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Ari Armstrong's 2017 Posts

Following are consolidated blog posts I wrote in 2017, republished here on August 18, 2025. All contents copyright © by Ari Armstrong. I may not in every case still agree with my older positions. Paragraphs that begin "Comment" are notes by readers, unless marked otherwise. Because so many of the hyperlinks have since become "dead," I removed almost all of the hyperlinks and (usually) put the original url in parenthesis. Due to minor editing and formatting changes the material here may not exactly match how it originally appeared.

Major themes include fake news, antitrust, spanking, Trumponomics, Trump's lies, human progress, liberalism, free speech, government arts funding, health insurance, United airlines, subsidized religion, Jury nullification, immigration, Pope Francis, environmentalism, atheism, public officials on social media, the Carbon Compensation Fund, Ayn Rand, and property rights.

How Partisans Can Help Fight Fake News

January 9, 2017

Just how big of a problem is fake news? As one indication, consider that Americans currently are debating the extent to which the (http://www.npr.org/2017/01/06/508520414/on-intelligence-and-election-hacking-trump-and-his-team-continue-to-miss-the-poi) Russian government used "classical propaganda, disinformation, [and] fake news" (in addition to outright hacking) in an effort to influence the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election. Glenn Greenwald (https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived/) argues that the Washington Post (among others) exaggerated the scope of such activities. Regardless, the fact that we're discussing whether news about fake news is fake suggests that fake news is a real problem.

What can we do about fake news? That's a big problem; here I'll focus mostly on a proposal of Colorado Progressive activist Jason Salzman. But first it's useful to delve deeper into the nature of the problem. Along the way I'll address Greenwald's complaint that "'fake news' has no cogent definition."

Fake news zooms around social media. Often it is the case, as Mark Twain first said, that "a lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots."

Except, of course, Twain (http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/" target="=_blank) didn't say that, at least not first. Versions of the quote circulated before Twain was born. The first version of it seems to come from Jonathan Swift in 1710: "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it." (I believe this claim from Quote Investigator because it provides a link to a Google book and squares with other sources.)

Swift's (http://www.bartleby.com/209/633.html) fuller comments are well worth reviewing, for they illuminate our current predicament and show that our problems hardly are new ones:

[I]f a man had the art of the second sight for seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits, how admirably he might entertain himself in this town, by observing the different shapes, sizes, and colours of those swarms of lies which buzz about the heads of some people, like flies about a horse's ears in summer. . . .

[I]t often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work, and there is no further occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.

We can divide fake news into two broad categories: misinformation that the originator knows is false, and misinformation that the originator thinks is true.

Intentional Fake News

Some "fake news" really is great parody and satire (which Swift knew something about); the originator knows it's false and doesn't intend for others to think it's true. (http://www.theonion.com) The Onion is the best-known publisher of this sort of parody news. Generally this sort of parody isn't a problem, as it's widely recognized as such—although some people have taken Onion stories (http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/27/world/asia/north-korea-china-onion/) seriously.

Other publishers of fake news want their claims to be widely believed or at least don't mind if they are. Motives for intentionally spreading misinformation vary dramatically.

On April 1 (April Fools Day) 2014, one fellow generated a (http://imgur.com/gallery/Okhvk) series of fake factoids and posted them to Facebook. The messages included these gems:

Apparently some people took these seriously; the fellow reports, "Not only did no one call me out but I received numerous compliments and one guy even took credit for an image." This seemed to be a benign experiment to test people's gullibility.

One of the most famous hoaxes of our time was perpetrated by physicist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair) Alan Sokal in 1996 when he submitted a nonsense article to a postmodernist journal. Of course the journal published the piece. Sokal immediately fessed up to the hoax; he perpetrated it intentionally to expose the sorry state of (much of) modern humanities studies.

If we take Jestin Coler at his word, he published fake news for humanitarian reasons. He (http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs) told NPR:

The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction.

We can wonder about the purity of Coler's motives; he also suggested to NPR that he makes tens of thousands of dollars per month from ads on his fake news sites.

Certainly we can worry about the impact of Coler's "work." One of the false stories to appear on one of his sites was, "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide"—a story "shared on Facebook over half a million times," NPR reports.

But the NPR story has an ironic flaw: Its reporting itself (unintentionally) perpetrates a fake story about a Colorado bill related to marijuana, as Corey Hutchins (http://tinyletter.com/CoreyHutchins/letters/a-bizarre-colorado-public-records-story-three-s-a-trend-means-a-new-beat-on-knowing-your-reporter-and-more-colorado-local-news-media) explains (see the forth item).

I too have gotten hoodwinked by fake news a time or three (although I cannot now recall particular examples), which I remedied by quickly deleting the offending social media post and posting a correction if warranted.

Generally, the proper response to intentionally faked news is to try hard not to fall for it; to correct ourselves quickly if we do; to call out others who spread it; and to expose and condemn those who recklessly or maliciously generate it.

Unintentional Fake News

Often the trickier problem to correct is misinformation that the originator believes (or carelessly assumes) to be correct. This sort of fake news (usually an element of a broader story) sometimes shows up in major newspapers and other publications.

Consider the NPR story mentioned above in a bit more detail. Coler, the news faker, told NPR that his fake story about "how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot" (NPR's words) "turned into . . . a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana" (Coler's words). In fact, Coler's story had nothing to do with the proposed legislation, which was being drafted "at least four months before the fake news story even came out" (Hutchins's words).

NPR related Coler's false claim as though it were accurate, although the reporter in question later granted to Hutchins "that there was no clear evidence that his story was the reason the legislation was passed." (The bill in question, Senate Bill 14-037, actually (http://www.leg.state.co.us/clics/clics2014a/csl.nsf/fsbillcont/4ECAEFB2253EA4CB87257C300005CAFB?Open&target=/clics/clics2014a/csl.nsf/billsummary/EB1D3A6573BEBB3087257C0E005479E5?opendocument) died in committee.)

Fake news scandals hit even the most prominent publications—for example, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair) Jayson Blair not only plagiarized others' work for his New York Times stories but fabricated some of his claims. Certainly Blair's editors did not intentionally aim to mislead their readers.

In my political writing I've often criticized media stories for making false or misleading claims. Here are a few examples:

But I too have unintentionally gotten details about a story wrong. In 2015, in the course of criticizing Progress Now Colorado for misstating the facts about a legislative bill (the "Parent's Bill of Rights"), I (http://ariarmstrong.com/2015/02/vaccinations-and-the-misreporting-of-the-parents-bill-of-rights/) misstated the facts about the bill. Embarrassing! I apologized for my error as soon as I figured it out, then wrote a detailed article to reflect a correct understanding of the bill. I'm proud of my final draft, as it carefully dissects errors others made about the bill as well as my own errors. I regret initially getting the story wrong, but I worked hard to correct myself and help clarify the discussion. The main problem is when news reports contain false or misleading claims that go uncorrected.

Unintentional fake news is in some respects harder to deal with than intentional fake news, for several reasons:

  1. False or misleading claims can occur in broader stories that, for the most part, are correct and sensitive to relevant context.
  2. Such claims can occur in publications that a reasonable person ordinarily regards as reliable. (I'm a lot more skeptical of, say, Media Matters or Breitbart than I am of the Denver Post or National Review, even though I can find good and bad material at all those sites.)
  3. Sometimes journalists, most of whom after all try to adhere to normal journalistic standards and think of themselves as protecting democracy, get defensive about their work.
  4. Although some incorrect claims readily can be marked as outright errors, more claims fall into the "misleading but debatable" category.
  5. Partisans have an interest in tagging perfectly objective claims as "misleading" in order to generate more-favorable publicity for their side. So editors have to distinguish complaints about genuinely misleading reporting from groundless complaints of partisans—while remembering that partisans can be right.

Salzman's Pledge

Let us concede, then, that fake news is a real problem. What should we do about it, beyond what I've suggested above?

Jason Salzman thinks part of the answer is for legislators and others to sign a "(http://bigmedia.org/2016/12/20/colorado-lawmakers-caught-spreading-fake-news-all-legislators-republican-and-democrat-should-sign-the-fake-news-pledge/) fake news pledge." His pledge reads:

As an elected official, I agree that the spread of fake news on Facebook and other social media platforms has a toxic effect on rational civic discourse. And I understand that when community leaders spread fake news, we legitimize it. By our example, we encourage people to play fast and loose with facts, and we blur the lines between real journalism and fabricated stories masquerading as news.

So, to promote informed and reasoned debate, I pledge not to knowingly spread fake news. If I accidentally do so, by sharing, "liking," or posting inaccurate information, packaged to look somehow like news, I will remove the falsehood as soon as possible and post a correction as well as an explanation of why I posted it in the first place.

If it's deemed unproven or false or inaccurate by Snopes, Politifact, Factcheck.org, or by a respected news outlet, information from my Facebook page will be removed as soon as possible—or detailed reasons for not deleting it will be provided.

I think Salzman's pledge is sensible and that everyone should strive to abide by it.

However, I personally do not plan to sign the pledge (there's a (http://bigmedia.org/fake-news-pledge-for-citizens/) non-legislative version), nor do I advise legislators to sign it.

Why won't I sign it? I already behave the way Salzman outlines. The idea that I might have to sign Salzman's pledge in order to not spread fake news is insulting. I already don't spread fake news as a matter of course, and I correct myself quickly on the rare occasion that I get something wrong. The presumption is already that I share news responsibly; I don't need to shift the presumption by signing a pledge. I invite anyone, Salzman included, to peruse my articles and social media posts let me know of any errors.

I think legislators might reasonably decline to sign Salzman's pledge for similar reasons.

And there's another reason that at least Republican legislators should think twice before signing Salzman's pledge: Doing so might be seen by Progressive activists as an open invitation to hector them over debatable points.

It's not as though Salzman is known for his even-handed criticisms of politicians of both parties. Salzman devotes his (http://bigmedia.org) BigMedia.org web site largely to criticizing Republican politicians and conservative talk radio hosts. (He also has a (http://bigmedia.org/2016/11/25/dont-steal-my-liberal-flag/) friendly review of my recent book, (http://amzn.to/2dxpvc9) Reclaiming Liberalism.) Maybe I could crawl through his archives and find some criticism of Democrats, but if that exists it's rare. (By contrast, I routinely criticize Republicans as well as Democrats.) Salzman has taken special aim at Laura Woods, formerly my state senator—because she was an especially devious politician? No; because she was a Republican legislator in an exceptionally competitive district (she lost this past November).

Salzman is the guy who cowrote—with Michael Huttner, formerly of ProgressNow—50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America (a book that I (https://ariarmstrong.com/2009/09/fifty-ways-to-leave-obama/) had fun reviewing).

And then there's the 2009 (http://ariarmstrong.com/2009/02/pork-roast-mixes-liberty-populism-and-partisanship/) Pork Roast Rally in Denver to criticize Barack Obama's "stimulus" spending—a rally that Salzman and Huttner counter-protested. The image with this article shows Salzman (left) and Huttner holding a giant sign blaming George W. Bush and former Colorado legislator Josh Penry for Colorado's then-high unemployment. Although it's reasonable to blame Bush (among many others) for the mortgage meltdown of that era—for Bush actively promoted loose standards for mortgage loans—the suggestion that Penry had anything to do with rising unemployment is laughable.

Incidentally, after (http://ariarmstrong.com/2009/02/coloradopols-com-misreports-pork-roast-rally/) ColoradoPols.com published fake news about me related to the rally, Salzman did not, so far as I recall, step forward to defend me. He did, however, offer Jon Caldara (who helped organize the rally) a helpful (http://bigmedia.org/2009/02/18/caldara-on-swastika-coverage/) opportunity to reply to criticism of the event.

The upshot is that I don't think Salzman—or at least his allies—would use the pledge to conduct an even-handed evaluation of the social media posts of Democrats and Republicans.

Salzman does report that he looked at Democrats' postings for several weeks: "I looked at the Facebook pages of all Colorado state legislators from Oct. 1 until the November election, and I found that three lawmakers spread fake news during that time."

All three were Republicans. I don't spend my time monitoring the social media postings of elected officials and party leaders, so I can't say whether I might have come up with a longer (and bipartisan) list. Maybe Republicans in Colorado really have been the worse offenders in this regard.

Regardless, I sincerely hope that Salzman continues to hold politicians accountable for their irresponsible media posts. The fact that he's partisan in his approach does not negate the value of his fact-based findings. If he spends less of his time investigating Democrats, hopefully other observers (perhaps including Republican partisans) will fill in the gaps.

Legislators (and others) don't have to sign some pledge in order to be held accountable. The pledge is essentially irrelevant to the task of holding people accountable for distributing fake news (although the pledge is a useful PR stunt to draw attention to the problem of fake news).

And Salzman has done some truly great work exposing elected Republicans and Republican party leaders (in Colorado) who distributed fake news. Following are some examples of Salzman's findings, as he reported in (http://bigmedia.org/2016/11/17/will-colorado-public-officials-be-more-careful-about-spreading-fake-news/) November and (http://bigmedia.org/2016/12/20/colorado-lawmakers-caught-spreading-fake-news-all-legislators-republican-and-democrat-should-sign-the-fake-news-pledge/) December articles:

The appropriate response by Republicans to Salzman's reporting is to condemn fake news and criticize Republican leaders for sharing it. Period. That's the decent thing to do, and it is therefore also the politically expedient thing to do. Republicans cannot do well if many people think they're crackpots.

What is not helpful is for Greg Brophy, formerly a state senator and a chief of staff for U.S. Representative Ken Buck,* to (http://coloradopolitics.com/straight-outta-copolitics-fake-news-fake-reporter-fake-pledge/) call Salzman a "fake reporter" for his efforts. Salzman has never made himself out to be a nonpartisan reporter; he is explicitly an advocacy journalist (as am I). And, anyway, calling Salzman "fake" does not disprove the claims of his articles at hand, which as far as I've found are all true.

Senator (http://bigmedia.org/2017/01/04/state-senator-declines-to-sign-fake-news-pledge-saying-the-term-fake-news-smacks-of-a-new-censorship/) Kevin Lundberg's reply to Salzman is much more helpful (although still troublesome in certain respects). Admirably, Lundberg begins his reply by noting his opposition to fake news:

I have always been as careful as I can in not promoting inaccurate information. However, there is a troubling element to the idea that news out of the mainstream might be suspected of being "fake."

Having been a legislator for many years, and at one time a member of the news media, I know that every story is laced with the assumptions and perspective of the reporter. Hence, almost all stories have elements of what somebody might want to brand as "fake." This is the reality of news reporting and the consumer of this information should always be discerning.

This new term "fake news," to me smacks of a new censorship that ultimately could do more damage than what inaccurate news could ever do on its own.

I will respectfully decline to sign your pledge.

Kevin Lundberg

Colorado State Senate

As much as I appreciate the tone of Lundberg's reply, I take issue with three aspects of it. First, I don't read Salzman's pledge as singling out non-"mainstream" sources as "fake." After all, Salzman's own web site is well outside the mainstream (as is mine). Second, although Lundberg is right that a lot of claims are debatable, it remains the case that some claims just are flatly wrong and can be proved to be so. Third, "censorship" is definitely not the right term here. Censorship refers to government forcibly restricting speech; what we're talking about are expressions of freedom of speech for the sake of condemning the dissemination of fake news.

But, for reasons outlined above, I do think that Lundberg reasonably can decline to sign Salzman's pledge, even as he personally takes care not to spread fake news. Hopefully Lundberg also will take on a leadership role within his party by encouraging party leaders to share information responsibly.

I'll note here that, as of last Fall, I too am a Republican by party affiliation, and I am happy to join Salzman in better policing ourselves, our allies, and our opponents to check the dissemination of fake news. Thankfully, we don't need people to sign Salzman's pledge to make this a reality.

Salzman Shares His Views

I asked Salzman (via email) whether anyone has signed the pledge and whether Republicans might reasonably suspect the pledge would be used against Republicans.

He said that State Representative Mike Foot and State Senator-Elect Dominick Moreno, both Democrats, have signed the pledge. "I am hoping more legislators will sign, from both parties," Salzman wrote.

I reproduce the rest of Salzman's reply in full:

The pledge is bipartisan, and as a practical matter, it won't work for partisan attacks. I don't think fake news has a lot of pop politically, insofar as it's not a good political attack to say something like, hypothetically, "Sen. Lundberg signed a fake news pledge and posted fake news on his Facebook page." I don't think that would work. You and I care about journalism and accurate information, but can you really see an attack ad being made around this issue? The fake news pledge is about the boring grind of good government, meaningful debate, etc., stuff we all care about.

So will leftists use it to attack righties? I don't think so, but I don't control them. It wasn't designed for this purpose. I wrote the pledge after seeing many outrageous instances of bogus information being spread on Facebook by lawmakers. Both sides should be concerned about this, and the pledge is a chance to do something about it and hold elected officials of both parties accountable.

If you're worried that this is biased against Republicans, then please edit the pledge so that it's more fair, in your mind. I've asked conservatives to do this, and none has taken me up on the offer. Yet, I know conservatives care about accuracy and civic discourse. And they know fake news is a problem. So let's do something about it.

The sticking points are 1) the definition of fake news and 2) the arbiters. The pledge defines fake news as information packaged in some way to look like news. And it uses mainstream sources as arbiters, with the caveat that the signer can ignore the arbiters if the signer explains why. What's wrong with that? I don't think our local media fact checkers favor progressives. Same at the national level. And it doesn't matter anyway, since no information or information source is banned by the pledge.

The pledge focuses an amorphous discussion about fake news on specific ways we can try to agree on ground rules for how to wage fact-based civic discourse.

Thanks, Ari, for reaching out.

Although I disagree with Salzman about the need for the pledge, I agree with him that each of us can and should help to establish a "fact-based civic discourse."

Because, as Abraham Lincoln said, "You can't believe everything you read on the internet."

* Note: Originally I claimed that Greg Brophy currently is chief of staff for Representative Ken Buck. I based this claim on Wikipedia's entry about Brophy and on Brophy's claim on his Twitter profile that he's a "Congressional CoS." But Buck's page (https://buck.house.gov/about/staff) currently lists Ritika Robertson as Chief of Staff. So I'm not sure what Brophy is up to these days. Anyway, this minor point again serves as a reminder of how difficult it can be to get every detail exactly right.

Abolish Antitrust

January 16, 2017

"U.S. appeals court revives antitrust lawsuit against Apple," goes the (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-court-idUSKBN14W2VH) headline of a recent Reuters story. This is just the most recent example of a long line of government acts of persecution of businesses for the "crime" of trading with consenting customers on mutually agreed terms.

The United States Congress authorizes not only the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission but independent lawyers to act under these inherently ambiguous—and inherently unjust—laws. State governments similarly authorize parties to pursue antitrust actions against businesses.

Although (obviously) antitrust law still has the support of most policy makers and even many economists (based on nonsense theories of "perfect" competition), the injustices and absurdities of antitrust law have been known to those who care to look for many decades. Key works on the matter include The Causes and Consequences of Antitrust, which examines the issue from the perspective of public-choice economics, and the Abolition of Antitrust, which critiques the laws on moral, historical, and economic grounds.

If anyone works routinely in the area of antitrust from the perspective of free markets and individual rights, I am not aware of that person. I'm a generalist, and, although I've spent scores if not hundreds of hours researching antitrust laws over the years, I hardly have a thorough grasp of the extensive literature on the topic. So here I issue a plea: If some young scholar at a university or think tank is looking for a fascinating interdisciplinary issue, antitrust would be a good one to tackle. And, if you have any control over the purse strings of a rights-oriented organization, I implore you to seek out and hire such a scholar. Alternately, someone could start a smaller, independent group devoted to the issue, on the model of what (http://industrialprogress.com) Alex Epstein has done with energy.

Yet one need not master thousands of pages of dense academic work to draw some general and firm conclusions about the evils of antitrust laws.

In the name of promoting competition, antitrust laws stifle competition. In the name of promoting open markets, antitrust laws forcibly restrain markets. In the name of "helping" consumers, antitrust laws throttle the very businesses that offer consumers the greatest values.

In theory, antitrust laws substitute the force of government for "capitalist acts between consenting adults" [Nozick]. In practice, those laws enable bureaucrats to capriciously lord it over private industry, enable some businesses to throttle their competitors, and enable predatory lawyers to extort businesses under the ambiguous and arbitrary statutes.

Before turning to some of the details of the recent Apple decision, let's consider the meaning of two key terms, competition and monopoly.

"Competition" can refer to many things outside an economic context, such as the competition of different species for resources—a key driver of evolution. We can also talk about competition for government handouts and other favors in any socialist or mixed economy.

In the context of a free market, competition typically refers to individuals making choices about whom to cooperate with and on what terms. Individuals have a fundamental moral right to freedom of association, and competition refers to the fact that individuals choose to associate with some people for certain aims and not with others.

In the realm of the production and consumption of goods and services, business owners compete for supplies, employees, and customers, and consumers compete to secure goods and services. (Outside that realm, people also compete for mates, friends, status, and so on.)

A market is "free" insofar as individuals acting within in are free from coercion of private and governmental parties. Within this context, people can compete only by persuasion, not by force. If a producer of bread or computers or phones cannot persuade consumers to buy those items, the business will fail. Companies that excel at persuading people to buy their products prosper.

In free-market competition, then, people enter into business relationships by mutual consent, generally implying that each party reasonably expects to profit from the transaction. A person who buys a phone or a book or a pet fish expects that item to be worth more than the money spent; the seller wants to earn the money rather than keep the item.

Government properly intervenes if an exchange is based on fraud rather than genuine consent. If someone knowingly sells you a phone that doesn't work, a book with missing pages, or a sickly fish, without informing you, that's fraud, and if necessary government properly helps you get your money back. Government also properly intervenes in certain cases of reckless endangerment of consumers (the details here are complicated).

Absent force or fraud or the like, a consenting adult who buys a product agrees to the exchange and has no further moral or legal claims on the business—unless of course such terms were mutually accepted at the point of sale (as with return policies). Even if the customer regrets his purchase later, no one forced him into it, and the business bears no moral fault. So, for example, if you buy and read a book, subjecting it to wear in the process, then decide you really wanted a different sort of book, you cannot rightly hold the bookseller blameworthy or liable (although you can take advantage of whatever return policies the seller offered if relevant).

If you consent to purchase an item, and get precisely the item advertised, you have no moral right to then try to collect "damages" from the seller on the grounds that you wish the item had been something different. If you seek to do so, you become (morally if not legally) guilty of extortion. Extortion precisely describes the current court proceedings against Apple. The essential complaint against Apple is that its phones do not do things that Apple never said they'd do (specifically, provide access to apps not within Apple's store). And no amount of pseudoscientific rationalizations, which litter much of the economic literature on the subject, can change those basic facts.

What about monopoly? Historically, the term was understood to mean government forcibly preventing competition against a favored business. For example, today the U.S. Postal Service continues to hold a legal monopoly over the distribution of first-class mail. A monopoly, in this sense, is a result of government force, not free-market competition.

Today "monopoly" is a (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/package-dealing,_fallacy_of.html) package deal glomming together the fundamentally different things of government force to restrict a business's competitors and success earned by a business operating strictly by mutual consent.

Strictly (on the modern view), monopoly refers to a single provider of a good or service—which, when considering relevant substitutes (and leaving Marxist fantasies aside) has occurred only by government force. Not even John D. Rockefeller could corner the entire oil market—and he achieved the market success he did only by (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-summer/standard-oil-company/) continually lowering prices, increasing his efficiency, and creating new uses for oil. Similarly, Alcoa did not totally control the primary aluminum market in the 1940s even though it relentlessly drove down prices—never mind the secondary market—yet Judge Learned Hand (https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa021.pdf) condemned the company precisely because of its "skill, energy, and initiative" that led to its success. Google (http://searchengineland.com/googles-search-market-share-actually-dropping-237045) doesn't facilitate 100 percent of internet searches despite the fact that it offers an excellent product for free to anyone in the world (damned rapacious capitalists).

Today, of course, most people use "monopolist" to condemn successful businesses who "control" a substantial fraction of the total market solely by selling goods and services to consenting customers on mutually agreed terms.

For what it's worth, Apple has about a (http://fortune.com/2016/02/11/apple-iphone-ios-share/) 40 percent share of smart phone sales—and this is an industry that Apple pioneered. That predatory lawyers can tie up companies in court under antitrust laws, when the companies do less than half of the business in an industry, illustrates the absurdities of those laws.

Let's take a closer look at the claims against Apple, from the Reuters story:

iPhone app purchasers may sue Apple Inc over allegations that the company monopolized the market for iPhone apps by not allowing users to purchase them outside the App Store, leading to higher prices, a U.S. appeals court ruled. . . .

A lower court sided with Apple, but Judge William A. Fletcher ruled that iPhone users purchase apps directly from Apple, which gives iPhone users the right to bring a legal challenge against Apple. . . .

[I]f the challenge ultimately succeeds, "the obvious solution is to compel Apple to let people shop for applications wherever they want, which would open the market and help lower prices," Mark C. Rifkin, an attorney with Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz representing the group of iPhone users, told Reuters in an interview. "The other alternative is for Apple to pay people damages for the higher than competitive prices they've had to pay historically because Apple has utilized its monopoly."

How convenient for Rifkin that among the "obvious solutions" to Apple's alleged wrongdoing is for the company to offer Rifkin a huge slice of a payoff to Apple's customers.

The idea that Apple "damaged" its customers by selling them phones that they wanted to buy, under terms that they knew (or easily could have known) in advance, is ludicrous. What is really going on here is that Apple enormously benefited its customers—but it did not benefit certain customers in the way or to the degree that those customers, in retrospect, wish that Apple had done.

As to whether Apple "should" let iPhone purchasers buy apps directly from third-party sellers, that is properly up to Apple. If customers don't like the way Apple does business, they'll stop buying Apple products.

In fact, Apple had very good reason to restrict iPhone apps to its own store. Apple explicitly wanted to serve as a gatekeeper, to try to keep shoddy products and malware at bay. (I'm an iPhone user, and I've not minded the way the app store works.)

Even if (counterfactually) Apple had said, "We don't have any reason to restrict apps to our store except we want to earn a cut of each app sale," that would have provided no sound basis for government action. Still customers would have been free to choose whether to buy Apple products on the terms offered, and app makers would have been free to choose whether to develop apps for Apple customers. Neither in reality as it played out nor in our counterfactual example is any force involved.

Government properly intervenes in market transactions only to maintain a free market—that is, one free of force, fraud, and rights violations generally. Antitrust laws involve the use of government force to violate the rights of business owners and their customers to freely associate. Antitrust laws are inherently arbitrary and inherently immoral—and they should be abolished.

Ban Spanking at School

January 17, 2017

Should Colorado legislators ban spanking in public schools? Absolutely.

First my own experience: I grew up mostly in and around the peach orchards of Western Colorado, where my grandfather was a farmer. But then my stepfather went to flight school and started working his way up the pilot seniority ladder—and that meant moving to some less-desirable places. During my grade school years in the early 1980s, we moved to Muleshoe, middle-of-nowhere Texas.

In my pleasant and comfortable Colorado schools, it never occurred to me that teachers or school staff might beat students. It occurred to me in Muleshoe right away—because teachers and staff beat students with wooden boards on practically a daily basis, sometimes in private but often behind a thin screen where other students could hear. Frankly it was terrifying.

I recall one new kid who was a little overweight and perhaps a little dorky. A few of the other kids convinced the new guy to "say 'toe' after 'hoe'"—which of course sounds like a swear word in Spanish. The other kids told on the new kid, and the principal proceeded to beat him for swearing.

I definitely missed home—I have an old photo of myself planting a peach tree in our desolate yard. My strategy at school was basically to keep my head down and not assert myself in any way—and certainly to not ever say toe after the word hoe. I never was beaten at school, yet the practice traumatized me nonetheless.

Here's a good rule of thumb: If doing something to an adult would be prosecuted as criminal assault, you probably shouldn't ever do that thing to a child. Certainly if your boss held you down and beat you with a board, the police would and should prosecute your boss for criminal assault. Or imagine what would happen if a school principal grabbed another teacher or a janitor and started beating the person "for his (or her) own good."

It should go without saying that the Colorado legislature should in no way allow or sanction violence against children by government employees or state-sanctioned childcare providers. We're not talking here about physical restraint to prevent a student from harming someone, nor are we talking about self-defense a teacher conceivably might take against an aggressive and physically powerful student. We're talking about beating students who are at the time no danger to others, for alleged disciplinary ends.

Shockingly (to me), Colorado is one of nineteen states that currently allow corporal punishment in schools, although, as a (http://www.srcd.org/sites/default/files/documents/spr_30_1.pdf) Social Policy Report notes, it's hardly ever used here. (I've never heard of a case.)

Still, the legislature should formally end the practice. Not only will the move help ensure that no child is victimized at school here, perhaps Colorado's move will inspire legislatures elsewhere, in states where school staff still beat students routinely, to put an end to the practice.

Thankfully, State Representative Susan Lontine, a Denver Democrat, has sponsored a bill to formally end corporal punishment in Colorado schools, 7News (http://www.thedenverchannel.com/lifestyle/education/lawmaker-spearheading-push-to-ban-school-spanking-in-colorado) reports. It's a little unclear (to me) just what school staff might be able to get away with in Colorado; a spokesperson from the Colorado Department of Education told 7News that "policies can't break state child abuse laws" regardless.

Lontine's bill follows the (https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/king-sends-letter-states-calling-end-corporal-punishment-schools) advice of Education Secretary John B. King, Jr., who called on states to end corporal punishment in schools. King (https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/school-discipline/files/corporal-punishment-dcl-11-22-2016.pdf) writes, "Notably, the very acts of corporal punishment that are permissible when applied to children in schools under some state laws would be prohibited as criminal assault or battery when applied to adults in the community in those very same states."

The bill in question, (http://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2017A/bills/2017A_1038_01.pdf) HB17-1038, applies not only to public schools but to child care centers, family child care homes (as (http://www.coloradoofficeofearlychildhood.com/familychildcarehome) legally defined), and "specialized group facilities." The bill offers appropriate language allowing the use of force "to quell a disturbance" or in self-defense.

If anyone comes out against the bill, I'll be interested to read their arguments. I can think of only two conceivable arguments, both flimsy.

Someone might argue that spanking is somehow good for children—but the (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/the-strong-evidence-against-spanking/479937/) evidence clearly proves the opposite. I regard "spankers" as roughly on par with anti-vaxers in terms of empirical legitimacy. Anyway, even if a parent might rationalize spanking his or her own child, that hardly would justify government employees spanking children.

Or someone might argue that formally banning spanking in public schools might create a "slippery slope" to banning spanking generally, even though many people beat their children for ostensibly religious reasons (don't "spare the rod" and all that).

Of course, severe spanking (at least) already is outlawed under the child abuse statutes (18-6-401), which forbid inflicting "threat or injury" to a child's health and inflicting "cruel punishment" (a vague term). Elsewhere (19-1-103), the statutes define "child abuse or neglect" as including cases in which "a child exhibits evidence of skin bruising, bleeding, . . . soft tissue swelling," and so on.

Clearly the bill in question would not automatically create a legal presumption against (shall we say) light spanking by parents and parent-designated caregivers beyond those covered by the bill. We can and should debate another day whether—and in what manner and to what extent—parents and other caregivers should be legally allowed to spank their children or otherwise use corporal punishment. (Although I'm against spanking across the board, I also worry that legally defining child abuse too narrowly will lead to the abuse of basically good parents by overzealous bureaucrats.)

The upshot is that, even if you disagree with my view that parents never should spank children, we can still agree that government employees and state-licensed caregivers ought not beat the children in their care. Now Colorado legislators have an opportunity to affirm that principle.

What Trumponomics Shares with Progressivism

January 21, 2017

If you asked most Progressives and most supporters of Donald Trump, they'd tell you that members of the two camps are diametric opposites. That's why Progressives are protesting Trump's presidency, right? But the reality is that Trump's economic policies share fundamental assumptions with Progressivism.

An essential feature of Progressivism is to confuse voluntary trade with force. That is why, for example, Progressives generally blame producers for poverty by claiming that high-earning producers create "inequality" (which they do) and thereby harm the less-well-off (which they do not). According to Progressives, the successful trade of some is responsible for the misery of others.

To take another example, Progressives typically want to forbid someone from accepting a job—regardless of age, job skills, and personal preferences—below a certain arbitrarily defined wage. A person cannot be allowed to voluntarily choose to work a low-wage job because then the person would be "exploited."

More broadly, socialists bluntly claims that capitalism per se is based on "exploitation." Here's how Socialist Worker (https://socialistworker.org/2011/09/28/what-do-we-mean-exploitation) describes it:

[A]ll working-class people are exploited. Marx argued that the ultimate source of profit, the driving force behind capitalist production, is the unpaid labor of workers. So for Marx, exploitation forms the foundation of the capitalist system. All the billions in bonuses for the Wall Street bankers, every dividend paid to the shareholders of industrial corporations, every dollar collected by capitalist landlords—all of this is the result of the uncompensated labor of working-class people.

So, goes the idea, just as slavers exploited their slaves by forcing them to work, so employers exploit their workers by offering them a job. Trade equals force. And never mind that people create capital—machines, computers, factories, and so on—by risking their own resources to build it, that successful business owners produce enormous value by creating or marketing products that people wish to buy, that people who accept a job working for others do so because they regard the rewards as superior to what they could otherwise attain, and that people who work for others often invest in businesses themselves.

Progressives treat voluntary trade as the equivalent of force—and so they seek to override the consensual planning of free individuals with the commands of government agents.

Donald Trump, too, sees trade in some respects as the equivalent of force, and he often uses the language of force to describe free-market transactions.

Consider how Trump discussed trade in his (https://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address) inaugural address: "We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength."

What does (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ravage) ravage mean? It means "to work havoc" or "do ruinous damage." "Ravage, devastate, lay waste all refer, in their literal application, to the wholesale destruction of a countryside by an invading army (or something comparable)."

So, according to Donald Trump, when people in Mexico, Japan, or China make automobiles, computers, clothing, or other goods that Americans happily buy, that is comparable to those people storming our lands with guns and tanks and slaughtering Americans. Trade equals force.

Trump also (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=trump+trade+rape) refers to global trade as "rape." So, to Trump, someone in another country producing and selling a product to an American is the equivalent of that foreigner raping an American. As Jonathan Hoenig (http://capitalistpig.com/news-media/nevertrump/) points out, "Trump's use of the term 'rape' in describing global trade is a horrid but telling indicator of just how he views voluntary relationships." (Of course, Trump does not view all forms of trade as exploitative.)

Trump's view of (some) trade as the equivalent of force is the most prominent way he is similar to Progressives (and Marxists more broadly), but he shares other similarities with them as well. Trump is also a collectivist, in that he sees jobs and companies as somehow belonging to society collectively and to the national government—rather than belonging to the producers who create them. And, like Progressives, Trump calls on government agents to forcibly interfere with the consensual arrangements of individuals. (I've written about Trump's (http://ariarmstrong.com/2016/12/the-trouble-with-donald-trumps-nationalism/) collectivist nationalism and (http://ariarmstrong.com/2016/12/crony-fallacies-and-trumps-carrier-deal/) cronyism before.)

To be sure, people working in America really are up against some unfair barriers—but those barriers are created by the United States government, not by foreign producers. True, the various trade treaties, although on net achieving freer trade, also contain cronyist provisions. But the capitalist alternative is not to cut off trade more but to free it more by unilaterally lifting border taxes. Congress pushes many companies out of America with high corporate tax rates and regulatory burdens—and Trump will deserve credit insofar as he follows up on promises to address those problems. And union laws, which enable unions to compel businesses to offer uncompetitively high wages, also have driven some manufacturers to other countries.

To a substantial degree, the decline in manufacturing jobs is due to better technology, not to foreign competition or to bad U.S. policies. As Financial Times (https://www.ft.com/content/dec677c0-b7e6-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9a62) reports, manufacturing output in the U.S. has climbed even as manufacturing employment has declined. Why? "Simply put, we are producing more with fewer people," a Brookings fellow told the publication.

Although shifts in industries create transition problems for people working in those industries, we should no more cry about greater manufacturing efficiency than we cry about the fact that most people no longer work as farmers. The entire point of economic progress is to produce more goods and services with less human time—and free up that time for other ventures.

For Trump to blame foreign producers for America's problems (both real and imaginary) is ludicrous and unjust. Notice how Progressives and Trump both blame scapegoats—they just pick different ones. For Progressives, "greedy exploitative capitalists" are to blame for our various ills ranging from poverty to global warming. For Trump, war-like, rapacious foreign workers trying to feed their families by selling Americans products they want to buy are to blame for our problems.

Contrary to Karl Marx, Progressives, and Donald Trump, the voluntary exchange of consenting adults is not force, trade is not rape, production is not exploitation, and blaming scapegoats will not make us great.

Trump wants to put American first. But America is Americans living under the shared ideals of liberty. Insofar as the expressions have worthy meaning, we can put America first and make America great again only by consistently protecting, not violating, the rights of individual Americans, including their rights to trade freely with others.

A Liberty Activist Reflects on the Denver Trump Protest

January 22, 2017

This is a guest post by Paul Hsieh.

Yesterday I went with a couple of friends to the (http://www.marchoncolorado.org/) Women's March on Denver, where crowds reached around (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/01/21/womens-march-denver/) 100,000 people. The march was one of over 600 "(https://www.womensmarch.com/sisters/) sister marches" to coincide with the (https://www.womensmarch.com/) march in Washington, DC, and overall these marches drew around 5 million people worldwide.

The march was organized to (http://www.marchoncolorado.org/home/missionstatement) highlight several themes, including freedom for "biological and reproductive health," equality "regardless of gender, gender identification, ethnicity, racial heritage, disability, religion, age, sexual orientation and/or socioeconomic status," and an overall support for "social justice, human rights and equality."

As an advocate of limited government, individual rights, and economic liberty, I knew I would agree with some ideas expressed but disagree with others. And I don't normally enjoy attending large crowd events. But I wanted to watch and learn what ideas and concerns were on the marchers' minds, support some friends who would be there, and get a close-up view of a major news event.

Overall, the crowd was peaceful, friendly, and upbeat. I saw people with signs expressing ideas I fully support (e.g., women's right to an abortion), others I disagree with (e.g., government-run health care), and others where my opinion is mixed.

My favorite sign featured the Thucydides quote, "Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men the most."

Several people peer down from a window, including a woman holding a sign reading stay out of my uterus.

A sign reads We demand access to full reproductive healthcare.

A woman holds a sign reading thanks ACA I love my pump.

A woman holds a sign reading normalize intersectional feminism.

People hold signs including one reading Get your laws off my body.

I'm not a supporter of ObamaCare, but I did appreciate this woman's costume featuring breast pumps.

Countless signs promoted broader themes favored by the political left, including "Black Lives Matter," immigration, environmental issues, public funding for arts and education, "intersectional feminism," "privilege," etc.

Many clever or humorous signs caught my eye, including one that read, "Melania, blink twice if you need help," and one that quoted George Takei, "Tinkle, tinkle, little czar. Putin put you where you are."

Overall, the crowd was full of positive energy. After the march, I saw many comments on social media from participants celebrating the fact that they felt energized, enthused, and empowered. I didn't agree with every viewpoint expressed. But I'm enormously grateful to live in a country where people enjoy the freedom to express their ideas in a peaceful fashion.

I also noted a near-complete absence of signs discussing areas where I think the new administration will be very dangerous, such as free speech, the surveillance state, and economic protectionism. But given the mission statement of the Denver Women's March, I'm not surprised these issues received minimal attention.

If the march in Denver was representative of the marches in DC and other cities, there will be an enormous amount of popular pushback against President Trump. Opponents of the President's agenda should take heart. Supporters of his agenda should take heed.

Paul Hsieh, MD, is a cofounder of (http://westandfirm.org) Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine and a (http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/) contributor to Forbes.

Photographs by Paul Hsieh

Comments

Great Reporting

Thanks Paul for the onsite reporting. It was refreshing to hear your analysis versus the Fox shouting and the CNN idolizing.

—Mike Spalding

Why Trump Lies

January 27, 2017

Why does Donald Trump lie so freely? I consider several good explanations, one moral-psychological, several strategic, one philosophic:

Subjectivism

At some level, Trump seems not to be able to tell the difference—or not to want to tell the difference—between the truth and his lies. Generally (barring physical disability) a person reaches such a state by habitually blurring the lines between fact and fiction. In a word, Trump is a subjectivist.

Ayn Rand offers a helpful (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/subjectivism.html) description:

Subjectivism is the belief that reality is not a firm absolute, but a fluid, plastic, indeterminate realm which can be altered, in whole or in part, by the consciousness of the perceiver—i.e., by his feelings, wishes or whims.

We can see Trump's subjectivism on display in his continual and casually lying, as with the (http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-ted-cruz-jfk-assassination-226020) absurd accusations that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of JFK and the (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/donald-trump-congress-democrats.html) obvious falsehood that "millions of people . . . voted illegally" in the presidential election.

It is, of course, an open question to what degree Trump actually believes his own lies (leaving aside the (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PSJsl0LQ) old trick that "it's not a lie if you believe it"). In The Art of the Deal, Trump('s ghostwriter) (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ye6e_VxM00kC&q=truthful+hyperbole#v=snippet&q=truthful%20hyperbole&f=false) writes,

[A] little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration.

The ghostwriter was a (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all) little more blunt: "It's a way of saying, 'It's a lie, but who cares?'" Of course, while some of Trump's claims can be counted as exaggerations (as with his (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-us-president-false-claims-inauguration-white-house-sean-spicer-kellyanen-conway-press-a7541171.html) claims about his "sunny" inauguration, his crowd sizes, and who will pay for "the wall"), the claim about Cruz's father was a lie manufactured from whole cloth.

But Trump's lies aren't all about his subjectivism; I think political strategy also has something to do with them.

The Squirrel Effect

Many of us have watched the (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUXXzN26zg) scene in Up in which the dog is in the middle of having a perfectly reasonable conversation, when he sees a squirrel, shouts "Squirrel!," looks intently at the squirrel for a moment, and totally forgets his train of thought.

Trump's pettier absurd claims are the media's squirrels—and I have little doubt that this is one fact that Trump firmly grasps.

You know what matters to the lives of Americans? Hint: It ain't how many people attended Trump's inauguration. The details of, say, the Trans-Pacific Partnership are vastly more consequential—but you wouldn't know that based on the relative media coverage.

The Overload Effect

Trump overloads some people's capacity to track the truth and overloads many people's capacity to track important issues.

I think Maria Konnikova is on to something when she (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/donald-trump-lies-liar-effect-brain-214658) writes for Politico:

When we are overwhelmed with false, or potentially false, statements, our brains pretty quickly become so overworked that we stop trying to sift through everything. . . . But Trump goes a step further. If he has a particular untruth he wants to propagate . . . he simply states it, over and over. . . . Keep repeating that there was serious voter fraud, and the idea begins to seep into people's heads. Repeat enough times that you were against the war in Iraq, and your actual record on it somehow disappears. . . . Repetition of any kind—even to refute the statement in question—only serves to solidify it.

That's depressing. But Konnikova sneaks in some deterministic premises: Whether a particular individual is susceptible to repeated lies depends on that individual's mental habits. When you hear someone repeatedly stating the same lie, the proper approach is not to listen passively and wonder if the lie is true; it is to remind yourself that it's a lie (assuming you've already checked it out) and that the person stating it is a known liar. When people have the right mindset, repeated lies only have the effect of reinforcing the liar's reputation as a liar. Unfortunately, in all eras there are those who care little for getting to the bottom of things, and that hardly has changed now that many people fancy themselves as living in a "post-fact world."

Then there is the simple overloading of people's capacity to follow important issues. Most people already are (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/11/13/political-ignorance-and-the-election/?utm_term=.edfaaadf1102) woefully ignorant of political matters. Trump multiplies the issues at play, spreading people's attention ever thinner.

For example, the integrity of our election systems is crucially important. But has something happened recently to make it an especially important issue now? Trump's bloviating aside, no—there's no evidence that voter fraud is somehow a special or critical problem now.

I think Trump realizes at some level that he could not get much done if he took on issues one at a time. For example, he pushed the country (further) away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership with hardly any substantive public debate on the matter. If we all had a sustained and serious discussion of Trump's mercantilist economic ideas and policy proposals, most people would realize that those policies are ludicrous (which is not to say the TPP is the best alternative). But I don't expect such a national discussion ever to take place—at least not until and unless we suffer serious and obvious economic harm from anti-trade policies. We'll be too worried about crowd sizes, the weather, wall height, the latest Twitter flame war, phantom voter fraud, and the like.

Screw the Media

When Barack Obama said, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," none but the most self-deluded thought that was anything other than an outright lie (or "truthful hyperbole," as Trump might call it).

I don't recall a New York Times headline calling Obama a liar. But at least every American whose insurance got cancelled—as mine did—knows that Obama lied. And his lie was vastly more consequential than Trump's lie about voter fraud.

