Laurie Miller Hornik on seeing the other side; Matt Yglesias on the regulated state; Martin Gurri on the censorship agenda; Michael Tanner on increasing work incentives for the poor
Gurri is correct that censorship is an indication of weakness of the elites, but Mir is also correct that it’s an expression of power as well. Like China’s killing of protesters at Tiananman’s Square. Both weakness and power—with power holding onto power.
As will happen here in America if the Democratic censors are allowed to hold power, supported by Dem voters. And not much opposed by Kling, Williams, Mounk, and others who claim to support truth.
Opposing the censorship of truth is the most important political position to take in America, and in the West.
"If you ask me how to get the Federal government to do its job better, I would say to lop 90 percent of its functions. Then it will stand a better chance of performing the remaining 10 percent well."
That would also turn down the temperature of our politics. Politics are so vicious now because there is so much power at stake. Alas, we all know that's not going to happen...
This is a point I have tried to make with friends of varying political dispositions - the expansion of politics into virtually all aspects of life has made our civic life substantially worse. It's a tougher argument with people on the left because even if they recognize this point, they think there must be some kinder, gentler way politics can be inflicted on economic and cultural issues without causing friction.
That said, I do interact with government at all levels and agree that in most cases less would be more just in terms of general performance. Yglesias has a sort of absurd belief that government largely attracts earnest and well meaning people, but this really isn't true at all.
It can happen in Argentina after over 100 years of more or less decline. It can happen in America. By electing politicians who promise to reduce govt, and have done so.
Not every election has a good choice in that respect, but there’s always a party supporting less govt than the other party.
I agree with Roger Sweeny. It used to be that Republicans, at least nominally, favored smaller government than Democrats. But now it seems they are both in favor of more government power but just differ in how they want to use that power.
Arnold - Love your excerpt for the Martin Gurri piece. Very positive! Thank you. Even better is the piece by Laurie Hornik. I restacked that post twice, and I’m going to start a book discussion “class” with my kids where we engage in that thought process as we read and discuss books. Maybe I should even incorporate that method into discussion of books at my Substack. Thanks Arnold.
Folks - I say it’s time more of us copy what Arnold is doing with his Links to Consider. Regularly share links using his format with regard to 1) number of links; 2) length of excerpt; 3) and style and brevity of commentary I believe this format alone can be a money maker for those looking to gain paid subscribers. Setting money aside, it is a valuable public service. Who wants to try copying this format with me at their own Substack? I’m going to commit to a weekly offering of Links to Consider for one month as an experiment.
"If you ask me how to get the Federal government to do its job better, I would say to lop 90 percent of its functions. Then it will stand a better chance of performing the remaining 10 percent well."
I think people underestimate the importance of this, as well as how the huge scope makes avoiding the procedural regulation nearly impossible to avoid. Coordinating the procedures of all those roles, making sure they do not overlap or contradict each other is a nearly impossible task, much less than making trade offs between which goal is more important.
Private businesses run into these problems all the time at a much smaller scale, as different groups and sub-businesses have their own rules and processes that conflict so any decision that touches more than one or two takes nearly forever to implement. All those problems without different organizations even being able to dictate by force of regulatory law what the others must do.
In the small world I’ve a window into my experience is that agencies don’t tend to talk to each other, and they can have different work cultures so that one is ready to go and on top of things while the other doesn’t answer the phone, or workflow stops because one particular person is on leave, etc. It’s like you need to find the fixer, and when you do, hope that they don’t retire or get promoted out of reach.
And I hate to say it but having a large number of people in the workforce who routinely vanish from their jobs for maternity leave or other (but not only health reasons ; federal workers in the sphere I’m speaking of, all go offline during training periods of a week and more, just as if a gov’t. shutdown had occurred), is never going to be very efficient. Which may be worth it anyway. Even in the non-government way: my husband mentioned that they got an email that a new coworker would be out on leave. “I haven’t even met her yet,” he said. As she was brand new (maybe a week on the job) we thought that there must have been some terrible medical emergency (such is HIPAA, giving rise to gossip that frankness would prevent lol).
