Bill Powers (970609.1451 MDT)
The concept of leakage from one country to
another didn't make much more sense to me than from one state or county
to another.
Why not? If you add up the incomes of all consumers in the unit you're
considering, and they are greater than the incomes of all producers in the
same unit, some of the money is not circulating. That is leakage. It could
be reversible (cash reserves) or not (lost to another economic unit or
destroyed as by bad debts). I don't see anything hard to understand about
that. It's only a matter of rather simple bookkeeping. What's the problem?
The problem, from my end, is why I'm having so much trouble making
myself understood. The point I was making in the sentence you quoted,
in the paragraph it was taken from, and in several previous posts, was
to seek clarification on what is privileged about the national level of
analysis. You have strongly deplored leakage from the U.S. economy
while being (apparently) indifferent to leakage from (say) the Colorado
economy (at least until I brought it up); you have strongly deplored
inequities in holdings within the U.S. while remaining silent about the
much vaster inequities between nations. Given especially, as I said in
my previous post, that leakage analysis is "cleanest" at the global
level, where we don't have to try to account for the (sizable) volume of
international trade, I would expect both the economic and moral emphasis
to be on the world economy. You deplored, for example, the widget
manufacturers moving overseas as leakage from the U.S. economy, when I
would have expected you to applaud the resultant more equitable
distribution of wealth worldwide. You (or someone) suggested that our
statistics on other countries were inadequate, but we don't need any
more statistics to know that the U.S. in primarily to blame for leakage
from the world economy. If wealth were evenly distributed around the
world, you and I would have an annual income of perhaps a few hundred
dollars at most, but the rest of the world would have enormously greater
purchasing power. That's not going to happen politically, but neither,
so far as I can tell, is equal distribution within this country. So I'm
still left with the question: what's special about the national level
of analysis, that with respect to leakage you would care only about it,
and not about either larger or smaller units?
Taxation is a very mild form of coercion, compared to other forms >> in
popular use around the world.
Any appearance of mildness is due simply to its operating mostly at >the
level of threat. The IRS actually operates on the same maxim as >Capone:
"You can get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than >you can with
the kind word alone." If I don't "voluntarily" pay >taxes, my property
will be confiscated. If I don't "voluntarily" >hand it over, I will be
arrested. If I don't "voluntarily" >surrender myself for arrest, I will be
killed. It's only the >ultimate threat of death that makes the system work
at all. That >doesn't fit my concept of "very mild."
This is true of all legal mechanisms. If you don't "voluntarily" refrain
from murder, you will be forcibly prevented. If you manage to murder
anyway, you will be arrested. If you don't "voluntarily" surrender for
arrest, you will be violently taken or killed. All legal coercion rests on
the credible threat of force and death. We all know that: the only way you
can truly control another person who doesn't choose to be controlled is
through the application of superior physical force. The only question is
whether we are willing to be subject to such coercion in specific
circumstances in return for what we think will be a better life for
ourselves.
I read these two paragraphs not only as blurring, but as denying in
principle, the distinction between offensive and defensive use of
force--or, more exactly, denying the possibility in general of telling
which is which, of who started it. Certainly that is true for
historical conflicts of some duration--the Balkans, the Middle East,
many marriages. But to deny the distinction as sweepingly as you do
here then renders meaningless concepts like murder, which depend on the
concept of an offender and one offended against. Epistemological
relativism notwithstanding, I think consensual identifications of
instigation are often rather easily reached.
You persist (in various places I won't cite) in reading my opposition to
coercion as pacifism. I don't see any incoherence in refusing to start
fights but in being willing to fight back.
I don't recall that it [Chapter 17 of B:CP] said
anything about the defensive use of force, to which I have no >objection
in principle. But I do see the offensive use of force as >inconsistent
with PCT (in just that sense, that PCT says it's a poor >strategy in a
practical sense), and that's what we're talking about >with taxation and
redistribution: the IRS is not collecting taxes >from me in self-defense
against my aggression.
But that's only how it seems to you, because you hate paying taxes. I don't
mind paying taxes, because I like roads and bridges and water treatment
plants and national parks and (honest) police forces and foreign aid where
it does some good and a whole passel of public services that I would hate
to try to perform for myself. I don't want to do away with taxation. And
this means that, as long as I pay taxes, I can't see any reason why someone
else should get a free ride just because he wants to hang on to his own
money and take advantage of what my taxes are buying. If you don't pay your
share, stay off of my roads! You're the aggressor, trying to take away from
me the things I value. Keep doing it, and I'll throw your ass in jail.