When Hillary Clinton initially (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BQGMzmzcd0) blamed the terrorist attack in Benghazi on an internet video, she was lying. At best, her remarks on the subject were willfully misleading half-truths. I don't recall a New York Times headline calling Clinton a liar. (David Harsanyi (http://thefederalist.com/2017/01/26/lets-hold-lying-politicians-accountable/) addresses these and other cases of obvious media double-standards.)

Some journalists can't even cover Trump's remarks about voter fraud truthfully. For example, CNN recently (https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/824327508476751874) Tweeted, "The White House says its probe into voter fraud may not be limited to 2016. There's no evidence of voter fraud."

Really, "no evidence?" Except that in Colorado credible journalists "(http://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/09/22/cbs4-investigation-finds-dead-voters-casting-ballots-in-colorado/) found multiple cases of dead men and women voting in Colorado months and in some cases years after their deaths." Journalists also (http://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/10/25/cbs4-investigation-finds-people-voting-twice/) discovered "voting records [that] show the same people voting twice in Colorado elections."

CNN's lie that there is "no evidence of voter fraud" is just as ridiculous—and just as dangerous—as Trump's lie that voter fraud is rampant.

Trump's supporters—and a lot of people who are not Trump supporters—are sick of the double standards when it comes to exaggerations, lies, and fake news. Someone in the right circles can get away with lying continually if the lies are the accepted sort, and most journalists will ignore, excuse, or downplay the lies. But if you're not part of the right crowd, the media will pounce on your every misstatement and perceived misstatement, even if innocent, trivial, or rationally debatable.

In part, Trump lies arrogantly to signal to his supporters that he's not playing the usual games. Because (goes the attitude) screw the hypocritical, two-faced media and their double standards.

The Bad Boy Image

In the wonderful film Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a man and boy on the run gain celebrity status for their success at evading the authorities. Even Bonnie and Clyde had their cheerleaders. A certain segment of the public seems to be fascinated with people who can get away with stuff in sensational form. A large part of Trump's appeal is that he bucks established norms, brags about it, and gets away with it. His lying is part of that.

The media, like piranhas, will tear apart some candidates if they poke an imperfectly trimmed toe in the water. Trump splashes through the waters like a joyous schoolboy, taunts the piranhas, and, unscathed, laughs about the free pedicure.

In Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky advises,

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. . . . It should be borne in mind that the target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target. . . . Let nothing get you off your target.

Trump discovered that the answer to Alinsky's tactics is to glory in being the target. His lies are, in part, a way of painting the target on his own back—and on his stomach, and on his forehead—in neon-red paint, and shouting, "Bring it on, motherflippers." And Trump's opponents and critics do bring it on and cannot stop themselves from bringing it on.

To run through the usual metaphors, Trump's critics are moths drawn to the flame. Fact-checking Trump is grabbing the tiger by the tail when the tiger also has you grabbed by the you-know-what. Trump is the pig who enjoys wrestling in the mud.

It is true-this is not a fake-news conspiracy theory—that Saul Alinsky praises Lucifer (as a myth) in the introductory text to his book (which is sitting in front of me as I type): "[T]he first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom [is] Lucifer."

Well, now one of Alinsky's acolytes knows someone else who rebelled against the establishment so effectively that he won his own kingdom—she attended his inauguration.

Loyalty Tests?

Tyler Cowen seems to agree with some of my reasoning above in terms of Trump's lies misleading the public, displaying power, and cutting against establishment lies.

Cowen offers another explanation too:

Another reason for promoting lying is what economists sometimes call loyalty filters. If you want to ascertain if someone is truly loyal to you, ask them to do something outrageous or stupid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren't fully with you. That too is a sign of incipient mistrust within the ruling clique, and it is part of the same worldview that leads Trump to rely so heavily on family members.

There might be something to this, but, aside from Trump's appointed flacks, Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, I don't see most of Trump's supporters falling in line behind Trump's lies. I don't think Trump needs the sort of loyalty test that Cowen describes, because he already has a powerful tool against the disloyal: fire them or otherwise cut them out of the power loop. Chris Christie did some spectacular groveling but still lost his seat at the table. So I don't think Trump is quite as conniving as Cowen makes out.

Now that we've run through some of the likely strategic motives for Trump's lies, we should consider the cultural Zeitgeist that made possible Trump's political rise.

The Postmodern President

How should we judge the danger of Trump's lies, and how should we respond to his lies?

Perhaps I'm not quite as disturbed by Trump's lies as others are because I expect many politicians to lie continually—they just usually lie in more sophisticated ways than Trump does. I think Clinton is at least the liar Trump is—certainly her lies are more calculated. So, after the primaries, to my mind it was a foregone conclusion that the president would be a liar; I just had to wait to see which liar would become Liar-in-Chief.

There were those on election night who sobbed hysterically and those who laughed hysterically, and I confess I was in the latter camp—although I also did a lot of nervous sighing. I see Trump as bad but not much worse than the norm—and in some ways not quite as bad as the norm.

Despite his reputation as a rebel, Trump's success is a manifestation of dominant cultural and political trends.

Remember that postmodernism is the normal playground of the political left (identity politics or "(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYpELqKZ02Q) intersectional feminism," anyone?). Trump is playing by the rules laid out by the postmodern left. Consider this passage:

For Trump, language cannot be cognitive because it does not connect to reality, whether to an external nature or an underlying self. Language is not about being aware of the world, or about distinguishing the true from the false, or even about argument in the traditional sense of validity, soundness, and probability. Accordingly, Trump recasts the nature of rhetoric: Rhetoric is persuasion in the absence of cognition.

The passage is from philosopher Stephen Hicks's book Explaining Postmodernism—except I altered the original by replacing "the postmodernist" and "postmodernism" with "Trump."

Trump lies and largely gets away with it, ultimately, because he is part of a culture that rejects facts and the very possibility of discovering facts. (Thankfully that trend represents only part of our culture.)

What can we do about Trump and the broader trends he represents? Ultimately, we need to help foster a reason-oriented philosophical and cultural revolution. That's an ambitious goal and a huge topic.

On a more modest scale, we can insist that truth matters and that it matters for our allies no less than for our enemies; we can offer and demand the relevant context and decry "gotcha" politics based on half-truths, innuendo, and out-of-context comments; we can call a lie a lie and a liar a liar, even if the lie superficially furthers our agenda; we can applaud and promote fact-based, context-sensitive journalism; we can graciously correct honest errors and accept good-faith retractions and corrections.

Long term, we can preserve liberty only by renewing a culture that has a fundamental respect for the facts of reality. Hopefully we can learn to see Trump and his lies as a blaring reminder of that.

The Emerging Reason-Rights Coalition

January 31, 2017

America is in cultural crisis. Powerful elements of left and right have become forces for irrationalism and authoritarianism. But there is hope, for an emerging coalition champions reason and liberty.

We begin with the headlines. Donald Trump's (http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/a-dangerously-isolated-president) unvetted, ready-fire-aim executive order on immigration—which arbitrarily excluded Saudi Arabia and other terror hotspots, left people such as a former (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-prompting-legal-challenges-to-trumps-immigration-order.html) U.S. military interpreter and (http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/01/two_cleveland_clinic_doctors_v_1.html) doctors working in Cleveland temporarily detained at airports, and pointlessly (https://www.propublica.org/article/cleveland-clinic-doctor-forced-to-leave-country-after-trump-order) ejected others from the country—is just one of the troubling developments under the new administration.

In his first few days, Trump also (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/29/512295108/with-national-security-council-shakeup-steve-bannon-gets-a-seat-at-the-table) appointed "(http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/22/steve-bannon-trump-s-top-guy-told-me-he-was-a-leninist.html) bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today's establishment" Steve Bannon to the National Security Council, senselessly provoked Mexico, threatened damaging tariffs, repeated unsubstantiated allegations of "millions" of illegal votes for Hillary Clinton, and fought pointlessly with media over crowd sizes.

Trump's actions as president, of course, come on the heels of candidate Trump (http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/13/technology/donald-trump-jeff-bezos-amazon/) threatening to go after Jeff Bezos and Amazon with tax and antitrust actions, threatening to change the law to enable him to (http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/02/donald-trump-libel-laws-219866) sue media outlets that publish articles about him that he deems "negative and horrible and false," (http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-ted-cruz-jfk-assassination-226020) suggesting that Ted Cruz's father helped assassinate JFK, and so on.

It would be unfair to call Trump a loose cannon—unfair to loose cannons because they at least can potentially be remoored.

I am frightened for the future of our country—not only because Trump is a dangerously arrogant and dishonest buffoon, but because of the political forces that gave rise to his presidency. Those forces include ones on the left that gave us the disastrously flawed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her pro-censorship, identity-politics, entitlement-expanding platform.

If there is a silver lining to Trump's political success, it is that it has prompted many people to evaluate their political beliefs and alliances at a more fundamental level.

Many on the left have recoiled from the "regressive left" with its antipathy to free speech, rejection of open debate and even of universal truths, and obsession with skin color and gender.

Meanwhile, many on the right have recoiled from the "alt-right" with its racism, scapegoating of outsiders, and rejection of global free trade. Notably, the views of these worst elements of left and right frequently converge.

Thankfully, a nascent coalition is emerging to counter the disturbing trends, a group I'll dub the Reason-Rights Coalition. We could also call it the Liberal Coalition if we look more to the classical ideal of (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-origin-of-liberalism/283780/) liberalism as first advocated by Adam Smith and fellow travelers. The people who most naturally fit in this group share some key political beliefs and also some broader beliefs about knowledge and the basic requirements for civil society.

Who are the people and groups aligned with this new coalition and arguably already informally a part of it? I'll mention some of the key players.

Obviously people within this emerging coalition often disagree with each other on points of philosophy and matters of economic and foreign policy. Some may even bristle at the suggestion that they're natural allies with others on my list. I'll note that the coalition I describe could work toward the same goals even if its members do not recognize themselves as part of a formal coalition.

Despite the differences among members of these factions, they share many important values. I'll outline the main ones.

Reason and a Reality Orientation

Those in (or potentially in) the Reason-Rights Coalition seek knowledge through evidence-based logic, not through faith in an alleged supernatural being, a "truth" dependent on bloodlines or group identity, or the narcissistic dissembling of Trump or some other demagogue.

In our age in which we're supposed to somehow divine the president's serious intentions without ever taking him literally, the reason-rights crowd insists that people say what they mean unambiguously and offer reasons (as opposed to "alternative facts") for saying it.

In a sane world, we wouldn't have to take seriously anyone who habitually misstates the facts and stretches the truth—because such a person never would gain political power. Such is not the world in which we currently live—but it could be and should be.

The basic orientation among people in this emerging coalition is toward reality, not some alternative plane of existence or subjective feelings.

Obviously in our era of "fake news" this group regards fact-based, context-sensitive journalism as tremendously important.

A Pro-Human Focus

Not everyone is concerned primarily (or even at all) with the flourishing of human beings. Certain strains of environmentalism regard humanity as a blight on the planet. Certain strains of religion—including totalitarian Islam—regard people as properly subjugated to God's will as interpreted by his select followers; flourishing in terms of happiness and material progress are beside the point. Certain philosophies regard the state or the collective as the moral primary to which individuals and their happiness properly are sacrificed.

The Reason-Rights Coalition puts human beings and their lives, happiness, and general well-being front and center.

Of course there are many disagreements about what human flourishing demands. For example, some say that human-caused global warming will lead to catastrophe and that intensive regulations and subsidies are needed to head off the problem. Others think that global warming is "(http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/10/19/climate-change-presidential-debate-fossil-fuels-editorials-debates/92386846/) mild and manageable" and that government ought not restrict fossil fuels. This is an important debate, but within the orientation I'm discussing the underlying standard is human flourishing. So, for example, Joshua Goldstein and Steven Pinker (https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/23/inconvenient-truths-for-environmental-movement/esDloe97894keW16Ywa9MP/story.html) call for the use of nuclear power to meet people's energy needs.

Freedom of Speech

In terms of policy, freedom of speech is a fundamental value for reason-rights folks. This reflects the underlying commitment to human reason, which we express in a social context through speech. Although people often are biased, we are capable of rational discourse; we are capable of changing our minds and of persuading others in light of the facts and logical argument. Although many people speak dishonestly and irrationally, forcible restrictions on anyone's speech threaten everyone's speech.

Notice that elements of left and right routinely attack freedom of speech—although in recent years the left has been the worse offender by far. Not only does today's campus left often want to "deplatform" speakers, but the left broadly wants to implement censorship of political speech—including books and films—via campaign finance laws. Indeed, such was Hillary Clinton's signature issue, at least regarding the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, support for such censorship is today so widespread on the left that even some people whom I'd usually regard as reason-rights allies probably favor it. But I see that as an aberration (hopefully correctable) stemming from their oversight of the relevant facts.

Generally, the people in the Reason-Rights Coalition staunchly uphold freedom of speech when that freedom is threatened by hate-speech laws, blasphemy laws, and the like. Freedom of speech, reason-rights supporters recognize, is fundamental to human liberty.

The Separation of Church and State

Members of the Reason-Rights Coalition need not be atheists, of course, but they must be secularists in the sense that they advocate secular institutions that guarantee freedom of religious worship and freedom of conscience generally. The institution of sectarian beliefs by government force is out.

Here a main point of disagreement is over whether government should punish religiously motivated business owners who refuse service to gay couples or others. I think it shouldn't—but I'm willing to work toward common goals with people who, in my view, are wrong about this.

* * *

I don't know whether the Reason-Rights Coalition ever will be formally organized. But I do think that the coalition is already informally in place, and I think it is an immensely important cultural force to challenge both the regressive left and the Trumpian right. Giving this nascent coalition a name and actively promoting it hopefully will make it stronger.

I realize that not everyone whom I consider to be (informally) part of this coalition will recognize all the others as allies. That's fine; I don't need someone else to recognize me as an ally in order for me to promote that person's work that furthers my values. Although I hope to see more self-conscious coordination among people I count as part of the Reason-Rights Coalition, such coordination isn't necessary for the coalition to exist and to advance shared values.

I also realize that the various parties, however aligned they may be in achieving certain goals, will continue to have serious disagreements. As examples, I think Sam Harris works some collectivist premises into his moral thinking that ultimately clash with human liberty, and I think most libertarians are dangerously morally agnostic and hostile to government as such. Still, someone can be largely or essentially oriented to reason and human flourishing and be wrong about some important philosophic and political matters, and I think that's the case with Harris and with many libertarians (and with others on my list). I see sufficient agreement to jointly address the cultural crisis of our time, and we can continue to discuss our differences going into the future.

As Harris and others have recognized, the regressive left unwittingly helps to prop up the alt-right and now the Trump presidency. Standing against the irrationalism and authoritarianism of the regressive left and the Trumpian right is the Reason-Rights Coalition.

Note: An exchange between John Clinch and Ari Armstrong on this issue has been moved to a new article, "(http://www.freedomoutlook.com/can-capitalists-and-leftists-find-common-liberal-ground/) Can Capitalists and Leftists Find Common Liberal Ground?"

A Pro-Reason Movement

Just a tremendously great essay. It's so important to understand that there is actually a pro-reason movement and there several strong voices who need to be heard louder!

—Carl Morano

Origins of Liberalism

I thought that the political and philosophical principles of classical ideal of liberalism were first developed by John Locke (1632—1704) through many of his works such as The Two Treatises of Civil Government, Essays concerning Human Understanding, and Letters Concerning Toleration, before its economic principles were developed and advocated by Adam Smith (1723—1790) through An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

—K. Nandagopal

Ari Armstrong replies: Undisputedly John Locke was a key figure in formulating the principles of liberalism. But (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-origin-of-liberalism/283780/) Daniel Klein's point is that liberalism as a movement (and called such) came into its own during the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly with Adam Smith and his allies.

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Johan Norberg Celebrates Human Progress

February 9, 2017

Are things generally getting better or worse? We routinely hear that the environment is going to hell, that inequality is damaging people's lives, that the next disaster is just around the bend. But does such doom-and-gloom handwringing have any connection to reality?

In his latest book Progress (Oneworld 2016), Johan Norberg discusses ten key ways in which the human condition has gotten spectacularly better.

Norberg introduces his book by noting that many people have been taken in by fearmongering despite the fact that, in crucial ways, we are living in the best times of human history. Norberg quickly recounts some of the main indicators: global real wealth per capita has grown dramatically, life expectancy is up, infant mortality is down, risks of dying in war or natural disaster are down.

Norberg offers a wonderful summary of the causes:

This progress started with the intellectual Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when we began to examine the world with the tools of empiricism, rather than being content with authorities, traditions and superstitions. Its political corollary, classical liberalism, began to liberate people from the shackles of heredity, authoritarianism and serfdom. Following hot on its heels was the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, when the industrial power at our disposal multiplied, and we began to conquer poverty and hunger. These successive revolutions were enough to liberate a large part of humanity from the harsh living conditions it had always lived under. With late twentieth-century globalization, as these technologies and freedoms began to spread to the rest of the world, this was repeated on a larger scale and at a faster pace than ever before. (p. 4)

But, Norberg warns, we should not take this progress for granted. It is not, as some presume, automatic or guaranteed. It could be undermined, not only by "terrorists and dictators," Norberg writes, but by "widespread resentment against globalization and the modern economy." Although Norberg does not name Donald Trump, obviously he is talking in part about him and his "alt-right" supporters as well as about the anticapitalist left.

I'll quickly run through Norberg's ten chapters, each of which focuses on a particular area of human progress.

Food

Norberg begins his first chapter with a discussion of the famines that were the norm prior to the Industrial Revolution. This makes for grim and difficult reading—but it is useful to set the context.

How did most of humanity turn the corner from perpetual hunger to abundant food? A big piece of the puzzle was artificial fertilizer, Norberg explains: "A colleague [of Fritz Haber], Carl Bosch, carried out of 20,000 experiments in over twenty reactors before he came up with the right process to synthesize ammonia on an industrial scale. The Haber-Bosch process made artificial fertilizer cheap and abudant. . . ." (p. 14) Of course mechanized farm equipment and the like also contributed, Norberg notes.

But the proven ability of people free to act on the judgment of their reasoning minds to create wealth did not stop the doomsdayers, Norberg points out. In the 1960s, various writers, including Paul Ehrlich, predicted imminent widespread famine. Of course his predictions never came true.

Norberg also tells the story (in brief) of Norman Borlaug, who, with his improved farming methods and wheat hybrids, helped Mexican farmers expand their yield by six fold from 1944 to 1963 (p. 18). Then Borlaug brought his technologies to India and Pakistan, also with astounding success.

Norberg is hardly blind to the costs of progress. For example, agricultural improvements also brought some problems of water allocation and "nitrate pollution of water bodies," he writes (p. 22). But, on the whole, Norberg argues, the benefits of improved agriculture monumentally outweigh the costs.

Norberg ends his chapter with a discussion of the famines caused by repressive Communist regimes. He ends on a hopeful note by describing how a village of Chinese farmers started a political revolution of private farming that soon spread throughout the nation.

Sanitation

Before modern water and sewer systems, life could be described by a single word: filthy. Norberg reviews in grim detail what life was like throughout much of the world, including Europe, when open sewage and diseased water were considered normal.

Norberg then tracks the major developments that led to clean and safe water: sewage systems, trash collection, and water filtration and chlorination. Because water no longer spread disease, Norberg notes, many fewer people (especially children) died from disease.

But not all the peoples of the world enjoy good sanitation yet, Norberg notes. He describes his trip to a slum in Kibera, Nairobi, where people defecated in bags and simply threw the bags "as far from their home as possible" (p. 39). But even in such places things are improving, Norberg closes.

Life Expectancy

Besides inadequate food and bad sanitation, things such as poor housing and rats also contributed to the spread of disease. In his third chapter, Norberg reviews the horrifying history of the plague and other diseases. Life was brutally hard for most of human history, and as a consequence life expectancy topped out at around thirty-five years (p. 44).

But finally innovative people started to turn things around. Here is an extraordinary statistic: According to the Max Planck Institute, "the bulk of humanity's mortality reduction has been experienced by only the last four of the roughly 8,000 generations of homo sapiens" (p. 45), Norberg writes. Today, people on average live to over seventy (p. 46).

Advances in medical sciences have spared countless people from early death. Norberg spends much of the rest of this chapter reviewing the major breakthroughs, extending from the germ theory of disease to vaccinations, pasteurization, antibiotics, and more.

Have you ever heard of Maurice Hilleman? I confess the name was not familiar to me. Yet, as Norberg points out, by creating numerous vaccines, including the measles vaccine, Hilleman is among "the people responsible for saving the most lives in history" (p. 54).

It is true, Norberg points out, that we may yet see more pandemics. However, we have better technology than ever before to fight infectious disease. Norberg notes that, after the H1N1 flu virus appeared in 2009, almost immediately "the full H1N1 virus genome was published online, for the whole world to use" (p. 59).

Poverty

"Poverty is what you have until you create wealth," Norberg notes (p. 63). For most of human civilization almost all human beings were desperately poor. Norberg writes bluntly, "Despite a few ups and downs, humanity had experienced almost no economic development until the early nineteenth century" (p. 64).

Many people today probably would be surprised that alleviating poverty was not always seen by various intellectuals as a possible or even a desirable goal. Mercantilist doctrines pervasive prior to the age of Adam Smith, Norberg writes, held that "only low wages could reduce the cost of production so that a country would remain competitive" (p. 66). Adam Smith and his allies destroyed—intellectually, at least—those and other mercantilist fallacies.

Because of capital formation in England—the building of steam engines and other machines—people in England created vastly more wealth and thereby increased people's earnings. "Between 1820 and 1850, when the population grew by a third, workers' real earnings rose by almost 100 per cent," Norberg writes (p. 66).

While reading Norberg's review I couldn't help but think of today's senseless hand-wringing about machines "taking our jobs." Enabling people to create more wealth in less time, thereby freeing up their time for new endeavors, hardly is a bad thing (despite possible transition troubles).

The economic progress that largely began in England soon led to a Great Ascent from poverty to prosperity, as Norberg calls it (following publications of the United Nations). After India and Asia substantially freed their economies, they too joined the Great Ascent. "Since 1950, India's GDP per capita has grown five-fold, Japan's eleven-fold and China's almost twenty-fold," Norberg writes (p. 68). What many people now regard as ordinary is, in fact, extraordinary.

But we oughtn't get so caught in the statistics that we forget that behind the numbers are real individuals. Norberg tells the story of him meeting a "dalit," or "untouchable" person, in India, Madhusudan Rao (pp. 72—73). In previous eras Rao would have been condemned to a life of horrid poverty and misery. But in partially liberalized India, Rao was able to begin a career organizing people to dig cable trenches. Eventually he formed a large construction company. He said, "When I'm hiring employees, I am not seeing any caste. I'm seeing if they're talented." That is the power of free markets.

None of this is to say that everything everywhere is great. Norberg notes that "more than 700 million people still live in extreme poverty" (pp. 80—81). Yet, for the first time in human history, if economies continue to liberalize and governments stabilize, the end of extreme poverty worldwide is now in sight.

Violence

Why do many people think that violence generally is on the rise, even though it is falling? Norberg offers a psychological explanation: People tend to recall memorable cases of violence—often from news headlines—and ignore or downplay trends of falling violence.

Drawing on the work of Steven Pinker, Norberg summarizes, "War and violence used to be the natural state of humanity" (p. 83). But in the modern era violence on net is down dramatically—and that goes both for private and state-sanctioned violence. That nearly all modern readers will regard with horror Norberg's account of past barbarism attests to the profound changes in attitudes in modern times.

Norberg offers a brief account of the causes of reduced violence, including the rise of state governments, the implementation of the rule of law and democratic institutions, the spread of trade, the growing embrace of "moral individualism" (p. 92) and humanism, and the development of media that better revealed the horrors of war.

Those unfamiliar with Pinker's work may be wondering: What about the genocides and world wars of the Twentieth Century? Was that bloodshed not the worst in human history? Norberg encourages us to look at violence relative to population sizes; then previous atrocities look even worse by comparison. For example, "The Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur Lenk . . . killed proportionally almost as many as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined when he ravaged Central Asia and Persia in the fourteenth century" (p. 95).

So, although Mao Zedong is history's (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/03/giving-historys-greatest-mass-murderer-his-due/) worst mass murderer in terms of total number of victims, others outdid him in terms of fraction of population slaughtered. The point is not to diminish the atrocities of the Twentieth Century, but rather to indicate that even given those atrocities violence per capita has declined overall relative to earlier eras.

Norberg offers an excellent discussion of the trends, but he is not blind to the possibility that the future will not necessarily follow the past. Norberg briefly discusses the possibilities of clashes between China and the United States, between Russia and other parts of Europe (as we've already seen in Ukraine), between India and Pakistan, between North Korea and whoever it can reach with missiles. As he notes, "nuclear proliferation means that the world is always at risk" (p. 104). Still, we have good reason to remain optimistic.

One trend that Norberg does not much discuss is the rise of racial nationalism, which in important ways has (ironically) become an international movement. As (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/380614/dugins-evil-theology-robert-zubrin) Robert Zubrin discusses, Alexander Dugin leads an explicitly anti-liberal, racial separatist-nationalist movement in Russia, one combined with mystical ideas about bringing about the end of the world. And Dugin's influence is not limited to Russia, where he whispers in the ear of Vladimir Putin; he is among the "intellectuals" influential among America's "alt-right." Of course Russia and the United States control almost all of the (https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat) nuclear warheads on the planet, so the more those countries' leaders fall under the spell of racial nationalism, the greater the threat of nuclear annihilation becomes.

That major caveat aside, Norberg offers an excellent and generally hopeful assessment of trends in violence.

The Environment

Industrialization did not come without costs, Norberg notes, and among the costs was horrid pollution of urban centers and waterways well into the past century. But pollution did not continue to worsen, as doomsdayers predicted. "There are still huge environmental problems," Norberg writes, "but if you look at the developed world today, it looks nothing like the scenarios envisioned in the 1960s and 1970s" (p. 110). Instead, most types of pollution have declined.

Of course carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, and Norberg addresses the resulting issue of global warming. Here too Norberg sees cause for optimism. For example, even as total levels of carbon dioxide have increased, deaths from natural disasters (per capita) have declined dramatically (p. 122). Norberg predicts that continued economic development will make it easier for us to address problems of all types, including problems of global warming:

If annual global economic growth remains around two percent per head, the average person in 100 years' time will be around eight times richer than today's average person. With those resources, the level of scientific knowledge, and the technological solutions that may then be at our disposal, many of the problems that intimidate us today will be much easier to handle—from adapting to warming to taking CO2 out of the atmosphere. (pp. 122—123)

I have to take issue with Norberg's appeal for a "revenue-neutral carbon tax" (p. 124). Even presuming government should take action to limit carbon dioxide emissions—a debatable and complex presumption—a carbon tax is not the way to go. For one thing, the idea of a "revenue-neutral" tax is a fantasy. Once politicians discover that they have a new revenue stream, they will continually seek to use it to increase net taxes. A carbon tax is like handing an alcoholic a bottle of vodka to go with his whisky so long as he promises to completely offset his whisky consumption with vodka. Ain't gunna happen. Another problem is that a carbon tax would have little to no relationship to the costs and benefits of switching to other types of fuel. Something like tradable credits would be much more likely to get the incentives right.

What about regulations more generally? Norberg argues that in certain contexts environmental regulations have solved certain problems, such as the harms of ozone-depleting chemicals (p. 111). (Norberg avoids complicated discussion of when and how government should intervene in difficult cases of pollution, and I won't enter that debate here.) But he is also careful to point out that ill-conceived environmental regulations can make people worse off, not better.

Norberg devotes the end of this chapter to a discussion of exciting technological developments in nuclear energy, biofuel, solar energy, smart grids, and more. He ends optimistically: "The problem at the heart of global warming—our thirst for energy—is, in fact, also the solution."

Literacy

This is truly shocking (in a good way): From 1900 to 2015, global literacy increased from 21 percent of the population to 86 percent (p. 133). That's just astonishing.

Norberg spends this chapter describing some of the many benefits of this vastly expanded literacy. For one thing, literacy connects people like never before: "People follow news on the internet and walk around with mobile phones, and see themselves as part of a bigger world" (p. 129).

Freedom

Norberg begins his eighth chapter with a grim history of global slavery and its brutality. Thankfully, with the Enlightenment, antislavery ideas spread, slowly leading to abolition. Norberg's brief history of these events is riveting, with just enough detail to bring life to the major stories, including the clash over slavery within the United States. For example, he quotes a Southerner who raged against the "doctrines of natural liberty" of John Locke and others (p. 147).

Norberg also discusses "the broader emancipation of humanity" from unlimited state power and the whims of rulers (p. 149). Although the spread of totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century threatened (broadly) democratic institutions, eventually those forces largely gave way to broader trends toward greater individual liberty, Norberg reviews.

Democracy is not an end in itself, Norberg helpfully reminds us, nor does it everywhere foster individual liberty. Democracy "has to be combined with the rule of law, rights for minorities and strong civil institutions" if it is to be a force for good (p. 157).

Equality

Norberg's chapter on equality was not what I expected. I thought he'd take on today's popular topic of income inequality. Instead, he focuses on equality under the law and the battle against prejudice, with sections on ethnic minorities, women's rights, and gay rights. To my mind, Norberg emphasizes what really matters, so I found his take a refreshing change of pace. However, I suspect that some readers of his book will be left wondering whether income inequality really is the problem that so many people say it is. (For an excellent discussion of income inequality, see Equal is Unfair by Don Watkins and Yaron Brook, which I've (http://ariarmstrong.com/2016/03/watkins-and-brook-return-with-book-challenging-inequality-narrative/) reviewed.)

Norberg begins the chapter with a discussion of racial oppression and the movement to overcome it, with an emphasis on America. One of his main themes is that "behind increased tolerance are open markets and rising affluence" (p. 165). Once people no longer are desperately poor, they tend to pay more attention to other values, including political equality. Norberg (quoting other researchers) notes that, globally, "official discrimination" has declined (p. 170).

Norberg has an amazing ability to bring alive major aspects of history in a few short paragraphs; in about a page he describes in horrific detail the degree to which women historically were oppressed by men nearly everywhere. Then, in a few more pages, he describes the Enlightenment project of securing equal rights for women. Of course much work remains to be done in this area, Norberg indicates, particularly in certain parts of the globe.

Norberg does an excellent job of bringing in statistics to illustrate historical changes. As a striking example, Norberg notes that, in 1987 America, only half the population thought it's "always wrong for a man to strike his wife with a belt or a stick" (p. 180). Living in 2017, I found that statistic so unbelievable that I had to check into it a bit; it seems to hold up (Norberg cites Steven Pinker, who in turn cites a (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047235200000337) journal article). Attitudes can change quickly, as they did in this case: By 1997, 86 percent were against such beatings.

Norberg similarly offers a succinct history of oppression of homosexuals and the advance of gay rights. Again, in 2017, when gay marriage is now the norm in the United States and in many other countries, it is shocking to think of how governments and the public at large treated homosexuals decades and centuries ago.

The Next Generation

A key marker of the improved lives of children is that they can mostly study and play rather than work backbreaking jobs. The Industrial Revolution did not create child labor, Norberg shows. Rather, intensive child labor was the norm throughout most of human history, and it was only because of the increased wealth made possible by the Industrial Revolution that the practice began to end.

Norberg reviews evidence indicating that regulations followed rather than drove trends of lower child labor and that, as families became more wealthy, they voluntarily stopped sending their children to work (pp. 193—195). Although Norberg does not put to rest the debate over the usefulness of regulations in this area, he firmly establishes that the essential cause of better childhoods is wealth creation.

In many other ways the lives of young people (and older people) are improving. I was particularly struck by one of Norberg's observations about humankind's advance:

Soon three billion people around the world will own a smartphone. That is three billion people who each have more computer power in their pocket than the super computers of the 1960s had, with instant communication and access to all the world's knowledge. (p. 200)

* * *

Norberg ends with an epilogue about why many people are so resistant to believing the world on net has become a remarkably better place for people to live. Norberg points to surveys in which people routinely say the world is getting worse in ways that it is actually getting better (p. 206). He spends a few pages discussing some of reasons why people tend to be so pessimistic.

I appreciate the fact that Norberg is in no sense an historical determinist. He does not see historical trends as forces beyond the control of individual people. People make history as much as history makes people. So people can block and destroy progress or they can advance it. Norberg ends (p. 218), "If progress is to continue, you and I will have to carry the torch." An excellent way to carry the torch a few more steps would be to buy copies of Norberg's book and distribute them to your friends. Progress is a gift—and an opportunity.

Can Capitalists and Leftists Find Common Liberal Ground?

February 13, 2017

Recently I wondered if a rag-tag and informal "(http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/01/the-emerging-reason-rights-coalition/) Reason-Rights Coalition”—made up of assorted atheists, skeptics, religious secularists, Objectivists, libertarians, and civil libertarians—could jointly support a culture of reason (in an era of fake news and "alternative facts"), a pro-human orientation, freedom of speech, secular institutions, and related values.

I continue to think that this nascent coalition already exists, albeit informally, and advances various shared values. I hope that drawing attention to it will encourage people in it (or potentially in it) to promote each others' relevant work and to open up new lines of discussion with each other. Put simply, we need each other in this dangerous era, and we can learn from each other.

Of course the philosophic and political differences among the different factions will make difficult or impossible anything other than narrowly focussed coalition work. But we don't have to sanction ideas we disagree with to share someone's helpful article on social media, speak at public forums together, go to events and rallies together, draw attention to relevant legislation and cultural events, join discussion groups, and so on.

They say politics creates strange bedfellows, and we live in particularly strange political times.

Still, is it too much to hope that these people with some very different beliefs can find common values and collaborate to advance them? I think such hope is warranted.

Consider my differences with Sam Harris. I think that Harris's denial that the self ultimately exists (and hence his denial of a willing self), and his collectivist moral presumptions, do, logically, ultimately undermine his goals of promoting reason and human flourishing. But I don't think those flaws "bleed through" his entire belief system. To my mind, there is no one better at demolishing the relativism of the left and the irrationalism of theocrats. And Harris is a consistent champion of the right to freedom of speech. So, for those reasons, I consider Harris part of the Reason-Rights Coalition (whether or not he sees himself as part of it), and I merrily promote his work when it furthers values that I share.

Some of the most heated debates between the factions at hand are over politics. In my experience, atheists and skeptics come in two main political stripes: capitalists and leftists. On the capitalist side (where I sit) are many libertarians, the Objectivists (Ayn Rand devotees), and some skeptics (Michael Shermer has some libertarian leanings although he's moved leftward in recent years). Atheists predominantly are leftists—partly as a vestige of the association of Marxism with atheism. I recall going to an "atheist" event around Denver some years back, and the conversation focused almost exclusively on leftist politics.

There is a lot of animosity between many members of these two camps, to be sure. My guess is that most atheists react with some combination of dread and loathing at the mention of (atheist) Ayn Rand. Some of this is due to misunderstanding—the caricature of Rand often portrayed in the media bears little resemblance to the woman—and some is due to a rejection of Rand's unabashed free-market capitalism. And the capitalists likewise oppose and often despise at least aspects of the regulatory-welfare state.

My goal here not to resolve those differences. Rather, my goal is to point out that the capitalists and the leftists under consideration, whatever their disagreements, still (usually) have some important beliefs and values in common.

Consider a few examples. Although free speech is under assault today primarily by a subset of the left (sometimes called the "regressive left" today), many leftists—the ones I see as part of a Reason-Rights Coalition—continue to steadfastly advocate freedom of speech. People of very different political views can agree that fake news is a genuine danger and that a president who perpetually lies and stretches facts is a problem. People for and against welfare (or this or that welfare program) can still agree on the underlying importance of human flourishing. We can all oppose racism. We can all speak out against human rights abuses, including the atrocities routinely committed by various Islamic regimes against homosexuals, women, and apostates.

I realize that some people just are not going to believe that members of the factions I describe have anything in common. For example, some advocates of the welfare state will refuse to believe that critics of it can be motivated by anything other than malevolence—and vice versa. All I can say about this is that we can either spend our time impugning people's motives regardless of what the evidence shows, or we can spend our time fighting for our values and working with others wherever feasible toward that end. We can live in and for our own echo-chambers, or we can seriously seek to make the world a better place.

I happily admit that I have an ulterior motive here. I'm serious about wanting to spur on the coalition I describe; secondarily, I want to generate more opportunities to persuade rational leftists to become free-market capitalists (or at least friendlier to capitalism). At the same time, I welcome the efforts of leftists to try to convert me to a belief in the merits of the regulatory-welfare state. Of course, there is already much common ground here; for example, today most people on the left acknowledge the huge benefits of international free trade (or substantially free trade)—whereas certain leftists and the Trump wing of the Republican Party usually oppose free trade. I already have more in common with many Democrats even on economic issues than I do with many supporters of Trump.

As an example of a (hopefully) useful dialogue between a capitalist and a leftist who otherwise agree on some crucial issues, I offer an exchange between me and a fellow from the United Kingdom, John Clinch. Our exchange began as a set of comments beneath my article "(http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/01/the-emerging-reason-rights-coalition/) The Emerging Reason-Rights Coalition;" I thought its length and contents merited more focused attention.

Clinch: Make Room for Social Liberals

This idea for a Reason-Rights Coalition is like a breath of fresh air in this fetid and illiberal world.

This is plainly a response to developments particularly pronounced in the U.S. right now: The contemporary figures referred to here are American. I write from the UK (home of the more ancient figures referred to) to express hope that this nascent movement is overtly internationalist since this is right in principle and good in practice. We must find common cause across borders.

I know Sam has said that we should embrace points of difference and, over policy, that must be so. My quibble lies in the political tone. Whilst all liberals can unite on the undoubted benefits of free trade, a rallying cry of "smaller government" as an ideological starting point is going to repel many. Liberalism—the extension of freedom—may well be achieved by a shrinking state. But it might also be achieved by judicious intervention in the economy to help spread wealth—and hence greater freedom to act—around. Leave some room for social liberals like me, please!

Armstrong: Look for Common Ground

There are a number of important points in your comments; I'll try to address them briefly.

First, I very much hope that the themes I discuss become more prominent internationally. My list is American-oriented partly because I'm more familiar with American figures (we also have strong classical liberal traditions). But I'd definitely include people such as England's Matt Ridley and Sweden's Johan Norberg on my list; I'm sure there are many more informally part of the coalition I describe.

Ironically, racial nationalism has become an international movement, so the movement to defeat it and to defend reason and rights also must be international. I do not wish to understate our political differences; at the same time, I do not wish to miss opportunities to collaborate with people toward shared goals.

Frankly, from where I sit it seems like classical liberals have had a harder time getting a seat at the table.

I too dislike the phrase "limited government"—my aim is rights-respecting government. My position is that the forced transfer of wealth violates rights. But I recognize that is a very difficult discussion and that my view is not the typical one today.

I'm happy to have discussions about such things, but at the same time I think "we" need to recognize that cultural forces are at work that would undermine the very foundations of liberal governance broadly understood. The debate over the welfare state hardly matters if we succumb to tyrannies that erode freedom of speech and broadly republican government.

In short, I will be happy to be your political opponent at the relevant times, but I also hope we can work strategically toward shared values and aims. In the process, I hope that we can open new channels of communication among people generally oriented to reason and human flourishing.

Clinch: Unite against NeoFascism

Thank you, Ari, for that considered response.

It probably won't be helpful to explore our (largely supposed) differences but I will say that any new organisation calling itself "Freedom Outlook" with a pronounced focus on market freedoms and an ideological aversion to taxation will be written off by many centrist liberals, imagining it to be just another Right-wing pressure group.

This would be a strategic error, IMHO. Many liberals hold the view that the rise of nativism and unreason is a delayed reaction to the financial crash—laissez-faire economics enjoyed its apogee in the years up to 2008, followed by socialism for the rich. Who are still rich. The system failed—ergo, throw out the system.

All freedom lovers now face the common enemy of neo-fascism. We can unite around plenty: in opposition to its contempt for facts and reason and science, its anti-intellectualism and demagoguery. We can also (presumably) unite against its hatred of free trade and free movement of peoples. But we will never cohere as a group if the dominant view is, say, that the Scandinavian countries violate the rights of their citizens by taxing them too much. Given a Rawlsian choice, I'd plump for Denmark any day. It's not egalitarianism: Social liberals are liberals, of course, not communists. And at least they recognise what got us into this horrible mess in the first place.

Armstrong: It's Okay to Disagree Sometimes

I never intended my web page Freedom Outlook to become the center of a broad Reason-Rights Coalition; that's just not the purpose of the page. I'm happy to be part of that coalition and to use my page to promote it. But I realize that most people whom I regard as part of this coalition will not share most of my political views.

I hope people don't write me off as a "Right-wing pressure group," especially given that I don't consider myself part of the right (or the left), that I'm not a group, and that I focus on writing articles rather than influencing politicians. I'm trying hard to reach out to people with different political views, and I hope others are willing to do the same.

Incidentally, I don't consider myself a conservative, either. Rather, I identify as a liberal, as that term was "classically" understood. Those interested in my views are welcome to read my essay "(http://amzn.to/2dxpvc9) Reclaiming Liberalism."

I will add here that I do claim that genuine liberalism just is free-market liberalism and that statist "liberalism" is not fully liberal. Bluntly, I think that taking people's stuff by force and controlling aspects of their lives by bureaucratic fiat are illiberal policies.

At the same time, I recognize that Rawlsian leftists think their views represent the truest form of liberalism and see my basic political orientation is largely illiberal. I'm not trying to resolve that dispute here. I do want to emphasize that we are both liberals in the broadest sense of that term, and we shouldn't let our disagreements totally overshadow our many shared values.

I will say a few words about your remarks about the rise of neofascism. I don't think that short-range economic policies played much role in that. Instead, I see neofascism as an ideologically driven, international movement, with roots far older and deeper than the mortgage meltdown. And I see today's "alt-right" as feeding off of the postmodern left—both of those groups at some level reject objectivity as such and also reject economic progress as an important value.

Beyond that, I do not think that "laissez-faire" policies created the mortgage meltdown. Rather, I see statist policies—including easy-money actions by our Federal Reserve and political promotion of risky mortgages—as mostly to blame. On the topic I suggest people such as Johan Norberg and Thomas Sowell. (Also, Jeffrey Friedman (http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14917.html) coauthored a book on the financial crisis that I haven't read but that I'd put on my list if I wanted to explore the issue in greater depth.) Of course, as a free-market advocate, I oppose corporate bailouts and subsidies.

Obviously we're not going to settle a debate over the financial crisis in a brief exchange. I do want to gently suggest that charitable treatment of potential allies can promote fruitful collaborations. I'll try to do better in that regard.

Here are some important beliefs that I'm confident we share. Respect for reason and the facts matters. Our goal is to promote human flourishing. The right to freedom of speech is fundamental to liberty. Government should be organized by broadly liberal principles, including the rule of law, the separation of church and state, democratic-republican distribution of power, and protection of the rights of members of minorities. Civil discourse is essential to preserving civil society.

I'd say that's quite a lot.

Free Speech for Milo

February 21, 2017

I'll begin by stating what should be—but is no longer—obvious in modern America: Milo Yiannopoulos has an absolute right to freedom of speech. He has a moral right to say whatever he wants within the boundaries of that right, despite the fact that what he says often is morally wrong.

It is also obvious that Yiannopoulos is a despicable human being who, in a rational world, would have no audience. But in our world the racial-nationalist "alt-right" movement has given him a prominent platform, and the regressive left, by seeking to silence him, has made necessary a vocal defense of his rights. So I write about Yiannopoulos while loathing those who cheered him on and those who gave him claim to victim status.

I defend Yiannopoulos's right to freedom of speech even as I recognize that he is a nihilistic provocateur who (http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/) apologizes for racists, publishes (http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/15/heres-why-there-ought-to-be-a-cap-on-women-studying-science-and-maths/) openly sexist rants, (http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/12/milo-yiannopoulos-harassed-a-trans-student-at-uw-milwaukee.html) bullies people, (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/ben-shapiros-messy-breakup-with-breitbart.html) mocks others for their skin color, and revels in living in an allegedly "(https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-america-divided/milo-yiannopoulos/) post-fact era" (a phrase that confuses facts with people's acceptance of facts).

But despicable people have a right to freedom of speech too. The entire point of the principle of free speech is to protect unpopular and offensive speech too. Even outright fascists and totalitarian jihadists defend the "right" to say what they already believe.

Although I have no interest in inviting Yiannopoulos to speak at an event or listening to him speak (I read his material only to learn the nature of his views), certainly I have an interest in defending his right to speak to those who wish to hear him. Everyone who loves liberty has such an interest.

The Violence at Berkeley

Clearly Yiannopoulos's freedom of speech was violated by violent thugs who shut down his planned February 1 appearance at the University of California, Berkeley.