A few weeks after, I inquired how she was doing, had he heard if she was okay?
Oh yeah, it’s fine.
You can guess why she was out and why she would be out for a further 3 months, having never worked at the place.
You need to accept that this is not going to be a wholly serious way to run an organization, or a country. And plan accordingly, not to let other countries leverage the difference.
Yea, a lot of people where I work pull that kind of annual FMLA vacation regularly. I can't help but think a lot of those sorts of things require people who would be embarrassed to take advantage of them, but, alas, that seems to be the minority. Male or female, it is worth noting, but then the plan I am at runs about 65% male.
"The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is a United States labor law requiring covered employers to provide employees with job-protected, unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons." wikipedia
What if when we read the pieces we agree with, we wonder, “What would someone who doubts this think? "
When I read a piece that says something I'd like to share with someone on the other side, I usually don't because it says things I know they would disagree with. I may even disagree. Either way, it would be impossible to get them to consider the part I want them to.
"elected officials in a hurry to do something often seek ways to bypass existing public sector institutions"
Elected officials typically have no idea who or how to accomplish what they want. At least at the federal level legislation near always lacks any specifics. Political appointees rarely have the expertise to determine the specifics. That's at least another level down, sometimes many levels.
Working for a “prime” contractor for the federal government, I see a lot of what I can only charitably call “other policy considerations” driving a lot of the decision making. If the primary goal is X, achieving it is burdened by also have to achieve Y and Z, which are often detrimental in achieving X.
I expect I'd still get thrown out of that woman's class, if she needs - or expects - me to be on a "side".
A pastured-for-its-whole life beef cow has what is to me the greatest life. Outdoors, lazing in the sun, feeling the breeze, generally among friends, eating the grass or if the grass runs out, the hay. At length succeeded by a scary few hours (days? I dunno) and grim death - but grim death awaits nearly all and overall the cow has enjoyed what seems to me an awesome time on Earth, free of psychic pain until the end.
The dairy cow's life could be sweet like that, but is marred by the sadness of having its calf taken away. Should the world maybe consider doing with marginally less dairy so that the cow suffers less? I remember once being at the store, asking for my favorite spreadable strawberry goat cheese, which came from a small farm in East Texas. The stocker replied, apologetically, that it was the season the goats nursed their kids (I had to look that up, couldn't remember what a goat baby is called).
On the other hand, factory-farmed chickens' lives mostly suck. The work is routinely regarded as "dehumanizing" - potentially even more dehumanizing than a 7th grade class discussion lol. But keeping it that way gives our country a reason to import people, which is supposed to be very humanizing of us. I'm confused, teacher.
But it makes me so sad to see the chickens stacked in the trailer, on the first, last, and only ride of their lives, looking about them as if with wonderment. And actually, those chickens have their beaks, so I guess they are the humanely-raised ones. Should my feelings ever be a guide to ... principles I might adopt? Or should I always stop short and only entertain "doubts"?
Oh yeah, teach - I notice that all our stories and lessons seem to end in deifying the "unfortunate" and condemning "society" which at any moment is about to institute a weird lethal lottery or otherwise destroy a young person's innocence, sometimes in the form of a beautiful wading bird.
Over a third of Americans eat fast food every day, overwhelmingly those of "lower SE status". Are you suggesting that those people should be made to change their habits? Or is it vegetarianism for me, but not for thee? McDonald's - at least in the past, before corporate decided to make this weird alliance with gas stations - was always considered to be extremely clean, efficient, and about the least wasteful food delivery mechanism on the planet.
Won't bringing in more poor people from around the globe result in less vegetarianism, not more? Since I know people of your class/education level support that, does that mean your vegetarianism is merely a highly-developed disgust thing, or a boutique preference which is not based in ethics?
