Bertrand de Jouvenel in Sovereignty notes has an effective, if reflexive, definition on political authority. A person has the authority to request those things which those to whom the request is directed feel is in his authority to request. In this manner, an “authoritarian” regime is one, paradoxically, which lacks authority. It must substitute force and terror and other methods because it lacks the authority to do what it commands. A master/slave relationship is unjust only if the slave rejects the authority of the master. In a monastic setting, the authority (freely granted) to the abbot by those in his care would in another setting seem more servile than much of the Slavery seen in the old south. However, because that authority is freely granted it is just. In that regard, one might regard coercion as the sign a government is going off the rails. The more coercion, the more imperfect the union.

The general principle that decides whether a government is exceeding its authority or restricting too much the liberty of its people therefore is measured by the amount of coercion required to enforce its decisions and not by an analysis outside of the culture and context of that particular action.

In St. Silouan the Athonite, St. Silouan teaches that following traditions of freedom, equality, hierarchy, and love as demonstrated by the Trinity (for example read the opening chapters of John Zizioulas Communion and Otherness and On Being and Communion), that the correct way for the authority, such as an abbot or staretz (spiritual advisor) is to give his command once, and if it is not obeyed offer no reprimand or repeat the command.

Parents however, cannot apply that rule in the same way. Children need repetition. As the saying goes, “The problem with children is that they are so darn immature!” In part this as well goes for men in society. Government lies somewhere between the monastery and the family regarding the need for repetition and the assumption of maturity of its members. Society cannot put a stop sign at an intersection and leave it up for just a week and leave it at that. We need reminding of the regulations and rules that society needs to operate smoothly. Additionally as generations pass and peoples come in and out of our society the customs and regulations must need be repeated.

The political process then is a exercise in walking the line, minimizing coercion in a way that maximizes human flourishing by locating and utilizing the authority that is generated naturally in human intercourse. From these simple observations a few general principles might be extracted:

• Authority, as it is generated by human contact and connection, can be strongest if generated locally, that is personally.
• Permission to do a thing is not approval. Government or its representatives can firmly condemn abortion, adultery, and so on. The point is that saying a thing is harmful to flourishing is not the same as coercing one to stop.
• The sign of better governance is not abstract review of its principals but a review of how much coercion is required to keep it in order.

Recently, Jason Kuznicki reconsidered the same-sex marriage question, and his considerations as always are well worth considering. Like abortion, eugenics (Downs abortions for example) and euthanasia these are matters on which Christian tradition frowns. But … how does the Christian traditions and theology noted above as well as Jouvenel’s ideas on authority instruct us to order policy?

Marriage, as noted toward the end of his essay, is an institution which has grown up in community, fostering, encouraging, family to aid in the raising of the next generation (and the care the prior). In that mode, it would be permitted for a state to maintain a statement of the need to support the nuclear stable family. It is not optimal for the state to either enforce denial of same sex marriage to Boysville, New Hampshire or on the other hand to insist that it be part of the community in Evangeliste, Kansas. It is however, likely that those small communities can generate the authority to enforce policies which from an outsiders perspective are far more encompassing, but from within the community are however within the limits of freely granted authority.

Today’s easy access and dissemination of information makes coercion harder if not impossible to hide (especially in the long term). A lot of coercion present in society could be removed by granting to the local community, where authority is strongest, those things which affect the community. That community can then grant to higher structures, city, county or state, the authority to regulate relations with other communities. Likewise states to the federal level. What needs to be watched for is local communities governments resorting to undue coercion to enforce their requests especially on subsets of their community.

However that seems a easier line to walk than finding a non-coercive way of finding a federal or state level statement on marriage that  both Boysville and Evangeliste will swallow.

(Note: I’m thinking out loud here, hoping that commeters will help me solidify my thoughts with more coherence. )

No, not the 80’s song by Nick Lowe. The “kindness” brought to you by a government that just doesn’t seem to understand basic economics. Employment of minimum wage earners keeps going down (the cruel part) because of the hikes in the minimum wage the government keeps mandating (the “kind” part).

The percentage of teens classified as “unemployed” — those who are actively seeking a job but can’t get one — is more than three times higher than the national unemployment rate, according to the most recent Department of Labor statistics.