Just as, if I refuse to participate in a neighborhood street sweeping
agreement, then, so as not unfairly to benefit from the efforts of
others, I am morally obligated to imagine dirt and litter as I walk down
the street.
But it does sound to me as though you were talking about entitlement
here, even though
"Entitlement" is not a PCT idea.
Our principal difference here is just that I'm not convinced that these
services couldn't be financed in noncoercive (and therefore more viable)
ways. But even as privatization of roads seems like a fine idea to me
in principle, it's about dead last in terms of my personal priorities
for social change (though the new technology of embedding sensors in the
road to read chips on the underside of your car is interesting, and
would ease congestion by allowing differential pricing at rush hour).
I'm not a tax activist; the little activist energy I have goes into
civil liberties issues instead (e.g., decriminalization of needles,
prostitution, nudism, gay marriage and adoption).
Hugh Gibbons' paper "Justifying Law" sounds very interesting, but I
didn't find a reference to it on your web page. Is it published, or do
I need to write to him for a copy?
You're right that the U.S. government doesn't
engage in physical torture (not counting questionable cases like >gassing
children in Waco or injecting people with radioactive >substances without
their knowledge), but that's not much of a >defense. As for "the benefits
of cooperation," I don't call it >cooperation if it's enforced.
To characterize an entire system by its most extreme failures is -- well, I
can't call it stupid because you're far from stupid, but it's certainly an
intellectual blunder. Worse, it's a form of argument that says "If you
don't reject the idea of government, then you must be in favor of gassing
children and injecting people with radioactive substances." This is a
simplistic argument for simple minds, but not for grownups.
There's no dilemma here. I wasn't characterizing the entire system by
its most extreme failures; I explicitly said I wasn't counting them. I
was agreeing with your generalization and adding a "questionable"
qualification--having recently been chastised for uncritically quoting
Lucas's sweeping generalizations :-).
And your example of Durango is a very good one, partly because I >don't
think it's at all atypical. My point, in fact, would be more >its
typicality. The economy at any level, at any location, is--or >ought to
be--continually in flux, even though that often means >hardship for some
people, like the mom-and-pop store whom the >loyalty of friends and
neighbors isn't enough to sustain when the >national chains arrive.
What do you mean "ought to be?" If we want it to be in flux, we will see to
it that it is. If we want to ignore people's hardships, we will ignore
them. It all depends on your personal principles and the kind of system you
want to live in.
Growth, which you have appeared to advocate, is flux. I meant no slight
of the hardships it causes anybody.
most of the objections I've seen [to leakage theory] are in
the form, "But if that's true, then it means blah-blah-blah, and since
blah-blah-blah can't possibly be the case (because I don't believe it), the
theory must be wrong." This sort of argument doesn't strike me as any more
relevant in economics than it is in psychology, where I've encountered all
of it I could possibly hope for.
I don't see anything wrong with Argument from Denial of the Consequent.
I just haven't gotten anywhere with it because no matter how outrageous
the consequents I derive seem to me, you keep happily endorsing them.
That says something about how dismayingly far apart we are, but not, I
think, about the form of argument.
In the latest case, where IRS employees tried to ruin a businesswoman
because she insulted an auditor, the law said that the agency used an
excessive and unreasonable degree of force, and made the transgressor
agency, the IRS, pay the woman something like $350,000 including punitive
damages. The only thing wrong with this judgment is that the individuals
responsible were not required to pay it. "The IRS" is just a place.
This is an excellent point, too seldom voiced--though a recent press
release from the Libertarian Party similarly argued that an apology from
Clinton about the Tuskegee experiments wasn't enough, that those who
planned, authorized, and carried it out should be held personally
responsible.
It is commonly regarded as a major advance that Western European
societies around the turn of the 13th century came to regard crimes like
murder as offenses against the state rather than against individuals.
I'm not so sure. It would be all right with me if the survivors of the
Oklahoma City bombing did whatever they wanted to McVeigh. But making
bureaucratic and impersonal so intimately personal an act as
electrocuting someone seems to me a bit ghastly.
The Constitution, in fact, specifically prohibited an income tax, >and we
didn't have one for well over a century.
Oh, pooey. The Constitution is like the Bible; you can interpret it to mean
whatever your own pet peeve wants it to mean.
Sure, but the same is true of any laws as well. Definitions can never
be made explicit enough to eliminate judgment. The recent Disabilities
Act, for example, has been interpreted to include alcoholism, so that
employees who are treated badly for being drunks are entitled to
compensation.
I wasn't implying anything special about the Constitution; my reference,
if you check, was just in support of the nonnecessity of the income tax,
since the Constitution specifically prohibited any "direct" tax.