Do Americans need to eat *quite* so much animal protein? I mean, my ancestors of course kept chickens and they certainly didn't eat it 3 or four times a week. Far from it. Is there a middle ground here, or does my suggesting the middle ground, restraint, make me - a conservative? Or am I a closet Commie?
Temple Grandin, a very high functioning and pretty autistic person, has designed most of the cattle slaughterhouses in the US. She deliberately makes the beef cow's last hours not scary. Each is led, as if it were the most ordinary thing, to an area it cannot see until it gets there. It's head is gently immobilized, and a bolt is fired into its brain, making it lose consciousness almost instantaneously. She is quite proud of what she has done.
(She's quite a celebrity in some circles and describes this in one of her earlier books. I haven't read any of the later ones. Wow, looking at amazon just now, she seems to have become a minor industry.)
Yes, I know about her/that and find it all admirable. I was referring in a general way to its being pulled from the pasture into the unfamiliar and uncomfortable, at the time of slaughter.
I think Grandin's idea was that cows get moved all the time, e.g., from outside to inside at night, and she tried to make their last journey subjectively the same, as familiar and comfortable as possible.
Somehow her supposed autism combined with her bent for writing at a moment when the public especially women enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell-type just-so stories (though she may predate his celebrity) combined to make hers an intervention everyone applauded. It has not seemed to lead to anything more in the way of a campaign for animal welfare, a subject usually treated with derision or as the province of wackos.
Incentives for work: Substitute a VAT for the wage tax and make health insurance subsidies flow to the person, not through a firm that employs them (which would make firms more willing to hire low wage people). Making the EITC more like an individual wage subsidy would help, too.
The Constitution gives the government 18 enumerated powers and no others. Many proponents of the Constitution said that this substantially limited the government. Enough others were afraid that the first Congress proposed twelve amendments, ten of which became the Bill of Rights. Ten pretty specifically says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Nine says, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
However, those amendments have pretty much been interpreted away. And the enumerated powers have been interpreted to include almost anything. E.g., the power "to regulate interstate commerce" has been interpreted to mean "the power to regulate anything affecting interstate commerce", which is just about everything.
1) To say that the Constitution all along was meant to create a government of unlimited powers is to say that the People who wrote and ratified the Tenth Amendment were either frauds or were hoodwinked. I don't believe that. I believe most of them really thought that the document created a government of limited powers. And at least until the Civil War, they were correct. In fact one could argue that until the New Deal, they were correct, at least as involves peacetime.
2) As I understand it, people at the time did not believe Hamilton's words in Federalist #41 meant what you say they do. They did not believe they were okaying a government with pretty much unlimited powers.
3) Article I (not II) section 8 lays out the enumerated powers. The first clause says, "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." This could be construed as being a backdoor grant of unlimited power since anything could be said to "provide ... for the general welfare". But this was certainly not how people at the time saw it.
4) After 18 enumerated powers, the last clause of Article I section 8 says that Congress shall have the power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
The "necessary and proper" clause highlights the importance of interpretation, what standards are used, and who is doing the interpretation. Both words can be interpreted narrowly or broadly. Arnold Kling (or Thomas Jefferson?) might find little that was necessary or proper. Robert Reich (or Alexander Hamilton?) might find little that wasn't.
I think it is significant that the modern "model" of the Constitution--that it creates a virtually unlimited government that is however limited by not being able to interfere with "civil liberties"--is only as old as the Twentieth Century and didn't become law until the 1930s. Until then, to a large extent, the law said government couldn't interfere in what we today call civil liberties not because that was a limit on otherwise unlimited powers but because the government simply didn't have enough power in the first place. It's a complicated history most people don't know. You might be interested in Ken Kersch's "Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law".
I remember actually reading the Constitution in high school history and being told that the enumerated powers were in the first article, which was the legislative branch, because the framers thought that the legislative branch would be the most important and powerful. It makes all laws; the executive branch simply carries them out.