One of the prime reasons for this drastic employment drought is the mandated wage hikes that policymakers have forced down the throats of local businesses. Economic research has shown time and again that increasing the minimum wage destroys jobs for low-skilled workers while doing little to address poverty.

According to economist David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, employment for high school dropouts and young black adults and teenagers falls by 8.5 percent. In the past 11 months alone, the United States’ minimum wage has increased by more than twice that amount.

So it should be no surprise to see teen jobs disappearing or to hear bleak testimony from employers across the country that make these hiring decisions.

And it’s not just teens looking for a summer job that this hurts.

There’s no end to the economic data that confirm these common-sense observations. Research from the University of Georgia, the University of Connecticut and Cornell University indicates that increasing the minimum wage causes four times more job loss for employees without a high school diploma than it does for the general population.

Furthermore, minimum wage hikes don’t effectively target the people who are typically portrayed as the key beneficiaries — low-income adults raising kids. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, just 14 percent of those who benefited from the most recent federal minimum wage hike are sole earners in families with children.

The whole “living wage” canard used to buttress the case for increased minimum wage, then, is an incredibly small amount of those who benefit, and arguable more folks are hurt because of it. The question always asked is, “Is it better to have a lower-paying job, or no job at all?” Democrats will consistently ignore or hand-wave away this question, in the interest of “caring”.

Well ask those unemployed folks how much that “caring” helped them.

[tags]minimum wage,economy[/tags]

Yeah, that’s what I want; permission from the government to pay for the medicine my doctor says I need.  That should never be in question, yet it is in the People’s Republic of England.

Cancer patients deserve to be able to pay privately for drugs without having their free NHS treatment withdrawn, a doctors’ leader said last night.

Baroness Ilora Finlay, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, said Labour’s policy of denying free care to patients who use their own money to buy the latest drugs went to the heart of the purpose of the health service.

Lady Finlay, a doctor who specialises in the palliative care of cancer sufferers, asked:

‘Can we justify spending billions of pounds on the relief of relatively minor conditions and deny patients with life-threatening disease the support of the NHS when they want to bridge the costs themselves?’

Oh no, say the proposal’s detractors.  That would be unfair.

The Government says allowing cancer suffers to pay for some drugs while receiving others free would create a two-tier health service, with patients on the same ward being given different drugs depending on their ability to pay.

But critics say it is ‘cruel and perverse’ to stop people using their own money to better their health.

The NHS has determined what cancer treatments it will and won’t pay for, and even if you could afford it, you’re not allowed to, unless you want to take on the full burden of payment for all your health care, and essentially forfeit the taxes you paid into the system. 

These are the kinds of debates you get into when you let the government run health care.  They pay, so they are in control.  Of everything.  One size does not and has never fit all when you’re talking about wellness.  Do we really want these sorts of debates in Washington?

[tags]socialized health care,England,Baroness Ilora Finlay,Royal Society of Medicine[/tags]

Paging Mr. Belafonte, Mr. Penn, Ms. Sheehan, et. al. Please call your office.

President Hugo Chávez has used his decree powers to carry out a major overhaul of this country’s intelligence agencies, provoking a fierce backlash here from human rights groups and legal scholars who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms.

[…]

The new law requires people in the country to comply with requests to assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Mr. Chávez. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years for most people and four to six years for government employees.

“We are before a set of measures that are a threat to all of us,” said Blanca Rosa Mármol de León, a justice on Venezuela’s top court, in a rare public judicial dissent. “I have an obligation to say this, as a citizen and a judge. This is a step toward the creation of a society of informers.”

The sweeping intelligence changes reflect an effort by Mr. Chávez to assert greater control over public institutions in the face of political challenges following a stinging defeat in December of a package of constitutional changes that would have expanded his powers.

Looks like his powers are expanding in spite of the voters. Again, yet another predictable step towards totalitarianism from a government that the Hollywood Left finds common cause with. Ignorance of history is no excuse.

(Can we use the term “dictator” now?)

UPDATE:  Chavez has revoked the law, which is great to hear.  Thousands of protesters combined with an upcoming election probably changed his mind.  Not a good idea to get the people in an uproar so close to voting.  Is this a case of Chavez listening to the people?  I hope so.  History still suggests keeping a watchful eye, though.