I take the (http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/02/01/yiannopoulos-event-canceled/) university at its word that "about 150 masked agitators" came onto campus and violently shut down the event that the university tried to keep safe:

UC Berkeley officials and UCPD went to extraordinary lengths to plan for this event, working closely with the Berkeley College Republicans [who invited Yiannopoulos] and putting the appropriate resources in place to maintain security. Officials were in contact with other university campuses where Yiannopoulos had been asked to speak, and they paid close attention to lessons learned. Dozens of additional police officers were on duty for Wednesday's scheduled event, and multiple methods of crowd control were in place. Ultimately, and unfortunately, however, it was impossible to maintain order given the level of threat, disruption and organized violence.

Campus officials added that they regret that the threats and unlawful actions of a few have interfered with the exercise of First Amendment rights on a campus that is proud of its history and legacy as the home of the Free Speech Movement.

It is an (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/02/08/uc-berkeley-police-defend-hands-off-approach-to-riot-over-speaker.html) open question whether the police officers charged with establishing safety at the event failed to take appropriate action to get the rioters off the streets or simply were too overwhelmed by the violent mob to effectively do their jobs.

What is clear is that government has a responsibility to protect people's rights, including their speech rights, and when government fails in that responsibility it only encourages further violence. Hopefully at future events police agencies find better ways to stop violent thugs and haul them to jail to await criminal prosecution.

But the main threat to freedom of speech comes not from violent thugs on the streets, nor from inadequate government action against such violence, but from "intellectuals" who openly call for the destruction of free speech.

The Academic Assault on Free Speech

Shockingly, in the aftermath of the violence that shut down Yiannopoulos's event, the Daily Californian—a Berkeley student-run paper—published (http://www.dailycal.org/2017/02/07/violence-self-defense/) five op-eds "in favor of the use of violence in protests" (as a summary puts it). The op-eds equate violence with peaceful protest and violence with speech. In short, these op-eds are anti-liberal, pro-authoritarian screeds far more dangerous than anything Yiannopoulos has said.

The only semi-plausible argument from these op-eds is that, because Yiannopoulos allegedly intended to essentially incite violence against illegal immigrants and others by naming them in the presence of violent people, violence (against third parties and their property) to shut up Yiannopoulos supposedly was justified.

But the op-eds present no credible evidence that Yiannopoulos actually planned to do that—and he (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/uc-berkely-protests-milo-yiannopoulos-publicly-name-undocumented-students-cancelled-talk-illegals-a7561321.html) explicitly denied that was the case. So, based on rumors about what Yiannopoulos might say and speculation about what some of his supporters might do, these violent street thugs intentionally stopped Yiannopoulos from speaking, in clear violation of his rights. Of course, if Yiannopoulos had been able to speak and if police had reasonably believed that he was intentionally inciting violence against specific persons, that presumably would have been justification for stopping the event. But prior restraint of his speech was not justified.

I should note that the Daily Californian also published several op-eds that denounced the violence that shut down Yiannopoulos's talk.

Some of Yiannopoulos's critics do have a point, however; why in the hell is he getting invited to speak on college campuses in the first place?

Speech on Other People's Dime

The right to freedom of speech means that you may say what you want, unless what you say or how you say it violates others' rights (as by inciting violence or violating contractual arrangements), while using your own resources or in voluntary association with others.

Free speech "does not mean the right to demand the financial support or the material means to express your views at the expense of other men who may not wish to support you," as (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/free_speech.html) Ayn Rand puts it.

So, for example, Yiannopoulos has no absolute right to speak via Twitter, and that company has banned him from speaking on their site. In my view Twitter selectively targeted Yiannopoulos under vague terms-of-use language mainly because of the racist posts of other users inspired by Yiannopoulos, but whether Twitter acted fairly is a separate issue from whether Twitter, in principle, has the right to set terms of use and ban people who violate them. It does have that right.

To take another example, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has the right to invite and (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/320358-milo-yiannopoulis-disinvited-from-cpac) disinvite Yiannopoulos as a speaker at their event. We can question CPAC's wisdom in inviting Yiannopoulos to speak given his long history of meanness and bigotry, and we can question CPAC's fairness in then disinviting him over (https://www.facebook.com/myiannopoulos/posts/851263248344905) questionable allegations, but we cannot say that Yiannopoulos has an absolute right to speak at CPAC. He has a right to speak there only if CPAC voluntarily agrees to the arrangement.

[Update: I'm afraid I was initially too quick to trust Yiannopoulos's explanation of his remarks about sex between men and boys. On reviewing (https://twitter.com/ReaganBattalion/status/833405993006616576) video footage, it does seem that Yiannopoulos advocates sex between adult men and boys as young as thirteen. His remarks are reprehensible—and I don't think he'll have to worry about additional invitations to speak on college campuses.]

In general, the right to freedom of speech entails the right not to speak and not to materially support speech you disagree with.

What, then, are we to make of Yiannopoulos's speaking engagements at state-affiliated and tax-subsidized universities?

No one (at least that I know of) doubts that state-affiliated universities have special obligations under the First Amendment that are not relevant to private institutions. A private institution may restrict speech on its property just as you may restrict strangers from barging into your home to deliver a speech.

As (https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2017-01-26/milo-yiannopouloss-college-tour-and-first-amendment-explainer) Glen Martin writes for the Cal Alumni Association:

Berkeley law professor Robert Cole observes that First Amendment strictures apply to state actors, not private parties.

"So if the question is do they apply to a state university, the answer, of course, is yes," says Cole.

In the case of Cal, says Cole, "Berkeley College Republicans is a university-sanctioned organization, and if, as it seems, it issued an invitation and arranged an engagement in accordance with university rules, then the university must allow the event. The university's role is to remain a neutral marketplace. It can't cancel a speaking event simply because a speaker is considered controversial, or officials are worried that it could result in bad publicity, or things could get raucous." . . .

Berkeley law professor Daniel Farber agrees with Cole that Cal—more to the point, any public university—must tread very lightly indeed around free speech issues.

"The Supreme Court has emphasized that the First Amendment is intended to protect 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,' public debate," Farber stated in an email, "so in terms of general principles, it seems to me that universities should be very hesitant to exclude a speaker or viewpoint simply because it is offensive or disruptive."

However, presumably even state-affiliated universities may set rules for student clubs and for the invitation of speakers. I see nothing unconstitutional about a university setting tighter rules about who may be invited to speak.

Regardless, certainly a private institution has every right to set such rules. In my view, Yiannopoulos has no business speaking at any institution of learning, simply because his rantings are in essence anti-intellectual. If I ran such a private institution, certainly I would set rules to preclude the likes of Yiannopoulos from sullying my institution.

None of this changes the fact that, once a college does set up rules for student groups and for guest speakers, and once Yiannopoulos is invited to speak, he does by virtue of the invitation have a right to speak, and government has a responsibility to protect that right.

Beyond that, colleges have an interest (or should have an interest) in fostering the open exchange of ideas. Some people seem to think that the point of college is to build a well-insulated echo chamber for postmodern leftists. The purpose of efforts to "deplatform" and shout down various speakers is to stifle speech and to shut up people with different ideas. My view of Yiannopoulos is that he says nothing worth hearing—he deals in insults, not ideas—and therefore is not worth inviting. But I could list dozens of other controversial speakers who definitely are worth hearing (such as Ben Shapiro, Christina Hoff Sommers, Sam Harris, Jerry Coyne, Flemming Rose, and Yaron Brook, to name just a few).

But there is another detail in the context of tax-subsidized institutions that almost all commentators totally ignore: What about the rights of the taxpayers? Ultimately there is no such thing as free speech if people may be compelled to support speech they find repugnant. And yet government, by forcing people to subsidize Berkeley and other institutions, is in fact forcing people to materially support speech that in many cases they disagree with and even morally condemn. Certainly I do not wish to help pay for Yiannopoulos to speak, and government violates my right to freedom of speech when if forces me to do so.

Ultimately, the right to freedom of speech requires that government stop forcing people to finance speech they disagree with. And, yes, that applies to universities as well as to media outlets such as National Public Radio.

By the same token, universities cannot be fully free from political strings until they are free from government purse strings. Many leftists understandably see as ridiculous the idea that universities must invite clownish rabble-rousers such as Yiannopoulos to speak. But it is equally ridiculous that universities that accept tax dollars may prohibit people such as Yiannopoulos from speaking. The source of the paradox is the tax funding, and the resolution to the paradox is to remove such funding. Then leave universities free to set their policies for student groups and for guest speakers as they deem best.

For the case at hand we can set such deeper considerations aside. What most urgently matters is that Yiannopoulos had a right to speak at Berkeley and that violent thugs violated his rights and the rights of those who wanted to hear him.

About the worst that can be said about Yiannopoulos's talks is that he insults people and facilitates fascist ideas. The people who forcibly stopped him from speaking acted like fascists. And, incidentally, they and their allies are the people primarily responsible for Yiannopoulos's undeserved fame.

Yiannopoulos our civilization can survive. The obliteration of free speech our civilization cannot survive. Let's act accordingly.

(http://freedomoutlook.com/comment/) Comments

The Relationship between Free Speech and the First Amendment

I'd like to clarify a point based on some feedback via Facebook. One critic claimed that rioters did not violate Yiannopoulos's freedom of speech because the rioters were not government actors, and the First Amendment pertains only to government actors.

I agree that the First Amendment pertains only to government actors, but I point out that government actors are not the only parties who can violate a person's right to freedom of speech.

The "free" in free speech pertains to one's ability so speak, free from the physical coercion of others. Private parties as well as government actors are capable of forcibly silencing someone, as the rioters did at Berkeley. Such actions don't specifically violate the First Amendment, but they certainly violate the right to freedom of speech.

—Ari Armstrong

February 23, 2017

(http://freedomoutlook.com/comment/) Leave a Comment

What's Wrong with Conservatism

February 27, 2017

Conservatism is concerned with conserving (keeping or preserving) something; it shares the same root as conservation. The question, then, is what is the something that a conservative is trying to conserve?

Today's American conservative movement is a hodgepodge largely of mercantilist racial nationalism and religious fundamentalism, as manifest in the political marriage of Donald Trump and Mike Pence and their supporters. But conservatism has taken many forms. Conservatism at its best looks to the Enlightenment principles of America's founding—but then it is not, as I point out, fundamentally conservative.

Here I reproduce two sections from my essay "Reclaiming Liberalism," contained in (http://amzn.to/2dxpvc9) Reclaiming Liberalism and Other Essays on Personal and Economic Freedom. I am concerned more with the inner logic of conservatism than with its history or contemporary manifestations.

I must note at the outset that I use the term "liberal" here quite differently from how most Americans use it today. By liberalism I do not mean Progressivism, the advance of the welfare-regulatory state, or any sort of Marxism or socialism.

Rather, I follow Ludwig von Mises in using liberalism to refer to

the great political and intellectual movement that substituted free enterprise and the market economy for the precapitalistic methods of production; constitutional representative government for the absolutism of kings or oligarchies; and freedom of all individuals from slavery, serfdom, and other forms of bondage. (Human Action, 3rd Revised Edition, 1966 foreword)

See my (http://amzn.to/2dxpvc9) longer essay for more of my thoughts on liberalism.

Obviously vastly more can be said about conservatism than what I say here; this is my essential critique.

The Incoherence of Conservatism

As an ideology, conservatism ultimately is incoherent. Conservatism makes sense only with respect to a particular and specified historical tradition; to oppose any and all change as an end in itself is to embrace stupidity, not an ideology. A delimited conservatism necessarily sanctions the ideological roots of the tradition it seeks to conserve; hence, conservatism is not an ideology, but rather a commitment to some particular ideology implied by or manifest in some tradition. So a conservative, depending on particulars, might favor monarchic rule over revolution, American constitutionalism over "living constitution" Progressivism, slavery over abolition, or religious tradition over secularization (as a few examples).

Conservatism cannot be salvaged as a coherent ideology in its own right by taking it to mean favoring "institutions and practices that have evolved gradually and are manifestations of continuity and stability" (as the Encyclopaedia Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/topic/conservatism) has it). Such an interpretation has two basic problems.

First, in almost all places and times, multiple traditions coexist, so to conserve one line of tradition often means to rebel against another. So, for example, when the tradition of slavery butts heads against the (newer) tradition of individual rights, which shall the conservative conserve? In many cases, conservatism is but an intellectually sloppy way to rationalize the embrace of one tradition over another while leaving deeper reasons or motivations shrouded. The attitude often seems to be, "What reasons need I? I'm a conservative." By the same token, one who looks hard enough can place any proposed change within the boundaries of some tradition or other, often going back to the ancient Greeks or further. Both the Nazis and their enemies could claim the conservative mantle, as could both the slavers and the abolitionists.

Second, there is no such thing as consistently gradual evolution of human institutions over sufficiently long periods of time, so conservatives necessarily embrace whatever radical changes transpired in the tradition they seek to uphold. Do Christian conservatives deny that their religion was at its founding radical, and that its widespread embrace led to profound and relatively fast social change? Do Constitutionalists deny that the American Revolution was a radical response to monarchic abuse, resulting in far-reaching social upheaval? Scratch a conservative, find a revolutionary—if you take a given tradition back far enough.

To continue this last point, one problem with conservatism is that any revolutionary can claim to be a conservative; there is no change so dramatic that its defenders can't frame it neatly within some tradition. By any sensible reading, Christianity is radically different from the religion of the Torah. Yet Jesus (through his biographers) cast himself as a conservative: "I have come [not] to abolish the Law or the Prophets . . . but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).

So too were America's revolutionary Founders conservatives by their own lights. They weren't upheaving the existing order; they were merely obeying "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God"—what could be more conservative than that? The Founders acknowledged the imprudence of overthrowing a government "for light and transient causes," yet saw the move as necessary in their case due to the monarch's pervasive abuses. To adapt Jesus's words, the Founders came not to abolish English legal traditions, but to fulfill them.

If Jesus and America's Founders can be conservatives, then anyone can be a conservative. Even Marx can be considered a conservative, in that he casts every movement of history as the culmination of previous movements. Conservatism becomes a tool—a trick, really—to pacify those who romanticize the past.

Every moment in history is partly new, partly rooted in the past. Every moment is at once a revolution and a conservation. To insist that a given incident is one rather than the other usually is not very helpful. Noticing what changes and what stays the same can be more helpful. There is no firm line separating fast change from slow; rather, speed of change lies on a continuum. Ancient Egyptian society stayed largely the same for long periods of time; the Enlightenment and the resulting Industrial Revolution resulted in breathtakingly rapid changes. (Which does the American conservative prefer?) But Egypt was not completely unaffected by the passing of time, and the Enlightenment was not an absolute break with the past. At most, the sensible conservative can say, "This is the wrong type of change," or, "We should proceed relatively slowly in this given case."

In many cases, a person calls himself a conservative to avoid saying precisely what he is for, and why. To imply that you are right because your view is the traditional one is to evade the essential questions. Which traditions do you support, which traditions do you oppose, which innovations do you support, which meddlings do you oppose—and why? A conservative without deeper reasons for his positions is a fraud or a huckster; a conservative with reasons is not, fundamentally, a conservative.

Conservatism, Utopianism, and Liberalism

Conservatives erroneously think that they alone stand against utopianism and that liberalism tends toward utopianism. In fact, genuine liberalism rejects utopianism (literally, no place)—despite the fact that some utopians are also confused about this. A political philosophy fancied as liberal by its advocates is not, in fact, liberal, if it aims at some imaginary version of liberty while undercutting the basis of the real thing.

The great economist Friedrich Hayek (who was strongly influenced by Mises) (http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek-why-i-am-not-conservative.pdf) hesitated to call himself a liberal because "American radicals and socialists began calling themselves 'liberals,'" and "in Europe the predominant type of rationalistic liberalism has long been one of the pacemakers of socialism." Hayek, then, feared that one strain of liberalism tended toward socialist utopianism.

In railing against "rationalistic liberalism," Hayek points to ideologies that ignore the importance of institutions (particularly those of government), ignore realities of human nature, and seek instead to achieve a "liberty" unmoored from reality. Hayek worries that such utopian ideologies sully the tradition of liberalism; I counter that they are not truly part of that tradition, but opposed to it.

Following Hayek, Jonah Goldberg too (http://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/420055/when-we-say-conservative-we-mean-jonah-goldberg) rails against utopian "liberalism." Indeed, he suggests that the socialist variants of "liberalism" are what keep him from embracing the mantle of liberalism. He says that "progressives stole the label" liberal. He grants, "The American Founding, warts and all, was the apotheosis of classical liberalism, and conservatism here has always been about preserving it." Paraphrasing Hayek, he says that only in America could "one . . . be a conservative and a defender of the liberal tradition." He continues:

I have no problem with people who say that American conservatism is simply classical liberalism. As a shorthand, that's fine by me. But philosophically, I'm not sure this does the trick. There are many, many, rooms in the mansion of classical liberalism and not all of them are, properly speaking, conservative.

Remarkably, Goldberg, writing for the flagship conservative publication National Review, here is saying that he is a (classical) liberal—a conservative liberal.

But a careful look at Goldberg's defense of a uniquely conservative sort of liberalism reveals that he doesn't really have a defense. Rather, he contrasts his conservative liberalism with (illiberal) utopian fantasies such as anarcho-capitalism and with (illiberal) views that are not "grounded in reality," not attuned to human flourishing, and the like. He fails to capture any ground for a specifically conservative subset of liberalism.

Liberalism properly understood necessarily includes a respect for human nature, an understanding of institutions, and due concern about unintended consequences of social change—things that Goldberg sees as conservative. A "liberalism" without such qualities achieves not liberty but chaos, oppression, and tyranny. Without its careful attention to the institutions of government—particularly the checks and balances needed to hinder political fads, demagogues, and democratic madness—the revolutionary era would not have been the "apotheosis of classical liberalism."

Genuine liberalism necessarily excludes utopianism; it is inherently conservative in certain respects. So, properly understood, the "conservative" in "conservative liberal" is not a qualifier narrowing the concept; it is an emphasis of certain necessary aspects of liberalism.

But Goldberg and American conservatives generally are not content to find the conservatism inherent in liberalism. Rather, they seek to stitch liberal views with illiberal ones and name this Frankenstein's monster conservatism.

Consider how often conservatives eagerly sacrifice liberty in the name of religion, tradition, or popular will. People should be free—but not to decide which drugs to consume. Government should protect freedom of expression—and ban certain forms of pornography involving consenting adults. People should be free to trade with others, unimpeded—but not with foreigners. Employers should be free to hire whom they please—except for Mexicans. People should be protected equally under the law—unless they are gay and wish to marry. People should be free to decide how to spend their money—unless the government or some social welfare program really needs it. People generally should be free to live their own lives—except government should force women to carry a just-fertilized zygote to term. (These are all typical but not universal conservative views; for example, (http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/04/01/goldberg-gay-marriage-vs-goodwill/2043429/) Goldberg is "very sympathetic to arguments for gay marriage.")

Among less-intellectual politicians and activists, conservatism often becomes an excuse to pragmatically embrace a huge array of statist measures, including expanded government controls of medicine (RomneyCare), corporate bailouts, massive welfare programs, tariffs, subsidies (Marco Rubio as sugar's sugardaddy), and myriad business regulations. In effect, conservatism becomes a license to cheat on Lady Liberty at will.

Trump's Joint Session Speech: Good and Bad

March 1, 2017

Whatever we might say about the policies that Donald Trump discussed during his (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/28/trumps-remarks-to-congress.html) February 28 speech to a joint session of Congress, we can grant that Trump sounded more like a statesman than he has in the past.

Trump opened by condemning the recent vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, the threats against Jewish centers, and the attack on two Indian men in Kansas—apparently ethnically motivated—that left one dead. He stressed common American values and invoked optimism about America's future. He highlighted some American heroes, including a disease survivor, a succeeding schoolgirl, people in law enforcement, and fallen Navy operator Ryan Owens. In all, it was a presidential speech.

Policy-wise, Trump's speech was a mixed bag from the standpoint of liberty, as expected.

Let's briefly run down some of the main issues.

Health care

The proposal that Trump has picked up to "help Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use of tax credits and expanded Health Savings Accounts," is probably the most important reform on the table. Our insane employer-provided health-insurance system—a product of decades of stupid government policies—could slowly be unwound starting with equitable tax treatment for individual policies.

Trump's endorsement of giving "Americans the freedom to purchase health insurance across State lines" is also a good policy that would effectively nullify many onerous state insurance regulations.

Infrastructure

Trump predicts, "Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways gleaming across our beautiful land." This will require a trillion dollars of "public and private capital," Trump says.

Trump seems to presume that it's obvious what "infrastructure" is and that the national government should finance it. In reality, infrastructure can be interpreted as broadly or narrowly as we like, to include practically all capital goods or only a small (typically arbitrary) pool of them. The only plausible economic argument for government spending on infrastructure is to pay for "public goods." At least airports and railways are not public goods—people have to pay to use them—so a pro-liberty administration would work toward fully privatizing those things, not further nationalizing them.

Regarding interstate highways, isn't the point of the gasoline tax to provide the funding for roads? Taxes directly related to use are better than special general taxes. (Whether a truly free market in such projects is possible or desirable is beyond our scope here.)

Taxes and Regulations

In some ways Trump wants to ease tax and regulatory burdens; in other ways he wants to expand them.

Reducing corporate tax rates is probably the single most important thing Trump can do in terms of improving the economy.

Although ham-handed, Trump's policy of eliminating two regulations for every new one passed on net probably will result in a less oppressive regulatory climate. Trump clearly wants to ease up the Environmental Protection Agency's controls of American energy producers.

At the same time, Trump apparently wants to impose higher taxes on incoming goods—taxes that harm American consumers and exporters—and make it "much harder for companies to leave" the country, an ominous if vague threat.

The story that Trump tells about international trade goes something like this. Freer trade results in manufacturing jobs fleeing the U.S. for other countries and in a debilitating "trade deficit." And other countries tax incoming American goods with impunity because of our lax tariff policies. So the solution is to restrict trade, impose more tariffs, and punish American companies that leave the country.

Almost nothing about Trump's account of trade is true. He's right that onerous taxes and regulations at home make it harder to do business here and drive many companies away; beyond that his view of trade is mostly mercantilist nonsense discredited since the 1700s.

Yes, free trade results in different mixes of production in trading countries—that's the entire point of it. The reason people can gain from specialization is that different peoples in different regions can produce some things relatively better than others. But it is not true, as Trump implies, that free trade costs jobs on net. With imports come exports and foreign investment. Taking into account all relevant exchanges, the "trade deficit" is an illusion. Trade doesn't cause above-normal long-term unemployment; stupid domestic labor policies do.

Anyway, manufacturing is hardly on the decline in the United States; since 1980 real output has (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602869/manufacturing-jobs-arent-coming-back/) more than doubled. But output has expanded as manufacturing employment has declined. Is this because of NAFTA and China, as Trump pretends? Obviously not—it's due to expanded use of technology in manufacturing. Basically, machines make more and people make less. Because free trade is not the problem, restricting trade is not the solution—as Trump's supporters will inevitably discover or at least experience.

Regarding tariffs, Trump pretends that imposing high tariffs on foreign goods is somehow a sensible reply to other countries imposing tariffs. It isn't. When Country X imposes high tariffs on American goods, that hurts the consumers and exporters of Country X along with American businesses. If America also adds high tariffs, that further hurts American consumers and exporters. If Trump wishes to use his fine negotiating skills to get foreign governments to lower their tariffs, great; but by threatening to impose higher tariffs Trump holds the gun to the heads of American consumers.

Immigration

Typical of him, Trump assumes that a job somehow belongs to the nation rather than to the person or company that creates the job. Beneath all of Trump's rhetoric on immigration is the call to forcibly prevent people in the United States from hiring the people they want to hire for the jobs that they create.

Yes, government should take appropriate action to keep violent people out of the country and to imprison or expel violent foreigners. But government ought not treat peaceable immigrants as though they were violent.

It is no more the proper role of government to "protect" the jobs of some from immigrants than it is to "protect" select businesses from foreign competition. Rather, it is the government's proper role to protect the rights of Americans to do business with whomever they please (among peaceable persons). If we're worried about some Americans falling behind, we should look to things such as education and job training (which I'd argue government should get out of rather than more deeply involved with), not call on government to restrict American producers and job creators.

Regarding Trump's "great wall" along the Mexican border, if we had sensible immigration and drug policies, we could easily control our borders without such a wasteful display—a display which, by the way, can easily be thwarted by tunnels, boats, and planes.

The Drug War

Trump has given every indication that the U.S. government is going to ramp up drug-war enforcement. Paradoxically, this will almost certainly cause crime to go up (relatively), not down. As Jeffrey Miron writes in Drug War Crimes, "[H]igh rates of prohibition enforcement are associated with high rates of violence" (p. 55). Why? Part of the picture is that prohibition efforts often remove relatively stable and established leaders of drug gangs, resulting in violent competitions to take over distribution networks. Mexico probably will be hurt most by any such increase in violence, which (ironically) will drive more Mexicans to seek illegal entry into the United States.

There is a simple way to take the violence out of the drug trade that Trump almost certainly will not consider: legalize drugs. That's a big issue that I won't further pursue here. At least the Trump administration should not crack down on states that have legalized marijuana, as it doing so would breathe new life into drug gangs.

Foreign Policy

Donald Trump proposes an odd group of policies. On one hand, he says the American military has done too much overseas, and he calls for other countries to spend relatively more for their defense. On the other hand, Trump "calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history." But isn't a major point of Trump's foreign policy that America is going to stop policing the world? I have to suspect that this new spending has more to do with "stimulus"—i.e., paying off special interests—than it does with genuine military need.

Notice that Trump uses America's foreign-policy blunders as a pretext for more domestic spending. "We've wasted money abroad that we could have spent at home," Trump essentially says. A fiscal conservative would point out that it's not either-or; government could spend less on foreign adventurism and also less domestically. I'm sure that thought has never crossed Trump's mind, but it is possible. Ah, but Trump is after "American greatness," not fiscal responsibility.

What about Islamic State? "I directed the Department of Defense to develop a plan to demolish and destroy ISIS," Trump says—which implies that he has no plan to defeat it.

Trump did not mention the following countries during the course of his speech: Syria, Russia, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. He mentioned Iran briefly. To his credit, he did mention "our unbreakable alliance with the State of Israel." But I don't get the sense that Trump has gained any better grasp of foreign policy.

In all, Trump delivered the same mixed package of policies he's known for with a more statesmanlike performance. That's probably as good as we could have expected. What will matter far more than what Trump says is what he and the Republican Congress deliver.

Fake News, Partisan News, and the Wiretapping Story

March 6, 2017

I don't know why I'm surprised anymore, given how many crazy things Donald Trump has said and done. But I was surprised when I read about Trump's claims that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump's communications at Trump Tower prior to the election. Even if we imagine that there's anything to these accusations, the manner in which Trump made them—in the same early-morning stream-of-consciousness Tweeting in which (http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/03/04/president-trump-tweets-schwarzenegger-was-fired-from-the-apprentice-and-the-former-governor-has-priceless-reply/) he discussed rumors about The Apprentice television show—is astonishing.

In tracking down details about the wiretapping story, we can also learn some lessons about fake news, partisan spin, and the difficulty of learning the relevant facts of such a story.

Begin with Trump's claims. In a pair of March 4 Tweets, (https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/03/trumps-unfounded-claims-of-a-nixonwatergate-wiretapping-scheme/518625/) Trump wrote, "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!" and "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

Needless to say, those are serious accusations—ones that Trump made flippantly with no supporting evidence. What are we to make of them?

Let's begin with an obviously bogus line of inquiry into the matter.

The Anatomy of a Fake News Claim

I follow nearly three-thousand people on Twitter. Obviously I don't carefully vet all those people, so sometimes when I look through my general feed I find some crazy material.

For example, I ran across a link to (http://truthfeed.com/breaking-new-report-indicates-clintons-were-in-on-the-wiretapping/55337/) this story: "BREAKING: New Report Indicates Clintons Were IN ON THE WIRETAPPING." The text with the main image is even more self-assured: "Wiretap Scandal: New Report—The Clintons Were In on It." The sensational language automatically makes the story suspect, but that didn't stop some people from thoughtlessly sharing the link.

Obviously the site hosting the story, Truth Feed, is a click-bait farm, filled with ads featuring such things as scantily clad women and teasers such as "No Bra? No Problem for These Sexy Ladies." The author of the piece, an Amy Moreno, "is a Published Author, Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd."

It's frankly shocking to me that anyone could be idiotic enough to take such garbage seriously. But some people do take it seriously—and others who see the claims register them as "possibly true" even though they're arbitrary.

So where did our tenacious reporter Moreno get her information? She links to two other ad-driven sites, Red State Watcher and DC Whispers. DC Whispers in turn cites Gateway Pundit—a site with a proven track record of publishing spurious claims (such as a (http://ariarmstrong.com/2016/04/breaking-jim-hoft-flubs-story-about-deny-trump-flyer/) set I reviewed).

The story at Gateway Pundit, by Joe Hoft, makes a less dramatic claim than what Moreno makes. Hoft does not claim to have evidence that the Clintons were "in on" the wiretapping. Rather, his headline suggests, "First FISA Request on Trump Tower Came After Clinton and AG Lynch Met Privately on Tarmac." That's not evidence; it's coincidence.

But Hoft's details don't even support the claims of his headline. The text of his article instead claims that "the meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch occurred at about the same time" as the alleged FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) requests. All we know is that Loretta Lynch (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/19/lynch-says-tarmac-meeting-with-bill-clinton-was-regrettable.html) met with Bill Clinton on June 27 and that the (purported) initial FISA requests were made sometime in June.

How does Joe Hoft know that "the Obama administration" filed a request "to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers?" Joe Hoft cites an article by his brother Jim Hoft, who in turn cites an article by Conservative Treehouse written by someone called "Sundance." Sundance in turn cites a Breitbart story, which in turn cites claims by Mark Levin and an article by Heat Street.

Observe the game of "telephone" that Moreno played to generate her (uh) trumped-up headline. (I'm intentionally not including all of the links in the chain because I do not wish draw more attention to these sites than necessary; interested readers can follow the links starting with the one to Moreno's "story.")

Heatstreet is on its face a credible news source; the (https://heatst.com/world/exclusive-fbi-granted-fisa-warrant-covering-trump-camps-ties-to-russia/) story in question is by Louise Mensch from November 7, 2016. At this point, we can leave the fake news behind and get to the real news.

The Factual Basis of the Wiretap Story and Partisan Spin

Mensch bases her story on the claims of "two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community." Who are these people, what are their "links" to counter-intelligence, and how credible are they? It's impossible to know based on Mensch's account.

Here are Mensch's central claims:

[T]he FBI's counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server. The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia's Alfa Bank. . . .

[I]t is thought in the intelligence community that the warrant covers any 'US person' connected to this investigation, and thus covers Donald Trump and at least three further men who have either formed part of his campaign or acted as his media surrogates.

For the bit starting with "after evidence," Mensch cites an (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html) article by Slate.

So Trump's claims apparently stem from an article at Breitbart and trace back to unnamed sources behind Mensch's story—which certainly does not establish (even assuming the account of the FISA warrants is true) that Obama had any knowledge of it or control over it.

Yet behind the bogus claims of Trump and of various fake-news sites is a real and important story. Did the FBI, in fact, surveil Trump or his associates prior to the election? If so, did the FBI do so based on real concerns of wrongdoing? (If so, what did the FBI discover?) Was any aspect of the FBI's activities driven by partisan politics?

The claim at hand is that the federal government spied on a candidate for president. That is shocking and disturbing if true—whether the spying was justified or whether it was not justified. And if the underlying claim is not true, then the fact that it was made is shocking and disturbing. (See a (https://heatst.com/politics/wh-calls-for-congressional-investigation-into-alleged-wiretapping-of-trump-campaign-first-reported-by-heat-street/) follow-up by Heat Street and an (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/us/politics/trump-obama-tap-phones.html) article from the New York Times for more details. See also an (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445496/special-prosecutor-trump-campaign-russia-jeff-sessions-recuse-ambassador-sergey-kislyak) article by Andrew C. McCarthy for additional context.)

Now we come to the spin. A recent (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-idUSKBN16C0MG) article by Reuters essentially claims that Trump's claims about the wiretapping are false. But the article carefully avoids a substantive discussion about whether any important aspects of Trump's claims are true. Specifically, was there any sort of surveillance of Trump or any of his associates prior to the election? The article quotes various officials to the effect that Trump is wrong, but it's unclear whether they're saying that there was no surveillance or that there was surveillance but of a different nature than what Trump described. James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence under Obama, does seem to deny the existence of any warrant, but it's not clear (to me) whether he's denying any and all surveillance of Trump and his associates. (It's also not clear to me whether we can (http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/06/americans-caught-between-trump-clapper) take Clapper at his word.)

Reuters claims flatly, "The White House offered no evidence on Sunday to back up Trump's accusation and did not say it was true." But the relevant evidence for aspects of Trump's claims comes from Heat Street and other publications. It's not very solid evidence, but it is evidence. Some parties told Mensch that the warrant was issued, but perhaps those parties were mistaken (or dishonest).

We already know that the FBI listened in on communications between Michael Flynn and Russian officials. The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/us/politics/trump-obama-tap-phones.html) reports:

During the transition, the F.B.I.—which uses FISA warrants to eavesdrop on the communications of foreign leaders inside the United States—overheard conversations between the Russian ambassador to the United States and Michael T. Flynn, whom Mr. Trump had named national security adviser.

The obvious question, then, is whether the FBI surveilled other of Trump's associations or Trump himself in the course of eavesdropping on Russians. In that case, the FISA warrants may have been issued only with respect to Russians but could have effectively covered various Trump communications with those Russians.

I have no idea whether the FBI surveilled Trump or his associates (other than Flynn) prior to the election or had good reason to do so. The tenuous nature of the reporting to date does not justify an outright rejection of the claims about surveillance, but neither does it support important aspects of Trump's claims, especially that Obama personally ordered the surveillance.

Once we discard the fake news, Trump's unsubstantiated claims, and the partisan spin, we are left with a set of important questions to which the American public deserves serious answers.

Terminate the Robot Tax

March 14, 2017

Should government tax robots to save people's jobs? Bill Gates advocated a robot tax in a (https://qz.com/911968/bill-gates-the-robot-that-takes-your-job-should-pay-taxes/) recent interview with Quartz. But it's a terrible idea.

Begin with Gates's arguments for the tax. He claims or suggests:

  1. It's only fair for government to tax a robot at a "similar level" to the human worker it replaces. So, for example, if someone earning $50,000 were taxed $10,000, then the robot that does the same job should be taxed around $10,000.
  2. Taxes fund things such as education and care for the elderly, and a robot tax would help finance the human jobs in those fields.
  3. A robot tax would "slow down the speed" of the adoption of labor-saving technology and also help finance "transition programs" to retrain workers and the like.

Gates's rationale might appear superficially plausible to some, but it falls apart at the slightest breeze of critical analysis.

Even leaving aside for a moment Gates's presumptions about what government should be doing, his call for a robot tax makes little sense just on accounting grounds. Consider a simplified example in which a business owner hires one person at $50,000, then buys a robot for $100,000 to do the same job. The money for the robot goes to the robot manufacturer as revenues and so will be taxed (after expenses). If the business owner pays $10,000 per year to pay off the loan for the robot, he clears an extra $40,000 per year in profits. That money is taxed, and likely at a higher bracket. Alternately, the business owner might plow the funds back into his business, which would result in other people making more money. So Gates's robot tax hardly substitutes one tax burden for another.

We should note that robots and other capital goods are already taxed by most states: It's called the sales or use tax. And various localities (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/02/01/colorado-republicans-business-personal-property-tax/) tax businesses annually on the value of their property. Apparently Gates is talking about a new federal tax. But we should be talking about how to get rid of existing taxes on capital goods, as such taxes depress investment and expand red tape, not how to expand them.

One effect of Gates's robot tax would be to create a new government bureaucracy to define what is and is not a "robot" and how much different robots will be taxed. Robots are just machines with computer components that require varying degrees of human maintenance and oversight. As Mark Herschberg (https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/mar/13/what-is-a-robot-exactly-and-how-do-we-make-it-pay-tax) suggests, drawing a firm line between machines such as power looms and tractors and "robots" is impossible. It is also impossible to accurately calculate how much human labor a robot offsets. As a consequence, the robot tax would be arbitrarily applied and manipulated by agenda-driven politicians, bureaucrats, and lobbyists.

Another problem, as Herschberg suggests, is that distinguishing "robots" from other sorts of technology is senseless. (Lawrence Summers also (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/picking-on-robots-wont-deal-with-job-destruction/2017/03/05/32091f08-004b-11e7-8ebe-6e0dbe4f2bca_story.html) makes this point.) For example, are we to tax "robots" (however defined) but not the software that makes them operate better and improves business operations generally? Gates suggests that his tax would apply to automation generally, not just robots, but he'd run into comparable problems however he tried to draw the lines.

We don't need a more complicated tax system; we need a simpler one. Even if we assume that the government spending Gates calls for is necessary and appropriate and that taxes would otherwise dip with increased automation, it would be less-bad to simply increase the income tax than to impose a bizarre new sort of tax.

Gates's idea for a robot tax can be criticized on deeper economic grounds. Gates's basic presumption is that automation expands unemployment. But that's false, at least in the long run. New technology does not permanently throw people out of work—it frees up people to go into new fields and thereby meet ever more human wants and needs.

Consider agriculture. Over the Twentieth Century, something like (http://eh.net/book_reviews/american-agriculture-in-the-twentieth-century-how-it-flourished-and-what-it-cost/) two-thirds of agricultural jobs were lost even as output expanded, trends due largely to better technology. Does anyone think it would have been a good idea to discourage development of tractors, irrigation systems, artificial fertilizers, and so on, to "save jobs?" That would have been idiotic.

As some industries shed workers with automation, other industries expand. Gates himself contributed to the expansion of myriad industries with his software that helped drive the personal computer revolution. In 1880, (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/) nearly half of everyone working in the United States were in agriculture; in 2016 only about (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html) one percent were. And now roughly 80 percent of people work in services. The fact that technology enables us to do less back-breaking labor and expand the number of services that people offer each other is a good thing.

Gates is right to worry about short-term problems involving people who need to find new jobs. For example, nearly (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/heavy-and-tractor-trailer-truck-drivers.htm) two million people drive heavy trucks for a living. As those jobs are taken over by computer-operated vehicles (are those "robots"?), as I figure they will be, truck drivers may need to look for work in other fields. But some of them may have a hard time training for a new position in a different industry. Part of this problem will be solved as fewer people train to drive trucks and some drivers retire, but many drivers may be thrown out of a job. What's the right way to address such problems?

Gates presumes that it's government's proper role to retrain workers. It isn't. Bureaucrat-run reeducation centers function poorly for the same reasons that bureaucrat-run industries generally do poorly (just ask the Venezuelans today). Individuals have a strong incentive to find new work, companies have a strong incentive to train those people, and private schools and training centers have a strong incentive to educate them. Government can push out some such efforts, but it can't do a better job providing those values.

Indeed, bad government policies are a major drag on people's ability to switch careers. High taxes, including payroll taxes, make it harder for people to save for their own rainy days. Badly run government schools often ill-equip people for a dynamic economy. Wage controls make it harder for people to earn their first jobs and enter certain unionized industries. Labor regulations make employers less likely to hire people. Government-controlled health insurance often binds people to their current jobs. Anti-competitive regulations and licensing also make it harder for people to enter certain fields. Subsidies often encourage people not to look for work. Land-use policies (https://reason.com/archives/2017/01/13/why-arent-more-americans-movin1) discourage people from moving from depressed areas to booming areas.

Bill Gates is wrong that today's technologies pose a unique challenge to people finding work, and he is wrong that government-controlled programs are the answer to retraining. When it comes to people adapting to a changing economy, government is the problem, not the solution. Politicians and bureaucrats should get out of the way and let businesses and individuals, working by voluntary consent for mutual gain, solve the transitory "problems" of living in an ever-wealthier and more prosperous society.

In short, the answer is to free markets, not more tightly control them; to slash taxes, not expand them.

We've gotten so far from capitalism in principle and in practice that even today's industrial giants such as Bill Gates often see a problem and reflexively reach for expanded government powers to solve it—temporarily forgetting that they often despise the people wielding that power. These days people often fear innovation and seek to throttle it rather than cheer it on and seek to unshackle it. Thankfully, capitalists continue to innovate, automate, and improve people's ability to produce life-enhancing wealth, despite political hindrances.

Capitalism in this context means simply that government protects people's rights to produce and to trade and leaves them otherwise free to go about their business. The fact that people's business increasingly involves robots is not a reason to further undermine capitalism but to more fully embrace it.

Fake News, Open Records, and the Spat between a Colorado Senator and Newspaper

March 17, 2017

How do responsible citizens interact with news media? What does good journalism look like? Is it ever fair to apply the term "fake news" to stories from otherwise reputable media outlets?

These are some of the questions that a panel of media experts addressed March 15 at a forum hosted by the (http://coloradofoic.org) Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition (CFOIC) and moderated by Kyle Clark of Denver's 9News. The half-hour event, in which I participated, is (https://www.facebook.com/ilike9news/videos/10154776285121077/) available through 9News's Facebook feed, and I encourage people to listen to the discussion.

Here my goal is to touch on some of the issues we discussed, focusing on a dispute between Colorado Senator Ray Scott and the Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction. Jay Seaton, publisher of the Sentinel, appeared on the March 15 panel to discuss that dispute; Scott declined an invitation to join the panel.

Background of the Dispute between Scott and the Sentinel

Joey Bunch of ColoradoPolitics.com (http://coloradopolitics.com/ray-scott-fake-news-colorado/) lays out the basic details of the dispute at hand.

On February 8, the Sentinel editorialized in favor of (http://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb17-040) Senate Bill 40, "Public Access To Government Files," a bill to make it easier for members of the public to access government records. Initially Scott delayed consideration of the bill, and the Sentinel seemed to imply that Scott was acting against its passage:

SB 40 deserves a fair hearing before the full Senate. We call on our own Sen. Scott to announce a new committee hearing date and move this bill forward. Open records shouldn't be a partisan issue. We have a difficult time understanding why anyone would oppose easier access to government data, which belongs to the public.

But Scott claimed he delayed the bill "to work out compromises in advance of a vote" (Bunch's words) to help it pass. In a Tweet, Scott referred to the "very liberal" Sentinel as "our own fake news in Grand Junction."

In a (http://www.gjsentinel.com/opinion/articles/a-false-character-assassination-that-cant-go-uncha) follow-up opinion, Seaton threatened to sue Scott over the allegation:

[T]here is a difference between criticism of a news story, editorial stance or perceived bias and what Sen. Scott has done. His tweet is patently, provably false.

Worse, he made his false statement knowingly for the purpose of diminishing the only real asset this newspaper has: its credibility. . . .

I don't think I can sit back and take this kind of attack from an elected official. We are brokers in facts. Words have real meaning in this business. Sen. Scott has defamed this company and me as its leader.

To borrow a phrase from another famous Twitter user, I'll see you in court.

That's an extraordinary threat. Before I evaluate it, I want to discuss a bit more history of the bill in question.

As originally introduced, SB 40 was supported by a broad coalition including (http://coloradofoic.org/news/zansberg-sb-40-brings-cora-digital-age/) CFOIC, (https://secure2.convio.net/comcau/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1928) Colorado Common Cause, and the Independence Institute (for which I have written articles).

On March 1, the Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs committee amended the bill before passing it on to Senate Appropriations. On March 14, Appropriations passed the bill on to the senate as a whole.

The first committee, on which Scott sits, considered and passed six amendments, including a particularly contentious one, (http://coga.prod.acquia-sites.com/sites/default/files/html-attachments/s_sa_2017a_20170301t133438z1__hearing_summary/17SenateState0301AttachL.pdf) L.011, which "passed without objection." The upshot is that Scott supported amendments to the bill, then voted in favor of the amended bill.

Amendment L.011 allows public officials to deny access to the public "any records the inspection of which is reasonably likely to compromise the safety or security of any natural person."

At first glance, Amendment L.011, requested by Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, doesn't seem especially far-reaching. But critics fear it would grant too much leeway to elected officials and effectively allow them, at their personal discretion, to hide records from public view.

A March 2 (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/02/cora-fix-headed-down-dangerous-path/) editorial by the Denver Post indicates the nature of the criticism of the amendment:

Let's pause a moment to think about just how broadly that could be interpreted by a public official hoping not to release documents that make them look bad. If the documents were bad enough, an elected official could be the "natural person" and the danger could be the public outrage that would ensue from such documents being released.

Jeffrey Roberts of FOIC voiced a similar concern (via email):

My concern is that some of the amendments added in the Senate state affairs committee could be broadly interpreted to let governments withhold records currently available for public inspection. The point of SB 40, as introduced, was to make sure the public has access to public records in useful formats that allow for analysis and a better understanding of the records. If records are kept in a spreadsheet, the public should be able to get a spreadsheet after the removal of any confidential fields of information.