The problem is that whenever these idealists do get together and try to
make their own private worlds where everything is done right, they start
right in on the same process that got us where we are today. They have to
make rules, because sometimes people, even idealists, don't behave the way
they ought to. Sometimes people don't just voluntarily do the work that
needs doing, like taking a proper turn at cooking dinner or doing the
dishes or unstopping the toilet. Sometimes people make promises in return
for favors or advantages, and then don't keep them. Sometimes people get
angry and hurt or kill other people. Sometimes people mistreat their
children, hurting them or starving them or working them to exhaustion or
frightening them into serious mental trouble. People can be very nasty,
even those who seem to agree with us about important things. And they don't
want to be stopped from doing things the only way they know how, so they
won't voluntarily do their share of the common work, live up to contracts,
become peaceable, or become merciful. Those around them who are affected by
their behavior have no choice: they must have some means of coercing the
deviants, of forcing them to do what they should do, or stop them from
doing what the community says they must not do. Government and law come
from living together with other people. There is no way out of it that I
can see. We can't get rid of governments and laws. If we did, they would
come right back.
I think the only difference between us here is that I'm less sure of the
last four sentences than you are. I suspect I have as little interest
in or patience with utopian schemes as you.
>The last chapter of B:CP contains the most eloquent and brilliant
argument I've ever read for why coercion doesn't work as a way of
getting people to do what you want.
I don't see how you could have read that into that chapter.
This is truly a revelation. On rereading it for the first time in a
year or so, I found it more radical and beautiful than I had remembered.
You speak in that chapter not of coercion but of arbitrary control,
which you define as attempts to control (others, in this context)
without regard to their goals. "The only way in which one person can
arbitrarily control the behavior of another person, without regard to
the other person's goals, is through reward and punishment. That is,
only by having the power to create and then alleviate intrinsic error in
another person can one truly cause that other person to reorganize and
behave in any way desired" (p. 266). Physical coercion appears to me a
paradigm case of arbitrary control. But: "Attempts to control behavior
arbitrarily--one's own or that of other people--accomplishes nothing in
the long run but to produce conflict and consequent pathology" (p. 259).
That's what I take as a statement that coercion doesn't work. Further:
"Our whole society is a maze of contradictions that can be traced
directly to attempts to run it by means of arbitrary control; no matter
what else is good about our society, that one factor will destroy it"
(p. 271). "_Any_ system based on the control of behavior through the
use of rewards (or, of course) punishments contains the seeds of its own
destruction" (p. 269). You speak specifically to the rule of law: "In
our American society there is a widespread belief in the rule of law
(enforced by physical punishment) and in the use of incentives tied
directly to our ability to stay warm, well fed, and otherwise happy. . .
. If we are to trust the theory in this book, however, we must conclude
the exact opposite. The more faithfully we adhere to the system of
incentives and the rule of law, the closer must the country approach a
state of open revolt" (p. 270). If you think back over how many times
you have appealed to the rule of law--for instance, to assure a certain
distribution of goods--perhaps you can understand my astonishment. You
have said in a previous post (I think--I can't find the reference at the
moment) that the good of society demands redistribution, but that is
just what the author of Chapter 17 warned us against: "People who want
to control other people seldom admit that they _want_ to, that
controlling people gives them any personal satisfaction, or that they in
any way are to blame for their own behavior. Rather they prefer to
objectify the situation, saying that morality requires control, or logic
requires it, or self-preservation requires it, or scientific experiments
prove its necessity, or the good of society demands it (and who am I to
go against society?)" (pp. 260-261). Finally: "There is only one way I
can see for fallible, ignorant human beings to live in accord with their
own real natures and that is to discard forever the principle of
controlling each other's behavior, dropping even the _desire_ to control
other people, and seeing at every level the fallacy in the logic that
leads to such a desire. Whatever system concept we adopt in the effort
to reach the conflict-free society, it must contain one primary fact
about human beings: they cannot be arbitrarily controlled _by any
means_ without creating suffering, violence, and revolution" (pp.
269-270).
All in all, the most magnificent argument for anarchy I've ever read.
3. Coda: Going up a level
One of the reasons I dropped out of the economics discussion a couple of
months ago (I had actually written another reply--among other things, to
thank Rick for taking the trouble to check my lag conjecture
empirically--but decided against sending it) was a clear sense that it
wasn't going anywhere. I had never had such an extended experience of
people talking past each other, of misattributions, distortions, and
polarization. Most disturbingly, I have the clear sense of having been
taxing your capacity for civility, as though I were pressing continually
on an exposed nerve--which is certainly not what I was controlling for.
