myself and what I stood for. On top of all this reading, my father, a small business owner and deep rooted capitalist, further instilled in me a sense of the vital nature of the free market and the evils of government influence and control. (It is important to note that he also fully recognized the benefits of tight government regulation in his own industry, as playing by the rules gave him a significant marketing edge over his competitors. I wish I had recordings of his brilliant over-the-phone conversations where he would weave a memorizing tale of how his business did everything by-the-book.)

If the me of 1998 was faced with the questions of bailing out the auto industry in 2008, 1998-Jason would have said with clarity and conviction, "NO! Government interference in this matter is anathema to a free market system. Free markets mean that sometimes you fail. Thems the breaks." And to anyone who might be hurt by the Big 3 going down or lose their job, I would say, to paraphrase Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs, "Learn to fucking program a computer."

There are times I miss being so damn sure of myself. Even as an atheist, I understand the appeal of having a central text to guide your moral thinking, and given that The Bible had found no purchase in my life, Atlas Shrugged served as that moral text for me for a number of my twentysomething years.

Over the years, however, I've become more and more of a pure liberal. This is no doubt a partial response to spending the ages of 24 through 33 living under the most anti-rational, anti-reason, anti-mind, anti-science Presidential administration in U.S. history (so I suppose I must give some credit to Rand for instilling in me a vital sense of the important of rational thought in my life), but over time I've reconsidered the role of government in society. For years now, I've been realizing that capitalism starts to break down when the Randian heroes and leaders of industry and finance start to get greedy beyond all comprehension. I have started to believe that some form of regulation and control must be put into place as a check and balance to this greed.

But I digress. The real question is, what does the 2008-Jason have to say about bailing out the auto industry? What do we do when the plane -- or in this case the oversized gas-guzzling SUV -- has crashed into the mountain?

I'm seriously torn. The bleeding heart liberal hippie in me sees the hard working Midwesterners who didn't have the same privileges as I did to go to college and have worked in the auto factories their whole lives and just want to put food on the table and give their kids a better life, and as far as that part of me is concerned, the government can give them a trillion dollars for all I care.

Then there's my analytical side, which thinks that while there will be serious struggles in the interim, letting the Big 3 go bankrupt could be the best thing for the long term. These companies would likely break down into smaller companies that would be far more adaptive and responsive to a changing economic and cultural environment. Toyota and Honda would likely sweep in further expanding their production in the United States, and I think that would be a good thing (I don't hold fast to the "Buy American" attitude -- buying a "foreign" car still puts the bread on plenty of American tables, and I accepted over a decade ago that we live in a world economy). I actually advocated a similar short-term-distress-long-term-benefits outcome for our local economy should United ever dump Denver as it's primary hub.

Besides, there's a part of me that thinks these stupid, greedy, corporate cocksuckers really deserve to go down on a sinking ship. Look, I don't give a crap that they flew to their first meeting with Congress in a private jet (or that they drove to their second meeting in a hybrid). I care that they missed the BIG writing on the wall that the market and the world was going to demand smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. This is beyond just being greedy -- because if their goal was just to make as much money as possible, they would have been very focused on making cars people actually wanted. These people were also just lazy. America used to innovate and inspire. These guys just sat on a pile of cash and presumed it would just grow and grow. So let them falter.

Michael Moore presented a very interesting idea earlier this week. (Here's the video version of the idea for those of you who aren't a fan of reading.) Basically, he suggests that the government just buys these companies (the common shares of GM are worth about $3 billion) and directs them to make super fuel-efficient cars and trains and lightrail and buses. When they get back on their feet, the government returns the companies to private ownership.

Do I agree with this plan? Well... the free market 1998 Jason still cringes a bit at this idea. But we live in a world with unprecedented challenges, and I recognize we're going to need unprecedented solutions. And as Moore points out, this solution actually isn't all that unprecedented -- FDR basically did the same thing. I will say this -- if there is one fundamental purpose I see in government, it's that government should do the things that are so big no one else can do, and this is one big mess we're in right now. I like Moore's plan a LOT more than I like the notion of a bridge loan, which has about as much good sense as giving a coke fiend with a bad sports betting habit a few grand "just to get by."

If I had to rank what I think should be done, I'd probably vote for Moore's plan first as radical as it may be, letting the Big 3 go bankrupt and see what rises from the ashes second, and giving them a bridge loan third.

Guess which one is actually going to happen?

"I like Rickrolling!!"

On a much, much lighter note than my first post, Cartoon Network Rickrolled their own Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float.

This has been making me smile non-stop since I saw it last night, and I just had to share. Enjoy.

I'm Sickened That I Contributed to Black Friday...

I started this blog with the idea of posting pictures and comments about my recent trip to Europe and thought that over time I'd start to post some various thoughts and ideas I had about the world in general. Alas, I must start, however, on an incredibly sad note, as I found out that an employee of Wal-Mart who was right about my age died today after being trampled by throngs of Black Friday shoppers.

There is a lot of senseless death in the world to be certain, but I am hard pressed to find a death more senseless than this one. The people who perished in the recent terror attacks on Mumbai hotels were certainly victims of senseless violence, but not every death in this horrible attack was senseless. A hotel employee shielded a family from a spray of bullets (it is unknown as of this writing whether or not he survived), yet in Long Island, a man died because people couldn't wait a moment longer to get their hands on a cheap toaster oven.

Just when I was starting to feel like maybe things were getting a little better for the good old U. S. of A. (let's just say I'm very excited about the return of complete sentences to the White House), I see this tragic story, and I take serious pause. I fear that Edward Gibbon's theory that the fall of the Roman Empire was due to a loss of civic virtue may come about again, and what more dramatically demonstrates a lack of understanding of the good of the community than squashing a man under your heel for the sake of consumerism.

Alas, I was a part of that cog today. I stopped at my local computer superstore to buy some cheap digital photo frames for a quasi-modern-art-project-thingie my wife and I have been thinking of doing for the past few months but have avoided putting together due to the prohibitive costs of digital photo frames. My experience was very civil -- I stopped by in the afternoon, there were plenty of frames in stock, the store was crowded but the staff was friendly and helpful, and the lines to check out were reasonable. The whole transaction took about a half-hour, but it makes me wonder if I added any fuel to the fire that is Black Friday. The same fire that left a 34-year-old temporary maintenance worker dead.

Whenever a tragedy happens and I hear about an act of heroism, I ask myself if I would do what the hero did? Would I shield a family I didn't know from a spray of bullets? I can't answer that with any certainty. I think that question can only be answered in the moment of finding yourself in such a terrible situation. But I would like to think that I would.

So, although I would never camp out overnight in front of a Wal-Mart on the eve of Black Friday, I would have to think that as I made my way into the store, if I saw a man on the floor being trampled, I would do something. I've never been in a fight before in my life, but I hear this story, and all I can think is, "Why didn't someone -- anyone -- push, punch, scream, kick, bite... not to get to the bargain first, but to protect further boots from stomping the life out of this poor man?" Not just one or two people, but several people, must have felt or seen a body under their feet as they made their way in, and they just kept on moving. Maybe someone screamed "Stop!" but not enough people listened or fought back the crowd that was pushing from behind. It may be impossible to prosecute the people who kept on moving, but if somehow the local police can charge those who were a part of this man's death, I sincerely hope they get to spend Christmas in jail learning from a 400 pound man named Sugarlips what it feels like to have the life squeezed out of you with no one around to help you.