The bill, as introduced, was about format. It didn't make available any records currently not available nor did it exempt any records currently open for inspection.

Under one of the amendments, a records custodian could deny requests for "any records the inspection of which is reasonably likely to compromise the safety or security of any natural person." I don't know how records custodians might interpret that clause, and it may be very difficult to challenge it if you feel that it's been applied improperly.

See also (http://coloradofoic.org/digital-public-records-bill-heads-senate-floor-appropriation-amendments/) Roberts's write-up about the bill for CFOIC.

For what it's worth, although I have not studied the bill in detail, offhand the rationale for the initial bill and the arguments against the amendments strike me as persuasive.

With that background under belt, let's return to the dispute between Scott and the Sentinel.

A Dubious Charge of Fake News

Notably, the Sentinel didn't outright say that Scott opposed "easier access to government data"—but it did seem to insinuate as much. A generous interpretation of Scott's motives is that he sincerely wanted to expand public access to government records, and he delayed the bill to work out amendments he knew the bill needed in order to pass. A less generous interpretation is that he delayed the bill so that he could help weaken the open-records provisions. Which of those stories is closer to the truth I have no idea. (I have a query out to Scott and will include his reply here when and if I receive it.)

Any claim based on divining Scott's motives is bound to be pretty weak, so the Sentinel's initial insinuation seems gratuitous to me.

That said, at most Scott had a reasonable complaint about the insinuation. If he would have simply called out the Sentinel for making insinuations about his motives, he would have been on pretty solid ground. Calling the Sentinel as a whole a "fake news" operation was definitely out of line.

But Seaton threatening to sue Scott over the remark is also out of line, in my view. I will be surprised if Seaton actually follows through with a suit, and, if he does, I will be surprised if any court takes it seriously. For starters, Scott does at least have the semblance of a reasonable complaint about the op-ed in question. Proving that a sleight as vague as "fake news" is actionable libel would be impossible, I expect. Beyond that, I doubt that Seaton can prove that Scott's claim damaged his newspaper, which after all buys ink by the barrel and which has received considerable positive publicity over the matter.

Frankly I think both Scott and Seaton were unwise to escalate the dispute. But the escalation is not entirely surprising, given the dynamics: Scott implied that he was persecuted by an out-of-touch media; the newspaper implied that it was smeared by a powerful politician.

Given that the dispute did escalate as it did, at least we can seek to learn from it.

What Is Fake News?

What lessons can we draw from this story regarding fake news? Let's begin with Scott's description of fake news (again via Bunch's story):

We all have our own definitions of "fake news." What one finds, when one looks closely at the issue, is that it's a subjective, eye-of-the-beholder thing. An editorial that seeks to impugn my actions and motives, by drawing false conclusions without first checking for countervailing facts or evidence, as professional standards of journalism dictate, struck me at the time as an example of "fake news." So out went "the tweet heard round the world."

I think in terms of legal actionability, Scott is exactly right. To preserve freedom of speech, the courts have got to grant substantial leeway to the interpretation of such terms.

In terms of the ethics of civic engagement, Scott is dangerously wrong. Conflating a respectable newspaper such as the Sentinel with sites that intentionally mislead their readers is unfair, and it encourages people to ignore real news and take more seriously dubious "news" sources.

As (http://bigmedia.org/2017/02/14/state-lawmaker-who-called-a-real-newspaper-fake-news-apparently-shared-real-fake-news-on-facebook/) Jason Salzman has uncovered, Scott himself has shared fake news via social media. Scott shared one item claiming that WikiLeaks "confirms Hillary [Clinton] sold weapons to ISIS"; he shared another item with a fake quote attributed to Ronald Reagan about Trump.

Obviously it is not helpful for an elected official to share fake news or to dubiously accuse a real newspaper of being fake news, much less to do both.

On the other hand, I do think that sometimes it is warranted to charge usually-responsible media outlets with publishing fake news. On this point, I disagree with First Amendment attorney Steve Zansberg, also the president of CFOIC, who (http://coloradofoic.org/zansberg-fake-news-lying-press-democracy/) writes:

Responsible and democracy-loving public officials should, or dare I say must, reserve the "fake news" label exclusively for the type of garbage for which it was created and has come to be understood: complete and utter fabrications that have no basis in fact and no legitimate sources to support the published allegations. That label is obviously inappropriate for the reports published in The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and other legitimate news outlets who have adopted, and strenuously adhere to, well-established canons of journalistic ethics.

But sometimes "legitimate news outlets" do publish fake news. For example, when the New York Times published articles by Jayson Blair, who fabricated material for his "stories," that was fake news. Obviously the difference between the New York Times and a fake news site is that, when the Times's editors learned what had happened, they were horrified, and they fired Blair, corrected the record, and took appropriate safeguards to prevent such abuses in the future.

There is a huge difference between an outfit dedicated to producing fake news and a reputable publication that strives to get the facts right and yet sometimes fails.

I think it's reasonable to use the term fake news widely or narrowly as appropriate. If an entire web site is devoted to manufacturing fake news, then we reasonably call it a fake news site. If a particular story is substantially fake, then we reasonably call that story fake news. And, I think, if an aspect if an otherwise-accurate story is fake, then we reasonably call that aspect of the story fake news. As I've (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/01/how-partisans-can-help-fight-fake-news/) written before, I also think it makes sense to distinguish intentional fake news from unintentional fake news. The key is to offer the relevant context to forestall confusion.

For some examples of what I consider fake news, see my recent articles on (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/01/how-partisans-can-help-fight-fake-news/) fake news broadly and on a (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/03/fake-news-partisan-news-and-the-wiretapping-story/) particular case of fake news related to Donald Trump's claims of wiretapping.

As I suggested during the panel discussion, the relevant standard is reality, not an authority and not your feelings. Insofar as an article gets the facts wrong, then its claims are fake to that degree—regardless of who makes the claims. As much as I sympathize with Zansberg's concerns about smearing "legitimate" news organizations, I also see a danger in granting those organizations unquestioning trust. To get to the truth, we need to approach what we read critically, notice the quality of the evidence presented, and pursue additional research as needed.

What we should strive never to do is throw around the term "fake news" as a pejorative without supporting evidence. And when others do that, we should call them on it. At the same time, we should not shy away from criticizing reports or aspects of reports as fake when we can demonstrate in what respect they are fake. And then in turn we should expect others to evaluate our criticisms and sometimes push back.

Civil society does not depend on us always agreeing about what are the facts and what is the most reasonable interpretation of the facts. It does depend on us agreeing that the facts matter, doing what we reasonably can to root out falsehood, and striving to learn and relate what the relevant facts are. The responsible citizen ultimately rests his case in reality. The New York Times is right: getting to the truth often is hard. But it is possible.

Nix Government Arts Funding, Says Artist and Gallery Owner Quent Cordair

March 28, 2017

If Congress adopts Trump's budget proposals, it will (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/with-elimination-of-nea-and-neh-trumps-budget-is-worst-case-scenario-for-arts-groups/2017/03/15/5291645a-09bb-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html) cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). That would be horrible for artists, right? Not all artists think so.

While working on a critique of government art funding, I contacted novelist (http://cordair.com/artists/cordair/index.html) painter, and (http://cordair.com) gallery owner Quent Cordair for his thoughts. I've done business with Cordair; I own prints from his shop of (http://cordair.com/artists/larsen/works/liberty/index.html) Liberty and (http://cordair.com/artists/larsen/works/justice/index.html) Justice by Bryan Larsen.

Cordair's brief remarks about the potential defunding of the NEA are so compelling that I decided to feature them here in a stand-alone article (I'll publish my piece later). Here's what he had to say:

For any artist with a genuine sense of self-esteem and independence, the prospect of ending tax-funded support of the arts can only be viewed as a very good development.

Artists, properly, are neither slaves nor thieves, victims nor beggars. In our chosen profession, we're no better or worse, no more fragile or more needy, than those who have chosen other professions or productive endeavors. We create and we build, we market and we sell—just like every other creator and producer, engaging and exchanging with our buyers like every other business that provides a product or service. We give value for value.

With hard work, dedication, and perseverance, we earn what is freely exchanged by those who value what we create. Or at least that's the moral approach, in a system in which we, as artists, can take genuine pride in what we create and what we earn.

In addition to being taxed to support government-funded artists, having to compete with those artists, on top of all the other challenges we face, makes the independent artist's life and work harder too.

Further, an art market that targets and sells itself for government favor reduces and dilutes true, cutting-edge creativity as artists attempt to mold their offerings to what they believe the government will support. Everyone loses under such a regime—the artists and the public alike.

Additionally, government involvement in funding the arts inevitably runs into freedom of expression issues and limitations. The theme and message of the art the government supports must stay in line with the government's philosophy and politics. What the government supports, it must and it will control.

Any true fan and supporter of the arts should demand that the government get out of the arts, completely—for the sake of the arts. And especially for the artists.

Kudos to Cordair for expressing these principles so well. Now (http://cordair.com) go check out his art gallery and consider consensually supporting a great artist—for you own sake.

April 3 Update: See also "(http://www.freedomoutlook.com/why-the-federal-government-should-not-fund-art/) Why the Federal Government Should Not Fund Art."

Free the Health Insurance Market

March 29, 2017

The failure of Republicans to "repeal and replace" ObamaCare with a pro-liberty alternative, as disappointing as that is for those of us who want to see health care move in the direction of freer markets rather than more government controls, at least offers a good opportunity to reconsider some fundamentals about health insurance. Then hopefully we can get it right next time.

How did we get here? ObamaCare did not turn a free market into a regulated market. Rather, it tweaked an existing system of intensive government controls. Indeed, the federal government, with some help from the states, severely disrupted the market in health insurance over a span of decades. So establishing a free market in health insurance is hardly as simple as merely repealing ObamaCare.

ObamaCare made things worse in some ways. In addition to expanding direct premium subsidies, it expanded wealth transfers hidden in premiums, turning insurance even more into a (sometimes regressive) social welfare program. It also devastated the individual insurance market, shoving many people into less-desirable plans or (as with my family) into employer-provided insurance. (John Goodman (https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2017/03/27/republican-health-care-fiasco/) offers details.) What happened to my family is ironic given that even many supporters of ObamaCare acknowledge that it was a huge mistake for government ever to prod employers to provide health insurance.

A major problem is that today's "insurance" largely functions as prepaid health care. People expect to use their health insurance, not only for expensive emergencies, but for routine doctor visits and minor expenses such as birth control pills. How did that come about?

Government did two main things to promote the use of insurance (so-called) as prepaid health care. First, by offering tax incentives to employers to provide health insurance, government promoted lavish and expensive "insurance" that covers routine care. Second, by mandating various benefits, government forced insurers to cover many things that are low-cost and easily anticipated. (Paul Hsieh and Lin Zinser (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/moral-vs-universal-health-care/) provide details.) Government has outlawed insurance that functions only as insurance.

Treating insurance as prepaid health care is a major driver of skyrocketing costs. Nearly every health procedure, no matter how simple or routine, gets buried in mounds of expensive paperwork. The vast time that doctors and their staff spend filling out insurance forms is time that they do not spend treating patients. Meanwhile, insurance companies grow far larger and more complex to deal with the massive volume of claims.

Even worse, when insurers process the bills and help pay them, patients have little incentive to spend health dollars wisely, and health care providers have every incentive to charge as much as they can get away with.

Imagine what would happen if we bought food the way we typically buy health care (an analogy others including (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446142/american-health-care-reform-reimagining-failed-system) Robert Zubrin have used). We'd each pay a monthly food "premium" of a set amount, then walk into the grocery store and pay nothing or a small "copayment" for the food in our cart. Perhaps we'd have to pay a deductible first—except of course for "essential" food." Naturally, none of the prices would be listed; insurers and grocers would work out rates behind the scenes. Shoppers and grocers would have every incentive to run up prices, not contain them. Eventually we'd see calls for government to step in to "manage" food prices, which would lead to direct or indirect government rationing of food.

Today's health "insurance" also functions to transfer wealth from some people to others. Part of what insurance mandates do is force people who do not need certain services to pay higher rates to fund others' use of those services. For example, by forcing people who do not need birth control to buy insurance that covers birth control, government jacks up their premiums to pay for other people's birth control. And of course the main purpose of ObamaCare's mandate and rate controls is to force young and healthy people to buy high-cost "insurance" to subsidize others' health care.

To move toward a free market in health insurance, Congress must remove existing controls that mandate insurance and dictate its terms and costs. Then insurers would be free to put together policies that they judge would attract users and remain economically viable, and individuals would be free to buy policies that best fit their needs.

What about people with preexisting conditions? Government controls largely are responsible for locking people out of sensible long-term insurance contracts, thereby creating most of the problems with preexisting conditions. By pushing insurance through employers (whom people often leave), requiring insurers to accept all comers, and subjecting insurers to ever-changing regulatory burdens, government made most long-term insurance contracts practically impossible. Insurers cannot sensibly offer such policies, and individuals have no incentive to seek them. So dumping existing government controls of insurance, absent other action, would leave many individuals now with preexisting conditions in the lurch. New companies would appeal to people with few health costs, leaving plans with high costs to either raise rates or go out of business.

A transition program seems reasonable, then. Government could "grandfather in" everyone with diagnosed preexisting conditions and offer government coverage only for those conditions. These patients would be subsidized, but directly via the federal budget rather than indirectly via manipulated insurance premiums. We shouldn't underestimate the difficulty of this transition; I expect many people would suddenly come up with a diagnosed "preexisting condition" prior to the cut-off date. And there would be strong political pressures to expand the transition program and make it permanent. But at least with the right political backing this would be a true transition program that would naturally end.

Everyone else would be on their own as of the cut-off date under this plan. They'd be free to buy lower-cost, long-duration plans that covered only emergencies (which is what I'd want) or any other product that an insurer voluntarily offered in the market.

And if someone declined to purchase insurance, they'd be at risk of losing their assets or going bankrupt in the event of a medical catastrophe. That would be a very strong incentive to get health insurance—just as the possibility of my house burning down is a very strong incentive for me to get house insurance.

Part of any sensible reform is to equalize the tax incentives for private insurance versus employer-provided insurance. One popular idea is to allow people to purchase private health insurance out of a tax-favored Health Savings Account. That at least would put individual insurance on equal footing with employer-provided insurance. Or, to cut out the tax-induced behavior modifications, overall taxes could be lowered and the employer tax break for insurance cut off at a specific time, say five years hence. That would provide enough time for companies and individuals to make the appropriate changes.

A free market for health insurance, of course, would not solve the problem of people who are too poor or too irresponsible to purchase insurance. (But remember that basic policies would be much less expensive.)

It would be less-bad to address that problem with direct subsidies than with controls over insurance. But, if we take seriously people's rights to control their own resources, we should leave the matter to private charity. Charity clinics, charity services or discounts by health care providers that normally charge fees, and direct charitable contributions could help the poor get care. I predict that, in the context of a free market in health care and health insurance, voluntary charity would not only adequately but robustly help the poor with medical needs. Americans already tend to be very charitable in such matters; for example consider the support they give to Shriners and Children's hospitals.

Regardless, the plight of the poor should not be used as an excuse to destroy the market in health insurance for everyone else.

ObamaCare took a bad, unfree system of health "insurance" and made it worse and even less free. Hopefully Republicans can still keep their promises to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a plan that frees people to consensually buy and sell insurance that manages their risks without draining their bank accounts or binding them to their current jobs.

We've tried statism in health insurance for decades and it has failed. Now let's try liberty.

Comments

What a Solution Would Look Like

Thank you for an excellent article! You did a great job of pointing out the essential problems with our current situation, identifying the fact that we purchase "pre-paid health care" and can no longer have long term policies. I especially appreciated your addressing how pre-existing conditions could be handled in the process of moving to freedom in health care. Thanks for showing what a solution could look like!

—Hannah Krening

March 30, 2017

Why the Federal Government Should Not Fund Art

April 3, 2017

If the federal government did not fund art, there would be no art, right? Obviously no one believes that.

American households (https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-4/movies-music-sports-entertainment-spending.htm) regularly spend an average of two to three thousand dollars per year on entertainment, or around 5 percent of household spending. This includes spending on things like pets and sporting events, which aren't art (if you (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/01/11/meryl-streep-slammed-mixed-martial-arts-she-doesnt-know-what-shes-missing/) believe Maryl Streep), as well as on arts including television programs, movies, and music. North Americans (mostly in the United States) spent more than (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/2016-box-office-hits-record-114b-north-america-angst-960198) $11 billion in 2016 on movies at the box office alone.

But to hear some people tell it, America's artistic landscape would be devastated if the federal government did not subsidize the arts. An example of this approach comes from Neil deGrasse Tyson, whose (http://ariarmstrong.com/2016/08/the-irrationality-of-neil-degrasse-tysons-rationalia/) collectivist premises I have examined before.

The background is that, on March 16 and 17, numerous news outlets published stories to the effect that Donald Trump's proposed budget sought to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), among other things. Fox News carried (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/16/trump-budget-would-end-federal-funding-for-arts-endowment-pbs.html) one such report.

On March 19, in a string of political Tweets generally lamenting budget cuts, (https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/843523716977905664) Tyson wrote, "We can all imagine a land that provides no support for Art. But is that a place you'd want to Live? To Visit? To Play?"

Here Tyson equates our "land" with the federal government and ignores all art funding that does not come from the federal government—which seems odd coming from a man who purports to uphold reason and the scientific mindset.

On March 22, Tyson released another string of Tweets to the effect that the budget for the NEA and NEH is a trivial portion of the total federal budget. For example, (https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/844585715161743361) he wrote, "Cutting the NEA & NEH to save money on a $3-trillion budget is like thinking 1/3-inch is long relative to a football field." I take it that his point is that cutting those budgets would be a petty and pointless thing to do, given their relative inexpensiveness and the benefits that result from the spending.

We might take Tyson's remarks in a different way: Given how slight the budgets for the NEA and NEH are (around (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/with-elimination-of-nea-and-neh-trumps-budget-is-worst-case-scenario-for-arts-groups/2017/03/15/5291645a-09bb-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html) $300 million) out of a total budget ((http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/119/2016) $3.54 trillion), is it worth spending any time to discuss them? Maybe we should talk about entitlement spending instead, which consumes the major part of the federal budget. Even the Department of Agriculture, at 4% of the budget, is vastly larger than the NEA and NEH: Perhaps we should talk about cutting that.

My answer is that art funding presents a relatable way to discuss underlying principles. Most people don't want to get caught up in the boring details of Social Security liabilities or agricultural subsidies, but art is visceral. Yet, because the stakes are relatively small, we can discuss the principles without people excessively hyperventilating about the imagined consequences of cutting the programs. This is especially true given that everyone realizes that art existed prior to 1965, when the NEA was created. Eventually, we can apply the principles under review to other areas. The discussion here applies directly to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with its $445 million budget, and indirectly to many other programs of much greater expense.

So what's wrong with the federal government (or any government) funding the arts? I'll review three of the major problems.

1. Subsidies Entail Force

Rephrasing Tyson's remarks to cut through the euphemisms will make the point: "We can all imagine a land in which the government declines to seize people's wealth, or threaten to lock people in cages, if they do not provide support to the art that bureaucrats deem worthy. But is that a place you'd want to live? To visit? To play?"

My answer is, yes, that's a place I'd like to live, visit, and play—a place where people are free to finance a given art project, or not, by choice. Government has no proper business taking people's wealth by force for such purposes.

Anyone who thinks I'm being hyperbolic when I talk about government threatening to lock people in cages is welcome to evade federal taxes and instead send a letter to the Internal Revenue Service explaining why.

As the (https://www.irs.gov/uac/overview-nonfiler-enforcement) IRS plainly warns:

It is to those individuals, who deliberately fail to comply with their obligation to file required tax returns and pay any taxes due and owing, that IRS Criminal Investigation devotes its investigative resources. In the most egregious cases, criminal prosecution is recommended to the United States Attorney's office.

If that is not sufficiently persuasive, the IRS helpfully offers a list of individuals who have been (https://www.irs.gov/uac/examples-of-non-filer-investigations-fiscal-year-2017) locked in cages for failing to pay the taxes the federal government says that they owe.

True, in cases of slight underpayment of taxes, the IRS likely would take less drastic measures than to lock someone in a cage. For example, the IRS might simply confiscate a portion of a person's paycheck to pay off the residual.

Whatever euphemisms and evasions may be offered, the obvious fact is that government funds art projects by forcibly taking the money from individuals, either by direct confiscation or by threats of punishment.

2. Art Doesn't Need Force

As indicated, Americans spend many billions of dollars every year on art and cultural events of their choosing. Why, then, do we supposedly need federal funding of the arts and humanities?

Presumably the answer is that, absent federal funding, not enough of the "right" sort of art would be funded. But "right" by whose standards? Why should government bureaucrats get to decide what is the "right" art for people to fund—or that they should fund such art rather than anything else they might care to buy?

Supporters of tax-funded arts are in a tricky position. They have to argue that the programs are popular—or else there would be no political will to continue them. Yet they also have to argue that the programs are not so popular that they'd be funded voluntarily. Or, alternately, they just have to pretend that voluntary financing is somehow impossible.

Of course art that is popular does not need to be subsidized; people go out of their way to finance it. People buy tickets for movies, plays, and concerts in addition to DVDs, CDs, and streaming content. People often also give charitably to art projects. In the internet age, crowd funding is increasingly popular; I have contributed to the production of a music album and a couple of documentaries this way.

An art project need not have widespread support to get off the ground. Often a small group or a single individual has a particular interest in a project and the resources to finance it.

Sometimes businesses help to finance art for the publicity. The fact that Toyota sponsored a recent "free day" at the Denver Art Museum and parked a couple of vehicles outside did not somehow sully my experience there.

It is foolishness to claim, as a "news" article for (http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2017/03/16/these-10-great-cultural-works-wouldnt-have-happened-without-public-funding/99259050/) USA Today does, that generally a given work "wouldn't have happened without public funding." (Lawrence Reed offers a lengthy (https://fee.org/articles/government-funding-cheapens-the-arts/) critique of that article.) In some cases, no doubt, a given project would not have found funding and individuals would have spent their money on other values. In other cases, a project would have proceeded with voluntary funding.

USA Today provides a great example of private financing when it notes that Sesame Street "no longer receives direct government funding" via the Public Broadcasting Service because it inked a deal with HBO, which is funded through subscriptions and sales of DVDs and streaming content. Are we supposed to believe that, at this unique moment in history, this children's show can thrive by voluntary funding, whereas before it could not possibly have done so? Private contributions and advertisements long have funding most broadcasting.

The only semi-plausible argument for tax funding of the arts (other than arguments resting on overt nannyism or other forms of elitism) is that the projects supposedly are public goods in the economic sense. But in most cases they are not public goods. Rather, they involve works that people must pay to read, see, or hear, things like books, ticketed events, and movies. And plausible cases of public goods, such as a television broadcast, usually are financed through advertising.

Perhaps we are to believe that a more artistically literate society is itself a public good. But, because so much art already is voluntarily funded or readily could be so, there's not much reason to believe that cutting the subsidies would reduce artistic literacy.

If we're going to entertain such fantastic applications of public goods theory, we can notice that practically anything that people might spend their money on instead would also provide a public good. For example, maybe if people got more massages, they'd be happier overall, and we'd all be better off for it. Or maybe if people spent more money tutoring their kids, or helping people in extreme poverty, or improving their diets, or enjoying time with friends at the coffee shop, those things would provide as substantial a public good. There's no reason to think that the things the NEA and NEH spend money on provide an especially impressive public good. Indeed, the sensible presumption is that things that can attract voluntary funding are the very things that provide the greatest external benefits.

Notice that I have been responding to a common argument about public goods, not arguing that public goods justify forced wealth transfers—I don't think they ever do (but that's a complex topic for another day).

Art that people value will be funded voluntarily. The attitude that "real" art requires tax subsidies stems from the pretension of elitists who think that they uniquely know what is worth funding—and that they should be able to finance their pet projects by taking others' wealth by force.

3. Subsidized Art is Politicized Art

Generally, we should not expect subsidized artists to be the best artists; rather, we should expect subsidized artists to be the best at filling out the appropriate bureaucratic forms to secure tax funding. This helps explain why some people legitimately fear that many projects funded by the federal government would not be funded voluntarily.

Subsidized art is inherently politicized art. There's no getting around that.

Or perhaps it strikes you as a curious coincidence that the NEH facilitates grant searches (https://securegrants.neh.gov/publicquery/main.aspx) based on congressional district and that the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (http://www.nasaa-arts.org/Research/Grant-Making/NEAStateFactSheet_2016_ID.pdf) brags that NEA money is distributed by congressional district as well as by population density.

Tax subsidies for art and cultural products tend to go to people who are not too successful—because it is harder to justify subsidizing artists already earning plenty of money—but not completely unknown.

So, for example, a software developer working on his first science-fiction novel on the side probably would have zero chance of getting a subsidy, even on the off chance that it occurred to him to apply.

On the other hand, a painter working with an established "arts residency program" and whose (http://www.kachstudio.com/the-uninvited-series) projects include "re-constructing the narratives that took place within late 19th century and early 20th century West African ethnographic photography taken mainly by French colonialist" can share a $10,000 subsidy to display works "to the public alongside narratives about the artists' creative process" (NEA grant (https://apps.nea.gov/grantsearch/) 17-7200-7002).

There's nothing wrong with the "art residency" project, but it is wrong to force the software developer (or anyone else) to help subsidize the "multidisciplinary artist" if he does not wish to do so.

Of course there is also the problem of forcing people to finance works that they disapprove of, a blatant violation of their rights. The classic example is the moral obscenity of forcing Christians (and others) to subsidize "Piss Christ."

On a personal note, after I complete a number of nonfiction works under development, I may try my hand at fiction. I already have the start of plot lines for two stories. Although I do not necessarily begrudge people who take NEA and NEH subsidies, for the same reasons (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2012/11/the-moral-integrity-of-condemning-social-security-while-collecting-it/) I do not begrudge Ayn Rand for having taken Social Security, I would never apply for such a subsidy because I'd feel morally dirty doing so.

If my fiction is any good, I won't have to rely on confiscated money to finance it. I'd rather make nothing than get a subsidy. And if I make more than nothing I will have earned it.

As artist and gallery owner Quent Cordair (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/03/nix-government-arts-funding-says-artist-and-gallery-owner-quent-cordair/) recently noted, self-respecting artists "give value for value." Get coercion out of the arts.

Update: Twitter users looking for Jacob Sullum's critique of Nicholas Kristof should see the (https://reason.com/blog/2017/04/03/we-cant-cut-the-neh-nyt-columnist-says-b) article at Reason. My (https://twitter.com/ariarmstrong/status/849018726846541824) recent Tweet that Kristof retweeted linked to Sullum's piece as well as to mine.

Defining Fake News

April 10, 2017

What is "fake news?" (http://coloradopolitics.com/ray-scott-fake-news-colorado/) According to Colorado Senator Ray Scott, "We all have our own definitions" of it; "it's a subjective, eye-of-the-beholder thing." But calling fake news a matter of subjective opinion is dangerous. It undermines the very idea of objectivity, and it excuses those who put bogus claims and dubious sources on the same level as proven facts and credible reporting. For the sake of rational civic discourse on which the health of our civilization largely depends, we need to to better. So what is fake news?

One thing that Jason Salzman's "(http://bigmedia.org/fake-news-pledge-for-elected-officials/) fake news pledge" has done is provoke a discussion about the meaning of fake news, which is not as obvious as one might initially presume.

In his pledge, Salzman describes fake news as "fabricated stories masquerading as news," as "inaccurate information, packaged to look somehow like news," and as information "deemed false or inaccurate" by a trustworthy source. That's an excellent first stab.

But a couple of key questions quickly arise. First, how do we distinguish fake news from the occasional (but inevitable) errors and unacknowledged editorializing of otherwise professional journalists and publications? Second, in the case of a debatable or non-obvious claim, how do we distinguish fakery from the truth?

Perhaps the best example illustrating the first problem is the case of Jayson Blair, who "committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud" while writing for the New York Times in 2003 and the years preceding, as the (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html) Times itself relates:

He fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not.

Were Blair's troublesome stories examples of fake news? Yes, obviously. Eventually I persuaded Salzman (http://bigmedia.org/2017/03/20/fake-news-pledge-requires-left-and-right-to-compromise/) of this point:

In a (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/03/fake-news-open-records-and-the-spat-between-a-colorado-senator-and-newspaper/) post [March 17], Ari Armstrong argues that any news outlet can produce fake news, even the New York Times. I'd rather say outlets like the New York Times never produces fake news, because when they do it's by accident, but I gave up on that a while ago and now agree with Armstrong that the definition of "fake news" should focus specifically on the accuracy of a news article, not its source.

Of course, there is a huge difference between a person or group devoted to intentionally producing fake news and a generally reputable news source that makes a mistake. A key marker of a reliable news source is its eagerness to correct the record. The New York Times "unleashed a posse of reporters and editors to put Blair's national desk oeuvre under a microscope," as (http://ajrarchive.org/article.asp?id=3019) Rem Rieder summarizes for the American Journalism Review. "It played the devastating findings of Blair's serial crimes against journalism at the top of page one, with four open pages inside," he writes. So we must carefully distinguish between a fake-news operation and the occasional fake news of an otherwise-reputable news organization.

Most instances of errors are not intentional and are not as egregious as in the case of Blair. Consider a couple of recent examples, again from the New York Times. (I'm using examples from the Times not to pick on that paper, but because the Times is widely regarded as one of the most important and trustworthy newspapers in the world.) In one case, the Times had to (https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/06/new-york-times-posts-correction-clarifying-ivanka-is-not-donal/22028355/) issue a correction for an article that "misidentified Ivanka Trump as President Trump's wife." In another case, the Times selectively reported the results of a survey on college admissions of international students, as economist Tyler Cowen (http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/03/one-real-blooper-cannot-let-pass.html) pointed out.

I too unintentionally produced fake news when, in 2015, I misread a Colorado bill and Tweeted my false interpretation of it. But I also quickly corrected myself, and, in my view, my (http://ariarmstrong.com/2015/02/vaccinations-and-the-misreporting-of-the-parents-bill-of-rights/) resulting article offers the best description available of the bill in question (regarding parental control of children in public schools) and its background.

The fact that generally reliable and responsible individuals and organizations sometimes make mistakes bears directly on the issue of how we determine what is fake news. If we cannot rely even on the best publications to always get all the facts right, how can we rely on anyone to reliably distinguish fake news from real news?

Ultimately I agree with Colorado Senator Tim Neville when (http://bigmedia.org/2017/01/16/state-senator-says-each-individual-has-to-be-the-arbiter-of-fake-news/) he says that "each individual has to be the arbiter"—if that means that each individual must exercise his rational judgment in evaluating reports.

But I worry that Neville might mean or be taken to mean, with Ray Scott, that fake news is just a matter of subjective interpretation. That's how Salzman seems to interpret Neville's remarks.

The standard of truth is neither an established authority nor subjective opinion. Rather, it is the facts of reality. A claim is true or false, based not on whether the New York Times or Ray Scott or anyone else says it is, but whether the claim comports with the facts.

How do we know the facts? Although we cannot always know all the relevant facts in a given case or absolutely avoid the possibility of error, we can learn facts by observing reality and drawing rational inferences from those observations. It is in that sense that each individual should evaluate the truth of a given claim.

With this background in mind, we're in a position to define fake news and the related concepts of bias and partisanship. In my view it makes the most sense to offer a three-part definition of fake news:

Fake News (1): Intentionally fabricated claims, made either with no supportive evidence or in contradiction to known facts, propagated to mislead others. Here the motive is to deceive.

Fake News (2): Unintentionally fabricated claims due to poor journalistic standards. An example of this is an article by Jim Hoft about an anti-Trump flyer distributed at Republican events last year; as (http://ariarmstrong.com/2016/04/breaking-jim-hoft-flubs-story-about-deny-trump-flyer/) I explain, many of Hoft's claims are false. Here the basic problem is irresponsibility (or just incompetence), not (necessarily or only) bad motives.

Fake News (3): Errors unintentionally made by otherwise reputable individuals and news organizations that normally are corrected. Jayson Blair intentionally produced fake news, but the New York Times unwittingly published it and then had to issue correctives. In these cases the motive of responsible parties is to get to the truth, and correcting mistakes is part of the normal journalistic process. Morally, fake news of this sort is far different from fake news of the other sorts.

Biased News: The intentional or careless omission of relevant facts, or the unacknowledged editorial interpretation of the facts. The case of the New York Times article criticized by Cowen (discussed above) is a great example of this. In a biased story, every point-by-point fact can be correct, yet the conclusion or implication of the story can be false. ("Half the truth is a great lie.") How does this relate to fake news? I would say that egregious cases of bias constitute fake news. Unfortunately, biased stories often go uncorrected.

Editorialized News: Articles written to advance a particular partisan or ideological interpretation of, or conclusion from, a set of basic facts. This is also called advocacy journalism (which is what I mostly do). A story is biased when it offers an unacknowledged editorial interpretation of facts, because the writer is trying to pass off an evaluative conclusion as though it were a basic fact. But a piece written self-consciously as an editorial—and identified as such—is not necessarily biased. Notably, good editorial writers often do great investigative journalism, and we can learn from their research even if we disagree with their conclusions. So there is nothing wrong with editorializing; the problem is trying to pass off an editorial as straight news. Many people refer to unacknowledged editorials as fake news, but it makes more sense to just call them biased. Note here that I'm not saying that evaluative conclusions—i.e., "slavery is wrong," "bombing Syria was justified"—cannot be factual; I'm saying that insofar as they are factual it is in a complex and philosophic way that goes beyond basic news reporting.

These definitions can go a long way toward fostering sensible public discussions about the nature and danger of fake news.

To foster truth-oriented discourse, we all need to think more critically about how we as individuals consume news. And we need to hold ourselves, our political and ideological opponents, and our allies accountable so that we help squash fake news and promote real news.

Debating the facts is an inherently messy process. Often people have a hard time overcoming their biases when judging reports. And often the facts are elusive and evidence seems to point in different possible directions. But these problems do not make truth a matter of subjective opinion. The facts are the facts, and we can learn facts by (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/objectivity.html) objective means.

Although we can never entirely root out fake news, we can, with effort, render it impotent to undermine rational public discussion and the civic standards that ultimately rest on such discussion.

Those interested in this issue may also want to check out my recent commentary and articles about it:

Image of signs posted after the "(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory) pizzagate" shooting: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory#/media/File:Comet_Ping_Pong_-_community_messages_(cropped).jpg) AgnosticPreachersKid

The United Debacle, Government Interference, and Contract Ambiguity

April 12, 2017

A shocking April 9 (http://fortune.com/2017/04/10/united-airlines-overbooked-flight-video/) video shows (https://twitter.com/RyanRuggiero/status/851577150117425154) Chicago Aviation Security Officers violently dragging a screaming and bloodied passenger off of a United Airlines ((http://theresurgent.com/new-united-ceos-email-sheds-light-on-shocking-video/) subcontracted) flight to make room for United crew. United CEO Oscar Munoz said the man, David Dao, was "(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/11/re-accommodate-united-gets-lampooned-for-its-awkward-response-to-passenger-dragging/) re-accommodated"—a Newspeak term widely ridiculed and condemned. As of the evening of April 11, Dao (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/doctor-pulled-united-airlines-flight-hospital-article-1.3043210) remained hospitalized for his injuries. By the end of that day Untied stock had fallen by (http://fortune.com/2017/04/11/united-airlines-stock-passenger-dragged-off-plane-warren-buffett/) over a billion dollars.

Why did this happen? The three main problems are overreaction by the parties involved, government interference in the airline industry, and ambiguities in United's terms of service. Let's take those issues in turn.

Overreaction

The obvious explanation is that United staff as well as the police officers involved egregiously overreacted. If Dao's removal was permitted by United terms and procedures, why did United's staff not bring out the relevant paperwork and carefully explain the situation? Regardless of the legal technicalities, United clearly screwed up by seating passengers prior to working out seat availability. Any resulting lateness, then, was United's fault.

And why did the police not fall back on negotiation rather than brutality? One officer even laughed over the violence, (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/ct-united-flight-3411-man-dragged-witness-20170411-story.html) according to a passenger. Why did police not ask United's staff to come up with a better solution before getting involved? Use of brute government force should be the last resort in such cases. Notably, the Chicago Department of Aviation "(http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2017/04/10/security-officer-placed-leave-after-united-flight-incident/100300246/) said in an emailed statement that the incident wasn't in accordance with its standard operating procedure and the officer's actions 'are obviously not condoned by the Department.'"

Although most of the blame belongs with United and the police, I think it's fair to say that Dao also overreacted. Why didn't he walk off, make arrangements to be late to work—or call Uber, as an anonymous United employee later (http://theresurgent.com/new-united-ceos-email-sheds-light-on-shocking-video/) suggested—and contact United and perhaps his attorneys later? Incidentally, I looked up rates at Uber.com from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky, the route of the plane, and found rates ranging from $321 and $1,679, depending on details. Presumably Dao, a medical doctor, was not without means.

But overreaction is the obvious story. Other important contributors are less obvious.

Government Interference

If you listen to people including Jesuit priest (http://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/04/11/united-airlines-debacle-isnt-about-customer-service-its-about-morality) James Martin and Paste writer (https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/04/youre-not-mad-at-united-airlines-youre-mad-at-amer.html) Shane Ryan, the Untied debacle is an indictment of capitalism itself. Such writers ignore the ways that people acting in the market have already prompted change at United and the ways that government controls helped create the problem.

Government substantially controls the airline industry in ways that helped set the context for the case under review. Government throttles competition by restricting foreign ownership of airlines as well as service of domestic routes by foreign airlines, as (https://cei.org/blog/want-better-airline-service-deregulate-enhance-competition) Marc Scribner writes for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. And the inflexible (http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2017/04/11/real-reason-man-dragged-off-united-flight-stop-happening/) union contracts that dictate how Untied must transport crew are made in a context in which union "negotiations" are backed up by threat of government force. Absent such controls, the airline industry probably would be more competitive and more responsive to customers' needs.

(Note: Originally in this section I claimed that federal regulations prohibited United from offering greater compensation to get people out of their seats, but my interpretation of those regulations was mistaken. See my (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/04/overbooking-and-passenger-compensation-after-the-united-fiasco/) follow-up article for more details. The fact that United could have offered greater compensation but did not substantially increases United's moral culpability, in my view.)

But United's own terms of service also deserve some blame.

Ambiguities of Contract

Prior to this case, it never occurred to me that an airline might remove a composed ticketed passenger from a plane after the passenger had been seated. Of course airlines will call security or police in the case of an unruly passenger, but, if Dao become "disruptive and belligerent," as (https://twitter.com/RyanRuggiero/status/851577150117425154) Munoz claimed, it was only after United staff insisted he leave his seat. Normally in cases of overbooking or standby tickets, passengers are notified before they get on the plane, not after.

The question, then, is whether United's terms of service clearly spelled out that it could remove passengers from planes in cases of overbooking (factoring in crew transports).

Passengers agree to abide by terms offered, and United openly publishes its (https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx) Contract of Carriage even if few people read it. Attorney (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/04/11/airlines-detail-flight-rules-contracts-of-carriage/100331176/) Anthony Sabino says of such contracts: "You signed it. You're stuck with it. If you didn't read it first, that's your problem."

But is the contract Dao signed really clear in this instance? I'm not convinced it is. Rule 25 of the Contract of Carriage says that, in the case of an "oversold" flight, a person "may be denied boarding against his/her will." But the flight in question was "oversold" only if we count the last-minute additions of United crew. And Dao had already boarded, so the language about passengers being "denied boarding" arguably didn't apply.

United's lawyers probably can make a good case that the terms apply in the case at hand, but Dao's lawyers probably can also make a good case that the terms are ambiguous. I'm not an attorney, but I would be surprised if Dao did not end up with a huge settlement and if United and other airlines did not clarify their terms in light of this case.

Fly the Freely Negotiated Skies

The problem of contract ambiguity in this instance does not undermine the case for freedom of contract under capitalism any more than a shoddy science paper undermines the legitimacy of the scientific method. Airlines should be free to offer and advertise, and people should be free to accept, terms that are mutually agreeable. Neither government nor any other outside party should seek to dictate those terms.

To emphasize the obvious: When you purchase an airline ticket, you do not purchase an absolute right to a particular seat at a particular time. Your use of the seat is conditional on terms of contract. Airlines rebook entire flights all the time for reasons of weather, security, and mechanical troubles. Everyone who flies is familiar with the practice of airlines buying off passengers at the gate in the case of overbooked flights. Most of us also are familiar with special-condition tickets that specify the holder may fly on standby if space is available. Air travel is a tricky business that requires elaborate agreements.

I doubt an airline ever would tell passengers that they may never be rebooked once they board. Consider three scenarios: An airline overbooks a flight due to a computer glitch and discovers the error only after boarding has started, someone with a pressing medical or personal need urgently needs a seat, or an airline urgently needs to transport staff.

In a genuinely free market, airlines would openly compete on terms of service—including terms for overbooking. (They already compete in many ways in our partly-free market.) Some airlines might advertise that they never overbook flights—although, for reasons that (https://thefederalist.com/2017/04/10/heres-real-reason-airlines-constantly-overbook-flights/) Sean Davis and (http://time.com/4733837/united-airlines-passenger-volunteer-overbooking/) Charles Leocha point out, they'd likely have to raise ticket prices as a result. Other airlines might sell "guaranteed no-bump" tickets for a premium and tell everyone else that they might be rebooked. Still other airlines might decide to always use compensation to convince some passengers to wait.

The point is that airlines should be free to set the policies that they think make the most sense, and travelers should be free to purchase tickets with the airlines that they prefer (or to use alternate means of travel).

Assuming that the contract is clear and advertised in advance, an airline has every right to remove a passenger from a plane, by force if necessary, if the terms allow for it. (The prudence of invoking a particular contractual clause in a given instance is another matter.)

Most of us recognize that, if a person stops paying a mortgage and refuses to leave the property in question, the mortgage company ultimately should and will call in the police. It is government's proper role to help enforce contracts.

I was surprised, then, to read (http://reason.com/blog/2017/04/10/why-should-police-help-united-airlines-c) Brian Doherty's take in Reason, which ignores the nuances of contract:

While there may be something to be said for the ability for private businesses to summon the help of the police to remove people from their premises if they refuse to leave peacefully and their presence is unwanted, there is no excuse for the police to cooperate when the reason their presence is unwanted is not "causing a disturbance" or being violent or threatening to other customers, or stealing goods or services, or doing anything wrong at all, but rather wanting to peacefully use the service they legitimately paid for.

Whether Dao "legitimately paid for" the right to unconditionally sit in "his" particular seat under the relevant conditions is precisely the question under review, and Doherty is wrong to assume it away. Even if we grant for sake of argument that United clearly was in the wrong under its own contract, liberty-minded people such as Doherty should grant that, when contacts clearly allow for removal of passengers, ultimately police may need to be called in if an individual refuses to abide by the terms of the contract to which he agreed.

[Update: See also Doherty's (http://reason.com/blog/2017/04/12/the-united-airlines-incident-does-not-re) follow-up article, in which he argues that United was not contractually authorized to remove Dao once he had boarded. As indicated, this might be the case but I think the matter is ambiguous.]

That the United debacle resulted in such widespread outrage indicates that airlines have not done a good enough job clarifying their terms of service and notifying passengers of those terms. A likely outcome of the shocking events of April 9 is that airlines will do better in this regard and the public will become more aware of the terms to which they agree by purchasing a ticket.

Virtually everyone—(http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/11/united-ceo-munoz-apologizes-in-response-to-dragged-passenger.html) including United's CEO—acknowledges that United personnel as well as the police responded horribly in this situation. But, in addition to blaming the individuals involved, we can see what created the context in which those individuals acted. Clearly, government should stop interfering in airlines, and airlines should clarify and better-publicize their terms of service.

See also the follow-up, "(http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/04/overbooking-and-passenger-compensation-after-the-united-fiasco/) Overbooking and Passenger Compensation after the United Fiasco."

Comments

Did United Violate Its Own Terms?

As indicated above, I think there's room to argue that United's terms of service did not (contractually) permit it to remove David Dao. (https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-united-legally-wrong-deplane-134223391.html) Jens David Ohlin and (https://thefederalist.com/2017/04/11/did-united-airlines-violate-its-own-contract-by-forcing-that-passenger-off-the-plane/) Sean Davis are among those who argue that United violated its own terms.—Ari Armstrong

Is Overbooking Flights Fraudulent?

Sean Davis (http://thefederalist.com/2017/04/10/heres-real-reason-airlines-constantly-overbook-flights/) marshals a great deal of math, and even a spreadsheet, to explain why airlines overbook flights.

Unfortunately, his premises are wrong. Eighty percent of seats on aircraft are booked with non-refundable tickets. When an airline sells the seat and no one shows up, it still keeps the money. The seat is not "empty" from a revenue perspective. It's certainly true that the seat is empty and the airline could sell that seat twice—once to the original no-show and the second time to somebody at the gate—and this would earn them more revenue, but it ignores crucial facts about the situation.