As we're going through this cycle a second time, it seems clear to me
that there's likely nothing ahead but more mutual frustration, and that
the only possible way out was by "going up a level," by stepping back to
look at why the discussion has gone so badly. At that point we are no
longer talking economics, but psychology, and the discussion necessarily
becomes more personal. I don't mean ugly in any way, just possibly more
private. It goes without saying that in taking this step I invite a
response in kind, if you're inclined. The analysis I have in mind is
similar to that in George Lakoff's _Moral Politics_, though the concepts
are my own. He writes as a liberal trying to understand conservatives
(amazing to me that the question would have occurred to him only a few
years ago); I write as neither trying to understand both.
I start from two clues. Looking over our exchanges again, I have had
the impression that the sore spot was the perception of me as not being
a team player. If so, I'm sure the reason I was slow to recognize it is
that I'm commonly perceived in quite opposite terms--as generous,
supportive, easy to get along with, carrying my weight and more--by
colleagues, friends, and family. I'll come back to this concept.
The second clue was noticing that the exchange on leakage theory has had
much the quality of debates on abortion--not only in terms of futility,
but in terms of generating a lot of heat that seemed disproportionate to
the ostensible subject matter. The lives of most prolife activists are
not touched very directly by abortion--as they are, for example, by the
choice of whether to eat meat. And the intensity of their concern for
fetuses is curiously unmatched by their concern for children--including
those whose parents didn't want them. On the other side, prochoice
advocates often end up denying or minimizing the fact that abortion is
always a difficult and painful decision, no matter how convinced you are
that it's the best choice in a given case.
I think many liberals have a good idea what is going on here with the
religious right, particularly if you look at the other things the same
people tend to be against. The real issue isn't abortion per se, but
sex. These people adhere to a very narrow view of what's proper in
relation to sex, and they have, most of them, paid a heavy price for
upholding such a view. Either they paid a price in terms of appealing
opportunities foregone; or, if they didn't adhere to the standard in
their own lives, they paid in terms of guilt. If this all felt freely
chosen, there probably still wouldn't be any problem. But it tends to
be experienced, not as a code freely chosen after careful consideration
of all possible alternatives, but rather as a simple matter of the way
things have to be. From that position, the idea of someone violating
those norms and _getting away with it_ is intolerable. To allow that as
a legitimate possibility is to admit that all of your own self-denying
or self-punishing was unnecessary.
An inevitable consequence of leaving such a conflict at an implicit
level is then that the forbidden becomes an obsession. Susie Bright
once said that the best jill-off book she had ever read was the evidence
collected by the Meese Commission on Pornography, the Commission having
gone out of its way to obtain the kinkiest, hardest-to-get stuff.
This is all familiar. What I think has been less clearly understood--it
sure to me a longer time to figure out--is the corresponding sticking
point for liberals. But I think the distinction can usefully be drawn
between public and private virtues. It's important to note that the
hold that that particular sexual doctrine has on the right derives its
power from defining what is _good_. I think people need to feel good
about themselves as persons; not to feel worthy, worthy of the
self-sustaining efforts of living, is pretty close to intrinsic error.
The emphasis of this tradition (what has become the religious right) has
been on private virtues and sins, of which sex is the preeminent
example. Don't touch yourself, don't think impure thoughts, save
yourself for marriage, and so on. Without going so far as an explicit
repudiation of the doctrine about the camel and the eye of the needle,
this tradition also notably included among private virtues things like
productivity, thrift, and self-reliance.
My sense is that the corresponding tradition behind modern liberalism
has emphasized in contrast the public virtues of good citizenship.
Share your toys, look after those less fortunate than you, don't be
selfish. (There are obvious religious alignments with the traditions
I'm describing, but there's no need to pursue that here. There is also
considerable overlap between them, but at the moment I'm into sweeping
generalizations :-).) These values happen to be easier for me
personally to relate to than sexual prudishness (not that I haven't been
there, too), but in either case they provide our reference for what is
good. (They don't do so until we adopt them as our own, of course; but
very few people really challenge these standards. I've seen people who
thought of themselves as sexually liberal discouraging their children
from masturbating.) Like sexual restrictiveness, however, these public
virtues constrain our behavior, or leave us feeling guilty when they
don't. They establish temptations on the other side. Again, this is
generally no problem so long as these constraints are experienced as
freely chosen, but they rarely are. And so the result, again, is
obsession with the forbidden. I was struck many years ago at how
singularly obsessed with material goods socialists are. An obsession
with money--with a particular distribution of it--is virtually their
defining characteristic. What is intolerable, from this position, is
the idea of anyone opting out of the system _and getting away with it_.
