Almost Classical

English: Schematic diagram of the hexon of a virus capsid (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) "The surest way to incur the wrath of a government agency is to demand they do their job," a friend from the "justice system" told me. I'm finally cynical enough to agree and I was pretty cynical before this year. Once you have a "system" in place, it exists to defend itself. It's like corporations... but with even less oversight. Who controls the system? Other parts of the same larger governmental system? The federal government oversees states, to a degree, but then what? Though recourse generally exists through courts and legislatures, it's hard to change the bureaucracy.

Because I've been cautioning that libertarians need to be pragmatic and we should avoid the caricatures of others that we are subjected to online and in the press, a few readers have asked why I consider myself an almost classical liberal and a libertarian. My core values and my ideal economic and political models remain firmly grounded in the works of Austrian economic theorists and John Stuart Mill's theories on freedom. I value Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, F. A. Hayek (a lot), early Murray Rothbard, Roger Garrison, Eugene Fama, Deidre McCloskey, and Milton Friedman. I enjoy the views and historical grounding of Meagan McArdle, Robert J. Samuelson, and Amity Shlaes. I argue with other "libertarians" over Ayn Rand, while still respecting The Fountainhead  for its emphasis on personal expression over greed. The federal government of the United States is a tangled mess of departments, agencies, bureaus, and offices. In order of Constitutiona...

One of the tendencies among progressives, and among statist conservatives, is to give government far more credit for invention and creativity than it deserves. They point to projects funded or supported by government as evidence of the value of larger, centralized projects, but they forget you cannot prove a negative. Because government is so intertwined in modern innovation and basic research, it is nearly impossible to prove what would be happening without government. People have forgotten that that big projects, like the Transcontinental Railroad, were actually boondoggles that catered to political cronyism, not genuine innovation. (There were better managed, more profitable railways that were crushed by the federalization led by the robber barons.) The market, left to its own, might fill gaps. We simply will never know. My thoughts on this are prompted by too many people claiming we need more and more and more federal spending, supported by higher taxes on the "rich...

The simplistic, and intentionally misleading, discussions of "libertarians" and classical liberalism tend to paint all libertarians as "anti-government." These popular caricatures of libertarians appear in various "progressive" publications and on many websites. The common theme is if libertarianism worked, Somalia or {insert lawless nation here} would be libertarian paradise. Yet, libertarianism requires functioning courts, enforceable laws, and the planning of some shared commons. If contracts don't matter, if you can take my life without consequence, if we can't travel across territories, then we don't have individual freedom or commercial markets. You can find these high-school level analyses equating Somalia with libertarianism easily online without my help; these are works I'd never accept from my college students. It's no better when classical liberals caricature progressives as uncritical supporters of all big government. Mos...

I've long argued that it was not unions or government spending that produced the great post-war boom in the United States and much of the Western World. In December 2014, Tim Worstall published a column on The Register ("El Reg") that agrees with my basic theory: we had to rebuild after the war, and the U.S. was fortunate enough to be the one nation not destroyed during the two World Wars. Bring back big gov, right? If only the economics, STUPID, could tell us more Post-WWII growth rates? Paaah http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/21/bring_back_big_government/ 21 Dec 2014 at 09:00, Tim Worst You don't have to go all that far leftward these days to find someone brandishing economic growth statistics at you. Proving that growth was higher in the 1945-1973 period than it has been in our own more neoliberal age. Thus, of course, we should bring back the signal economic and political policies of those days so that we can speed up growth again. Big Unions, gover...

If you believe in small government (and small business), how do you defend those ideals when confronted with arguments that "government is necessary" to help those in need? (Put aside the idiotic "needs" from cell phones to high-speed Internet connections now supported by government.) Here's my answer: Do something for your community. If you don't want activist government, you need to support charitable non-governmental organizations. Unless you give time, energy, resources, and money, to various causes, then progressives are going to have a more valid argument that government is the preferred charity. My success in life is possible only because other people voluntarily helped me achieve more. The list of supporters is long, beginning, with my parents, grandparents, and extended family. My wife, my in-laws, and many friends also helped me along the way. Then there are the strangers who donated to the universities I attended, making scholarships possib...

There have been a great many blog posts and columns written since President Obama spoke on July 13, 2012. Many of his defenders have tried to "correct" any confusion about what his words meant, arguing that his statements were misinterpreted by the press and taken out of context by opponents. As Charles Krauthammer rhetorically asks, "Did the state make you great?" http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-did-the-state-make-you-great/2012/07/19/gJQAbZOiwW_story.html The problem for Pres. Obama and his supporters is that his argument is deeply flawed. We do succeed with the help of friends, family, church, non-profit organizations, and, yes, government (generally of the local variety). But, many people have the exact same access to all these various supports… yet some succeed and some fail. Also, a simple point of fact: government is the people, not something outside and above the people. Without successful people paying taxes, there would b...

Republicans are shouting that President Obama has acted "unconstitutionally." The Democrats respond that the GOP merely dedicated to obstruction. And the truth is… (in my opinion) they are all schmucks. President Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Board are legally questionable, but the real problem is that the appointments continue an already lousy practice that is outdated. This week the President is claiming that he can make recess appointments because the Senate session is currently a "sham" procedural move by Republicans. The Senate, we all know, is really on vacation. But, only weeks earlier, the non-present Senate conducted serious business and he was more than willing to accept arcane Senate parliamentary tricks. In December of 2011, the U.S. Senate and House approved a two month extension to current payroll deduction rates. Only a handful of legislators, not even a third, were in ...

After a great deal of research on the matter, I have been an outspoken critic of high-speed rail. The binary simplicity of the major political parties and our media outlets soon reduce this debate to a different, larger debate: public vs. private spending. Any nuance? That doesn't make for good two-minute "debates" on cable news. When people read that I cannot support high-speed rail, one side of the issue assumes I'm against all public projects. In fact, I agree with the American Society of Civil Engineers that we need at least $2.2 trillion (yes, that's with a "T") in short-term investment simply to maintain our existing infrastructure. Building a cool train while bridges are collapsing seems wasteful to me. And the notion we can spend on huge new projects without taking the money from other projects is idealistic. As a nation, we have limited funds. We must spend money in ways that have the greatest return on investment. A colleague said I was wantin...

I suggest reading this article: Politicians Cause Downsizing “It was an enormous surprise, at least to us, to learn that the average firm in the chairman’s state did not benefit at all from the increase in spending,” says Coval. “Indeed, the firms significantly cut physical and R&D spending, reduced employment, and experienced lower sales.” -- Let's hear it for stimulus spending… The fact scholars were surprised that government spending does not result in improvements to a local economy is pretty sad. Most business owners could have explained this basic of Econ 101: government takes resources from the private sector, whether it is money (taxes) or intellectual capital (employees). Governments compete against the private sector and when the government is losing it can change the rules. Consider the U.S. Postal Service. Each employee of the postal service is also a potential UPS or FedEx employee. But, laws prevent private competition in standard mail delivery. You can buy a m...