What about refundable tickets? I looked up a United flight from IAD to LAX next month and the round trip cost for a non-refundable ticket was $306, while the round-trip ticket for a refundable ticket was $1,765. Call me crazy, but I think a premium of more than 500 percent is probably sufficient for the airline to reap enough revenue for those few people who have refundable tickets and don't show up to get their money back.

The issue is not about airline revenue, the issue is about the airlines wanting to sell the same exact product to two people and collect money from both of them, but only deliver the product to one of them. In any other industry, that would be called "fraud" and it is no different if it's an airline seat or a theater seat.

If you buy tickets to Les Mis and don't show up, it's not like the theater "oversells" the show and has a bunch of waitlist people ready to take your seat at 5 minutes before showtime. Why is that when the theater business is much more precarious financially than the airline business? It's becaue the theaters don't have the government backing them in enforcing a fraudulent contract, so no theater could get away with doing this without being sued to death. If you buy Seat A101 and A102 for Les Mis, those are your seats whether you come to the performance or not. Airlines are no different.

—Ed Powell

April 14, 2017 (posted)

Ari Armstrong replies: Fraud means someone lies to you about what they're selling you. So, if an airline sold you a ticket on the promise that it would not overbook your flight, then intentionally overbooked it, that would be fraud. (Of course, a sensible airline would have terms of service to cover accidental overbookings.) But that's not what airlines do here. They tell you upfront that a) your ticket is nonrefundable, and b) they sometimes overbook flights and rebook some people. If you know the terms in advance and agree to them, there is no fraud. As I've mentioned, if someone wants to run an airline with a "no overbooking" policy, they're welcome to try.

Regarding how theaters work, important differences between flying and watching a play probably explain the differences in policy. With theater, the particular seat matters very much; not so with an air flight. Usually a person can catch another flight within a few hours; not so with a typical theater performance. Usually going to the theater consumes only a few hours of time, whereas travel often involves much longer periods (including transport to and from the airport). And I think theaters often do have "standby" tickets, and someone who can't get in has spent very little time waiting.

Overbooking and Passenger Compensation after the United Fiasco

April 13, 2017

In the aftermath of the April 9 incident in which police dragged a passenger from a United plane, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has "(http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/12/politics/chris-christie-united-trump-cnntv/index.html) asked the Trump administration to stop overbooking until we set rules how the airlines can conduct themselves."

For the sake of airline passengers, let's hope the federal government does not take Christie's request seriously.

As I've (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/04/the-united-debacle-government-interference-and-contract-ambiguity/) pointed out, airlines do need to clarify their terms of service and better advertise them to customers. Beyond that, it is up to individual airlines to treat customers in such a way as to win people's business. In response to widespread outrage, United already is instituting changes; CEO (http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/11/united-ceo-munoz-apologizes-in-response-to-dragged-passenger.html) Oscar Munoz apologized for the incident and promised a "thorough review" of United's practices.

Government should get involved only if it reasonably deems that United violated its contracts with passengers (a debatable question); after all, people have a right to freely assent to the terms an airlines offers. Assuming that airlines and passengers mutually agree to a contractual arrangement, government should play no further role. Paying customers even in our semi-free market are ably equipped to punish bad actors by withholding their business, as they continue to punish United. Government shouldn't interfere with people's agreements, and generally it imposes harm when it does so.

Even those who think that government must tightly regulate business should grant that it would be foolish to push for a ban, even temporary, on overbooking, for a ban would immediately increase airline ticket prices. Even regulation advocates should recognize that a softer touch—say, a ban on forcibly removing passengers after they are seated—would address the problem at hand without substantially disrupting the airline industry.

What else can we learn from the United debacle? In what follows I'll touch on a number of issues related to overbooking in the airline industry and the related matter of offering compensation to passengers who are bumped.

The Practice of Compensating Passengers

Once United staff figured out they needed to squeeze four crew members onto a booked and seated flight, they tried to buy passengers' cooperation. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/business/united-flight-passenger-dragged.html) According to the New York Times, United offered first $400, then $800, then $1,000 to passengers to leave the plane "voluntarily" (this is a key term here, as we'll see). No one "volunteered," so United's staff selected four people to be "involuntarily" deboarded. (It's unclear to me how these four people were selected; was it truly random or solely at the discretion of United staff? Update: A United spokesperson (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39556910) told BBC that "frequent fliers and higher fare-paying passengers are given priority to stay aboard." One person present (http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/10/video-surfaces-of-man-being-dragged-from-overbooked-united-flight.html) said that staff "used a computer to randomly select four passengers," but this was once the pool was narrowed.) "Four passengers were selected to be bumped, and three left without incident," United spokesperson Charlie Hobart told the Times.

David Dao did not leave without incident. He left carried by police, bloodied and screaming, and video recorded for the world to see.

The obvious question is why United did not offer more in compensation. The widespread view (which I share) is that United was idiotic in not doing so. My guess is United staff wouldn't have had to go above a couple grand or so, times four passengers, to get people off the plain. To save on the order of $10,000, United enraged airline passengers nationwide. As I noted on Twitter, this public-relations disaster will be studied for years.

How widespread is the practice of bumping passengers? Again from the Times:

[I]nvoluntarily bumping passengers is rare. In 2016, United involuntarily denied boarding to 3,765 of its more than 86 million passengers on oversold flights, (https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/resources/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/2017MarchATCR.pdf) according to the Transportation Department. An additional 62,895 people voluntarily gave up their seats.

Not moving this one passenger from the "involuntary" to the "voluntary" category probably will end up costing United tens of millions of dollars, not counting the heavy hit United stock took.

Meanwhile, United's competitors get free publicity over the matter, as with the headline "(https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2017/04/09/why-delta-air-lines-paid-me-11000-not-to-fly-to-florida-this-weekend/#1d9dd5924de1) Why Delta Air Lines Paid Me $11,000 Not To Fly To Florida This Weekend."

After reading a newly recirculated 2015 story from PBS, "(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/how-delta-masters-the-game-of-overbooking-flights/) How Delta masters the game of overbooking flights," I'm floored that United did not follow Delta's practices in this regard.

Delta lets passengers choose, at the point of check-in, how much they'll accept to be bumped, explains Max Nesterak, the author of the PBS piece. (I don't know whether Delta consistently practices this policy.) This is a brilliant strategy, because it lets passengers buy into the idea of getting bumped, put a dollar value on the hassle of getting bumped, and essentially prioritize themselves. Obviously Delta first bumps and compensates passengers who pick the lowest values.

As a consequence, "only three of every 100,000 Delta passengers were bumped involuntarily" in 2014, Nesterak notes, compared with 11 for United.

I checked with the (https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/resources/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/2017MarchATCR.pdf) October—December, 2016, statistics: Delta involuntarily bumped only one passenger per 100,000, while United involuntarily bumped four (bear in mind this is only for a quarter). It's worth noting, though, that Delta had relatively more voluntary "denied boardings."

It's also worth noting that, in the same quarter, the number of involuntary to voluntary "denied boardings" for all U.S. airlines was 8,955 to 106,723. And the number of of "denied boardings" (voluntary and involuntary) to "enplaned passengers" was 115,678 to 164,615,313. That's a ratio of around 1 to 1,400—so let's not exaggerate the scope of the problem.

How do Federal Regulations Relate?

(https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/250.5) Regulation 14 CFR 250.5 defines the "amount of denied boarding compensation for passengers denied boarding involuntarily." The limit is set at 400 percent of the fare, at a maximum of $1,350, in cases of substantial delay.

Initially I was confused about the meaning of "involuntary" here. If an airline says, "We'll offer you a given number of dollars to leave the plane—and if you don't leave we'll make you leave"—that counts as a "voluntary" deboarding, assuming the passenger accepts the offer. If the airline makes you leave without you accepting a prior compensatory offer, then that is "involuntary," and in that case the airline must compensate you according to the regulations. (I had to (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/04/the-united-debacle-government-interference-and-contract-ambiguity/) correct my previous article because of my erroneous interpretation of this.)

Thankfully, someone on Facebook pointed me to an (http://www.businessinsider.com/united-airlines-big-mistake-offering-cash-2017-4) article by Business Insider, which in turn cites the (https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights) Department of Transportation:

DOT has not mandated the form or amount of compensation that airlines offer to volunteers. DOT does, however, require airlines to advise any volunteer whether he or she might be involuntarily bumped and, if that were to occur, the amount of compensation that would be due. Carriers can negotiate with their passengers for mutually acceptable compensation.

Given this framework, it seems clear why the federal government requires compensation in cases of "involuntary" deboarding; the idea is to ensure that passengers who are bumped are compensated.

Ironically, though, this regulation may sometimes have the opposite of its intended effect. Absent the regulation, airlines would have to set their own policies for compensating passengers voluntarily and involuntarily deboarded.

As I've argued, airlines should be free to set these policies, and customers should be free to accept them or not. Absent the regulation, airlines would either set popular compensation policies or else notify people (hopefully very clearly) that involuntarily deboarded passengers would get no compensation. Absent clear buy-in from customers in exchange for lower ticket prices, this second option would be insanely unpopular.

Because of the regulation, some people at airlines might think, "We'll lose a maximum of $1,350 if we involuntarily deboard a passenger, so we might as well not offer more than that to voluntarily deboard." In other words, the regulation may have the unintended effect of training some airline personnel to meet the requirements of the regulation, rather than meet the needs of their customers. It seems plausible that such thinking was at play leading up to the debacle of April 9.

Government has no need to set such regulations and no proper business interfering in the contractual relationships between airlines and passengers.

Another Test Case

The Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united-low-priority-passenger-20170412-story.html) reports another case of a man getting booted off of a United flight. In this case, Geoff Fearns was not physically dragged off the plane, but he was threatened with arrest if he didn't leave.

But in this case United had a pretty good excuse for cutting back the number of passengers:

Apparently United had some mechanical troubles with the aircraft scheduled to make the flight. So the carrier swapped out that plane with a slightly smaller one with fewer first-class seats.

But, as indicated above, obviously United could have done something far better than threaten the man with arrest.

The Genius of Julian Simon

The Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-market-for-uniteds-bookers-1491953960) notes:

The economist Julian Simon wrote on these pages in 1977 (and we repeated in 2010) that the way to handle overbooking if too many passengers show up for a flight is to hold an auction. Treat the seat shortage like a market to persuade people to give up their tickets voluntarily. Offer passengers compensation in gradually rising value until enough volunteers give up their seats.

As the Journal discusses (and as noted above), Delta does a better job instituting Simon's advice than United does.

(http://reason.com/blog/2017/04/10/why-should-police-help-united-airlines-c) Doherty also discusses Simon's role in devising auctions to solve problems of overbooking.

A Sense of Context

I offer a few concluding thoughts here.

Maybe United will have great customer service when pigs fly. But let's not take for granted that human beings really can fly, and that's an awesome thing.

Image (modified from the original): (https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/10998752575/) Gage Skidmore

Subsidies for Jesus and the Supreme Court's Conundrum

April 17, 2017

Should states unjustly subsidize religious organizations—or unjustly discriminate against them? That is a conundrum facing the Supreme Court as religion-friendly Neil Gorsuch joins that body.

Here are the details of the relevant case—one with potentially broad implications—(http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-church-idUSKBN17I0BA) from Reuters:

Trinity Lutheran Church, which is located in Columbia, Missouri and runs a preschool and daycare center, said Missouri unlawfully excluded it from a grant program providing state funds to nonprofit groups to buy rubber playground surfaces. Missouri's constitution prohibits "any church, sect or denomination of religion" from receiving state taxpayer money.

The basic case against subsidies specifically for religious groups is that they violate people's rights not to financially support ideological groups of which they disapprove. Forcing individuals to subsidize such groups violates their freedom of conscience. This is true even if courts uphold the legal fantasy that states can somehow subsidize "non-religious" projects of religious groups without thereby subsidizing the groups' overall missions. It is wrong, as examples, to force atheists or Hindus to subsidize the operations of a Protestant church or preschool.

The basic case against state discrimination against religious groups is that it violates the legal principle of equal protection under the law. If Missouri subsidizes the playgrounds of secular organizations, it is unfair for Missouri not to also subsidize the playgrounds of religious organizations.

This case is rationally unresolvable because it leaves unquestioned the underlying presumption that state governments should subsidize private organizations. If Missouri stopped subsidizing playgrounds, the case would be moot. But that possibility is not currently under consideration.

Whichever side the court takes in this matter, it will probably let stand the violation of some people's rights—the only open question is whose rights will be violated.

The root issue is that people have a moral right to decide how to spend their resources. A person has a moral right not to subsidize a playground—and to spend that money on something else—regardless of the ideology of the individual or the organization. It is wrong to force a Protestant to subsidize a Protestant-run playground, too. Of course, people properly are free to voluntarily contribute their funds to playgrounds or to any other project consistent with individual rights. But the basic issue almost certainly will not be considered by today's courts.

The wrong question is whether states should subsidize only secular playgrounds and not religious ones. The right question is whether states should subsidize private organizations. Assuming the Supreme Court will not address the right question, it will necessarily get the wrong answer.

The Question of Jury Nullification

April 21, 2017

Should a juror vote to acquit a criminal defendant on the grounds that the law behind the charges is unjust? Is such a practice of jury nullification legal, whether or not it is moral?

Jury nullification is a live issue in Colorado because of ongoing legal disputes between activists who hand out jury-nullifcation literature outside Denver's Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse and Denver officials who wish to restrict such activity. Here I'll address the specific dispute as well as the general question of jury nullification.

The Colorado disputes began in mid-2015, when two men handing out nullification literature at the court, Mark Iannicelli and Eric Brandt, were arrested by Denver police and "(http://www.denverpost.com/2015/12/16/denver-judge-dismisses-charges-against-jury-nullification-activists/) each charged with seven counts of jury tampering" for (http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/colorado/codce/1:2015cv01775/157727/97/) allegedly violating Colorado statutes 18-8-609. (See also the district attorney's (http://www.denverda.org/News_Release/Releases/2015%20Release/Iannicelli%20jury%20tampering%20charges.pdf) media release.) Each charge carries a maximum penalty of (http://reason.com/blog/2015/08/05/denver-activist-arrested-for-passing-out) three years in prison. Although the Denver District Court threw out the charges, the city appealed, so the men still could be prosecuted, according to Kirsten Tynan of the (http://fija.org/) Fully Informed Jury Association and to Eric Verlo, parties in a related law suit.

Following the 2015 arrests, activists won a federal injunction enabling them to continue to hand out literature outside the court. In a case heard this week on April 17 and 18, activists (including Verlo and Tynan's organization) (http://www.thenationreport.org/jury-nullification-educators-have-their-day-in-federal-court/) argued, with the help of well-known Colorado attorney David Lane, that they should be able to operate under the injunction free of subsequent restrictions imposed by Denver. On April 19, in a separate case, Lane also pursued a complaint against Denver for violating the terms of the injunction when, in 2016, its officers again arrested and held Iannicelli and Brandt. Neither case has been been decided yet.

A number of important questions arise from these events. Is jury nullification morally and legally proper? Is the advocacy of it proper? What restrictions may government rightly place (if any) on the advocacy and practice of jury nullification?

Jury Nullification Is Moral and Legal

We'll start with the big issues. Generally people agree that jury nullification is legal, whether or not it is morally proper. Law professor Eugene Volokh (http://volokh.com/2011/02/25/suppression-of-jury-nullification-advocates-speech-outside-courthouse/) writes, "[I]t's clear that it's not a crime for jurors to refuse to convict even when the jury instructions seem to call for a guilty verdict."

Regardless of the morality of the practice, banning jury nullification would be practically impossible. Sure, government could formally outlaw the practice, ban from jury pools people who embrace jury nullification, and provide criminal penalties for jurors who lie about their beliefs about this or who act to nullify the law in a given case. But, aside from the fact that such measures likely would be wildly unpopular, in most cases government could not possibly distinguish those covertly practicing jury nullification from those skeptical of the government's case. The possibility of jury nullification is inherent in the use of the jury; the only way to eliminate it is to eliminate jury trials. Nobody I know wants to do that.

The more fundamental question is whether jury nullification is moral. I think it is moral when used to prevent unjust punishment of a defendant, most notably in cases in which the law in question is unjust. The classic cases of justifiable jury nullification involve jurors who decline to convict people who publish true information critical of government officials, who help slaves escape, or who consume or sell alcohol or other drugs in ways that do not violate the rights of others.

No sensible person argues that jury nullification is moral for the purpose of helping someone escape justice, as by letting off a defendant because of the race or ethnicity of the defendant or the victim.

Philosopher Michael Huemer (http://fija.org/aie653l/wp-content/uploads/HUETDT.1.pdf) argues that jury nullification is proper—indeed, is a moral "duty" (I'd say moral responsibility)—"to avoid contributing to serious, unjust harms" to defendants resulting from punishment under unjust laws. Huemer basis his case on the "simple and uncontroversial ethical principle" that generally ("extreme cases" aside) it is "wrong to cause another person to suffer serious undeserved harms." Huemer makes a strong case and ably fends off common counter-arguments.

Huemer argues that jury nullification (to prevent unjust punishment) is not only morally permissible but morally obligatory for someone on a jury, at least in usual cases. Huemer also argues that someone may intentionally lie about his or her views about jury nullification in order to participate on the jury. (I'd argue there's no general moral obligation to seek to get on a jury to prevent injustice or to lie to do so.)

Huemer draws an analogy to walking down the street with a gay friend and lying to a gang of hooligans about your friend's sexual orientation in order to prevent the hooligans from beating him. (We should recall that homosexual acts were, in fact, outlawed throughout much of the United States (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas) until 2003, and they still are today in various other countries.)

In short, it is morally right to prevent unjust punishment of another person and even to lie to do so, and it is morally wrong to facilitate such punishment. Those who wish to argue otherwise must claim (or imply) that, instead, a juror should knowingly and intentionally facilitate the unjust punishment—often involving many years in prison—of a person. Good luck making that case.

If it is moral to practice jury nullification, it must also be moral to advocate the practice.

Government properly may not censor speech even if it advocates immoral practices (although government may restrict speech that is inherently rights-violating, such as direct incitements to violence). Certainly government ought not censor speech that advocates a moral practice such as jury nullification.

Answering a Common Objection

It seems that the most common sort of objection to jury nullification turns on claiming that it somehow undermines the rule of law. Consider, for example, a (http://www.hbletter.com/why-not-to-vote-libertarian/) recent argument by Objectivist philosopher Peter Schwartz:

When [the Libertarian Party] platform declares: "We assert the common-law right of juries to judge not only the facts but also the justice of the law"—it is rejecting the means by which government protects the individual's rights. The purpose of law in a free society is to make objective the prohibitions against the private initiation of force and the authorizations of government's retaliatory use of force. By giving a group of citizens the power to nullify any law they happen not to like, including perfectly rational laws, the LP is negating the entire function of laws. (I agree with [Harry Binswanger's] suggestions about recusing yourself if you are a juror on a case involving a patently unjust law.)

The claim here seems to be that one cannot advocate or practice jury nullification without advocating or practicing moral subjectivism regarding the law. But that's not the case. Generally, it is morally right to help a slave go free; it is morally wrong to kill someone because of the person's race. These are moral facts regardless of what the law says. So it seems straightforwardly to follow that it is morally right not to punish someone for helping a slave go free and morally wrong not to punish someone for killing another person because of the person's race. The advocacy or practice of jury nullification, for the purpose of preventing unjust punishment, rests on objective moral principles that are logically prior to the law.

On the other hand, the position that jury nullification is inherently wrong seems to inescapably slip into moral subjectivism, for it rests on the presumption that the law must be obeyed no matter what it says or demands or what moral principles it violates. Indeed, the position that jury nullification is inherently wrong seems to logically imply that disobeying any law for any reason is wrong. It would be odd to claim that a person is morally justified to violate an unjust law (say, by escaping if one is lawfully enslaved), but morally unjustified to refrain from helping to punish the person who violates the unjust law.

What is the "entire function of laws," if not to achieve justice for individuals? Knowingly facilitating an unjust outcome in a given criminal case seems obviously to be contrary to the proper function of laws, not in concert with it.

Anyway, it is apparently not the case that jury nullification is contrary to existing or proper law. "[J]ury nullification is supported by longstanding Anglo-American legal tradition, and was considered a vital check on government power by many of the Founders," law professor (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/08/07/rethinking-jury-nullification/) Ilya Somin summarizes. Presumably the (https://www.nps.gov/feha/learn/historyculture/the-trial-of-john-peter-zenger.htm) famous 1735 Zenger case involving jury nullification influenced the Bill of Rights's provisions about jury trials as it influenced its provisions about freedom of the press. John Jay, who helped write the Federalist Papers, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification_in_the_United_States#Court_opinions) conceded that juries have a right to judge "the law as well as the fact in controversy."

I agree with many of Schwartz's criticisms of the Libertarian Party (and of the broader libertarian movement), but his remarks about jury nullification seem off-base.

Debatable Legal Restrictions

The fact that jury nullification (and its advocacy) is moral does not imply that government may do nothing to discourage it. As Huemer concedes, concerns about the abuse of jury nullification "might provide a reason for designing institutions that render jury nullification less common."

I have no objection to courts disallowing information about jury nullification in the courtroom or even instructing jurors to follow the law as written. My understanding is that today's courts follow that course.

Some people argue that courts should actively inform jurors about their powers to nullify, but I'm not convinced. I worry that, if lawyers could explicitly argue for jury nullification in the course of a trial, they easily could appeal to jurors' prejudices. Although I do not think jury nullification should be legally prohibited, neither am I convinced that it should be legally promoted.

I don't have a strong opinion about whether prosecutors (or judges) should be able to ask jurors about their views regarding jury nullification or reject jurors with the "wrong" attitudes. I worry about such questioning, and I definitely don't think there should be any penalty if jurors lie about their views on jury nullification.

What about restrictions about handing out pro-nullification literature outside of courthouses? The "public" property surrounding courthouses is subject to the usual requirements regarding free speech on public property. Government properly may issue reasonable content-neutral "time, manner, and place" restrictions; but what constitutes "reasonable" in this context I'm not sure.

From what I can tell, the "reasons" for restricting speech outside the courthouse in question, regarding security and the like, are mere pretexts for preventing the distribution specifically of literature advocating jury nullification. If that's the case, then the restrictions at issue violate the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech. But I have not carefully studied the back-and-forth about this, so I have no firm opinion about what exactly the right call would be. My best guess is that activists should be allowed except within a specified number of feet in front of the entrance, so long as they aren't making too much noise or harassing, blocking, or intimidating people.

Concluding Remarks

In sum, jury nullification and its advocacy to prevent unjust punishments are moral and legal—although certain restrictions pertaining to its advocacy are appropriate in and around the courthouse.

The irony for me is that, by publicly advocating jury nullification to prevent unjust punishments, I almost certainly will never be on a jury where nullification might be an issue. If I'm asked about this, I cannot plausibly claim that I am against jury nullification, given these published statements. As far as I can tell, given the (http://www.westword.com/news/juris-prudence-5063999) Laura Kriho case, it's still possible for jurors to be punished if they demonstrably lie about this. And if I refuse to answer, the prosecution almost certainly will throw me off the jury. (I've been called in for jury duty several times but, somehow, I never make the final cut.)

As horribly unjust as the felony jury tampering charges against the Denver men were, the arrest of those men and the legal battles that followed have served to publicize the cause of jury nullification. As Tynan (https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2017/mar/9/colorado-demonstrators-clash-police-over-seizure-jury-nullification-pamphlets/) points out, "the DA's efforts to quash our message have made it go much further." Denver's district attorney certainly helped to make a believer out of me.

Image of the Zenger Trial: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger#/media/File:29-THE_FAMOUS_ZENGER_TRIAL.jpg) Martha J. Lamb

Comments

Reason As Absolute

I recently was summoned to appear for jury selection. Prior to determining if I would be selected, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire. Toward its conclusion it asked "are there any facts which you are aware that might prevent you from determining the innocence or guilt of the defendant you may be empowered to decide?" I answered the question, "perhaps."

At the conclusion of the selection process, whereby the lawyers and judge asks assorted questions of potential jurors, the judged asked that Mr. Walden identify himself. I acknowledged, and the judge then indicated that he would like to understand my "perhaps." I responded that irrespective of my thoughts on whether the defendant was guilty or innocent, I also would always reserve the right to determine the legality of the law. He then responded that it is the law! He would decide issues of law, jurors are only allowed to decide issues of fact—the facts of the case. I simply responded that I disagreed. He then angrily continued with the proceedings without further comment.

I am an Objectivist. As such I fully understand that reason must be man's only absolute. All other "absolutes" exist within context. I therefore disagree with Schwartz and am in support of your fine articulations of the issues.

—Dave Walden

Ongoing Violations of the Rights of Immigrants

April 28, 2017

Arturo Hernandez Garcia was working peaceably in Denver putting in floors when he was (http://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/04/26/arturo-hernandez-garcia-ice/) arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Garcia is married with two children—both U.S. citizens—and he has no criminal background. Yet he was forcibly taken from his job and his life and confined, and he now faces the possibility of being forcibly ejected from the country. Garcia is one of (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration-arrests-of-noncriminals-double-under-trump/2017/04/16/98a2f1e2-2096-11e7-be2a-3a1fb24d4671_story.html) thousands of people treated in this manner so far this year.

America's immigration "policy" in many cases is to send out heavily armed thugs with badges to snatch peaceable people from their homes and jobs and rip apart families. This policy is a moral outrage and a profound violation of people's rights.

Ah, but Garcia and countless others like him are "illegal" immigrants—and "don't you know what EE-LEE-GAL! means?" Yes, I do know what illegal means in this context. It means that many peaceable individuals are legally prohibited from working for willing employers, from renting or purchasing property from willing providers, from living with their families, and generally from acting to improve their lives, as they have a moral right to do.

Many of the same conservatives who cheer on the rounding up and removal of "illegal" immigrants, when talking about themselves and their own interests and values, recognize that rights precede government and are not mere legal concoctions. Yet they pretend that somehow immigrants do not have the same rights the rest of us have, only permissions which government may deign to grant or not.

The fact that government bars many peaceable people from immigrating does not mean they have no right to do so. To draw a comparison from history, the fact that government used to permit some people to enslave others did not give them a right to do so, and the fact that government forbade slaves to escape their masters did not revoke their right to do so. Just laws recognize and protect people's rights; unjust laws violate people's rights and are therefore not morally binding. Excusing rights-violating government actions because "the law is the law" is intellectual default and moral cowardice.

The rule of law, in the context of just law, is indeed a foundation of a free and prosperous society. The rule of rights-violating law is a foundation of tyranny and, potentially, of totalitarianism.

No one who takes seriously the principle of individual rights denies that peaceable people have a right to migrate under normal circumstances. The rights to move from place to place, to seek out voluntary associations (including employment) with others, to live with one's family—these are basic to all people. (See philosopher (http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/immigration.htm) Michael Huemer's remarks about this.)

To address the usual caveats: Yes, in time of war or other serious threat of widespread violence government may temporarily restrict freedom of movement in some ways for the sake of general safety. (Today the threat of violent jihad justifies some immigration restrictions.) Yes, government may check people at the border and keep out criminals and those with contagious diseases. Yes, government may remove immigrants who squat on public or private property or who otherwise violate rights. No, immigrants do not have a "right" to welfare (even though illegal immigrants now pay many (https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/study-undocumented-immigrants-pay-billions-in-taxes) billions of dollars annually in taxes). No, illegal immigrants should not have an easy or automatic (or necessarily any) path to citizenship.

None of the following facts justifies the violation of the rights of immigrants:

The rights violations of today's immigration policy are widespread, and the resulting harms are severe. Government forcibly prevents countless individuals from seeking a profoundly better life for themselves and their families, with the result that many are left impoverished and in extreme danger of violence.

Outrage at the injustices at hand is appropriate—but not sufficient. We—meaning advocates of individual rights concerned about immigration policy—need strategies to spur others to take seriously the ongoing injustices and to prompt political change. We can aim for consistently rights-protecting policies while pushing for piecemeal reforms to reduce the scope and harm of rights violations.

Amnesty is an obvious reform in the right direction. I'm not talking about granting illegal immigrants the "right" to vote or anything along those lines. But immigrants who have long lived peaceably in the country, and who often have careers and families here, should be given an opportunity to achieve legal status.

Immigration for job seekers and students, especially for those with open offers in the United States, should be expanded, not further restricted. It is worth remembering here that current immigration policy violates the rights of U.S. citizens who wish to hire or otherwise associate with immigrants, no less than it violates the rights of immigrants. Such abuse comes at (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-04-21/trumps-immigration-restrictions-will-hurt-americans) great economic cost, as Ilya Somin explains.

One possible approach is to federalize the issue. Why not let the states set their own immigration inflows? States could set immigration targets and terms, and immigrants could agree to live and work in a given state (with federal sign-off). It would be far easier for activists in a few states to achieve freer markets, freer migration, and restrained welfare than for activists to achieve comparable reforms at the federal level.

Regardless of particulars, people who advocate individual rights—and people who have a basic sense of decency—have got to resist the temptation to ignore the extreme harm that government imposes on many peaceable immigrants by violating their rights. Immigrants deserve better—and so do the rest of us.

Pope Francis Denounces "Liberal-Individualist Vision"

May 1, 2017

Pope Francis (http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2017/04/28/170428h.html) recently condemned the "liberal-individualist vision" of economic liberty, saying it is "urgent to act . . . especially in the financial field" to limit "market activity and the manipulation of nature."

It will surprise no news-aware person that the Pope continues to condemn free-market capitalism. In his frequent expressions of disdain for it he sounds like a cross between a typical American college humanities professor and a street-corner doomsayer. Yet his recent remarks (an April 24 message to the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences) are worth reviewing to get a better sense of his views—and what's wrong with them.

First a positive note: as a proponent of (http://amzn.to/2dxpvc9) reclaiming the term liberalism to refer to free markets, constitutional government, and individual rights, I'm pleased to see Francis use the term appropriately. That's helpful for framing the debate.

Beyond that, most of Francis's remarks about politics and economics are hopelessly confused (although some of what he says about the nature of work is helpful).

For Francis, a fundamental evil in the world is inequality—and never mind the context or cause of it:

What is most disturbing today is the exclusion and marginalization of the majority from equitable participation in nationwide and planetary distribution of both market and non-market assets such as dignity, freedom, knowledge, belonging, integration, and peace. In that respect, what makes people suffer the most and leads to the rebellion of citizens is the contrast between the theoretical attribution of equal rights for all and the unequal distribution of goods for most people. Although we live in a world where wealth abounds, many people are still victims of poverty and social exclusion. Inequalities—along with wars for dominance, and climate change—are the causes of the greatest forced migration in history, affecting over 65 million human beings.

Here Francis senselessly packages political equality under rights-respecting governments—a liberal aim—with equality of wealth. He sees political inequality as of a piece with economic inequality. But the two things cannot properly be compared or equated.

Political inequality means that some people do not have their "liberal-individualist" rights protected. The solution is not to put everyone's rights equally at risk but to consistently protect everyone's rights.

Economic inequality, by contrast, can arise from opposite causes: plunder or liberty. The "economic inequality" caused by the destructive brutality of the murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad is hardly of a piece with the "economic inequality" caused by the productive genius of Bill Gates, and yet Frances pretends they're fundamentally related.

The (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-migrants-world-day-un-a7090986.html) 65 million refugees in question came from war-ravaged regions such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia—not from regions in which people generally are free to start businesses and to grow wealthy if they are able by building factories, starting tech companies, and the like.

Meanwhile, regions that embrace liberal policies generally prosper. It's as though Francis cannot see past his self-blinding dogmas to observe what's going on throughout the broader world—such as the fact that (https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/) global poverty has fallen dramatically over the past couple of centuries thanks to "liberal-individualist" economics.

Francis's preoccupation with contextless inequality pairs with his Christian antipathy to self-interest to generate his loathing of liberalism. Consider his fuller statement on the matter:

A society in which the true fraternity dissolves is not capable of having a future; a society in which only "giving in order to have" or the "giving out of duty" exist, is not capable of progressing. That is why neither the liberal-individualist vision of the world, in which everything (or almost) is an exchange, nor the state-centric vision of society, in which everything (or almost) is a duty, are safe guides for overcoming inequality, inequity and exclusion that now overwhelm our societies. It is a search for a way out of the suffocating alternative between the neoliberal thesis and that neo-state-centric thesis. Indeed, precisely because market activity and the manipulation of nature—both driven by egoism, greed, materialism and unfair competition—at times know no limits, it is urgent to act on the causes of such malfunctions, especially in the financial field, rather than just correcting the effects.

Francis's remarks here are a jumble of confusions. The main characteristic of liberalism, socially, is not that it turns every transaction into an economic exchange; it is that it turns every adult association into a voluntary one. Families, fraternal societies, ideological groups, charity groups, and so on are as much a part of the liberal order as are businesses and banks. Yes, market activity is driven largely by self-interest—which Francis condemns without cause—but that activity is certainly not without limits. It is limited, legally, by the principle of individual rights, and practically by market demand.

I suppose that in today's world we should be pleased that Francis explicitly rejects totalitarianism; what he wants instead is a bureaucratic state that controls people's lives and wealth partially rather than wholly. But such a system already exists throughout the developed world, and the problems it causes are to a large degree what Francis blames on the element of liberalism.

Francis is particularly worried about the "libertarian" variant of liberalism:

. . . I cannot but speak of the serious risks associated with the invasion, at high levels of culture and education in both universities and in schools, of positions of libertarian individualism. A common feature of this fallacious paradigm is that it minimizes the common good, that is, "living well," a "good life" in the community framework, and exalts the selfish ideal that deceptively proposes a "beautiful life." [I]ndividualism affirms that it is only the individual who gives value to things and interpersonal relationships, and . . . only the individual who decides what is good and what is bad. . . . [L]ibertarian individualism denies the validity of the common good because on the one hand it supposes that the very idea of "common" implies the constriction of at least some individuals, and the other that the notion of "good" deprives freedom of its essence.

The radicalization of individualism in libertarian and therefore anti-social terms leads to the conclusion that everyone has the "right" to expand as far as his power allows, even at the expense of the exclusion and marginalization of the most vulnerable majority. Bonds would have to be cut inasmuch as they would limit freedom. By mistakenly matching the concept of "bond" to that of "constraint," one ends up confusing what may condition freedom—the constraints—with the essence of created freedom, that is, bonds or relations, family and interpersonal, with the excluded and marginalized, with the common good, and finally with God.

Here at least some of Francis's criticisms strike true: Quite a few libertarians are in fact moral subjectivists. Such libertarians do tend to equate whatever an individual wants to do with that individuals' "good," at least within the bounds of property rights and non-aggression. So if someone wants to smoke dope, drink soda, and watch porn day after day without pause, what's wrong with that? But beyond that Francis's remarks are (again) confused.

I regard libertarianism as liberalism stunted by moral agnosticism (in effect, "all moral roads lead to liberty") and an antigovernment stance.

But the liberal view that the so-called "common good" cannot morally trump individual rights is valid. What Francis is arguing here is that individuals and their values may be sacrificed to the "common good"—as defined presumably by government agents under the influence of "social justice warriors."

If we look at what is actually good in common, as opposed to what fanatics imagine to be the "common good," we find that individual rights is the most important good in common, without which the "common good" becomes a pretext to benefit some at the expense of others by use of force.

As for Francis's strange contrast of a "good life" of community versus an isolated "beautiful life," that's just a hastily built straw man. No actual liberal, and not even any libertarian (a few kooks aside), thinks it's a good idea to live free from social bonds. The difference is that liberals think social bonds among adults should be a matter of consent; Francis thinks they should be a matter at least partly of force.

Usually the practical import of Francis's line of thinking is that some people are "bonded" to others by a government threatening to lock them in cages if they do not hand over a portion of their wealth to those others. Those sorts of "bonds" really are constraints, ultimately of the literal kind, as in handcuffs and jail cells. I will cling to "suffocating" liberty, thank you.

Let us return to Francis's claim that individualism implies that only the individual "gives value to things and interpersonal relationships," and that this implies moral subjectivism. It is true that only individuals—not, say, rocks or stars or mythical creatures—value things and relationships. Society is a collection of individuals, not a metaphysical entity unto itself with its own consciousness or values, so only as shorthand or metaphor can we sensibly say that "society" values something.

But the fact that only individuals value things, and that many values are particular to given individuals, doesn't imply moral subjectivism. Rather, individuals can value things according to objective moral principles, such as the principle of individual rights.

Francis is the one toying with moral subjectivism with his undefined "public good." In practice, the "public good" as Francis treats it is nothing other than the subjective preference of some individuals to force other individuals to do certain things, such as hand over their money or go to jail.

In sum, the "liberal-individualist vision" sees a world in which individual adults interact by consent, not by force; in which each individual respects the rights of every other individual; in which individuals are free to pursue values according to objective moral principles, or not (so long as they don't violate others' rights), and enjoy or suffer the consequences; in which governments consistently act to protect rights rather than violate them.

How does Francis equate liberal freedom with suffocation? We already know he is prone to magical thinking. Liberalism is suffocating in the same realm that bread is human flesh, that children come from virgins, that burning bushes talk—the realm of fantasy. Those who live in the real world should take his political pronouncements with the appropriate solemnity.

In Trump Piñata Case, Greeley Tribune Shamefully Blames Victim for Threats

May 20, 2017

What's crazy is not that a Colorado teacher let his students smash a piñata with pictures of Donald Trump and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto on it; that was merely foolish. What's crazy is what happened after that, culminating in a local newspaper blaming the woman who publicly complained about the incident for threats of violence made against her and her daughter.

Let's back up. Lesley Hollywood, whom I've interviewed at political rallies, (https://www.facebook.com/LesleyAnneHollywood/posts/1542918279053852) posted publicly on Facebook May 5:

So, this happened at my daughter's high school today. The Spanish teacher allowed students to destroy a pinata that had Trump's face on it (unclear if it was his idea or a student driven idea, but regardless it was allowed). UPDATE: According to students, the other side of the pinata had a picture of Mexico's president, Enrique Peña Nieto. There are multiple videos of this all over various students' social media accounts.

Now it's no secret I didn't vote for Trump, and I'm certainly not his biggest fan. I'd be outraged by this if it was Obama or Bush or Clinton. It's really unbelievable, especially right here in little ol' Johnstown, Colorado (a town which is honestly fairly conservative).

I will definitely be taking this up with the school.

The school in question is Roosevelt High, near Greeley in Weld County north of Denver.

I do not share Hollywood's outrage about the incident. I have long been aware that smashing (http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/459-history-of-the-piñata) politically-themed piñatas is fairly common in various Hispanic cultures. Clearly bashing a piñata often is not an expression of hatred, as reports by the (http://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/elections/debate-watchers-batter-trump-pi-ata-outside-st-louis-restaurant/article_d06054f4-8ea0-11e6-9611-f3709fc764db.html) Missourian and the (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-man-behind-the-trump-pinata) New Yorker indicate. The fact that the piñata in question featured the presidents of the United States and Mexico seems to indicate that the school event was not partisan. (I have not seen a report about what the teacher said or is alleged to have said about the event.)

On the other hand, the teacher, Jay Moser, probably should have thought a little harder about how the piñata might be interpreted in rural Colorado, where the practice of smashing politically-themed piñatas is not common. This is especially true given that bashing Trump piñatas often is an expression of hatred or contempt for the man, as reports by the (http://progressive.org/dispatches/cinco-de-mayo-celebrations-feature-trump/) Progressive and (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/trump-mexico-villain-213167#ixzz3mTQhU0eE) Politico indicate. And this is in the aftermath of such stories as (http://kdvr.com/2017/01/29/teacher-who-shot-water-gun-at-trump-video-and-yelled-die-now-on-leave/) one in Texas in which a teacher shot a picture of Trump with a water gun while yelling "Die!" We're in uneasy political times.

What might have been an appropriate resolution to the incident? The principal of the school might have invited Moser and Hollywood to meet, where Moser could have explained the cultural context and agreed not to pursue similar projects in the future and Hollywood could have expressed her concerns. End of story. Unfortunately, nothing like that happened.

Instead, the superintendent of the district (http://kdvr.com/2017/05/06/weld-county-teacher-accused-of-letting-students-smash-pinata-with-trumps-picture/) publicly condemned Moser as the district put Moser on administrative leave, a  move that strikes me as an overreaction.

Far worse, "a (http://www.9news.com/news/roosevelt-high-school-closed-for-the-day-after-receiving-threat/437802675) potential threat to the school" resulted in the school closing on May 8. According to a (https://www.youcaring.com/hollywoodfamily-822299) You Caring page for Hollywood intended to raise funds for legal representation over the matter, both Hollywood and her daughter—a student at the school—received a large volume of messages expressing "harassment, intimidation and threats," including one hoping for "a bullet in [Hollywood's] brain." The You Caring page says that the person who sent that message has been "charged with harassment" (a claim I have not independently verified).

Regardless of what one thinks about Hollywood's response to the incident, she has every right to publicly express concerns about events at the tax-funded school her daughter attends. Others have a right to criticize her remarks in turn—but certainly not to threaten her or her daughter.

Astoundingly, a (http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/opinion/tribune-opinion-theres-plenty-of-blame-to-go-around-in-unfortunate-johnstown-pinata-controversy/) May 15 editorial by the Greeley Tribune in effect blames Hollywood for the threats she received, saying "the unruly threats from students" were "sparked" by her reaction (as well as by that of the "district officials"). The Tribune mocks Hollywood for posting her concerns to Facebook rather than quietly "taking her concerns to the administration or the principal." Then the editorial board, apparently experts all in Freudian psychoanalysis, imagine that Hollywood expressed her concerns and then appeared "on local and national media" because "she enjoys the attention" and has an "addiction to the buzz of hornets." The Tribune says that the students who issued the threats merely "followed the adults' lead and overreacted themselves"—as if threats of violence were remotely comparable to peaceable speech. Regarding the threats, the Tribune writes, "We feel bad for her child, but [Hollywood is] the one who kicked the nest."

The Tribune’s editorial is shameful, cowardly, and hypocritical. When the Tribune’s reporters have concerns about the conduct of a tax-funded government employee, do they go quietly to that employee's bosses and seek an unpublicized resolution? Obviously not; the Tribune rushes to blare the news in large headlines. If someone threatened the Tribune or one of its reporters—even if the Tribune published an article of disputed appropriateness—would the Tribune’s editorial board blame itself or its employees for the threats? Obviously not; presumably the Tribune would instead loudly denounce the threat and stand proudly on its right of free speech. Apparently the Tribune holds itself and its staff to different standards than apply to rubes such as Hollywood, who after all was so provocative that surely she had it coming.

As the Tribune notes, the teacher and the district exercised poor judgment in this incident. Arguably Hollywood and various activists and parties in the media did as well. But the Tribune's editorial board would do well to peer into a mirror. Whatever missteps Hollywood might have made, they do not justify or excuse people harassing or threatening her or her daughter. Whatever poor judgment the teacher, the district, or Hollywood may have exhibited, the poor judgment behind the Tribune’s despicable editorial is vastly worse.

Comments

Lesley Hollywood Replies

Something that I feel has been grossly missed regarding this whole story is why I feel an activity like this is inappropriate for school. I understand pinatas are part of Mexican culture, and I take no issue with high school students learning about different cultures. I actually lived in Mexico as a kid and became immersed in the culture myself. I have been to Guatemala a handful of times, Ecuador twice, as well as various other countries across the world. When I was 18, I had been to more countries than I had states. I don't lack an understanding of culture simply because I now live in rural Colorado, nor do I take issue with culture being taught in our schools.

But these days school is about more than "teaching"; it's about helping our children excel and even for some, simply survive. In the past three years, I have watched two horrible teen suicides rattle this tiny town. I have heard heartbreaking stories of bullying. I've watched kids (including my own) face personal challenges that the school has little sympathy for. I have an expectation of teachers to not make this worse.

I feel it is irresponsible for a teacher to allow a class of eight students who lack the maturity to separate a political meaning from a cultural meaning when putting the president's face on a piñata (and not long after one of the ugliest elections I've ever seen), then take said piñata outside into a commons area to beat it up, where the 967 other students from the school could see the activity take place. These 967 other students were not in the class and did not get the accompanying lesson but get to witness this activity.

I care about these kids. Not just mine, all of them. Activities like this only further divide students and encourage animosity which leads to more bullying and more suicide. I expect teachers to do what they can do to keep that from happening, not exacerbate it. Does that mean they don't touch controversial subjects? No. But it means they do it in a responsible manner. I feel this teacher's actions were very irresponsible.

My understanding is the kids from the class put Trump and Nieto on the piñata because they didn't like either of them, they had a political/cultural lesson in class, then proceeded outside for the piñata celebration. A great alternative to the piñata could have been a civics lesson or even a mock-election, a chance to teach these kids what they can do if they do not like the president. How they can become engaged. Maybe discuss if Trump's executive orders are constitutional. There are so many alternatives.