I think this is where I came in. Passages like the following suggested
to me the strains of adhering to the code of selflessness and
egalitarianism:
Why
not just cut through all the nonsense, do away with laws and governments
and coercion and the concentration of power in a few hands, and let people
run their own lives? Why can't I decide what to do with my own money, my
own land, my own children, my own slaves? Why should I have to share
anything with dirty, lazy, immoral freeloaders and foreigners?
(I incidentally favor unrestricted immigration, and of course the
abolition of the INS. The fence along the Mexican border is a horror,
as is the concept of illegal aliens--not least because it makes it sound
as though they came from Mars.)
I don't want to do away with taxation. And
this means that, as long as I pay taxes, I can't see any reason why someone
else should get a free ride just because he wants to hang on to his own
money and take advantage of what my taxes are buying. If you don't pay your
share, stay off of my roads! You're the aggressor, trying to take away from
me the things I value. Keep doing it, and I'll throw your ass in jail.
Somehow I'm missing here the spirit of charity I thought underlay the
egalitarian ethic. Sounds to me instead like a rather fierce
protectiveness of what you consider yours. (Why should freeloaders
matter? Aren't they whom the restributive system was designed to
benefit?) I'm not objecting to the attitude expressed here, merely
calling attention to the tension it embodies--tension which I suspect
may have kept your from grasping my point. I never advocated using or
taking anything without paying for it; but my raising the possibility of
noncoercive alternative to financing services now funded by taxes was
read as unilaterally opting out of the system, not wanting to pay my
share.
In point of fact, I suspect that my values with respect to sharing and
caring and cooperation are very close to yours. But, if I weren't
already convinced, B:CP would have persuaded me that trying to enforce
these values corrupts and sabotages them. Private charity and community
organizations haven't been entirely supplanted by government welfare,
but there have been substantial changes in the direction. We're less
likely to help neighbors in need when we figure there's some government
agency to take care of it. More than that, I would think that
mobilizing resistance to sharing by attempts to enforce it could lead
people to experience themselves as stingier than they really were.
Jacob Hornberger recently said, paraphrasing Mencken: "Republicans are
haunted by the fear that someone somewhere may be having fun. Democrats
are haunted by the fear that someone somewhere may be making money."
(He added: "Libertarians want you to make money and have fun.") Both
are doing everything in their power to enforce their self-imposed
constraints on the whole society, insisting that the good of society
requires it. As Powers observed in 1973, the attempts can only lead to
failure--the suicide rate among gay teens is awesome, but it is still
far from 100%; and laws aimed at redistribution are met with tax dodges,
black markets, and bribes--but failures are merely met with redoubled
efforts at control. Logically, there is no reason why the ranks of
libertarians should include more ex-conservatives who saw the
inconsistency between policing sexual and drug behavior and the economic
freedom they valued than ex-liberals who saw the inconsistency between
policing economic activity and the civil liberties they valued. I
suspect the explanation for the difference may be simply that it was
easier for ex-conservatives (in these times) to give up the idea that
sex is bad than for ex-liberals to give up the idea that selfishness is
bad. I think I see evidence of that when conservatives tell me they
oppose drug legalization because it would send a message that there's
nothing wrong with using drugs. But in fact there is no need for anyone
to change values or definitions of what is good; the point is just to
uncouple those values from the desire to enforce them on others. At
bottom, apart from the fact that it doesn't work, I think trying to
control by arbitrary/coercive means either sexual or capitalist acts
between consenting adults is not a nice way to treat people. Even if
you tried persuasion first. Even if you're sure we'll all be better off
doing it your way.
The author of Chapter 17 clearly had an inkling how radical his ideas
were: "The major premise of civilization has, I submit, been proved
wrong" (p. 270). But the ideas in this chapter have lain neglected for
24 years, the author himself appearing to me not only not to have
followed up their implications, but actually to be disavowing them. If
so, I think it wouldn't be the first time such a thing happened. Taking
unpopular positions, the opposite of what everybody else is saying,
provokes attack; but really radical innovation, like PCT, often simply
leaves one alone--without the community of understanding that the rest
of us count on to sustain us. For those few who are radical innovators
in multiple fields, the resulting loneliness can be extremely hard to
bear. The one or two people I can think of whose thought was radical on
such a scale were much less successful than you in maintaining ties to
humanity.
Surely arrogance and impertinence go no higher than to imply that I
understand better than you do what you have written. But know also that
my respect, admiration, appreciation, and affection are similarly
unbounded.
Best always,
Mike