[tags]Harry Belafonte,Sean Penn,Cindy Sheehan,Hugo Chavez,Venezuela,socialism,Blanca Rosa Mármol de León[/tags]

Don Surber notes that the health care system run by the state of Oregon won’t pay for cancer drugs, but they’ll cover assisted suicide.  Socialized medicine is about the money just as much as "capitalized" medicine is.

One example cited is that of a woman who’s oncologist prescribed a drug to slow the cancer growth, but Oregon Heath Care wouldn’t cover it, though she could take the Permanant Exit Door(tm) with their blessing.  Instead, the drug company gave her the medicine for free.  Surber notes the moral of the story:

Socialists to cancer victims: Kill yourself.

Capitalists: Can’t pay? No problem.

Oh and the capitalists also pay the taxes that finance the socialist programs.

The New York Post has a column up on this topic as well, noting that the health care system that Ted Kennedy would like to see could actually have killed him (well, if he wasn’t a man of means).

Problem is, governments that promise to "cover everyone" always wind up cutting corners simply to save money. People with Kennedy’s condition are dying or dead as a result.

Consider Jennifer Bell of Norwich, England. In 2006, the 22-year-old complained of headaches for months – but Britain’s National Health Service made her wait a year to see a neurologist.

Then she had to wait more than three months before should could get what the NHS decided was only a "relatively urgent" MRI scan. Three days before the MRI appointment, she died.

Consider, too, the chemo drug Kennedy is receiving: Temodar, the first oral medicine for brain tumors in 25 years.

Temodar has been widely used in this country since the FDA approved it in 2000. But a British health-care rationing agency, the National Institute for Comparative Effectiveness, ruled that, while the drug helps people live longer, it wasn’t worth the money – and denied coverage for it.

Barack Obama – and other Democrats – have been pushing a Senate bill to set up a similar US "review board" for Medicare and any future government health-care plan.

After denying this treatment completely for seven years, the NICE (did whoever named it intend the irony?) relented – partly. Even today, only a handful of Brits with brain tumors can get Temodar.

And if you want to pay for Temodar out of your own pocket, the British system forces you to pay for all of your cancer care – about $30,000 a month.

So the lion’s share of the populace is stuck with sub-standard health care, and only the super-rich can get what they need.  I thought that’s what Michael Moore said our system was like.

And the column notes that it’s no better in Canada, where, if they live close enough to the border, they come here for the care they have to wait for over there. 

Socialized health care is simply not delivering for the countries that have it.  The fact is, the US system is delivering better medical care for more of its population in a timely manner than government-run ones are.  Why would we want to change that?

It’s (mostly) official.  Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, based on the number of convention delegates who are either pledged to him or are super-delegates that say they’ll vote for him.  Partisanship and politics aside, this is a fantastic day for America, having the first black candidate for the White House. 

I believe this isn’t so much a step on the journey as it is an indication — proof, if you will — that those steps have already been taken.  I’m proud of our country, and frankly I’d have been just as proud had Hillary Clinton been the first woman to lead a major party ticket.  That she was a viable candidate the entire way through the primary season also speaks to our progress on that journey.

(And now, let the games begin. >grin<)

[tags]US presidential campaign,Barack Obama,Hillary Clinton[/tags]

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis

[tags]C. S. Lewis,tyranny[/tags]

Intrade is a betting pool, which uses a market model to “predict” political and other sorts of events. However, it misses many essential features of market which make it less reliable as a device for optimization than one would imagine. Intrade came up in a discussion this morning and the reflections below are the result.

Marxism caricatures the market with a vision of workers slaving away “making stuff” and the “owners” fat catting it up reaping the profits which they fail to share with the blue collar set. However, a casual inspection of actual business in the real world demonstrates a number of important errors in this model (and as well in the Intrade model of market).

The free market works not just because of flexible financing methods like the stock markets, but because there are optimizations in a lot of places. The “workers” at the blue collar level work. But the rest of the business/management is not just “an owner”  collecting due proceeds. There are engineers, maintenance, and developers working on developing new ways of either getting their product out the door with less cost or higher productivity and developing new products. There are sales and advertising people working to find new ways to bring what is made to market. 3M for example, when their engineering people came up with a glue that “failed” … because it didn’t dry some bright people realized that a non-drying glue could be useful … and now post-its are everywhere. A market and demand for a new product was “created” by engineering errors and smart product development people. These people would likely be placed as  “owners” not “workers” in the Marxian caricature of industry. Additionally, management or “owners” do work hard as well. A lot of market development and sales and corporate strategic alliances are developed which cut the deals necessary to get the raw materials and financing necessary to keep a business afloat. Just as working on an assembly line is “work”, so is management. It just requires a different skill set. The point is that a great deal of free market efficiency comes from a lot of people hunting for better ways of doing very many things at the same time. It doesn’t come from market structure, i.e., stock market and particular banking methods. It comes from people being motivated by their best interests (making money and staying in business) to think and work hard to do things the best way. A lot of local optimizations making for fast global optimization.