Regardless of how these kids feel about the president, these kids are our future leaders and turning something so serious into a joke is a very bad idea in my book.

The Nonsense Economics of "Climate Action"

June 2, 2017

The climate apocalypse is coming now that Donald Trump has stepped the United States away from the Paris climate agreement, if we believe some critics. Never mind that compliance (http://theweek.com/articles/702717/dont-cry-paris-agreement) was voluntary and that, at least absent tighter controls in the future, the agreement was (http://www.npr.org/2017/06/01/531090243/trumps-speech-on-paris-climate-agreement-withdrawal-annotated) unlikely to have much effect on global temperature increases by 2100.

The effects of continued industrial emissions of carbon dioxide—and what (if anything) governments should do about it—are important discussions. Unfortunately, those discussions frequently are derailed by nonsense economic claims by some advocates of "climate action" that throttling fossil fuels and subsidizing solar and wind energy somehow deliver an economic boon rather than a painful cost. Such claims furiously followed Trump's announcement about the Paris deal.

The essential error is one that French economist (http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html) Frédéric Bastiat described in the mid-1800s (and that (https://fee.org/resources/economics-in-one-lesson/) Henry Hazlitt later revisited): observing only the seen benefits (in this case, jobs in solar and wind) while ignoring the costs in terms of foregone investments and fewer jobs elsewhere.

Consider three examples (out of countless instances) of this error. Congressman (https://twitter.com/RepJaredPolis/status/870377194270412801) Jared Polis claims that pulling out of the Paris agreement "flies in the face of economics" because it prevents the creation of "21st century jobs" and the advancement of "innovative energy." The (http://theweek.com/speedreads/702465/united-nations-just-brutally-subtweeted-trump-climate-change) United Nations claims, "Climate solutions provide opportunities that are unmatchable." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/06/01/obamas-harsh-words-for-trump-after-paris-withdrawal/?utm_term=.0d58a0fd43c3) Barack Obama points to the new jobs in "growing industries like wind and solar" and claims that "nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created."

But any policy looks good if you look only at the benefits and ignore the costs. By the same standard, it would also be a great idea if everyone in the country gave me $1,000, if we banned automobile engines and motors (think of the gains in the bicycle industry!), if we required all electricity to be generated by human pedalling, if we required everyone to work with one arm tied behind their backs, if (via Bastiat) we (http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html) banned windows, and so on. Sensible people who are not ideologically self-deluded look at costs as well as benefits.

It is worth stepping back to remind ourselves of where we currently get our energy. (https://www.eia.gov/EnergyExplained/?page=us_energy_home) According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2016 the top three sources of energy were petroleum (37 percent), natural gas (29 percent), and coal (15 percent). So-called renewable energy (at 10 percent) barely topped nuclear electric power (at 9 percent)—and renewables consist mostly of biomass and hydroelectric. Of the 10 percent renewables, wind was 21 percent of that, while solar was 6 percent. In other words, wind and solar combined provide less than 3 percent of our energy—and that's with massive subsidies.

A rapid and painless path to a future free of carbon emissions is a pleasant fantasy, but it is only a fantasy.

So where does that leave us? What should we do, if anything, to mitigate the harms of global warming? I'm not prepared to answer that question here, but I wanted to at least outline the basic possible approaches.

  1. Accept the costs of seriously curtailing fossil fuels and subsidizing wind and solar (or nuclear) power and try to implement the relevant policy changes. Obviously this is a hard sell politically. Even if the United States had stayed in the Paris agreement, I suspect most nations (including ours) would have treated the agreement unseriously. The fact that the United States has now withdrawn from the agreement under President Trump illustrates the problems with the political approach. Arguably but for Barack Obama's changes at the EPA and his entry into the Paris agreement, Hillary Clinton would be president today.
  2. Argue that the harms of global warming even with unmitigated carbon emissions would be modest or offset by gains. For example, if global warming floods some coastal areas and makes some areas too hot to grow food, it will also make new areas available for habitation and agriculture. I worry that this approach looks for pie in the sky.
  3. Hope, (http://theweek.com/articles/702717/dont-cry-paris-agreement) with Shikha Dalmia, that "America's technology and energy sectors [will] develop innovative solutions that present consumers with cleaner energy options that are obviously cheaper and better than what exists today." The strategy here is for government to do nothing (or very little) and let private industry push ahead. I think this is probably close to what will actually happen, probably led by new sorts of nuclear plants.
  4. Treat "climate action" as a sort of religion, complete with carbon indulgences, intentionally dysfunctional sinks and toilets, bans on politically-incorrect light bulbs, hectoring of the masses, etc. Notice that much of today's left is consumed with this approach plus the far-fetched political approach.
  5. Treat carbon emissions beyond a certain level as a sort of pollution that violates property rights, and call for government intervention to require polluters to compensate harmed property owners (ski resorts, coastal property holders, etc.). This is the approach I'd probably favor if I thought it could become politically viable. This would better capture the true costs of carbon-based fuels and then let free actors sort out the rest. Is the best answer nuclear? New forms of solar? A variety of new technologies? Carbon capturing in tandem with the use of fossil fuels? Geoengineering? Just living with the changes? I have no idea—and neither do the "experts" who implement policies of taxation and regulation.

What should be obvious is that it's difficult to reach a viable solution when so much of the public discussion is clouded by ludicrous economics. Once we agree that we can't get something for nothing, that throttling cheap energy while throwing tax dollars at renewable cronyists will not somehow provide an economic miracle, perhaps we can get to the business of discussing the science of global warming and what we might sensibly do about carbon emissions.

The Abstract Artist We Need in the Age of Trump

June 10, 2017

A critical review of Dark Times: A Visual Dialectic in Four Parts, by Q. E. Armstrong

The first panel of Q. E. Armstrong's innovative Dark Times series reveals a playful conversation between black and blue, with other friends chirping in the background. Q. E.'s choice of canvas, simple 8.5 by 11 inch paper from a common retail store, dares us to compare the artist to a two-year-old boy whose father is too cheap to buy him proper supplies, strikingly undercutting the visual independence of the piece.

A child's drawing.

In the second panel, black is no longer a playful friend; it now overtakes and dominates the other colors. Q. E.'s striking background use of green, red, and yellow evokes the Greeks' three-part soul with its nutritive, locomotive, and intellectual aspects. Black is something apart, something deeper, something that sinisterly threatens to erupt and blot out the other colors.

A child's drawing.

The other colors disappear by the third part, forgotten. Black now reigns. And although it attempts to assert some sense of order, ultimately it spirals out of control. I asked Q. E. what the blackness symbolizes to him. He stared at me as though he did not understand the question; who can explain the ineffable?

A child's drawing.

By the final panel black strikes at the paper, slashing, trying to draw forth as blood the other colors. But they are nowhere in evidence. Are they now too buried to find their way to the surface, or are they gone altogether, absorbed by black?

A child's drawing.

In reply to a query about the significance of the work overall, Q. E. said only, "One, two, three, four." There is no understanding beyond the sequence, no external force by which to seek redemption. If we are to rediscover the other colors it is only through black. But then does the piece not end ultimately in contradiction as it presumes the potential of hope beyond itself?

Q. E.'s masterwork is thus the epitome of our times.

Chocolate Milk Does Come from Brown Cows

June 26, 2017

Seven percent of Americans are so gullible they think chocolate milk comes straight from brown cows, right? Wrong. The gullible ones are the news reporters and their readers who unquestioningly swallowed the incredible survey result on the matter.

I have no doubt that real surveyors asked real Americans where they thought chocolate milk comes from and that seven percent said brown cows. The question is whether those respondents were telling the truth or playing along with what they reasonably concluded was a joke.

There may actually be people so ignorant that they think brown cows squirt chocolate-flavored milk from their tits. But to conclude from the survey in question that seven percent of the population thinks that you'd have to be, well, ignorant—or else a "journalist" intentionally peddling (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/04/defining-fake-news/) fake news to promote page clicks.

The story presents a good object lesson for critically reading—and professionally producing—the news.

One giant red flag is that the raw survey results, along with the wording of the questions, are apparently nowhere to be found. On June 1, Food and Wine published a (http://www.foodandwine.com/news/survey-finds-too-many-people-still-think-chocolate-milk-comes-brown-cows) story by Elisabeth Sherman claiming (link in the original):

The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy (http://www.undeniablydairy.org/) conducted a survey of more than 1,000 adults 18 and over in April of this year. They uncovered some shocking facts about how people think about—and drink—milk.

First off, 48% of respondents said that they aren't sure where chocolate milk comes from. Um, guys, it comes from cows—and not just the brown kind.

Still, 7% of people—and remember, this survey talked to actual, grown-up adults—still think that chocolate milk only comes from brown cows.

First off, if you're not immediately skeptical of the percentages, you're not reading or reporting the news with a sufficiently critical eye.

Let's try to track down the survey to see how the questions were worded, because obviously survey results depend radically on the wording of the questions.

The Food and Wine story takes us to undeniablydairy.org, which redirects to dairygood.org/undeniably-dairy. And what is Undeniably Dairy? According to an (http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/industry-reminds-people-love-dairy/309013/) article at Ad Age linked by Undeniably Dairy, the purpose of the organization is this: "Dairy Industry Ready to Remind Us Just How Much We Love It [Dairy]." So presumably a purpose of the survey is to help persuade people to buy more dairy. Might a responsible journalist wonder whether an industry-funded survey uses questions to generate sensational results?

As of this date, the relevant segment at Undeniably Dairy reads, "Udder-ly shocking: Some Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows!"

This links takes us to a June 15 (http://www.today.com/food/does-chocolate-milk-comes-brown-cows-t112772) story by Today’s Tracy Saelinger, which in turn references two sources: an (https://dairygood.org/Content/2014/4-Chocolate-Milk-Myths-Busted) article originally published in 2014 by the National Dairy Council which does not list survey results, and the June 1 story by Sherman. Huh?

Any time you see circular or ambiguous references you should become nervous as a news reader or reporter. Where is the original survey? Anyway, I'm not sure what documentation Sherman originally saw that served as the basis of her story.

Notably, neither Sherman nor Saelinger voice the slightest bit of skepticism regarding the survey results. Saelinger condescendingly writes:

Uh, yeah—sorry people, but unless you're vegan or have a dairy allergy, don't most of us learn that when you first squeeze Hershey's syrup into a glass of milk at 6 years old? And aside from that, how on earth would a mammal be able to manufacture cocoa inside one's organs?

Apparently Saelinger never learned another tidbit that most six-year-olds know: You can't believe everything you read on the internet.

Numerous other media sites also picked up the story. For example, a June 15 Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/15/seven-percent-of-americans-think-chocolate-milk-comes-from-brown-cows-and-thats-not-even-the-scary-part/) story by Caitlin Dewey (referencing Sherman, of course) uncritically cites the industry-funded survey results. So does a June 16 CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/us/chocolate-milk-help-trnd/index.html) story by Nancy Coleman (as do others).

So what does the actual survey question state? I have not been able to find that information anywhere. On June 16 and 17, I contacted Lisa McComb from (the government-affiliated) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Management_Inc.) Dairy Management Inc. She wrote:

The full survey currently isn't posted anywhere. The survey was conducted by Edelman Intelligence to kick off our Undeniably Dairy campaign on behalf of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. It polled 1,000 American adults online between May 5 and May 9, 2017.

I asked her how the question about chocolate milk was worded. She replied, "The question was phrased as: Where does chocolate milk come from?" However, I have not heard back regarding my follow-up question about whether the question was open-ended or included multiple-choice answers.

The best indication of the question wording I've seen (http://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/533255590/alarming-number-of-americans-believe-chocolate-milk-comes-from-brown-cows) comes from NPR. Host Audie Cornish says, "Jean Ragalie-Carr is president of the National Dairy Council, which commissioned the survey. She says they put that question to a thousand people and gave them several options for how to answer." Ragalie-Carr says, "Well, there was brown cows or black-and-white cows, or they didn't know." NPR's report is entirely uncritical of the survey results.

Glendora Meikle, an actual journalist with the Columbia Journalism Review, was (https://www.cjr.org/analysis/brown-milk-study-cows.php) understandably perplexed by the NPR exchange:

A careful listener's ear may have perked up at this exchange. How exactly was the question phrased? Were those the only three options—two cow colors or "I don't know"? And did this mean that even someone who plainly knew that chocolate milk was simply any milk that had been mixed with chocolate and sugar was not given the option of choosing anything resembling the correct response? "Comes from" is heavy-handed phrasing in and of itself, implying the chocolate milk emerges as is, without human intervention.

My best guess is that the question frequently came across as a joke, something like, "Where does chocolate milk come from, brown cows or black cows?" Understandably, some people smiled and delivered the well-known punch-line. The survey result is humorous, but it says nothing reliable about what the American public actually believes.

Meikle's further remarks are well worth pondering:

[J]ournalists don't have the luxury of playing fast and loose with the facts.

We've become accustomed to seeing these kinds of poorly phrased survey questions pop up and go viral because of some bonkers statistic they claim to support. The build-up/tear-down cycle is exhausting, and "the media" come off looking either lazy and gullible, or malicious for trying to mislead the public.

Those of us concerned with news literacy and public trust in media feel let down when one of these stories fools us across such a wide array of platforms. The problem isn't this one survey and subsequent coverage. The evergreen problem is that if we feel like we can't trust journalists to vet the small stuff for us, we worry that we can't trust them with the big stuff, either. And we don't need to be reminded that public trust in media is incredibly fragile right now.

Here's another quibble: As Meikle indicates, the question is ambiguous. In fact, chocolate milk does come, in part, from brown cows, as well as from other sources (other cows, chocolate, and perhaps sweeteners and various additives). For example, the photograph I selected to accompany this article shows brown cows on a dairy farm. Dairy farmers do not somehow segregate out the brown cows when they produce chocolate milk, so some portion of the chocolate milk that people drink comes from brown cows. Also, depending on how broadly we interpret milk, chocolate milk does not necessarily come from cows at all; for example, I could mix up some chocolate "milk" from the coconut milk currently sitting in my refrigerator.

I'd love to see a new survey from the dairy industry that asks people where American journalism comes from. Let's include "the ass-end of cows" as one of the possible choices and see what the survey says. Some journalists, such as Meikle, would not deserve the results.

The Religious Liberty to Spend Other People's Money

June 28, 2017

Religious organizations have the same right as nonreligious ones to use wealth taken from others by force, according to the Supreme Court and its conservative cheerleaders.

At issue is the high court's Trinity Lutheran Church (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-577_khlp.pdf) decision of June 26. After the Missouri Department of Natural Resources declined to issue a grant to rubberize the playground of the Trinity Lutheran Church Child Learning Center on grounds that the state forbids grants to religious organizations, Trinity Lutheran sued. (The Department issued such grants to nonreligious nonprofits.) The Supreme Court decided that the state cannot discriminate against religious organizations in offering a "public benefit" such as a grant.

The Colorado Springs Gazette (http://gazette.com/editorial-supreme-court-ruling-may-free-colorado-kids/article/1605987) hopes that the Court's decision will "free Colorado kids" to spend tax-funded vouchers at religious schools. As John Kramer from the Institute for Justice (IJ) (http://ij.org/press-release/major-win-school-choice-u-s-supreme-court-vacates-colorado-supreme-court-decision-sends-case-back-review/) explains, the Supreme Court also directed the Colorado Supreme Court to reconsider, in light of the Trinity decision, a 2015 decision rejecting the use of vouchers at religious schools. The case involves Douglas County, which IJ represents in the matter, but has implications statewide and indeed nationwide.

Whether or not the Trinity decision ultimately leads to the wider use of tax-funded vouchers at religious schools, it sanctions use of tax-funded benefits by religious organizations, use that undoubtedly will expand under the ruling.

Who is the "forgotten man" of this decision? The person who is forgotten, whose freedom of conscience and right to direct his wealth are ignored, is the person forced to help finance a religious institution who does not wish to do so.

The atheist who does not wish to help finance any religious organization, and indeed who believes it is immoral for him to do, is forgotten, his rights ignored.

The religious person who does not wish to help finance an organization that promotes a different religion is forgotten, his rights ignored.

Anyone who wishes to choose which organizations to support, and wishes not to help finance projects a government agency deems best, is forgotten, his rights ignored.

Some people may be "free" to spend other people's money, as the Gazette indicates, but the people financing the projects in question are not free in that respect. They are threatened with fines, arrest, and even imprisonment if they do not pay up. They are offered a deal they cannot refuse, and their own judgments, liberties, and beliefs of conscience be damned.

This is not to say that government violates people's rights only when it forces them to help finance a religious organization. It also violates people's rights when it forces, say, Christians to help finance organizations that promote secular views. So the Supreme Court would have sanctioned the violation of people's rights whether it said governments may fund only secular organizations or religious ones too.

The only way out of this conundrum consistent with individual rights, as I argued in my (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/04/subsidies-for-jesus-and-the-supreme-courts-conundrum/) April article on the matter, is for government to stop subsidizing private organizations altogether. But of course the Supreme Court would not possibly consider issuing a ruling that protects everyone's rights. These days the job of the Court in such matters is merely to decide whose rights will be violated, in which ways, and how severely.

Some critics may think I'm making too big a deal over a playground. But the principle at stake is broad. If government may force people to help finance a playground, religious or otherwise, then government logically may force people to help finance practically anything, regardless of the purpose or scope of the project.

Perhaps in some future case American courts will take seriously the inextricable link between freedom of conscience and freedom of finance.

See also "(http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/06/cakes-playgrounds-and-conservative-hypocrisy-on-religious-liberty/) Cakes, Playgrounds, and Conservative Hypocrisy on Religious Liberty."

Conservatives Play the Bigotry Card to Support Tax Funds for Religious Groups

June 29, 2017

We expect people on the left to argue that government should counter bigotry by forcing private parties to do things they otherwise would not do, such as, in the case of a Christian baker who opposes homosexuality, bake a cake for a gay wedding.

We do not usually expect conservatives to make comparable arguments, but, when it comes to tax funding for religious groups, many conservatives do just that. They are wrong to do so.

Let's first consider in more detail what people on the left typically think. James Esseks of the American Civil Liberties Union (https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/can-businesses-turn-lgbt-people-away-because-who-they-are-thats-supreme-court-now) argues that "religious freedom doesn't give anyone the right to discriminate against or harm other people." The problem with his claim is that it conflates proactively harmful action, including physical violence, with the lack of helpful action. But beating someone is hardly the equivalent of not baking a cake for the person. Both the action and the inaction here arise from bigotry and are morally condemnable, but only the former violates rights (regardless of what the courts might say on the matter). Not helping a person (outside of an existing contractual relationship) leaves the person untouched and free to go his own way and associate with others.

The only plausible argument I can see that a cake baker proactively "harms" someone by not baking a cake is that, if the baker purports to be open to all comers (within the bounds of civility and hygiene) and then refuses service, that wastes a few minutes of the would-be patron's time. But businesses could easily enough post that they refuse certain types of services on religious grounds. Notably, everyone else could also easily boycott such businesses, and listing agencies could easily refuse to list them.

If we're going to expand "harm" to include murder and physical assault as well as hurting someone's feelings, then practically everything on Twitter should be deemed an offense. Logically, we should also legally punish those who decline to date people outside their religion. I don't think Esseks has thought through the logical implications of his position very well. The fact that bigotry always is morally condemnable doesn't mean it always should be legally punished.

Progressive writer Jason Salzman also emphasizes bigotry in (http://bigmedia.org/2017/06/27/reporters-should-be-clear-about-whos-backing-the-baker-who-discriminated-against-a-gay-couple/) discussing Masterpiece Cakeshop, a Colorado business that declined to bake a cake for a gay wedding in a case now headed to the Supreme Court.

Salzman makes a persuasive case that the group representing the bakery in court, Alliance Defending Freedom, "is fundamentally opposed to the civil rights of gay people." But the fact that the group is motivated by bigotry doesn't mean Colorado government should punish bakers for not baking cakes for gay weddings. I can hope for the baker to prevail in court without sanctioning the organization defending him.

(Note: Currently I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and I've had friendly engagements with Salzman despite our disagreements.)

Now turn to the similar ways that conservatives discuss bigotry to support tax funding for religious groups.

The Institute for Justice, which hopes the Supreme Court's decision allowing playground grants for Trinity Lutheran Church will lead to tax-funded vouchers for religious schools, (http://ij.org/press-release/major-win-school-choice-u-s-supreme-court-vacates-colorado-supreme-court-decision-sends-case-back-review/) points to the "anti-Catholic bigotry" behind the Blaine amendments that in many states block religious groups from getting tax money. The (http://gazette.com/editorial-supreme-court-ruling-may-free-colorado-kids/article/1605987) Colorado Springs Gazette editorial page and the (http://mailchi.mp/i2i/press-release-trinity-lutheran-gvr) Independence Institute (for which I have written) also make much of the Blaine amendments.

These conservatives (or conservative-libertarians) seem to argue that, because bans of tax money to religious groups were created out of anti-Catholic sentiment, therefore the transfer of tax money to religious groups is justified. But obviously that is a non sequitur.

As (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/06/the-religious-liberty-to-spend-other-peoples-money/) I have argued, forcing people to finance religious organizations violates their rights. No conservative has offered any sort of plausible argument against my position. The fact that the laws banning the transfer of tax funds to religious groups were created out of anti-Catholic sentiment does not imply that forcing people to help finance religious organizations is somehow justified. Two wrongs still do not make a right. (As for equal-protection claims, I've also (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/06/the-religious-liberty-to-spend-other-peoples-money/) indicated how to resolve such issues.)

Many of today's conservatives in effect argue that past bigotry justifies present subsidies for religious groups. And it's a little surprising that conservatives make this argument with a straight face, given how loudly they often criticize similar arguments put forward by the left.

Image of James G. Blaine: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:James_G._Blaine_-_Brady-Handy.jpg) Library of Congress via Wikipedia

Cakes, Playgrounds, and Conservative Hypocrisy on Religious Liberty

June 29, 2017

Many conservatives are logically inconsistent when it comes to religious liberty, as their positions on two prominent legal cases illustrate.

In its June 26 Trinity Lutheran Church decision, the Supreme Court ruled that religious groups must be considered for the same grants and other "public benefits" (here involving work to playgrounds) available to nonreligious groups. Most conservatives applauded this decision (which I've (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/06/the-religious-liberty-to-spend-other-peoples-money/) criticized elsewhere).

On the same day, the Supreme Court (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/26/us-supreme-court-colorado-gay-wedding-cake-case/) announced it would hear the case regarding Masterpiece Bakeshop of Colorado, the owner of which refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Most conservatives think business owners should not be legally punished for declining service for purposes at odds with their beliefs (and (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2014/06/right-bake-cake/) I agree).

The story for why these positions supposedly are compatible goes something like this: People with church-affiliated organizations should be free to practice their religion without suffering loss of grants and the like, and business owners should be free to follow their religious beliefs while working.

But there is a huge difference between the cases that the conservatives in question ignore. Tax-funded grants (and such) inherently involve money that rightly belongs to other people, whereas a person's business morally belongs to that person. Laying claim to other people's property hardly is equivalent to laying claim to one's own property, and those are the issues at stake.

So what the conservatives under review actually believe is this: Religious business owners must not be forced to provide services for purposes of which they disapprove, yet taxpayers must be forced to help finance religious purposes of which they disapprove.

In short, such conservatives call for the protection of religious liberty for some (Christian bakers and the like) and the violation of religious liberty for others (taxpayers who do not wish to help finance a religiously affiliated project).

One might argue that most leftists also hold contradictory positions here, in that they want to force bakers to bake cakes for gay weddings but not force taxpayers to subsidize religious organizations.

The difference is that leftists don't pretend to respect rights to property, contract, and wealth, so their positions aren't really contradictory. Conservatives do often pretend to respect such rights. Yet, with respect to the two cases at hand, many conservatives want to have their religious liberty and eat it too.

Why Vouchers Subsidize Religion

July 10, 2017

When government helps to finance the operations of a religious organization, it violates the rights of the people whose wealth it forcibly takes for the purpose. Such funding violates not only people's right to control their resources, but their right to follow their conscience, insofar as they are forced to propagate ideas with which they disagree. I've argued these points in a (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/06/the-religious-liberty-to-spend-other-peoples-money/) first, (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/06/cakes-playgrounds-and-conservative-hypocrisy-on-religious-liberty/) second, and (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/06/conservatives-play-the-bigotry-card-to-support-tax-funds-for-religious-groups/) third article responding to the Supreme Court's decision that a playground operated by Trinity Lutheran Church must be considered for government grants available to others.

But when exactly does government funding constitute a subsidy to a given party, when does a subsidy promote a religious purpose, and what are the ethical implications of various government programs, such as tax-funded vouchers that parents can spend at religious schools? Vouchers are a hot topic; the Supreme Court also (http://kdvr.com/2017/06/27/douglas-county-school-voucher-program-has-new-life-after-us-supreme-court-ruling/) ordered the reconsideration of a voucher program in Douglas County, Colorado, that state courts had rejected.

Defining Subsidies

Most broadly, a subsidy is any transfer of wealth where the funder does not receive a good or service in return, as when parents subsidize their child's school tuition or income. Here the context is government subsidies, which involve forcibly taking money from some people and giving it to others. The use of force distinguishes the subsidies at hand. Subsidies come in two main flavors: welfare for individuals, including Social Security payments and other "entitlements" funded by current taxpayers, and corporate welfare, such as grants to (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/specialreports/solyndra-scandal/) solar panel producers.

A subsidy is not, as many leftists claim, the lack of a tax or a lower tax on some person or group. As I've (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2012/11/the-crucial-distinction-between-subsidies-and-tax-cuts/) written, "letting a person keep his own money is [not] the equivalent of handing him someone else's money." So, for example, it would be wrong to say that government subsidizes churches by granting them tax-exempt status. (I think churches, nonprofits, for-profit corporations, and all other sorts of organizations should be taxed at the same rate, zero.) Unequal taxes can be a matter of cronyism (as (http://completecolorado.com/pagetwo/2013/05/22/bipartisan-support-for-tax-discrimination-in-colorado-legislature/) I've written), but they're not rightly considered subsidies.

A government contract for a good or service normally is not a subsidy to the producer. So government does not subsidize a defense contractor when it buys a tank from it. But if government spends money to enrich a contractor rather than to obtain a good or service at market price, that is a subsidy in effect. For example, if government buys an overpriced tank from the brother-in-law of a powerful Congressman, that is partly a subsidy. So we can distinguish formal subsidies from informal ones.

When government buys goods or services for private parties, it subsidizes the recipients of the goods or services, not the producers of them. So when government hires a contractor to construct a road out of general funds, it subsidizes the users of the roads, not the contractor. If government hired a private contractor to install rubber playground surfacing at a church facility, it would subsidize the church, not the installer.

Matters get tricky when we consider that many government-provided goods and services are funded partly by the recipients and partly by others. As an obvious example, roads are funded largely out of gasoline taxes, which function like a users' fee, and partly out of general funds. Government subsidizes users of roads insofar as it forces people who do not use the roads (or who use them less) to pay disproportionately more for roads relative to use. Many municipalities finance things such as libraries and recreation facilities partly out of sales taxes, which both users and nonusers pay, and partly out of fees paid by users.

What about vouchers? Recipients of vouchers usually pay the property and other taxes that fund the vouchers. Insofar as recipients of vouchers get their own money back, they are not subsidized. But vouchers also are funded by people who do not have children in school and by people who pay far more taxes than the value of any voucher they receive. So voucher programs are substantially subsidized—although at a certain point following the dollars becomes impossible. (At issue are government-funded vouchers, not private ones.) I oppose vouchers because they function largely as subsidies. However, for (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2012/11/the-moral-integrity-of-condemning-social-security-while-collecting-it/) reasons I've explained, people who oppose vouchers as a matter of policy may rightly use vouchers if available as a way to get some of their tax money back.

When Subsidies Support Religion

Getting back to the Supreme Court decisions that prompted this discussion, Trinity Lutheran Church clearly sought a subsidy in the form of tax-funded playground resurfacing. Even apart from the religious implications, such subsidies violate the rights of the funders to control their own wealth.

It is also worth checking whether a given subsidy promotes religion. Insofar as it does, it also violates people's freedom of conscience, their right to decide which beliefs to embrace and support and which not to.

Freedom of conscience is broader than the freedom of religious worship mentioned by the First Amendment. Individuals have a moral right not only to embrace religious beliefs and to act on those beliefs within the boundaries of individual rights, but to embrace and act on nonreligious beliefs within the same boundaries. It is just as wrong for government to violate the rights of atheists and agnostics as it is for it for it to violate the rights of theists. It is just as wrong for government to force someone to help finance the propagation of religious beliefs with which he disagrees as it is for government to curtail someone's religious practices (provided those practices are within the boundaries of individual rights).

When government gets into the business of subsidizing religious groups, it necessarily forces atheists to help finance theists, Christians to help finance Muslims, Buddhists to help finance monotheists, and so on. If government is to remain neutral, it must also open subsidies to Satanist groups and the like, which most people would prefer not to help finance. And, as religious organizations should note, government subsidies often come with government strings or lead to government oversight.

Is it a stretch to claim that all subsidies to religious groups thereby further a religious purpose? If government issued grants to print Bibles, obviously that would be a religious purpose, but there's nothing inherently religious about a rubber playground surface. However, as my conservative friends never tire of pointing out in other contexts, money is fungible. Here that means that, if a church's child-care facility gets tax-subsidized playground resurfacing, that frees up the church's funds for other purposes—including overtly sectarian purposes. In addition, the church can use the improved playground as a way to promote its religious activities. So, when government subsidizes a religious organization in any form, trying to separate out a religious purpose from a nonreligious purpose is an errand for fools or frauds.

Vouchers as Religious Subsidies

Do vouchers count as subsidies for religious groups? Vouchers seem to be different in an important way from direct grants of cash, goods, or services to religious groups. Long-time reader Mike Spalding argues:

I don't think vouchers count as funding religious groups. Some of the contracting companies the government uses to pave roads are run by religious folks who donate 10 percent or more to their church. Yes, as with vouchers, the money eventually goes to a religious group. But vouchers give money to parents to spend on a school. That the school may make a profit and that the profit may go to the religious group running the school is irrelevant. Personally I object to the government taking tax dollars to fund any schools. And I think vouchers subject schools to government oversight. But this is not funding religions.

Spalding's reasoning is similar to that put forward by the Institute for Justice (IJ), which (http://ij.org/press-release/major-win-school-choice-u-s-supreme-court-vacates-colorado-supreme-court-decision-sends-case-back-review/) argues that in Colorado "the Choice Scholarship Program was designed to aid Douglas County families, not schools, and . . . not a penny flowed to any school, religious or nonreligious, but for the private and independent choice of parents."

There are two main issues here: Do vouchers subsidize schools or just parents, and do they subsidize a religious purpose?

With vouchers, government effectively purchases educational services from nominally private schools used by parents and their children. So technically vouchers do not subsidize the schools; they subsidize the parents. If we say that vouchers "subsidize" schools, this should be interpreted as short-hand to mean that vouchers benefit schools by subsidizing the parents who use them.

But vouchers such as those developed in Douglas County subsidize parents for a religious purpose, and that is the point relevant to matters of freedom of conscience for the funders.

The voucher program in Douglas County might have been developed to exclude religious schools—although the recent Supreme Court decision may rule out such exclusions. Instead, the voucher program was intentionally designed to include religious schools.

As a practical matter, we can expect the voucher money in Douglas County (if the program proceeds) to go substantially if not mostly to religious schools. Heather Weaver of the American Civil Liberties Union (http://www.denverpost.com/2015/07/08/guest-commentary-school-voucher-decision-stops-discrimination-in-the-name-of-religion/) wrote in 2015:

[E]very high school participating in the Douglas County voucher program [prior to courts shutting it down] was religious, with the exception of schools for special needs or gifted students. Most of the participating schools discriminated in admissions on the basis of religion. One school required students and parents to sign a Family Commitment Statement that included a promise to pray. Another school required parents of student applicants to attest to faith in Jesus Christ and sign a doctrinal statement submitting to the school's religious beliefs. One participating school demanded that parents "give evidence" of their theological "regeneration"—or salvation—before their children would be enrolled.

Subsidies to parents to use at religious schools obviously promote a religious purpose. A central purpose of an overtly religious school is to promote religious beliefs. Because money is fungible, there is no such thing as a voucher payment restricted to a nonreligious function of a religious school; any such payment furthers the religious aims of the school. So vouchers directed to religious schools inherently help finance the religious mission of those schools—in violation of the rights of people who do not wish to help finance the propagation of religion (or of some specific religion) but are forced to do so.

Is buying an education from a religious school akin, as Spalding suggests, to buying (say) groceries from a religious grocer? After all, government grants food stamps to people who may spend them with religious grocers who in turn donate a portion of their profits to a church. In most cases the comparison is a stretch. There's nothing inherently ideological about buying a banana. I have seen religious business owners post Bible versus on the walls, but such propaganda is superfluous to the business at hand.

Education, on the other hand, is inherently ideological. Will a school teach evolution? Will it do so accurately and well or, due to religious biases, misleadingly and half-heartedly? Will it also teach Creationism, if only as "literature" or "religious history"? In history classes, will it describe America as a "Christian nation" or a basically secular one?

Different subjects are more or less prone to a religious slant, but every aspect of education is influenced by the educator's views about the purpose of education. Christians, Buddhists, and atheists can all play basketball and agree that two plus two equals four, but they often disagree profoundly about why it's important to exercise, recreate, and learn mathematics. To a consistent Christian, the ultimate purpose of every action, even learning the multiplication tables, is to glorify God. So, again, the idea that vouchers spent at a religious school do not thereby support the school's religious mission is fantasy.

Spalding does have a point, though. Insofar as government subsidizes the customers of a business owner who purposely works to help further religious purposes, government violates rights of conscience of those footing the bill. People have a moral right to boycott businesses that promote causes they disapprove of. Spalding's point does not excuse vouchers; rather, it damns other sorts of subsidies.

Consider Hobby Lobby, one of the major hobby chains in the country. Hobby Lobby is widely known for its advocacy of religious beliefs—as when it (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2014/07/hobby-lobby-ruling-government-protect-rights-everyone/) took a case to the Supreme Court to avoid paying for health insurance that covers certain forms of birth control. If government offered "hobby vouchers," which would go largely to support Hobby Lobby, that would violate the rights of conscience of the many leftists and atheists who oppose the religious advocacy of Hobby Lobby and do not wish to support that business.

How Leftists and Conservatives Ignore Rights

Notice something peculiar about the debate over vouchers. Conservatives (and libertarian-conservatives) often promote vouchers even though vouchers violate people's rights to control their own wealth and act on their beliefs—rights that in other contexts conservatives often support. Leftist "Progressives" often oppose vouchers even as they support many other kinds of subsidies. The Institute for Justice fights for tax-funded vouchers in court, and the American Civil Liberties Union fights against them (as IJ (http://ij.org/press-release/major-win-school-choice-u-s-supreme-court-vacates-colorado-supreme-court-decision-sends-case-back-review/) notes). Why is this?

IJ and its allies focus on religious liberty and equal legal protection and ignore or downplay rights to property in this context. The ACLU focuses on the legal wall between church and state and also ignores or downplays rights to property, meant broadly to encompass all forms of wealth.

Religious liberty, equal protection under the law, and the separation of church and state all are important values—but they are not ultimately compatible or possible without property rights. That is the fundamental issue that both major sides of the voucher debate ignore.

Government necessarily violates religious liberty—and more broadly freedom of conscience—when it forces people to subsidize ideological movements of which they disapprove. Notably, although I have focused on religious groups in this article, the point applies equally to government forcing theists to subsidize the propagation of secular beliefs in tax-funded schools. The ACLU ultimately cannot care about the freedom of conscience of taxpayers because it does not care about property rights. Meanwhile, IJ focuses on freedom of conscience of the recipients of vouchers and ignores the freedom of conscience of the funders of vouchers.

When government subsidizes secular organizations or their customers but does not subsidize religious organizations or their customers, obviously it treats religious organizations unequally under the law. But equality under the law is a value only in the context of individual rights. Government could treat all people equally by forcing them all to cut off their right arms or by forcing them all to work for the government for ten years, but such equal treatment is not sufficient for justice. What advocates of vouchers call for is the equal violation of rights.

The legal separation of church of state too makes sense only in the context of property rights. When government forces religious people to finance secular causes, it does not achieve the separation of church and state; it uses the state to advantage secularism at the expense of religion. Yet the ACLU is blinded to this fact because, again, it ignores property rights. Government can be neutral with respect to religion only when it abstains from subsidizing ideological causes of all types. Yet to the ACLU that solution is unthinkable.

The approach of IJ and the ACLU (and their allies) leads to treating rights as inherently conflicting, such that government must "balance" people's rights. And "balance" here is euphemism for violate. When government violates people's property rights, it inevitably also violates freedom of conscience (including religious freedom), equal protection under the law, and the separation of church and state. The remaining debate is over whose rights government will violate and in what ways—whatever obfuscations and euphemisms disguise the nature of this debate.

It is only by consistently upholding property rights that government can consistently uphold freedom of conscience, equal protection under the law, and the separation of church and state. Perhaps one day the employees and supporters of IJ, the ACLU, and other organizations with similar stances on vouchers will allow themselves to realize that basic fact.

Jared Polis's Fantasy that Aspen Runs on 100 Percent Renewable Energy

July 12, 2017

Let's (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJjWhSTgEI) talk about a little place called Aassspen. Jared Polis, member of Congress from Boulder and a Democratic candidate for governor of Colorado, touts a "bold goal of 100% renewable energy" in the state by 2040. Surely Colorado can do it, he suggests on his (http://www.polisforcolorado.com) campaign page, given that Colorado's own Aspen "became the third city in the country to already achieve 100% renewable."

But Polis's claim about Aspen is pure fantasy, and, insofar as Aspen does run on renewable energy, various aspects of its power program are unique to the wealthy ski town and cannot be scaled statewide. Polis's inflated claims about Aspen cast doubt on the plausibility of his goals for the state.

Important details of Aspen's program are revealed by a pair of articles by Grace Hood for (https://www.cpr.org/news/story/aspen-charts-a-100-percent-renewable-course-can-other-cities-match-that) Colorado Public Radio and (http://www.npr.org/2017/07/05/535578438/aspen-moves-toward-its-goal-of-supporting-100-percent-renewable-energy) National Public Radio. Consider some of the pertinent facts drawn from Hood's reports (the commentary is mine):

The upshot is that Polis's claims about Aspen are exaggerated. Maybe we're supposed to take Polis seriously and not literally here.

The facts about Aspen's energy use, of course, do not imply that it is impossible to achieve true 100 percent renewable energy in Colorado (or close to it) by 2040. Whether that's a worthwhile goal is a different matter, and a key issue is cost, which is undoubtedly huge. As a point of reference, Colorado now gets only about (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/16/colorado-renewable-energy-improvement-march/) 18 percent of its electricity from solar and wind, while we get 78 percent of our electricity from coal and natural gas and run our cars and heat our homes almost entirely with fossil fuels. If Polis wants to persuade skeptical voters that he'll avoid magical thinking that puts the state on the path to economic disaster, he'll need to pop his Boulder bubble and convince people he's living in reality.

* * *

A few related sidepoints are worth discussing here:

1. "Aspen got its electric utility to 100 percent renewable energy through the use of power purchase agreements" with companies located elsewhere, Hood reports. I haven't looked into the details, but I'd be curious to learn whether these agreements involve true "100 percent renewable" energy or function by some sort of averaging, where renewables "offset" fossil fuel use. I wonder about this because, when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, something else has to fill in. Perhaps hydro plants and the like are adequate for Aspen.

2. A document by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/62490.pdf) points out that Aspen defined nuclear power as non-"renewable." But there's nothing magical about the "renewability" of an energy source. Although fossil fuels are not "renewable" within the human timeframe, proven oil reserves have (http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/topics/encyclopedia/fossil-fuels/) increased dramatically over the the last few decades. Nuclear power may not be "renewable," but there's no practical danger of us ever running out of it. What's really at issue is the release of carbon dioxide. Nuclear power releases zero carbon dioxide, and it already provides a (http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx) substantial amount of the world's electricity. So why does Aspen ignore it, and where is Polis's policy statement about it?

3. With Congressman Ed Perlmutter (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/11/why-ed-perlmutter-leaving-politics/) out of the governor's race, Polis seems to be the leading candidate. He certainly has the money. Polis's position on energy likely will become his biggest political problem—although such things are hard to predict this far out. Liberty minded voters probably won't like important aspects of Polis's energy program, but they'll probably find other things to like about the candidate. For example, Polis supports free international trade, he (http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/polis-introduces-to-protect-marijuana-from-session) stands against federal intrusion into state marijuana policies, and he (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/04/rep-jared-polis-proposes-task-force-to-highlight-immigrant-contributions-in-the-u-s/) defies Donald Trump's demonization of immigrants. As an indication that Polis is not a typical Progressive Democrat, I first met Polis (if memory serves) at an (http://www.freecolorado.com/2002/11/friedman.html) event featuring Milton Friedman. He's a smart, independent-minded, and eloquent guy. He's one of my favorite members of Congress (he used to be my representative before the lines shifted), whatever our disagreements. So it will be interesting to see how the race plays out.

Image of Jared Polis: (https://www.flickr.com/photos/denverjeffrey/4722802586/) Jeffrey Beall

(http://ariarmstrong.com/comment/) Comments

Jared Polis Replies

Thank you for fact checking my statement and for holding my feet to the fire! Some of your points are valid, but I still think you are missing the forest by focusing on a tree. Renewable energy is becoming less and less expensive and while that is an important variable in any plan, I believe that that trend is more likely to continue than not. Our last two governors have supported movement towards renewable energy I hope to build upon that base.

Aspen touts 100% renewable energy, and indeed it is their municipal utility not Holy Cross Power that has reached that goal. The City of Aspen only controls their municipal utility, the boundaries of Holy Cross go well beyond Aspen. I will make a technical correction indicating that the "area served by Aspen's municipal utility" are 100% renewable to avoid any confusion.

There is nothing wrong with your point about commuters, but that is not directly related to this debate. My plan is for renewable energy for the grid. There is an intersection as electric vehicle usage increases (a rounding error at this point but potentially significant by 2040) but my plan is not directly about automobile emissions. It's a fair point, but I was talking about electricity.

Wind is now so cheap in CO that utilities can, and will, probably, retire coal plants while switching to wind and still reduce costs for ratepayers. Solar is also inexpensive and getting cheaper. The Colorado PUC did a (http://www.denverpost.com/2014/10/15/the-benefits-of-wind-energy-in-colorado/) study showing that wind investments by XCEL will save ratepayers $100 million over 25 years.

Yes, Aspen has a very high percentage of hydro energy which both 1) IS available to many other communities as a cheap, inexpensive energy source and 2) is NOT universally available across CO. Hydro is a great model for Colorado and should increase in many parts of the state. Aspen was 100% hydro until 1957! It is indeed hydro availability that helped the Aspen municipal Utility reach 100% renewable energy already.

If your point is that 100% renewable isn't realistic today except for special cases like Aspen, you are generally correct. It is POSSIBLE today, but projections for when it actually makes sense universally rely on future efficiency enhancements to renewable production, storage, and transmission technology that track with the rate of improvements over the last decade.

You make some fair points about the Aspen example and as a realist I certainly appreciate the pushback. I don't think my policy paper suggests in any way that I think Aspen's exact model today should be the entire state's model, and anyone reading it that way is being disingenuous.

I hope this means you are volunteering to proofread and fact check my future energy policy announcements?

Jared Polis

Fossil Fuels Are Base of Electric Grid

Regarding "related side points 1 and 2":

1) If the utility is getting its electricity from anywhere other than its own power plants, it cannot claim the electricity is coming from only renewable sources. That electricity comes to them from the grid, and all electrons on the grid are fungible. They don't differentiate themselves based on what got them moving. It's not like Aspen can plug an extension cord into someone else's windmill.

They can only make the claim about renewable sources by pretending to buy only the electrons that were put in motion by the sun or wind. In effect, they are buying renewable "indulgences".

2) Nuclear and coal are both base-demand sources. As variable sources increase (if we build more wind and solar plants) base demand sources get pushed out, and more natural gas plants must be built to supplement the variability.

That's like buying every new car that comes along, just because it's cool, and keeping your old cars but not driving them, but paying for maintenance, registration, and insurance. That's great if you've got as much money as Polis. But I ain't got that much, and don't want to pay for new power plants that we don't need.

We should only build new power plants when demand for electricity outstrips our current capacity, or when the cost of maintaining older power plants exceeds the cost of building new power plants.

Coal electricity generation is still a much larger industry than renewable, and has many more resources to pour into further cleaning emissions. All things considered, it is more environmentally friendly than wind or solar.

Thank you, Ari, for pushing back on Polis. I've not met him, but I'm certain he is smart enough to have known in advance that he was disingenuous with his claims about Aspen. It doesn't take much research to disprove his claims, and as a man who claims to be the right guy to direct energy policy (the Fatal Conceit, as Hayek would call it) he should demonstrate that fact.

I would prefer that he stay in Congress where he is only one disingenuous voice out of 535, and he can do less harm.

Brian Vande Krol

What the Study on "Closed-Minded Atheists" Really Proves

July 17, 2017

If I say that two plus two equals four, and someone else insists that two plus two equals five, am I closed-minded if I do not find that person's mathematical arguments persuasive? Am I closed-minded if I reject the idea that two plus two can at the same time equal four and five? A recent study implies that the answer is yes. And that study, along with various media accounts of it, conclude that, by comparable standards, atheists on the whole are more closed-minded in certain ways than are theists. Clearly something has gone wrong.

The paper in question, "(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917303070) Are Atheists Undogmatic?”, is based on the doctoral dissertation of first-author Filip Uzarevic. (https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/ipsy/psyreli/filip-uzarevic.html) Uzarevic is a "member of the Centre for Psychology of Religion at the UCL Institute of Psychological Sciences." UCL is the Université Catholique de Louvain of Belgium. Incidentally, from 2014—15, Uzarevic was a research fellow with the John Templeton Foundation, which has a (https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/?s=john+templeton+foundation&searchsubmit=Find+») long history of funding "science" for the purpose of promoting religion.

Uzarevic's paper is misconceived from the outset. It takes advantage of the ambiguity of the term "closed-minded" to concoct a ridiculous standard for it. As (http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/13/open-mind/) they say, we should strive to be open-minded in certain ways, but not so open-minded that our brains fall out. For example, should we praise the Coloradans who (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/07/colorado-earth-flat-gravity-hoax/) believe that the Earth is flat as open-minded and ridicule those who insist the Earth is not a flat plane as closed-minded?

What matters is that we are reasonable and critical-minded—that we strive to embrace or reject beliefs based on logic and evidence. A rational person does not embrace nonsense, or arbitrary assertions, or logical contradictions, or flagrant irrationalism. To anyone who doubts this, I say that morality demands that you send me one million U.S. dollars (or as many as you have), so what are you waiting for?

Of course, it can be perfectly reasonable to try to get inside the heads of people with false beliefs to try to see where they have gone wrong. It can also be perfectly reasonable to sympathize with people with false beliefs rather than mock or deride them. For example, when I worked as a tutor, none of my students claimed that two plus two equals five, but they did reach all sorts of other false conclusions, and usually I could trace out the source of the error.

We also need to realize that many issues are unresolved and rationally debatable. Consider, for example, all the scientific controversy surrounding diet and health. Academic debate tends to take for granted a large body of knowledge and focus on controversies. Generally it is considered the mark of good academics to be able to convincingly state the arguments of one's interlocutor. When we strive to understand others's arguments, we not only become more persuasive, but we help guard ourselves against bias and hasty conclusions. So Uzarevic's paper points to something important about open-mindedness, but it quickly jumps the rails.

Details of the Study on Dogmatism

We need to set the stage before turning to the study. Atheism is not a positive belief system; it is merely the rejection of supernatural beliefs. So, while religion entails faith as an alleged means to knowledge, atheism entails no particular epistemic orientation. Some atheists, such as Karl Marx, are (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt58gg1DQGk) wildly irrational. We can imagine a world in which all atheists happened to be irrational.

Still, in today's world, we can expect that most atheists reject religion on rational grounds (or what they regard as rational grounds). So, although there is no reason to think that atheism as such promotes rational thinking, there is some reason to suspect that atheists as a whole tend to be more rational relative to people who embrace religious faith.

Uzarevic recognizes that people with religious beliefs often show irrational thinking (citations and emphasis omitted):

[E]ven common religiosity . . . often reflects closed-minded ways of thinking to some extent. Indeed, religiosity is, to a modest degree, characterized by dogmatism, defined as an inflexibility of ideas, unjustified certainty or denial of evidence contrary to one's own beliefs. . . . [R]eligiosity, though to a lesser extent and less consistently than fundamentalism, is often found to predict prejudice. This is certainly the case against moral (e.g., gay persons) and religious outgroups and atheists, but also against ethnic or racial outgroups, at least in monotheistic religious contexts. . . .

Uzarevic asks whether "non-believers tend to be undogmatic, flexible, open-minded, and unprejudiced." A study on the tendencies of thought of self-proclaimed atheists in a given region—Uzarevic draws subjects from the UK, France, and Spain—could be useful as anthropology, so long as we realize there's no reason to extrapolate the findings to atheists as such. Unfortunately, because of its methodological flaws, Uzarevic's study offers little of value even as anthropology.

Uzarevic's study sees three major indicators of mental "rigidity": "self-reported dogmatism," "intolerance of contradiction," and "low readiness" to embrace a perspective "different from one's own." But only the first test is even potentially valid. It is not closed-minded to reject nonsense or logical contradictions; doing so is a hallmark of reason. It is, of course, unreasonable to hastily reject new or surprising claims as nonsense or to presume that paradoxical or peculiar results are contradictory. But it is also unreasonable to refuse to recognize nonsense and contradictions for what they are. To return to our opening example, if you take seriously the claim that two plus two equals five or think that the sum can as well be four or five or sixty-seven, you're not open-minded, you're just an idiot.

Let's dig into some of the details. Uzarevic's study describes the "myside bias as a low propensity to take a different perspective into consideration." Well, obviously we often should take a different perspective into consideration, but context is key. Given today's context, how much do I really need to take seriously "different perspectives" regarding the sum of two and two, the non-flatness of the Earth, the historical reality of the Nazi Holocaust, the immorality of executing homosexuals, or the twaddle of phrenology? A reasonable person does not treat nonsense or flagrant irrationality as if it were on par with well-reasoned, evidence-based beliefs.

The study presented subjects with three opinion statements, then "asked [participants] to generate as many arguments as they could both in support for and in opposition to the statements," then "asked [participants] to report to what extent they found [each] argument convincing."

Consider the three statements: "Child adoption by homosexual couples is a positive advance for society"; "The meaning of life is something entirely personal"; and "In a house, rooms must be painted with light colors."

To begin with the mundane, if we take the statement about paint literally, there is no argument for it; it is obviously false, as demonstrated conclusively by the fact that several rooms of my house used to be painted a grotesque dark red. If you think rooms literally "must" be painted with light colors, you either don't understand the question or you are a dunce, and convincing yourself that obvious falsehoods are true does not make you open-minded by any sensible standard. If we interpret "must" as "should" here, then the statement is merely pointless (I don't care what color you paint the interior of your house) rather than stupid. Either way, what we can learn from people coming up with "arguments" about this is precisely nothing.

The statement about the meaning of life is ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness. The statement about child adoption turns on the ambiguous phrase "advance for society." Nevertheless, we should expect the explicit statements against homosexuality in the Judeo-Christian Bible and in Islamic texts to impact some religious people's beliefs on the matter. I'd be interested to see the raw data regarding this particular statement, as they might show something useful about how atheists and theists (and different sorts of theists) think about a religiously charged controversy.

If we wanted to test people's capacity to creatively interpret ambiguous statements and to creatively offer arguments for and against them, we could design a test to do that. But the study at hand conflates people's argumentative creativity with their propensity to concoct arguments and to find concocted arguments convincing.

Another methodological flaw with the study is that it compares the number of pro and con arguments generated, when there is no good reason to think the raw numbers matter. Some arguments are more fundamental and persuasive than others. So, if I listed one knock-down argument in favor of a position and ten silly arguments against it, the sheer number of arguments listed would demonstrate nothing about my beliefs or about potential bias in my thinking. Also, arguments can be restated and multiplied into simpler arguments, so, again, just counting the number of listed arguments reveals nothing of interest.

Regarding "intolerance of contradiction," the paper states, "The rationale behind this measure is that people who are intolerant of contradiction will have more difficulty in accepting the seemingly contradictory findings as equally true (or false)." Intolerance of contradiction is a virtue, not a vice; it is an indication of rationality, not of being closed-minded. The fudge word here is "seemingly"; the difficulty is distinguishing actual contradictions from mere paradoxes, conclusions that superficially seem to be at odds but that are actually compatible.

For his pairs of supposedly "contradictory" statements, Uzarevic draws on examples from a 1999 (https://culcog.berkeley.edu/Publications/1999AmPsy_DT.pdf) paper by Kaiping Peng and Richard E. Nisbett. But none of the statement pairs shows a true contradiction. Consider one of the five examples:

A sociologist who surveyed college students from 100 universities claimed that there is a high correlation among college female students between smoking and being skinny.

A biologist who studied nicotine addiction asserted that heavy doses of nicotine often lead to becoming overweight.

The first problem is deciding what we're evaluating. Am I to judge whether a sociologist, in fact, "claimed" the results indicated? Well, how the hell am I supposed to know, given that no citation for the study is given? For all I know the entire bit is fabricated. But apparently I am supposed to judge whether the correlation mentioned actually exists. Given how shoddily many "scientific" studies are conducted, that is again hard to judge without access to the original work. But it certainly is plausible that lots of college students who smoke also are slender. This says nothing about whether "heavy doses of nicotine often lead to becoming overweight." Presumably, lots of skinny college students who smoke later become fat.

The upshot is that the paper by Peng and Nisbett is based on a misconception of "contradiction"—it confuses contradiction with paradox or oddity—a misconception that carries over to Uzarevic's paper.

According to Uzarevic, atheists had a slightly greater propensity than theists, "if they evaluate one scientific finding of the pair as true, [to] tend to judge the other as very false." What are we to make of this? If you read and critically analyze the allegedly "contradictory findings," you will find no good reason, based solely on the given text, to conclude that any of the statement pairs is contradictory and no strong reason to believe or disbelieve any of the statements.

So what is Uzarevic actually finding? Maybe he's finding that atheists are slightly more likely to take a position on the statements, perhaps because some of the atheists have (or think they have) more background knowledge that bears on them. Perhaps Uzarevic is finding that theists are slightly more likely to uncritically read the statements and just presume that any of them might be true. Being uncritical is hardly the same thing as being open-minded.

I certainly would not be surprised if some atheists in Uzarevic's study were too hasty in rejecting some of the claims, nor if some theists were too hasty in accepting some of them. But Uzarevic's study reveals nothing about people's tolerance of actual contradictions. Nor does the study demonstrate anything about the degree of rationality of the participants. Certainly it does not show that "intolerance of contradiction" somehow makes a person dogmatic or unreasonable.

The test about dogmatism at least makes some sense. But it too has serious problems as executed. The study mentions only one "sample item" to which participants were asked to respond: "There are so many things we have not discovered yet, nobody should be absolutely certain his beliefs are right." Are we supposed to read this as "all of his beliefs" or "any of his beliefs?" Nobody should be absolutely certain that all of his beliefs are right; we all believe many things provisionally as likely true given what we know. None but the most nihilistic skeptic would claim that all of a person's beliefs are subject to overthrow. To claim that some of one's beliefs are not subject to overthrow is to be not dogmatic but reasonable.

As a practical matter, barring pointless Matrix-style paranoia, I am as certain as a person can be (for example) that life evolved on earth and that new discoveries might affect only details of the theory, not its essential claims. Whether people call that "absolute certainly" is a philosophic dispute with no bearing on the reasonableness of the belief.

Incidentally, the paper found that religious people tend to be more "dogmatic." My guess is that some of the religious participants interpreted the statements non-literally and tried to indicate that they'll still believe in God whatever scientists claim, whereas some of the atheists tried to indicate that they're pro-science. So the study might actually reveal different attitudes among some theists and atheists about the significance of scientific discoveries, but if so it does so in a messy and unreliable way. Alternately, perhaps the "sample item" provided is especially ambiguous and other statements were clearer and more revealing of dogmatism. It would be pleasant if researchers published their raw questions and results so that readers could check such details.

The upshot is that Uzarevic's paper is fundamentally misconceived, and the tests do not show (or, at best, ambiguously show) what the paper claims.

The Media Response

PsyPost published a decent (http://www.psypost.org/2017/06/study-finds-nonreligious-can-close-minded-religious-49182) summary of the study on June 23 and noted the limitations of the paper in terms of sample size and geographic distribution. Although PsyPost doesn't critically dig into the details of the study, it offers a basically responsible (if superficial) journalistic take.

Daily Caller published a June 28 (http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/28/science-finally-realizes-atheists-are-more-close-minded-than-the-religious/) piece that "borrows" PsyPost’s interview material and adds a religious-conservative spin.

Patheos published a June 29 (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/06/29/no-a-new-study-doesnt-show-atheists-are-more-closed-minded-than-believers/) article that highlights the paper's limitations and caveats. It's a helpful corrective to the Daily Caller spin, but it does not offer a critique of the study's details.

The only substantive critique of the paper that I've seen (other than my own) came, ironically, from (https://dontletitgo.com/2017/07/15/my-appearance-on-fox-with-tucker-carlson/) Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. Carlson himself didn't critique the study, but his guest Amy Peikoff did. To his credit, Carlson let her. It's a remarkably informative and amiable television sequence. Peikoff, a philosopher and law professor (and an acquaintance of mine), briefly made the points that I make above that rejecting contradictory and irrational claims is not "closed-minded." Her discussion made me aware of the study at hand and prompted me to write about it.

Carlson asked Peikoff whether she can reject the findings of a scientific study. Peikoff replies:

Certainly I'm allowed to disagree if I think the fundamental approach was flawed. And I think there's one question that can show you what's wrong with the fundamental approach to the study, and it's this: Are you closed-minded if you refuse to seriously entertain or to spread fake news? And by that I mean a media driven narrative for which nobody has provided any evidence. I would say no, and yet the notion of closed-mindedness at the foundation of this study is essentially the same at that.

One of the things that the study classifies as closed-mindedness is a reluctance to come up with arguments against your particular position. . . . So in order to be not closed-minded according to this study, you have to come up with a bunch of arguments against your view, and you need to say that you find those arguments persuasive. It's not a situation in which you're presented [with] evidence against your view, and you've refused to consider that evidence, and that therefore you're closed-minded.

Carlson pushed back a bit on this last bit, but Peikoff effectively drove home the point, clarifying the distinction between thinking critically and embracing as persuasive arguments unsupported by evidence. A bit later, Peikoff added:

The second [major] issue is that [the study] evaluates you according to your willingness to entertain contradictions, to integrate contradictions into your own thinking. And the refusal to integrate contradictions into your own thinking is part of the basic laws of logic.

Yes, Fox haters, Tucker Carlson hosted a philosophically informed and pleasant exchange about a psychology study on Fox News. (Maybe Peng and Nisbett can misidentify that as a contradiction in a future paper.) And Peikoff did a great job avoiding Tucker's baited hook and staying on topic. Carlson even granted, "I have to admit you seem like a pretty logical atheist." Indeed. Kudos to Carlson for letting her show it.

What broad conclusions should we draw from all of this? First, we should critically read "scientific" studies to see if their premises make sense and if their tests prove what they purport to prove. Second, we should critically read news accounts of scientific studies, because such reports are usually superficial, rarely substantively critical, and sometimes misleading. Third, we should applaud researchers, journalists, and critics when they skillfully seek to get to the bottom of things.

In other words, when reading scientific studies and news reports about them, we should be open-minded—but not so open-minded that our brains fall out.

Why Taxing Bicycles in Colorado Is a Dumb Idea

July 24, 2017

Stunningly, some Colorado Democrats have finally found a tax they don't like. After Republican State Senator Ray Scott suggested he might propose a bicycle tax similar to one Oregon just imposed, Democratic Senator Andy Kerr slammed the idea as an "anti-business, anti-freedom policy," Colorado Politics (https://coloradopolitics.com/scott-tax-bicycles-colorado-roads/) reports. If only Colorado Democrats were (https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2010/02/08/daily44.html) always so skeptical of taking people's money.

And yet the case for taxing bicycles seems compelling, at least on the surface. Bike lanes and paths cost money, and a bike tax would establish a dedicated fund, paid by users, for building and repairing bike-related infrastructure. What's not to like? Colorado's two biggest newspapers, the (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/20/why-not-tax-the-bicyclists-share-the-road-share-the-tax/) Denver Post and the Colorado Springs (http://gazette.com/editorial-conservative-makes-case-for-taxing-bicycles/article/1607500) Gazette, agree it's a proposal worth considering.

If you think about how a bike tax actually would work, though, the case for it falls apart. If the idea is to make users pay, a bicycle tax is a horrible way to accomplish that.

Begin with some details: The Oregon tax of $15 applies to "new bicycles with a wheel diameter of 26 inches or more and a retail price of $200 or more," (http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2017/07/oregon_just_passed_the_only_bi.html) reports the Oregonian. A goal is to exclude kids' bikes and take it easy on the poor.

A bike tax would be nothing like a gas tax in terms of making users pay. Almost all automobile drivers pay the gas tax, and the total amount they pay relates closely with their use of the roads. (Coloradans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States) pay 22 cents in state tax per gallon of gas, plus another 18.4 cents in federal tax.) People with lighter vehicles and better gas mileage pay less tax per mile, but their vehicles do less damage to the roadways.

By contrast, a bike rider's bike tax would have little or no relationship to how much the rider used bike paths and lanes. Someone who biked every day to work with a pricey, Tour de France-worthy bicycle purchased in Cheyenne or Los Angeles would pay no tax, while someone who bought a modest new bike in Colorado to ride around the block once a month would pay the full tax. (Here I'm talking only about the bike-specific tax, not (http://ariarmstrong.com/2016/12/kill-the-amazon-tax/) use taxes and the like.)

In other ways the tax would be unrelated to use. Some people with bikes don't even ride them on roads or paved paths. Instead, they take their mountain bikes onto wilderness trails, which presumably would receive zero funding from the tax. Most people in rural areas probably would receive little or no benefit from the bike lanes and paths, so they'd end up subsidizing urban riders and tourists. And some people who ride recreationally on roads drive to less-populated areas to bike, far from special bike paths.

Then we have to ask how much the new tax program would raise (after the cost of administering it). There's no question that drivers pay a lot in gasoline taxes. The average driver (https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/14/heres-how-much-gasoline-the-average-american-consu.aspx) uses around 650 gallons of gas per year, so pays close to $300 per year in state and federal gas taxes. But a bike purchase is a one-time deal, so divide the $15 by the number of years someone owns the bike. Are we really going to create a new tax program to make some bike riders pay a couple bucks or so per year for infrastructure they may not even use?

Thankfully, Colorado's Democrats probably won't have to worry about the "anti-business, anti-freedom" bike tax, because Colorado's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) requires a vote of the people for new taxes. (Incidentally, Senator Kerr (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/05/04/judge-tosses-tabor-lawsuit/) tried and failed to overturn TABOR in the courts.) My guess is that no one will want to conduct the requisite political campaign for the tax. But I could be wrong, and perhaps someone will include a bike tax as part of a broader transportation measure.

Are there any good alternatives to the bike tax? Here's just one idea for sake of discussion. Colorado could require an annual fee (say $50) to ride a bike on certain dedicated bike paths. Bikers could get little stickers for their bikes, just like car owners do now. Visitors could pay a modest fee online for short-term use.  This approach could raise serious money and dedicate it to something that the funders actually use. This is similar to how Colorado's toll roads work now.

The Broader Transportation Debate

The debate over bicycles is just a taste of the debate to come over electric cars. Eventually (I anticipate), most people will drive electric cars. How fast that day arrives will depend mostly on how fast the manufacturers of such cars improve the batteries in terms weight, cost, and performance. Obviously, people who drive electric cars do not pay gasoline tax. Even if only a few percent of drivers switched to electric, that would seriously impact road funding.

So the question about electric cars is the same as the one about bicycles: How do we get users of transportation routes to pay for their use?

One proposal that I don't like is to make people pay according to how many miles they drive. If, to enforce the tax, government agents investigated where people drive, that would be a gross invasion of privacy and an open invitation to abuse. But perhaps there's a way to do it that solves this problem.

One alternative to the gasoline tax is simply to finance roads (other than toll roads, which could be expanded) out of general taxes. Politicians already supplement gas taxes with general funds (and other funds) to pay for roads. There's some relationship, however imperfect, between how much someone earns (and so pays in taxes) and how much the person benefits from the roadways, with benefits including trucked deliveries and the like. But there's no getting around the fact that general funds separate payment from use.

The usual problem with government paying for roads out of general funds is that politicians use roads to extort the citizenry for more tax dollars for less-popular programs. One possible approach to this problem is to lock the legislature into spending a certain fraction of general funds on transportation routes. (Then we're left "only" with political fights over which transportation projects to fund.) Or voters could agree to "(https://coloradopolitics.com/caldara-fix-our-damn-roads-initiative-free-of-new-amendment-71-hurdles/) fix our damn roads" by requiring that the legislature pay off road bonds without raising tax rates or imposing new taxes.

As more drivers switch to electric cars, the gasoline tax will make less sense. However government gets drivers of electric cars to pay for roads, whether through general funds or taxes on vehicles or mileage, government should do the same for drivers of gas cars and eliminate the gas tax.

Of course, this discussion has been in the context of government-controlled transportation routes. Whether government should control roadways and such is a complex topic for another day. In an age of Islamic terror, Russian election meddling, and government-mismanaged health insurance (among other serious problems), privatizing the roads is not a pressing issue. Until and unless we fundamentally rethink the legal structure of roadways, we need to do the best we can with what we've got. So politicians need to figure out how to get people who use transportation routes to pay for them, whether they drive gas guzzlers, electric cars, or bicycles.

Why Public Officials Have a Right to Block People on Social Media

August 18, 2017

August 21 Update: I made some important mistakes in the article below, and I have since drafted a (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/08/on-the-right-to-petition-public-officials-on-social-media/) new article dealing with the same issues. Please see the new article for my developed views. I am leaving up the text below, despite its problems, as an archive. Please do not quote from it as though it reflected my developed view. My basic mistake was to assume that, because social media companies block people, therefore government may not use social media for official forums of public commentary. But government may do so, I now conclude, so long as they also provide a means to comment outside of social media. I apologize for the confusion caused by the release of the draft below. However, I wouldn't have made the advances in my thinking that I did without publishing the initial draft, so I have a hard time regretting it.—Ari Armstrong

The right to freedom of speech entails the right not to speak; the right to freedom of association entails the right not to associate. If government may force you to speak when you do not wish to speak (aside from cases involving obstruction of justice or the like), or associate with people with whom you do not wish to associate (aside from lawful imprisonment or the like), then rights of speech and association are not rights at all, but merely government-granted privileges. (I speak here of rights in the moral sense, not to refer to whatever politicians and judges happen to say rights are.)

If we take seriously rights of speech and association—rights enshrined in (not merely granted by!) the First Amendment—then we must take seriously (among other things) a couple of derivative principles. First, private organizations (with "private" understood here broadly to include all non-governmental corporations) have a right to establish terms of association with respect to the organization. Private organizations do not lose their rights by virtue of operating via the Internet. Second, individuals have a right to say what they want to say and to whom they want to say it (leaving aside speech that is inherently rights-violating, such as incitement of violence). Individuals do not lose their rights by virtue of being elected to public office.

Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are private organizations in the relevant sense. They are not arms or branches of the government. They are not guilty of censorship when they remove content or ban users that they deem in violation of their terms of service. So, for example, (https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/08/16/twitter-boots-daily-stormer-latest-eviction-neo-nazi-site/573428001/) the fact that GoDaddy and Google refused to host a white supremacist site, and the fact that Twitter suspended the account of the white supremacist group, does not constitute censorship. Private organizations are not government, they are not aspects of government, and they properly may set their terms of use however they like (however vague, stupid, or irregularly applied those terms may be).

Private organizations may not properly be compelled by government to conduct or facilitate official government business—such use of force would violate rights of speech and association. (If there are exceptions to this they would apply in very narrow and unusual circumstances.)

Yet, if we say that public officials may not block users or users' comments on social media, we in effect say that government may force private organizations to conduct or facilitate official government business. Why? Bear in mind that social media sites already block certain people from using their services—so obviously those people cannot interact with public officials on those sites. If we are to be consistent in saying that public officials may not block users, then we must also declare that the social media sites themselves cannot block users with respect to their access to public officials. If we declare that public officials violate people's First Amendment rights by blocking them, then we must also declare that the social media sites themselves violate people's First Amendment rights merely by enforcing their terms of service. Obviously that is an absurd conclusion, the effect of which is to declare that government must violate the First Amendment rights of social media companies to protect the First Amendment rights of social media users.

The obvious alternative—and the one consistent with individual rights—is to recognize that a public official may not unilaterally impose upon a private company the conduction of official government business. And insofar as a public official is not conducting official government business, the official has the same rights as everyone else to speak and associate (or not speak and not associate) freely. This includes the right to block users and users' comments on social media as consistent with the relevant terms of service.

Let's take a more tangible example to clarify the relevant issues. If a public official rented a private hall for official government business—say, to hold a vote on a town ordinance—the public official would need explicit buy-in from the hall, and the hall would not be able to ban participants. For example, if the hall's owners had banned some white supremacists from the hall for giving a Nazi salute during a meeting, those people could not be banned from the official government meeting (assuming the meeting is open to the public, as is usual). Government may not exclude people who in the past gave a Nazi salute; private parties may. Insofar as a hall agrees to host an official government function, the hall in effect is not "private" for the duration of that event. It operates in the service of government and must play by government rules.

If Facebook explicitly agreed to host an official government function—again, say a vote by city officials on an ordinance—Facebook would not be able to block certain people simply because they violated Facebook's terms of service then or in the past. For purposes of that meeting, Facebook effectively would be acting as an agent of the government, again subject to government rules.

We can take an extreme example from the The Circle, a film about a Facebook-like social media site. One proposal that comes up in the film is to run official public voting for government officials through the social media site. The implication is that literally everyone would have to be allowed onto the site. Obviously government could not contract with a private party to operate official voting and allow exclusions based on the company's terms of service.

Anyone who claims that a public official may not block users on social media on First Amendment grounds, but that the social media service in question may itself block people from participating (because they are blocked generally), in effect calls for a two-tiered system in which some people have certain rights that others do not have. Such a position is untenable, legally and morally.

The above analysis has obvious application for several current news stories, the most prominent involving a case of people suing Donald Trump for blocking them on Twitter. One of the arguments for the suit, the New York Times (https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/trump-twitter-users-lawsuit.html) summarizes, is that "Trump was imposing an unconstitutional restriction on the plaintiffs' ability to participate in a designated public forum." But Trump cannot unilaterally declare a privately owned forum a "public forum" in the sense relevant to official government action. If he could, then obviously Twitter would not be able to block anyone, possibly except in very narrow circumstances, from interacting with Trump's account, regardless of what Twitter's terms of service might say.

Now someone might say that Trump, as a public official, has a positive obligation to release comments related to government business only in a forum open to the public, where only the First Amendment, and not a private company's terms of service, applies. The implication is that Trump would simply have to stop using Twitter. But such a policy would violate Trump's rights, as Trump has a right to freedom of speech just like the rest of us do. Government officials are not above the law, but they are not beneath the law, either.

I therefore agree with (https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/trumptwitter.pdf) analysis of Michael H. Baer of the Department of Justice:

It would send the First Amendment deep into uncharted waters to hold that a president's choices about whom to follow, and whom to block, on Twitter—a privately run website that, as a central feature of its social-media platform, enables all users to block particular individuals from viewing posts—violate the Constitution.

Oddly (to me), Jacob Sullum (http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/19/do-you-have-a-right-to-follow-the-presid) writes on this matter for Reason magazine—an overtly libertarian publication—without addressing the problems that I bring up. Sullum writes, "The crucial question is whether Trump has created the constitutional equivalent of a town hall on Twitter." That's wrong. The central question is whether a government official may unilaterally impose on a private party the demands of a government-regulated town hall. The ultimate implication of the sort of legal reasoning that Sullum reviews is that government should treat social media companies as public utilities, at least in important ways. I take it that the partial (or total) nationalization of Twitter and other social media companies is not now a libertarian position.

A second case involves a county official in Virginia who blocked people from her Facebook page. A federal court (https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/virginia/vaedce/1:2016cv00932/348006/132/0.pdf) found in favor of the people suing the official, on grounds that the official operated the page in question in an official capacity. But the ruling ignores the fact that a government official may not impose on a private party—in this case, Facebook—the obligations of hosting an official government function. What the court should have said is that, regardless of how the public official handled the account, it simply wasn't a public forum in the sense relevant to First Amendment law.

A third case involves Colorado State Senator Ray Scott. As the Daily Sentinel (http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/sen-scott-blocks-some-from-official-social-media/) relates, Scott blocked several people from posting to his Facebook page. An (http://www.gjsentinel.com/opinion/articles/if-you-want-to-tweet-you-cant-delete) editorial by the Sentinel argues that Scott was legally wrong to do so. But none of the complaints counter my main two claims: First, that government may not unilaterally impose on private parties the requirements of official government purposes, and, second, that public officials have First Amendment rights of speech and association, too.

One thorny issue is what constitutes official government action. I think that only a narrow interpretation of official government business is legally justified. Obviously a meeting to vote on policy, to solicit comments explicitly from the entire public, or the like is an official government function. But we cannot sensibly extend officialdom to anything a public official says that pertains to their office, or public officials would have severely curtailed First Amendment rights. So, for example, government cannot rightly bar public officials from holding exclusionary rallies, private fundraisers, private dinner parties where participants discuss politics, and so on.

If we say that public officials, whenever they discuss policies relevant to their office, may not block participants, then the implication is that politicians must not use private social media accounts to discuss politics—because some potential participants already are blocked by social media sites. The proper conclusion, however, is that public officials should be free to use social media to discuss politics, and that such use does not constitute official government business in the sense relevant to First Amendment law.

This brings me to a peculiar area of law pertaining to open meetings. According to a (https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/files/Open%20Meeting%20Requirements%20of%20the%20Colorado%20Sunshine%20Law.pdf) summary from Colorado's Office of Legislative Services:

The Open Meetings Law (OML), which is part of the Colorado Sunshine Law, generally requires any state or local governmental body to discuss public business or to take formal action in meetings that are open to the public. A "meeting" refers to any kind of gathering, convened to discuss public business, whether in person, by telephone, electronically, or by other means of communication. The Colorado Supreme Court has held that "a meeting must be part of the policy-making process to be subject to the requirements of the OML." (endnotes omitted)

I'm certainly no expert in this area of law, but the measure seems highly ambiguous to me. If the law means that a few legislators cannot get together over dinner to discuss a legislative strategy, then that would constitute a violation of the legislators' rights of speech and association. This seems to be the meaning of the law; the summary says of a "state body," "Two or more members of the body conducting business are subject to this law."

The dividing line should be actions that anyone could do versus actions that only public officials could do. Can private citizens get together to discuss legislative strategy? Obviously. So public officials have a right to do the same thing, and state laws to the contrary should be tossed on First Amendment grounds. The Bill of Rights applies to public officials too! Can private citizens get together to alter city ordinances or state statutes? Obviously not. So when public officials are involved in such actions, they properly are covered by open-meeting laws. So I do see the propriety of open-meetings laws, so long as they are narrowly tailored to actual government actions.

We should bear in mind here that the First Amendment is part of a Constitution that was drafted in private. The people who drafted and adopted the First Amendment certainly did not think that public officials meeting in private thereby violated anyone's rights. I do think that narrowly tailored open-meeting laws are compatible with the Bill of Rights, but that broader restrictions on the speech of public officials are not.

No doubt critics of my narrow interpretation of public business would complain about the loss of "openness." But openness is not the point of the Bill of Rights; the protection of individual rights, is. One theme of the Bill of Rights is to protect individuals from unwanted "openness" to government and the public. Government actions per se should be public (with exceptions for national defense and the like); the actions of public officials, except insofar as they directly pertain to an official government action, should not be public by legal mandate.

Of course, none of this pertains to how we, as private citizens, should respond to public officials. We have every right to complain when public officials block people from their social media pages for arbitrary reasons. We have every right to complain about "back-room deals" that take place in smoke-filled bars and the like—and we have every right to vote with such actions in mind. What we do not have is a right to violate the right to freedom of speech of public officials.

Let me close with a comment regarding my degree of certainly about all of this. First-Amendment law is complicated. Sunshine laws are complicated. I'm "pretty sure" that my analysis and conclusions here are solid. But I recognize that there are very smart people who specialize in these areas who might be able to bring facts or arguments to my attention that I have so far neglected. At this time I cannot imagine anything that would shake my confidence in these matters, but I have to recognize the limits of my knowledge here. Obviously I'll post an update if I find that my analysis is in any important way wrong or incomplete.

I wanted to post these comments, even if somewhat tentative, because, so far as I've seen, several of the views that I'm expressing here have not been part of the discussion. I think they should be because they're right and important. Getting these issues wrong means that government will violate someone's rights.

On the Right to Petition Public Officials on Social Media

August 21, 2017

Public officials have the same rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association that the rest of us have. The do not lose their rights simply because they win elected office. Public officials are not above the law, but they are not beneath the law, either. They have a right to maintain their private lives, including their personal social media feeds (per the relevant terms of service), and interact with people (or not) as they see fit, just like the rest of us.

At the same time, insofar as public officials act as agents of government, they assume certain legal responsibilities that the rest of us do not have. If public officials open official forums of public commentary, they may not discriminate on the basis of ideology or point of view (among other things), and they must treat everyone equally under the law.

That brings us to Donald Trump's Tweets. Has Trump effectively turned his Twitter feed into a public forum subject to government rules? If so, then he may not block people from his feed, as he has done. More broadly, do public officials at all levels have a responsibility to treat their social media feeds as official public forums? Two related cases involve a county official in Virginia and a state senator in Colorado who blocked people on their social media feeds.

The issue is tricky because it can be hard to separate a public official's private life from his government agency. (I changed my mind substantially on several of the related issues, as my (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/08/why-public-officials-have-a-right-to-block-people-on-social-media/) earlier draft of this article attests.) Yet it is important to get these issues right, or else government will violate some people's rights, either those of public officials or those of individuals seeking to petition government.

As explained below, I think that public officials can indeed create official public forums for announcements or public commentary on social media—and that Trump and the Virginia official (but not the Colorado state senator) did so.

However—and this is the point missing from other commentary I've seen on the matter—if a public official creates a government-controlled public forum for public commentary on social media, his responsibilities do not end simply with not blocking people. He also has a responsibility to ensure that people who do not or may not use the social media site in question have an opportunity to comment.

Public Forums and Exclusionary Social Media

The problem is that social media companies themselves block people for reasons related to contents of statements—and government may not run public forums from which people have been so excluded. Two famous cases involve Twitter (https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/twitter-just-permanently-suspended-conservative-writer-milo) banning Milo Yiannopoulos (https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/08/16/twitter-boots-daily-stormer-latest-eviction-neo-nazi-site/573428001/) and (more recently) a white supremacist group. Of course Twitter, as a private company, has every right to ban people on whatever grounds the company deems best. But government may not ban Milo Yiannopoulos or white supremacists or anyone else from petitioning the government via official public forums.

Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/terms.php) explicitly bans so-called "hate speech" on its site, but the First Amendment has (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/19/supreme-court-unanimously-reaffirms-there-is-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/) no hate speech exception. Twitter's (https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311) terms more precisely pertain to harassment and threats, but they also forbid an "attack" on someone "on the basis of race, ethnicity," and so on. If "attack" is understood broadly to include harsh or pointed criticism, as apparently Twitter interprets it, then Twitter goes well beyond what government may do in terms of excluding people from public commentary.

A possibly remedy is for the public official or government entity in question to allow people to comment in other ways. For example, if a public official started a government-related Facebook thread, the official could also accept comments via email and mail, and add those comments to the thread. (Everyone may view publicly posted Facebook comments, whether or not a person has a Facebook account.) I think such a remedy would address the problem while respecting the rights of the social media company and of the commenting public.

But then another potential problem arises: What if a comment, added either by a user or indirectly via a public official, is deemed by a social media company to violate its terms of service? It is conceivable that a social media site could block a user for a comment left on an official government thread. In that case, a public official or government entity could link from Facebook to a secondary web site that included the comments. Although not a perfect remedy, it might be adequate.

Another possibility on Facebook is that a public official or government entity could create a page with all comments turned off. Then it would be a simple announcement page, not a forum for public discussion. Twitter functions differently, in that any user who is not blocked may comment on any Tweet. But then the question becomes whether government can establish an announcement-only feed on Twitter without having to assume responsibility for the comments.

To help clarify the complications pertaining to social media, it may be helpful to invoke the contrasting example of a physical space. If a public official rented a private hall for an official government meeting open to the public,the public official would need explicit buy-in from the hall, and the hall would not be able to ban participants (except for reasons of public health, threats of violence, or the like). For example, if the hall's owners had banned some white supremacists from the hall for giving a Nazi salute during a meeting, those people could not be banned from the official government meeting. Government may not exclude people who in the past gave a Nazi salute; private parties may. Insofar as a hall agrees to host an official government function, the hall in effect is not "private" for the duration of that event. It operates in the service of government and must play by government rules.

When government entities host official public forums on social media, they do not in effect rent the entire site, and they do not get assent from the social media company to suspend its terms of service for purposes of the forum. I doubt any social media company ever would agree to such terms. This is the reason why the government entity must also accept comments outside of the social media site in order not to exclude people.

If social media sites did start contracting with government, just how embedded with government might social media become? We can take an extreme example from the The Circle, a film about a Facebook-like social media site. One proposal that comes up in the film is to run official public voting for government officials through the social media site. The implication is that literally every qualified voter would have to be allowed onto the site for purposes of the vote. (Another proposal in the film is to force everyone to participate on the site.) Obviously government could not contract exclusively with a private party to operate official voting and allow exclusions based on the company's terms of service.

Clearly, many people have not sufficiently considered the implications of running an official, government-related public forum through a private social media service that routinely blocks people from participating.

With that background in mind, let's turn to the legal cases at hand.

The Virginia Case

In a July 25 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge James C. Cacheris (https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/virginia/vaedce/1:2016cv00932/348006/132/0.pdf) found that Phyllis J. Randall, Chair of the Loudoun County, Virginia, Board of Supervisors, created an official forum for public commentary on Facebook, and then improperly blocked a person (for a short time) because of the contents of the person's comments. I think the ruling is warranted.

Although the county did not require Randall to maintain an online forum for public commentary and did not explicitly authorize her use of Facebook for the purpose, Randall proactively declared the feed in question to be an official public forum. The page in question was titled "Chair Phyllis J. Randall," and Randall set it up explicitly to correspond with constituents regarding official government business.

To me, the most salient fact is that Randall explicitly invited everyone to participate on the page. She wrote on the Facebook page in question, "I really want to hear from ANY Loudoun citizen on ANY issues, request, criticism, compliment, or just your thoughts." She explicitly recognized that such exchanges were subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. Moreover, Randall's office issued official newsletters that urged constituents to "stay connected" through the Facebook page. So, in my judgment, she proactively created a positive obligation for herself to treat the Facebook page as an official forum for public commentary.

The legal controversy arose when, following an exchange at a live forum, someone posted a comment to the "Chair Phyllis J. Randall" page that (as the judge summarizes) "included allegations of corruption on the part of Loudoun County's School Board involving conflicts of interests among the School Board and their family members."

Randall deleted this comment and, for a short time, banned the person from the page. The person sued and got the favorable ruling.

Here is an interesting detail. If Randall's page were deemed to be private, then, to me, it is an open question whether Randall potentially could be held liable for the contents of comments that she allowed. Randall at one point said that she thought the remarks were slanderous. (I don't know whether the remarks in question, which were not preserved, were in fact true or false.) If someone posts libelous remarks on someone else's Facebook page, can the offended party sue the person who posted the comment? The person who allowed the comment to remain on the page? If such matters already have been legally sorted out, I am not aware of the relevant cases. If, on the other hand, the page in question is an official government forum for public commentary, then presumably the public official operating the page would be immune from such legal liability. So it's important for a variety of reasons whether a forum is deemed personal or official.

One thing that seems clear is that Randall created her Facebook page without fully thinking through the implications of creating an official forum for public commentary. For one thing, Randall apparently did not establish a way for people not on Facebook to comment on relevant threads (an issue the court ruling does not address). Randall did not establish formal rules for comments. And, in the case at issue, she tried to use the page as though it were personal to block people at her discretion.

No doubt the ruling will prompt public officials to think more carefully about designating official public forums via social media.

Importantly, the court did not declare that public officials may not moderate comments on official public forums. Instead, the judge found that it is not the case that

public officials are forbidden to moderate comments on their social media websites, or that it will always violate the First Amendment to ban or block commenters from such websites. Indeed, a degree of moderation is necessary to preserve social media websites as useful forums for the exchange of ideas. Neutral, comprehensive social media policies like that maintained by Loudoun County—and eschewed by Defendant here—may provide vital guidance for public officials and commenters alike in navigating the First Amendment pitfalls [of social media].

Moving to the next case, is Trump's Twitter feed substantially similar to Randall's Facebook page?

Trump's Twitter Feed

On July 11, the Knight First Amendment Institute and other parties (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3892179/2017-07-11-Knight-Institute-Trump-Twitter.pdf) filed suit in federal court against Donald Trump and assorted other parties because Trump has blocked various people from his Twitter feed.

As a technical matter, Twitter does not actually block anyone from seeing someone's public feed. Twitter (https://support.twitter.com/articles/117063) says, "Blocking only works if the account you've blocked is logged in on Twitter. For example, if the account you've blocked isn't logged in or is accessing Twitter content via a third party, they may be able to see your public Tweets." In other words, you don't actually have to have a Twitter account to see someone's public Twitter feed. And someone who is blocked need merely view the relevant Twitter feed via a web browser that is not logged into Twitter.

Still, getting blocked from Twitter is a minor annoyance with respect to viewing the relevant feed, and it does prevent a user from responding to the blocker's Tweets.

Has Trump turned his once-personal Twitter feed into an official government forum? The answer clearly seems to be yes, at least in terms of posting official announcements. The lawsuit notes that Trump as well as government aids help to run the account, and that Trump's Tweets are deemed "official statements" by the Trump administration.

I think the proper conclusion, then, is that Trump has turned his Twitter feed into an official forum from which people cannot lawfully be blocked.

What about the problem of Twitter blocking certain individuals, who may not then interact with Trump's Tweets? Has Trump assumed a positive obligation to provide a means for people to comment on Trump's Tweets?

I think the answer to this question, although debatable, is no. Trump doesn't use the Twitter feed expressly to gather commentary from the public; he uses it as a means to make announcements to and share his thoughts with the public. The public commentary function is secondary and, from Trump's perspective, incidental. So, in my view, Trump legally may not block people from his feed, but he has no positive obligation to allow people whom Twitter has blocked from responding with commentary of their own. It will be interesting to see if the relevant court even addresses this issue.

Ray Scott's Facebook Page

An editorial by the Daily Sentinel (http://www.gjsentinel.com/opinion/articles/if-you-want-to-tweet-you-cant-delete) strongly suggests that Colorado State Senator Ray Scott is violating the First Amendment by blocking people from his Facebook page. Yet neither the editorial nor a (http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/sen-scott-blocks-some-from-official-social-media/) first or (http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/gj-residents-file-ethics-complaint-against-scott) second news article published by the Sentinel offers any substantial evidence that Scott proactively turned his Facebook page into an official government forum.

Scott does operate the page titled "(https://www.facebook.com/rayscottforcolorado/) Ray Scott for Colorado" that lists his political position, and Scott discusses politics on the page and corresponds with others. But this is hardly evidence that Scott has turned this page into an official government forum for public commentary. Notably missing, unlike with the Randall case, is anything like a positive declaration by Scott that the page is so intended. No one who reads the long list of facts pertinent to the Randall case can reasonably conclude that anything remotely similar has been presented in the Scott case.

Unless substantial new evidence is forthcoming, we should conclude that Scott uses the page as a personal page, and he has the same rights that the Sentinel and everyone else has to speak freely via social media (subject to the relevant terms of service) and block people or their comments at will.

Just as the Sentinel has no legal obligation to publish every letter it receives, so Scott has no legal obligation to leave up every comment posted to his page.

The Sentinel's case against Scott is remarkably weak. The paper's editorial claims that Scott is using social media "under a banner of government representation," but it offers no compelling evidence that the page in question is an official public forum. The editorial also claims, "Scott doesn't seem to understand that he is the government." Clearly that's wrong. Elected officials are not the property of the public. They are individuals with their own lives and their own rights. They assume the mantle of government only in vary particular circumstances.

It is worth noting here that the Sentinel's publisher (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/03/fake-news-open-records-and-the-spat-between-a-colorado-senator-and-newspaper/) once threatened to sue Scott for calling the Sentinel "fake news." The relationship between the newspaper and the senator hardly is a friendly one.