The Intrade problem is that the majority of market efficiency and innovation is tied up in mangement (those alliances and financing and other engineering/product development) noted above … but this facet is lacking in the Intrade mode. “Placing bets” in a market framework might be a good polling mechanism … but it is basically parimutual betting which doesn’t insure optimal results.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) slaps his party on the back of the head and tells them to wake up.

As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial.

Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans.

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn’t good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and "compassionate conservatism." If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof "governing" majority, the goal of "compassionate conservatism" was to spend our way to a governing majority.

Indeed, Republicans, with control of the purse strings to incredible riches that is the constant lure in a centralized government as huge as ours, turned into the very things they criticized; spendthrifts.  In doing so, they further exemplified one of the major problems with government trying to "do something".  Each party essentially winds up promising money for votes.  A smaller central government, not nearly as flush with cash, would be required to stick more closely to its constitutional boundaries.  Instead, regardless of the party, government has, in recent administrations, decided that it knows better how to be "compassionate".

But, as Senator Coburn notes, it’s not "compassion".

Compassionate conservatism’s starting point had merit. The essential argument that Republicans should orient policy around how our ideas will affect the poor, the widow, the orphan, the forgotten and the "other" is indisputable – particularly for those who claim, as I do, to submit to an authority higher than government. Yet conservatives are conservatives because our policies promote deliverance from poverty rather than dependence on government.

Compassionate conservatism’s next step – its implicit claim that charity or compassion translates into a particular style of activist government involving massive spending increases and entitlement expansion – was its undoing. Common sense and the Scriptures show that true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver. This is why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, not his neighbor’s possessions. Spending other people’s money is not compassionate.

Precisely.  Read the whole thing, especially if you’re a Republican.

[tags]Senator Tom Coburn,Republicans,compassionate conservatism,K Street Project,small government[/tags]

In a recent post, I was writing in what I hoped was a provocative fashion, about thinking long term. In that essay I concluded that stability and adaptability are two features which are identifiably necessary for a state which has any hope of lasting for a significant period of time, and by significant I mean more than a millenia. Stability is not a feature our state and government finds as an essential feature. It is not something on which we base praxis or our lawmakers policy.

Jefferson (and his co-authors) wrote in the Declaration that Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness was the end of government. Happiness in Jefferson’s mind, if not in our less well educated modern ones, meant eudaimonia, which he following Aristotle would have tied to virtue (and the pursuit of the same). Liberty today as well, has been corrupted in meaning. But I would propose that of the three ends of government noted just above are not equal in value for a nation which hopes to last for a significant period of time. Life for example, which many modernist/futurists look to a time when our life span escapes the three score and ten (give or take) that nature has allotted and would extend that indefinitely, which would of course as a consequence redefine “human” and human society and not very likely in a better way. Liberty as well, if liberty is freedom from restraint, will find itself in the mix betwixt the stability/adaptability tension identified earlier.

Three primary factions of our political discourse, the progressive/liberal, the libertarian, and the conservative all naturally hold the same ends of government as essential but prioritize them differently. The progressive values enforcing or “creating” equality as the most important end of government, the libertarian to enforce and protect our liberty and the conservative our Happiness. Part of the difficulty of our discourse between the factions comes when fails to realize this split in underlying assumptions, to address it in our rhetoric, and a failure of imagination. We fail to imagine the consequences and reasons for our opponents points of view and end up just spitting at the other side. In part this means, while I think that Happiness and its pursuit is the most important end of government, that isn’t universal.  So, let’s look at elsewhere first. Read the rest of this entry

Joe Lieberman, on his party and how it dealt with enemies:

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

And then came the late 1960s, and it turned upside-down.  Or, perhaps more correctly, inside-out.  Read the whole thing.

[tags]Joe Lieberman,Democrats,foreign policy[/tags]

Macro and Micro economics normally look at the economics of nations (and I’d think multi-nationals) vs the economics of individuals and smaller corporations. There is less discussion, as far as an outsider like myself, in making similar distinctions about Macro and Micro political theory, that is the theory of the body politic at the small scale (family/village/precinct) vs the theories of the same at the larger scales. In this essay, I’m not going to talk about the continuing dystrophy evident in the micro-political in America and how that anticipates movements towards autocracy at the macro-political level. For there is another “macro” to be discussed. That of time.

If we imagine the goal/end of government is to establish a small subset of Goods for its people, e.g., Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness for not just tomorrow but larger timescales. The Ancient Coptic society and it’s form of government lasted for an astonishing length of time, from about 3000 BC through until about 500 BC and Assyrian conquest (although “officially” it really fell in 31 BC when Rome conquered it). The point is, right now our leaders and thinkers about policy and politics do not try to imagine America and its democracy and how their policies might fit into a nation lasting for millenia. Heck, given medicare and social security and demographics and a little math and logic it is hard to imagine that they think much beyond the next election [ed: There is of course the possibility that they do in fact “think” beyond the next election but because of fundamental innumeracy the term “think” deserves scare quotes.] However this is not just their fault for very few people do consider the consequences of policy and praxis, of custom and lifestyle and how that will play out if repeated (and perhaps amplified) for 1,000 generations or beyond. Read the rest of this entry

That is, the ones who are grilling oil executives.  Bruce McQuain at QandO notes questions suggested by the Institute for Energy Research.  The first 3:

1. Do you understand the fundamental economic principal of supply and demand for commodities pricing in the oil market?

2. Oil is a global commodity, bought and sold on the world market. Given that the nine largest private oil companies hold less than 5% of the entire world’s proven oil reserves, isn’t it more likely that the law of supply and demand is “manipulating” current prices than the five corporations represented at your witness table?

3. As a U.S. Senator, you have control over oil production on U.S. federal government lands. Taxpayers own these lands and the energy that lies beneath them, but 97% of the federal OCS and 94% of onshore government lands are not being used. Are you willing to help increase the world’s supply of oil – and thus reduce the price of oil and gasoline – by allowing more U.S. energy to be produced from these lands?

Read the whole thing.

[tags]energy,oil,Senate,economics,commodities[/tags]

Erik Erickson, a contributor to Redstate.com, also has a personal blog in which he talks about local politics (he lives in Macon, GA). Yesterday, he talked about a good local government program the finds summer jobs for high school students. It does its job well, he says, but it’s having a new problem.

Erik is on the Macon City Council’s Community Resources and Development Committee, and the lady who represents the program briefed the committee on it.

During the course of the lady’s presentation she lamented the increase in the minimum wage — this from a government bureaucrat who’d already blamed Bush for cutting other social program funding.

Because of the minimum wage increase, it is now more expensive to employ each student. Because it is more expensive per student, less students can be employed. The less students that can be employed through the program, the more students there will be on the street during the summer without jobs.

And that could very probably increase the rates of petty crime during the summer.

Way to go Democrats!

He titles the post “The minimum wage and unintended consequences“, but those consequences are certainly not unforeseen, as any honest economist would have to admit to it. Democrats, when arguing for an increase, however, never seem to mention that a minimum wage increase does not, cannot, happen in a vacuum. There are consequences to tampering with the free market, but the loss of jobs is minimized or ignored by a party that claims common cause with the poor.

[tags]minimum wage,free market,Democrats,living wage,unintended consequences[/tags]

In the 50s there was a tuna cannery that used an advertising campaign based on

“Our tuna will not turn black in the can.”

Now, no tuna by any manufacturer did not turn black in the can, however this campaign was highly successful. The trepidation and uncertainty generated by the thought that the other canneries never seemed to mention “turning black” in the can left them to wonder on that possibility. This sort of advertising is today illegal.

However it is not apparently illegal on the campaign trail. Mr Obama campaigns as the candidate of “hope” and that he is a “uniter.” ….

This is exactly the same sort of argument/campaign as claiming “will not turn black in the can.” It implies, by omission that the other candidate(s) are the candidates who will turn black in the can.

Mr Obama has announced that his campaign is a “higher” more ethcial sort of campaign. Yeah, right. It’s a campaign that uses advertisting tactics which have been illlegal for decades.