In some nice reporting for Colorado Politics, Dan Njegomir (https://coloradopolitics.com/facebook-flap-leads-to-an-ethics-complaint-seriously-against-a-state-senator/) points out that "only days after that ruling [in Virginia pertaining to Randall], the same plaintiff also (https://coloradopolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/davison-rose.pdf) lost a very similar case he had brought against another local government. Same U.S District Court but a different judge."

Njegomir rightly wonders whether, owing to the legal uncertainty, public officials may become "targets of orchestrated trolling tactics that taunt them into reprisal" so the activists can then "haul them to court."

As Njegomir and the Sentinel point out, some parties that Scott has blocked have asked the state legislature to open an ethics investigation about the matter. I doubt any such investigation goes forward. Based on facts so far presented, it should not go forward.

Of course, this says nothing about how we as private citizens may respond to Scott's use of social media. People are free to complain when he blocks people or their comments for arbitrary reasons and to carry their concerns into the voting booth. Anyone who uses social media extensively knows that people routinely complain about getting blocked by this or that contact—the difference is that people do not normally expect judges to come riding to their rescue.

How Broadly May Public Officials Be Constrained?

Let's return to the broad question: What does it mean to have a First Amendment right to correspond with government? The First Amendment, as generalized by the Fourteenth Amendment, says that government may not abridge "the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The right to freedom of speech means a right to speak using your own resources, and sometimes government resources, in ways that do not violate others' rights. So, for example, you have a right to give a speech in a public square (subject to "time, place, and manner" restrictions that must be applied equally), but you do not have the right to barge into my house or another private establishment to give a speech. And you do not have the right to, say, solicit the services of a hitman or incite violence against someone.

Notably, the right to freedom of speech entails the right not to speak and not to support speech with which you disagree. As Ayn Rand (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/free_speech.html) puts it, the First Amendment "does not demand that private citizens provide a microphone for the man who advocates their destruction." (Similarly, the right to freedom of association entails the right not to associate.) With respect to social media, this means that blocking someone from your (non-governmental) feed, or blocking particular comments from your feed, does not constitute a violation of someone's right to freedom of speech. It also means that social media companies themselves may block people for ideological reasons—as they regularly do.

The First Amendment also says people have the right to petition the government. It's not specific as to how this must happen. It just implies that government has some positive obligation to accept people's petitions. As we've seen, government entities may create for themselves positive obligations to facilitate public commentary in particular instances. For example, the passage of federal regulations generally follows an official collection of public commentary. Similarly, state and city government entities may officially collect public commentary. Such collection of public commentary definitely is a government function—and it must not be conducted in a way that discriminates on the basis of expressed ideology or point of view.

The central question at issue, again, is when is a public official acting as a private citizen and when is he acting as a government agent?

It will not do to treat public officials as if they are owned by the public. Among other problems, no decent person would agree to run for public office under such circumstances. Public officials have a right to discuss politics in private and to host exclusionary rallies, private fundraisers, private dinner parties where participants discuss politics, and so on.

I continue to have (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/08/why-public-officials-have-a-right-to-block-people-on-social-media/) concerns that some aspects of "open meeting laws," particularly as they might apply to relatively informal meetings among a few (or even two) public officials, define government agency too broadly and so encroach on the rights of public officials.

With respect to social media, surely a public official has a right to maintain non-governmental social media pages, even ones that discuss politics. To say otherwise is to deny pubic officials their First Amendment rights. And to sue or investigate public officials for their personal communications is to chill their speech. Not only the public official but the general public loses when the effect of such actions is to cause the public official to shut up.

At the same time, public officials, by virtue of their government agency, have a responsibility, if they create an official forum for public commentary, to operate it responsibly and in accordance with government rules. As I've indicated, when an official forum involves a social media site, public officials need to offer a means to comment for people blocked from the site.

Yes, people have a right to petition the government. But public officials are people too, and they have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of association. I'm hopefully that the courts will uphold the rights of the people generally without violating the rights of public officials.

Sketching a Free-Market Response to Climate Change

September 9, 2017

As Florida faces Hurricane Irma and Houston continues its recovery efforts from the intense flooding there, a lot of people are turning more of their attention to the matter of climate change, and with good reason.

Summarized briefly, my position on human-caused climate change has evolved over the years roughly from "it isn't happening" to "it's happening but it isn't that big of a deal" to "it's happening and it's probably a big deal." These notes represent my quick attempt to help bridge the communication gap between scientists and activists who think that climate change represents an existential threat to people on the planet and free-market advocates typically less inclined to take the problem seriously. (And yes, I realize that no given weather event can be attributed to climate change, but that doesn't undercut the case that climate change makes certain types of damaging events more likely.)

In particular I want to reply to some of the remarks of Joseph Romm and Sam Harris in (https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-you-need-to-know-about-climate-change) Harris's recent podcast on the subject.

The basic reason that free-market advocates often are skeptical of claims of dangerous climate change is that such claims seem to be the latest in a long line of anticapitalist fearmongering. In his (http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/the-inconvenient-truth-about-al-gore-and-the-climate-experts/) recent article, Lawrence J. McQuillan discusses the ridiculous predictions of catastrophe by the likes of Paul Ehrlich, who decades ago predicted widespread famine due to population growth. His claims were not just wrong but laughable.

But just because the boy keeps falsely crying wolf doesn't mean there is no such thing as wolves. My belief now is that climate change actually has teeth. Ignoring the threat of wolves just because someone keeps seeing phantom wolves is just as counterproductive as falsely crying wolf.

I want to suggest that, even if people concerned about climate change have reason to distrust free-market advocates, and vice versa, each group should try to pay attention to what the other is saying.

I was struck by something Romm said to Harris:

The problem is that we've been unable to get a carbon price passed in this country. . . . If we had the right carbon price, if the price of carbon reflected the actual damage that carbon does to the world, then we wouldn't need a bunch of other policies. . . . The market would just figure out what is the cheapest thing to deploy, and it would deploy it.

Harris followed up:

This is a classically libertarian description of what to do. It's really an amazing irony that the people who seem to be against doing anything about climate change—. . . a very high percentage of these people consider themselves libertarians—but the core philosophy of libertarianism is that you have to price in all the benefits and harms of any given economic behavior.

Minor quibbles aside, I agree with what Romm and Harris are saying. An aspect of free markets is that people who pollute must stop polluting or pay compensation to those they harm.

My disagreement is over the particular policies that Romm advocates to get carbon pricing that captures the real costs of pollution. Romm discusses cap-and-trade, and I get the sense he'd accept a carbon tax as an alternative.

But a real free-market approach would involve something like a Carbon Compensation Fund. The basic idea is that energy producers would have to pay into the fund according to how much carbon their products emit and what damages are expected to be. So this would act similarly to a tax in some respects, but it would not create a slush fund for politicians; the money would actually go directly to compensate those harmed by climate change (if the program functioned correctly).

A Carbon Compensation Fund would be superior to cap-and-trade for several reasons. It would not create artificial "rights" in pollution that would arbitrarily make existing players rich at the expense of newcomers. Also, it would not try to guess what the "right" amount of carbon emissions is in a given year; it builds the damages into the costs, and, as Romm says, lets the market function.

If Romm is right that people really would be better off switching entirely from fossil fuels to solar and wind and the like, then a compensation fund would best incentivize people to make the switch in the most economic way. But the approach does not rule out in advance other potential paths involving a mix of fuel substitutions and adaptations to a changing climate.

A huge benefit of the fund, relative to other approaches, is that contributions could be regularly adjusted based on expected harms, and refunds could even be issued if the damage is less that expected. So, as a hypothetical, if producers of fossil fuels figured out a way to suck carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere to offset emissions, they would no longer need to pay for damages from emissions. (As an side, the fund theoretically could be expanded to include other sorts of relevant emissions. Obviously a fund like this would be very hard to set up and properly manage.)

Romm is a big fan of government subsidies, but the problem is that subsidies often support politically correct research rather than the best research. If people want to subsidize renewables with their own money, great. But there's no reason to think that government will accomplish anything other than to waste resources on net. Generally politicians and their bureaucratic appointees pick winners and losers based largely on politics, not based only (or even) on the best science and economics.

If people like Romm want to be more successful, they will pay more attention to the reasons that many people get nervous when "climate activists" start calling for yet more taxes, more regulation, and more centralized bureaucratic control of the economy. A Carbon Compensation Fund would follow the model not of bureaucratic controls but of torts. Such a fund, theoretically, could even be the product of an actual class-action lawsuit or a series of lawsuits. But if, due to the complexity of the international legal order, treating the problem literally as a tort cannot work, then a political intervention to reach comparable results probably would work as well as anything might while potentially appealing to a broader political marketplace.

And if national and international politics fail, then, I predict, we'll still slowly phase out most carbon-based energy, simply because people will become ever more willing to spend more of their own money on carbon-free alternatives. If Romm is right, then we should be able to see more signs of trouble as the years progress. But building the costs of harm into the price of carbon-based energy certainly would help get the incentives right and help achieve more-just outcomes.

As far as I'm concerned, the debate over whether humans cause potentially harmful global warming by emitting carbon dioxide and other gases is over. We do. Now the interesting debate is what to do about it. Those who act as though the automatic answer is to tax, regulate, and subsidize energy production are not only failing to think fully scientifically, they are failing to craft an approach with a realistic chance of succeeding politically.

A personal note: As I write this, Irma is bearing down on Florida, and it's unclear what the damage from that will be. Those of us not in the danger zone are thinking of the the people affected.

What If Global Warming Is "Mild and Manageable"?

September 10 Update: What if, as some people on Facebook have suggested, global warming is "mild and manageable," as (http://industrialprogress.com/about/) Alex Epstein thinks?

How severe the harms of global warming will be is an empirical question. Some people still think the harms will be zero, but most people concede that there will be at least some damages. The severity of global warming depends largely on whether "feedback loops"—prominently, the reduction of light-reflecting ice and the increase of water vapor—increase warming beyond what carbon dioxide by itself would accomplish.

My basic response is that, if people think global warming will be "mild and manageable," then they should embrace my approach. Even if the harms of global warming are "mild," then those harmed should be compensated. Normally we do not let people freely harm others if they do so in a "mild" way. If the effects of global warming turn out to be mild, then my approach would result in modest compensation paid by producers of carbon-based energy to those harmed.

The adjustability of my approach is a huge advantage over other approaches. If the harms of global warming turn out to be quite severe, then we'll increasingly see its effects, and my approach would call for higher compensation to those harmed. If the harms are less severe, then the compensation would be scaled back accordingly. So my proposal should appeal to people with a very wide range of views.

Comments

Other Works Bear on the Issue

Thank you for addressing this issue. Have you seen the articles on this topic by (https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2006/11/cj26n3-3.pdf) Edwin Dolan (Cato Journal) and (http://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/faculty_publications/30/) Jonathan Adler (Social Policy & Philosophy)? (Both of those articles are mentioned by Jerry Taylor in "(https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-principles-climate-change/) Libertarian Principles & Climate Change.")

Also, regarding the remark, "if producers of fossil fuels figured out a way to suck carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere to offset emissions," this is not a hypothetical, as you might know. It's called carbon sequestration. I expect people have proposed, in lieu of a carbon tax, that producers pay to sequester their own carbon.

—Brian S.

Ari Armstrong replies: Thanks for the tips, Brian. I did read Adler's article years ago, and its ideas stuck with me—although I had lost track of the citation. I think Adler gets a lot right, but I disagree with his emphasis on developed versus developing nations. We should be concerned with specific individuals harmed by global warming, regardless of where they live, not with national aggregates.

A Property Rights Approach

First, I agree that there are anthropogenic effects to climate. I may lean toward the wolf having smaller teeth, however. I am glad that others like you realize that it should be addressed in the context of rights violations. It's really frustrating that this issue for the most part, has two schools of thought—"do nothing" or "more statism."

Assuming that the United States would address it and implement something from a property rights approach (I'm skeptical of that happening, but it would be nice), the world is likely to still have major polluters who will likely do nothing. I suppose that we could lead by example.

—Ben F.

Ari Armstrong replies: I don't know enough about international law or about tort law to comment on the possibility of international tort actions under existing law. It is theoretically possible for nations via treaty to in effect create an international tort system to deal with global warming.

Rethinking a 2012 Article

I read with interest my 2012 article for the Objective Standard, "(https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2012/11/does-reason-support-a-carbon-tax/) Does Reason Support a Carbon Tax?" The main difference between my views then and my views now is that I take the potential harms of global warming much more seriously. My argument was that a carbon tax does not treat global warming as a tort, but I did not then see a need to do so or a way to do so.

—Ari Armstrong

An Exchange on Climate Change

John Clinch sent in some replies about the above article; due to the length of his remarks and of my reply, I have (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/09/an-exchange-on-climate-change-and-a-tort-based-response/) posted the exchange elsewhere.

—Ari Armstrong

An Exchange on Climate Change and a Tort-Based Response

September 22, 2017

The following exchange was prompted by my September 9 article, "(http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/09/sketching-a-free-market-response-to-climate-change/) Sketching a Free-Market Response to Climate Change." John Clinch sent in some critical comments, which are reproduced here with my reply.—Ari Armstrong

Clinch: Climate Change is a Serious Problem Demanding a Multifaceted Approach

Ari—

Thanks for your piece.

I too listened with interest to (https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-you-need-to-know-about-climate-change) Sam Harris's conversation with Joseph Romm. What struck me was not that it revealed anything new but that it stuck to the science. Climatology has developed into a highly sophisticated discipline and, in doing so, has alarmingly confirmed the predictions it's been making about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) for thirty years.

While the canary has been chirping away in the coalmine, we've largely wasted those 30 precious years, mainly because of inertia and denialism by non-experts. In the face of the growing evidence, now we find the denialists—the Matt Ridleys and the Nigel Lawsons on this side of the Atlantic and much of government on the other—to be squirming, shifting positions from "it's not happening" to "it's not us" to, in some cases, "it's us but it's not that bad." They will be forever catching up until it's too late. It almost is.

A lot of that denialism has been fueled by ideology—principally, as you acknowledge, the suspicion by neo-liberals that it's all just another anti-capitalist conspiracy. You are a self-confessed Johnny-come-lately on this (you're not alone) yet, even now, you plead a 1960s popular science book, The Population Bomb, to hint that it's sometimes okay for common-sense folk to scoff at the eggheads. I suppose it's to your credit that you didn't cite the supposed 1970s "global cooling hypothesis"—a great favourite of the denialists, since it suggests a false balance. These were not serious hypotheses supported by mountains of evidence, as the AGW hypothesis is (although the population book did at least remind the world of the Malthusian problem). Don't confuse bad or inchoate science with the good.

My point is that now is not the time to seek ideologically-motivated answers in solving this. This is a global emergency that will occupy the concerns of the world community for decades. It must do or we fail and failure potentially spells an endgame for civilisation. The stakes couldn't be higher, yet your contribution to the public debate has been to argue narrowly for a free market solution. You offer little to no evidence to support the view that your proposal would be any more effective that the one advocated by most people directly involved in this field, namely a carbon tax. A carbon tax harnesses free-market mechanisms and has the great virtue of simplicity and ease of administration. Why, other than for reasons of pure ideology, would you equate this (in order to dismiss it) with the extension of the bogeyman State?

The difference between us is that I don't care what we do as long as it works. I'd do all of the following if it worked. Yes, establish your quasi-tort if it can be shown to be effective—why not? But also cooperate internationally to establish ever more stringent binding national targets for carbon reduction. Introduce a carbon tax (a complete no-brainer for me). On the technical side, of course invest in blue-sky technologies but, in the meantime, rapidly expand new nuclear energy and continue investment in renewables. For this, we can subsidise, if required, from carbon tax proceeds. (You dismiss investment subsidies yet these have been demonstrably effective at getting the renewables industry off the ground.)

If you don't support almost anything that can be shown to assist us with this problem, my charge to you is that you don't think that AGW is a serious enough problem.

Finally, to those people who are not climatologists but who advocate for the "mild and manageable" view, I say this. They may be right. However, I don't know and neither do they. I am not entitled to my own opinion about the science behind AGW. Neither are you, President Trump, Republican senators, Lord Lawson, Exxon-Mobil, Friends of the Earth, or Greenpeace. All of those people or bodies are either denying the science, funding denialism, or are allowing ideology to hamper the science. It's time for us all to listen to expertise because, as I say, the stakes could not be higher. The solution is scientific, not ideological.

Sorry for the length of my comment but it's self-evidently the most important issue we face.

—John Clinch

London

Armstrong: A Tort-Best Response Would Be Best

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate that you grasp the essence of my position (ironically, some people closer to my political views have not grasped it) and that, unlike some environmental activists, you are open to realistic options such as nuclear energy. I am not persuaded by all of your remarks, however.

To start off, your claim that global warming could spell the "endgame for civilization" is hyperbole. What we seem realistically to be talking about is the potential for rising sea levels, more intense storms, desertification of some regions, and agricultural disruptions. As Romm says, the potential mass migrations could cause enormous political difficulty. These are no small problems, but they hardly threaten civilization as such. And there are several reasons to think that outcomes will probably be considerably less-bad than the worst predictions:

As people such as (http://ariarmstrong.com/2017/02/johan-norberg-celebrates-human-progress/) Johan Norberg and (http://reason.com/blog/2017/09/19/climate-change-will-reduce-incomes-in-22) Ronald Bailey point out, assuming continued economic growth (a good bet), people will be enormously wealthier by the turn of the century and therefore much better equipped to handle the challenge.

Some people might respond to warming by moving north. Vast regions of the planet are currently iced over for much of the year. Hardly anyone lives in such places. As examples, the United States has Alaska and Russia has Siberia (which may help explain why Russia does not seem very concerned about global warming). Canada is roughly the same size as the United States and yet has only around a tenth of the population. Our planet has loads of space that would become more habitable with substantial global warming—although of course this would come with dramatic political and ecological changes.

It is worth noting here that, although climate scientists are pretty much all on the same page regarding the basics of global warming, they still don't know the details of what will happen. That is why climate models offer a range of predictions. You may have heard of the recent report (http://reason.com/blog/2017/09/21/climate-models-run-too-hot-settled-scie2) claiming that the models may have overpredicted warming.

Regarding the "experts," it is absolutely essential that people interpret the claims of experts with an engaged and critical mind. You grant the possibility of "bad or inchoate science"—yet a person can distinguish the bad from the good only through critical reasoning. Paul Ehrlich's apocalyptical nonsense is hardly the only example of "eggheads" getting important things wrong; we can also look to the the once-widespread eugenics movement, the modern "replication crisis" in psychology and other fields, and even now-discredited dietary advice in the United States, as a few examples. There is not an absolute break between experts and the layperson in terms of knowledge; an expert whose views are supported by the facts should be able to convincingly make that case. Blind faith in "experts" can help to pave the road to totalitarianism.

Now to my proposed solution. As indicated, I offered only a sketch of my position. To present a fully formed version of it would require weeks or months of my full-time occupation (which would go uncompensated). I'd have to learn a lot more not only about climate change but about tort law and international law. I figured it was better to present a sketch than nothing.

That said, my position has a lot more going for it than you indicate.

I suggested some of the problems with a tax. At what rates should the tax be set? On what will the proceeds be spent? Obviously these would be deeply political issues guided by the whims of politicians and the influence of special interests. As a new source of revenues, a carbon tax would incentivize politicians to maximize the proceeds of the tax, not to minimize the harms of global warming. A tort-based compensation fund such as I describe would at least be tied, as a matter of principle, to actual damages.

You advocate subsidies, but there's little reason to think that government bodies do a good job at picking winners. Political subsidies tend to favor the politically connected. Yes, subsidies are always "demonstrably effective" at helping those subsidized—but at what cost? If the full costs of carbon-based fuels were accounted for, there would be no reason to subsidize alternative forms of energy—because worthwhile technologies would succeed without government support.

There is no reason to think that government bureaucracies will do a good job trying to guess what the right technologies will be decades hence, what the right amount of carbon dioxide emissions will be in a given year (or even in total), what the right adaptive strategies are, what the right balance between cutting greenhouse gasses and adapting to warming is, and so on.

A great advantage to a tort-based compensation fund such as I describe, relative to a system of bureaucratic commands and political subsidies, is that it would foster the full engagement of the knowledge and expertise of consumers, inventors, and investors across the planet. And because the specifics of the fund would be continually updated based on the best available forecasts of damages, it would be very adaptive to changes in scientific consensus as well as to the implementation of new technologies for mitigation and adaptation.

My main concern with my proposal is that I'm not sure existing legal structures make it possible, and I'm not confident governments will set up new legal structures if needed. Tort law is well established. But global warming is a wide-scale issue involving a multitude of energy producers and potentially damaged parties in many regions. So it's complicated.

I don't think my proposal (or something like it) actually will be implemented, simply because few people will seriously consider it. But sometimes politics changes fast, and there's a better chance of a tort-based approach gaining ground if I advocate it than if I don't. Hopefully at least more people will start thinking about global warming in terms of actual damages and in terms of economic trade-offs.

We shouldn't succumb to magical thinking about "renewable" energies. Solar and wind contribute a (https://www.facebook.com/bjornlomborg/photos/a.221758208967.168468.146605843967/10155659082403968/) tiny fraction of total energy despite their heavy subsidies. Meanwhile, at least as of 2015, annual global use of fossil fuels (https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/06/08/world-sets-record-for-fossil-fuel-consumption/) continues to grow, not shrink. Today the earth supports billions of people, whose lives on the whole have gotten better over time, largely because we burn fossil fuels to run our computers and communications and appliances, power our cars and tractors and planes and ships, heat and cool our dwellings, and so on. Global warming potentially endangers many people's welfare, safety, and lives in the future. Depriving people of energy would endanger their welfare and lives severely and immediately.

The right approach takes into account the profound benefits of fossil fuels today as well as their potential harms in future decades. A tort-based approach promises to best balance costs and benefits while spurring the most economic mix of adaptive strategies and transitions to other sources of energy.

—Ari Armstrong

Calling Vile Racists Right-Wing or Extreme Only Gives Them Cover

October 12, 2017

In Charlottesville at a rally of white nationalists, a man with neo-Nazi sympathies drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer. The need to condemn racist ideologies and the violence they inspire remains urgent.

The language we use to combat racism matters. Calling white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and their ilk "far right" or "extreme," rather than white supremacists or the like, only obscures their vile nature and helps them falsely claim ties to mainstream America. White supremacists (http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/city-says-permit-will-only-be-ok-d-if-rally/article_29f8e566-7baa-11e7-906d-63c9ea503128.html) openly welcome such labels—the event in Charlottesville was called the "Unite the Right" rally.

Whether we look to (https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/08/18/president-trump-wants-facts-right-wing-extremism-here-they-are-erroll-southers-column/577308001/) USA Today op-ed pages or the (https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/murder-and-extremism-in-the-united-states-in-2016) Anti-Defamation League or beyond, often we see critics of white racists refer to them as "far-right" or "right-wing extremists." A recent (https://www.bennet.senate.gov/?p=release&id=4019) media release by Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado criticized Donald Trump's administration regarding its handling of "far-right extremism," as did a (https://www.leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/081817%20Letter%20to%20Acting%20Secretary%20Duke.pdf) letter signed by Bennet and twenty-three other senators.

However well-intentioned, charges that racists are right-wing or extreme serve to give the racists cover by lumping them together with many respectable people and intellectual traditions.

Many people call themselves "center right," by which they mean roughly that they support lower taxes and less regulation. Although I eschew the label, I have attended local center-right meetings filled with good people with whom I often ally in politics. Neo-Nazis are quite happy to be called "far right" because of the seeming implication that they have something in common with my "center right" friends. But they have nothing in common. Being a racist is not a more extreme version of being for low taxes (or the like); logically the two things have nothing to do with each other.

The basic problem with the terms left and right as applied to politics is that they imply two opposing viewpoints. But typical ways of describing left and right combine various views that are not alike.

Today in America "the left" generally is understood to refer to advocacy of a robust welfare and regulatory state as often championed by Democrats. "The right" usually is associated with conservatism that advocates governmental restraint. Where do white supremacists fit into this? They don't.

Of course, some people on today's left would call all conservatives and advocates of limited government racists and say that neo-Nazis and the Klan represent an extreme form of that evil. But not only is this view unjust toward the scores of millions of Americans who regard themselves as right-wing and who condemn racism—many of whom are members of the Party of Lincoln—but it gives the racists a false claim to an affinity with those Americans.

This is not to say that all conservatives and advocates of limited government have done a good job distancing themselves from racists. For years many conservative Republicans beat the anti-immigration drum with a nod and a wink toward those who reject most immigration on racial grounds. Who can forget Trump's slander of Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, exempting only "some" as "good people"? Such libertarians as (https://niskanencenter.org/blog/explaining-white-nationalisms-anti-statist-bedfellows/) Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul (or at least (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/ron-paul-and-the-racist-newsletters-fact-checker-biography/2011/12/21/gIQAKNiwBP_blog.html) Ron Paul's ghostwriter) openly flirted with racists.

Part of the problem is that the term conservative is itself ambiguous: What is being conserved? White supremacists can claim that they're trying to "conserve" the tradition of racial oppression.

Yet insofar as conservatives aim to conserve America's tradition of liberty—the principles that all people are "created equal" and have a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—they fall squarely within the classical liberal tradition of representative government, individual rights, and free markets.

There is no logical link between "right wing" views of limited government or classical liberalism and racism. Classical liberalism generally is individualist and hence anti-racist. Racists generally call for powerful government action to keep people with the "wrong" skin tone at bay.

American leftists who wish to paint free-market "right wingers" with the racist brush would do well to remember that eugenics once was a Progressive cause, and the Democratic Party once was the pro-slavery party. Do we want to play games of guilt by association or get down to the serious business of eradicating racism?

The tag of extremism is just as troublesome. We must ask, extremely what? Shouldn't we be extremely opposed to racism and not just moderately opposed? The Abolitionists were extremists; they sought to overthrow an institution that had existed for thousands of years. Gandhi was extremely nonviolent. America's Founders sought the extreme goal of separating from England. Extreme doesn't always mean bad. (Yes, I also think people should stop calling Muslim terrorists "extremists.")

If you mean racist, then say racist. If you mean violent, then say violent. To get serious about fighting racism, we need to stop obscuring its nature with vague labels and call it what it is.

A version of this article originally was published by the Colorado Springs Gazette on August 26, 2017.

On the Outside Looking In at Ayn Rand's Moral Philosophy

November 6, 2017

In the early 1990s I attended an Objectivist event in southern California. I'm pretty sure this event was organized by George Reisman, an economist who also advocates Ayn Rand's philosophy, before the Ayn Rand Institute split with Reisman and his wife Edith. During a social period at this event I was talking with a fellow, not too much older than I was, who asked me, "So, are you an Objectivist?"

I answered, I thought sensibly enough, "I don't know." Disdain wrinkling his face, he retorted, "How could you not know?"—and that marked the end of our conversation. At the time I didn't know quite what to make of this exchange, other than to think that the fellow wasn't that original. His line was similar to something that Howard Roark says in The Fountainhead (only inappropriately applied).

As is often the case, "I don't know" was a perfectly reasonable response. I was familiar with the basic tenets of the philosophy, and I thought they were at least largely true, but I had some important questions about them.

Years later I came to regard myself as an Objectivist, once I came to agree that Rand's moral philosophy (read in a certain light) is correct. But, after thinking about Rand's ethical framework for additional years, I am prepared to say that, no, I am not an Objectivist, mainly because I think Rand's basic moral case is false. Specifically, I think that it is not the case, as Rand claims, that life in terms of survival is an individual's ultimate moral end.

So what is ethics basically about, then? I think I have the answer (or at least a compelling answer) to this worked out in a preliminary way, and eventually I'll discuss my views publicly. (Join my (http://eepurl.com/bZb7HX) email list or my (https://www.patreon.com/ariarmstrong) Patreon page for updates.) My thinking is still very much inspired by Rand's work in certain ways, but the theory I now think is true goes in a different direction in important respects.

Recently there was a dustup among a circle of my social media friends regarding an old debate over whether Objectivism is an "open" or a "closed" system. I agree with Leonard Peikoff (Rand's heir) that Objectivism is "closed" in the sense that it is limited to the philosophic theories formulated by Rand. And that puts me on the outside looking in. I consider myself a "fellow traveler" with Objectivism in many respects but not an Objectivist.

My thinking about Rand's ethics progressed roughly as follows:

In high school I read Ayn Rand, and hers was the first serious philosophic material I'd read. Not too surprisingly, I found her case convincing, especially compared with the fundamentalist Christian doctrines I'd been taught as a child.

In college and some years thereafter I became skeptical of Rand's ideas. I didn't know what to make of Rand's seemingly incompatible remarks regarding life and happiness, and I came to think that happiness (or a sort of enlightened pleasure) actually is the ultimate moral good. I happened to run into the philosopher Eric Mack, and he hit me with Nozick's Experience Machine. Although Mack didn't convince me at the time that I was wrong, eventually the sort of argument he made, and that Rand also makes, eroded my hedonistic-leaning views. (I also had some personal problems during part of this period and did not always live up to moral standards. I learned about rationalizations and moral blind spots the hard way.)

Some years later I took up Rand's ideas with renewed interest. I listened to important lectures by Peikoff—his material on rationalism had a huge impact on me—read Rand's works more closely, read related materials such as Tara Smith's books, and started to take virtue ethics much more seriously. I finally worked out a way to interpret Rand's theory that, to my mind, resolved all the seeming paradoxes (How can the choice to live be premoral? How can happiness be one's moral purpose if life is the ultimate end? How does Rand's account fit with standard evolutionary theory?).

More recently I decided that, although Rand gets a lot right, her basic moral theory doesn't hold up. What I regard as the correct moral theory has a lot in common with Rand's theory and shares a broadly Aristotelian approach.

Why does any of this matter? I'm part of Objectivist social circles, I used to write for an Objectivist publication, and I run a (https://www.patreon.com/ariarmstrong) Patreon account, so I didn't want anyone to be confused about where I now stand. And my new views have stabilized; at this point I think there's a very low chance that I'll change my mind.

Incidentally, although my main disagreement with Rand is over her core ethical theory, I also wonder about her theory of free will. I do not doubt that we are deliberative creatures with free will in that sense. But I'm not sure that I understand Rand's theory of free will, and I'm not sure that it wins out over compatibilism in the style of Daniel Dennett. Personally, I would not rule someone out as an Objectivist just for thinking that compatibilism probably is true.

Of course I disagree with Rand on all sorts of particulars—I have no problem with a woman as president, for example, and I think some forms of photography are art. But such disagreements are not a matter of core philosophy.

One result of pointing out a viable alternative to Rand's basic ethics, I hope, will be to make her broader views more interesting to certain people. Once we get past some people's antipathy to Rand's capitalist politics, the largest impediment to people taking Rand seriously probably is her core moral theory. As much as critics misrepresent her theory, some critics detect some real problems with it. Yet much of Rand's broader theory remains powerful and can be separated from (what I see as) Rand's metaethical errors.

So no, I'm not an Objectivist. And I'm okay with that.

Property Rights and Democracy: Reply to Wilkinson

December 5, 2017

Property rights—at least "absolutist," "hard-core," "hard-nosed" property rights that are "rigid and all-encompassing"—are the enemy of democracy. That is essentially the theme of Will Wilkinson's (https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-democracy-skepticism-infected-american-right/) essay and (https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-origins-libertarian-influence-ruling-american-right/) follow-up on the matter.

I answer that Wilkinson, who apparently favors the "standard redistributive policies of successful modern states," does not recognize property rights at all, but merely property permissions that can be granted or retracted by democratic majorities at will.

Properly, democracy is restrained from violating people's rights. If the majority wishes to enslave the minority, too bad—a proper constitution forbids it. If the majority wishes to censor the speech of the minority, again, that is properly disallowed.

Wilkinson grants generally that democracy properly is restrained. He recognizes that most people, "left or right," want "to take some issues off the table of democratic negotiation by constitutionalizing certain rights." Wilkinson's position is that property rights should not be in this bundle—which in effect means that people do not actually have property rights, as government may take people's property at will to "redistribute" it (provided it follows procedure).

Wilkinson does not offer any argument, in these essays, as to why people do not have property rights. He just treats the position that people do as crazy and tars it with alleged connections to racial nationalism. Thus, the essays function as a long-winded ad hominem—if you believe in property rights and oppose welfare statism, you're a nut who promotes (at least implicitly) unjust policies and unsavory movements.

The question of whether people have property rights—in the broad sense that would bar welfare statism—is too intricate to answer here. My goal is not to convince the reader that people in fact have such rights, but merely to show that Wilkinson's claims against the position do not hold.

Wilkinson wrongly suggests that restraining democratic governments from violating people's property rights would effectively destroy democracy. He writes, "if 'taxation is theft,' it's hard to have a government at all, and democratic bodies will be left without much to make decisions about."

It is possible to think that people have robust property rights and that limited taxation—only to fund rights-protecting government actions—is justified, due to the free-rider problem. The idea is that people "really" want to help fund such services, only they are tempted not to because others might defect. Taxation for such purposes, in this view, is not theft, it does not violate people's property rights, and it is not an aspect of the redistributive welfare state.

Some of us believe that the free-rider problem can be overcome without government threatening to lock people in cages if they do not contribute to the rights-protecting services of government. This suggests a short-term and a long-term goal, as (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2017/11/a-plea-for-voluntaryism/) articulated by Auberon Herbert: "We must place limits upon every form of compulsory taxation, until we are strong enough to destroy it finally and completely; and to transform it into a system of voluntary giving."

But even if that long-term goal proves impossible, that hardly justifies the position that democratic governments may take people's property at will for the enjoyment of others, as Wilkinson seems to believe. (If he doesn't believe that, perhaps he would care to articulate when democratic governments may and may not take people's wealth by force for others' benefit and why his lines are not arbitrary and subject to majority revision.)

Wilkinson is right that, if government robustly protects people's property rights, that rules out a great deal of what democratic majorities might otherwise do. But why is that a problem? Why is it somehow worse to say majorities may not "redistribute" people's property than to say majorities may not enslave minorities, censor their speech, search their property without a warrant, or imprison them without trial?

A stronger argument may be made. Constitutional protection of property rights is actually pro-democracy, just as the constitutional protection of speech rights is.

When majorities censor speech, they cut off the very public debate that makes possible government by the people, and they open wide the door to authoritarianism. So democratic censorship is actually profoundly anti-democratic.

By comparison, when majorities "redistribute" people's wealth, they unleash a political system of interest-group warfare (factionalism), cronyism, and bureaucratic control that undermines true governance by the people and that ultimately threatens authoritarianism. So democratic redistribution also is profoundly anti-democratic in the only sense that matters.

No sensible person advocates absolute democracy or even thinks it's a coherent doctrine. Before any vote of the people occurs, there must be some rules established regarding who can vote, what people can vote on, how proposals may be brought to a vote, what are the rules of voting, and so on. In other words, any democratic action necessarily rests on fundamentally non-democratic rules that set the bounds of democracy.  These rules dramatically affect outcomes (as the Public Choice economists show). To take an obvious example, can the majority vote to transfer power to an autacrat, a minority, or a supermajority?

Democracy in the sense of absolute majority rule does not exist and logically cannot exist. The only democracy that is possible and that is worth having is democracy restrained to certain functions and to certain procedures. History shows that constitutional republicanism is the only stable form of democracy (at least in a large area). A workable constitution necessarily protects individual rights from majority oppression—and we can't just omit property rights from such protection on the basis that some people won't like that.

As for Wilkinson's complaint that, if majorities cannot violate people's property rights they'll have nothing to do, there is plenty that a rights-respecting government can and should do. It can build a military force to repel foreign invasion, hire police to keep the peace domestically, enter treaties, ensure that people and businesses do not harm others via pollution and the like, help record property rights, run the courts to handle disputes, deal with violent and "white collar" criminals, facilitate immigration, and set rules for citizenship and voting, among other things. A government that did those sorts of things well would be a robust government, one that played a critical role in the daily lives of everyone in the country. So a democratic order, in which people voted on representatives to set policies in these areas, would be critically important.

The upshot is that Wilkinson's main thesis is wrong and indeed the opposite of the truth. Robust constitutional protections of people's property rights would not be anti-democratic but profoundly pro-democratic, in the proper sense of the term.

Yet Wilkinson makes some other important points about libertarianism which, although confused, are extremely important. I turn to those next.

The Problem of Anti-Government Libertarianism

Wilkinson identifies some real and important problems with libertarianism, only he misdiagnoses them.

As Wilkinson writes, a distressingly large number of libertarians have gotten in bed with racial nationalists. He offers, as examples, the racist newsletters that went out under the name of Ron Paul and an essay written by "Mr. Libertarian," Murray Rothbard, defending David Duke and promoting "right-wing populism." (Rothbard's (http://rothbard.altervista.org/articles/right-wing-populism.pdf) 1992 essay is a remarkable read, particularly for those of us now living in the Age of Trump.)

These libertarians actively work with racial nationalist conservatives, Wilkinson points out, to suppress democracy via gerrymandering; voter ID laws, which disproportionately affect minority voters; voter restrictions for felons; and immigration restrictions.

I agree with Wilkinson that these are real problems and that many libertarians are so aligned. The problem is with Wilkinson's explanation for the trend. He blames "absolutist" property rights, when in fact the problem is virulently anti-government strains of libertarianism.

Wilkinson lumps together Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard (among others) as property rights absolutists and as responsible for the racial nationalist libertarian turn, despite the facts that a) Rand explicitly denounced Rothbard's anarchism (and indeed libertarianism generally), b) Rand developed a theory of property rights that is substantially different from that of Rothbard, c) Rand explicitly advocated government in the form of democratic constitutional republicanism, d) Rand explicitly and strongly (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/racism.html) denounced racism and racists, e) Rand was an immigrant who advocated the right of free migration (for peaceable people), and f) Rand explicitly denounced the sort of "populist" anti-intellectualism that typifies the likes of Trump (see Onkar Ghate's (https://ari.aynrand.org/blog/2017/11/06/the-anti-intellectuality-of-donald-trump-why-ayn-rand-would-have-despised-a-president-trump) insightful essay on the matter).

Wilkinson pretends that Rand characterizes democracy as such as "a social system in which one's work, one's property, one's mind, and one's life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose." But here Rand was explicitly (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/democracy.html) talking about "unlimited majority rule," which Wilkinson also opposes, not democracy broadly understood to include constitutional republicanism, which (again) she advocated.

The upshot is that there is nothing of substance in common with respect to the problems at hand between pro-government defenders of individual rights and anti-government anarchists who wish to tear down the state. The problems that worry Wilkinson are entirely caused by anti-government libertarians, not pro-government advocates of rights. Apparently it is convenient for Wilkinson to blur the distinction to promote his welfare statist agenda.

Ideology and Politics

In his generally excellent (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/11/05/will-wilkinson-on-libertarian-democracy-skepticism/) first and (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/11/17/more-on-libertarian-skepticism-about-democracy-a-rejoinder-to-will-wilkinson/) second replies to Wilkinson, Ilya Somin makes a similar point that I make: Restraints on democracy are not necessarily anti-democratic, and they can be profoundly pro-democratic insofar as they make government by the people feasible.

Unfortunately, Somin and Wilkinson get off on a tangent as to whether property rights are "absolute." Somin notes he doesn't think they are. But Rand doesn't think they are, either, in the sense that they may not apply in (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emergencies.html) emergency situations. But the fact that property rights are not in that sense "absolute" does not mean that they do not exist or that they allow room for welfare statism, and that is the substantive issue on the table.

Libertarians really can be crazy with respect to their hostility to government as such and to their "theory" (usually dogmatic non-theory) of rights. Consider a line from Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism (p. 19):

Libertarians (not all libertarians, certainly, and not even many) have advocated on libertarian principle private ownership of nuclear weapons; the right of parents to starve their children; and that, if you fell off a building and grabbed onto a flagpole and didn't have the explicit permission of the person who owned the balcony, you ought to let yourself fall rather than violate their property rights by crawling to safety.

I readily concede that many libertarians believe utter nonsense. That doesn't mean that people who advocate property rights thereby advocate nonsense.

It is important here to distinguish types of libertarians. There are classical-liberal libertarians (David Boaz); burn-it-all-down libertarians (Rothbard and the Trumpists); and anarchist but still broadly liberal libertarians ((https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Authority) Michael Huemer). The second group is the main source of the problems that Wilkinson identifies. The Boazes and Huemers of the world detest Trump and the racial nationalist movement he inspires. However, I do think that some of the ideology from the other camps helps to feed the virulently anti-statist populism of the worst libertarians, because libertarianism in its main thrust really is anti-government more than it is pro-rights.

The stance for robust property rights can and does stand apart from the libertarian edifice and forms part of a refined classical liberalism. I refer to myself as a (http://amzn.to/2dxpvc9) liberal, not a libertarian.

A genuine liberal with strong property-rights commitments opposes such evils as gerrymandering and voter suppression precisely because the liberal sees government as essential for protecting people's rights and does want to see government undermined. And the liberal is concerned not only with property rights but with the rule of just law, which entails equal treatment under the law. So Wilkinson is wrong to conflate liberals who endorse a strong version of property rights with anti-government libertarians who consort with racial nationalists.

By contrast, Rothbardian libertarians are not even consistent advocates of property rights. In the main libertarians condemn intellectual property, for example. In a libertarian anarchist world, private defense agencies generally would defend only the rights of their paying clients—and there's no guarantee that "defense" agencies would not violate others' rights, if their clients paid them to do so.

Wilkinson is wrong about the source of the problems he describes; he is also wrong about how those problems play out among conservatives. Wilkinson  claims that, after the Cold War, "American conservatism continued to grow more ideologically anti-redistributive." That's ridiculous. If anything, Republicans defend welfare programs such as Social Security even more ardently than Democrats do (even though the program punishes the poor by stripping away a substantial portion of each pay check). George W. Bush expanded Medicaid, and the "individual mandate" of ObamaCare was a conservative invention.

Paul Ryan is "an Ayn Rand fan," Wilkinson insists. Sure, one who (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2012/08/paul-ryan-rejects-ayn-rands-ideas-in-word-and-deed/) explicitly rejects Rand's philosophy and who explicitly advocates the welfare state.

The modern racial-nationalist conservative movement simply is not driven by an antipathy to the welfare state, as Wilkinson suggests. Instead, it openly embraces welfare statism. Granted, it wants the welfare state only for the "right" people, which helps explain its anti-immigrant and anti-minority policies.

Donald Trump is pretty much the opposite of a free-market champion. He advocates trade restrictions, he used to advocate universal government-financed health care, he has no concern with paying down the national debt. He has lifted not a single finger against the welfare state, but has instead loudly praised  and promoted it.

Racial-nationalist conservatives are driven not by any love of markets or property rights but by a desire for cultural "purity." We can't let in immigrants, we can't go out of our way to let minorities vote (goes the thinking) because they'll sully American "culture." The racial nationalists are not fundamentally anti-democratic, as Wilkinson supposes; they want to use the power of democracy to disenfranchise the "wrong" people and to keep out more of the same.

Is it possible for people to read (say) Ayn Rand's works and use elements of those works, out of context, to promote a racial nationalist agenda? Of course it is. It's also possible to contort Charles Darwin's works toward the same end. That hardly undermines the theory of evolution; it just proves that some people are intellectually dishonest jerks. We need to look for logical connections, not accidental associations.

A couple of caveats: First, obviously conservative fusionism remains alive, so some Republicans really do embrace some free-market positions. This helps explain why Republicans currently are trying to cut corporate tax rates, which is a good idea (I have no strong opinion on the broader Republican tax plan). People are complicated, and some Republicans reflect multiple intellectual influences.

Second, liberals who oppose welfare statism recognize that the welfare state should be unwound carefully. Long before Brink Lindsey (https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarians-conservatives-stop-opposing-welfare-state/) raised the point, people such as George Reisman (https://www.capitalism.net/Laissez-Faire%20Capitalism.htm) pointed out that removing opportunity-destroying economic regulations would be necessary before scaling back welfare for the poor. (Corporate welfare, by contrast, should be eliminated totally and immediately.) And welfare programs would have to be phased out sensibly. For example, Social Security should not be ended abruptly, as that would be profoundly harmful; rather, its costs should be contained through means-testing, and then it should be phased out by slowly and continuously raising the payout age.

If Wilkinson wishes to find the intellectual co-conspirators of racial nationalism, he is looking in the wrong place insofar as he focuses on advocates or property rights. Beyond anti-government libertarians, he should look (for example) to the identity politics of the left, the advocates of which increasingly sound like members of the KKK. He should look to the conservative supporters of the drug war, which has devastated many minority communities and destabilized much of Central and South America. And he should look in the mirror; as I've suggested, welfare statism inherently creates the sort of factionalism that feeds collectivist movements.

Wilkinson, quoting Samuel Freeman, says that a liberalism that takes seriously property rights and that rejects welfare statism promotes a sort of "feudalism." But a system based on individual rights is the opposite of feudalism. The heirs to the feudal lords are not the capitalists; they are the political and bureaucratic administrators of the welfare-regulatory state, for which people trade real control over their own lives for the illusion of control over their government.

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