Obviously, that is not true today, partly because of technology. Prior to the railroads--and typewriters, telegraphs, and telephones--there weren't any large long-lasting bureaucratic organizations. Even absolutist governments like France's Louis XIV were pretty small.
Thanks for this discussion. I have long puzzled over why enumerated powers has proven to be inadequate assurance of liberty. This discussion seemed to start with the lack of specific prohibitions of authority and wind up at baked-in unlimited powers. So I guess that leaves us with lop off 90 per cent? That would be revolutionary. Those are good paying jobs that would not transfer to the private sector becuase they are not productive. I think that’s why so many people hate libertarians.
Gurri is correct that censorship is an indication of weakness of the elites, but Mir is also correct that it’s an expression of power as well. Like China’s killing of protesters at Tiananman’s Square. Both weakness and power—with power holding onto power.
As will happen here in America if the Democratic censors are allowed to hold power, supported by Dem voters. And not much opposed by Kling, Williams, Mounk, and others who claim to support truth.
Opposing the censorship of truth is the most important political position to take in America, and in the West.
Kling does enough already.
Right. The Vance Walz debate was instructive on this.
"If you ask me how to get the Federal government to do its job better, I would say to lop 90 percent of its functions. Then it will stand a better chance of performing the remaining 10 percent well."
That would also turn down the temperature of our politics. Politics are so vicious now because there is so much power at stake. Alas, we all know that's not going to happen...
This is a point I have tried to make with friends of varying political dispositions - the expansion of politics into virtually all aspects of life has made our civic life substantially worse. It's a tougher argument with people on the left because even if they recognize this point, they think there must be some kinder, gentler way politics can be inflicted on economic and cultural issues without causing friction.
That said, I do interact with government at all levels and agree that in most cases less would be more just in terms of general performance. Yglesias has a sort of absurd belief that government largely attracts earnest and well meaning people, but this really isn't true at all.
It can happen in Argentina after over 100 years of more or less decline. It can happen in America. By electing politicians who promise to reduce govt, and have done so.
Not every election has a good choice in that respect, but there’s always a party supporting less govt than the other party.
I'm not at all sure that is true in the USA today.
I agree with Roger Sweeny. It used to be that Republicans, at least nominally, favored smaller government than Democrats. But now it seems they are both in favor of more government power but just differ in how they want to use that power.
Arnold - Love your excerpt for the Martin Gurri piece. Very positive! Thank you. Even better is the piece by Laurie Hornik. I restacked that post twice, and I’m going to start a book discussion “class” with my kids where we engage in that thought process as we read and discuss books. Maybe I should even incorporate that method into discussion of books at my Substack. Thanks Arnold.
Folks - I say it’s time more of us copy what Arnold is doing with his Links to Consider. Regularly share links using his format with regard to 1) number of links; 2) length of excerpt; 3) and style and brevity of commentary I believe this format alone can be a money maker for those looking to gain paid subscribers. Setting money aside, it is a valuable public service. Who wants to try copying this format with me at their own Substack? I’m going to commit to a weekly offering of Links to Consider for one month as an experiment.
I certainly Want to… but maybe maybe next week*
is my usual answer.
Yet it’s a fine model.
https://vpostrel.substack.com/p/dean-ball-on-ai-regulation-hard-tech
Virginia Postrel has started to podcast AND use substack ai for cool transcripts.
I’m hoping to try it out, and maybe talking/note making on links will be big winner.
Arnold should try it, maybe with an open AMA live podcast with his subscribers.
Along with Ask Me Anything, Rob Henderson has highlights from archives, which might be good too.
(*’cause you see I’m on
A losing streak
I can’t get no,
A-no no no)
All good ideas Tom. Look forward to seeing your experiments.
"If you ask me how to get the Federal government to do its job better, I would say to lop 90 percent of its functions. Then it will stand a better chance of performing the remaining 10 percent well."
I think people underestimate the importance of this, as well as how the huge scope makes avoiding the procedural regulation nearly impossible to avoid. Coordinating the procedures of all those roles, making sure they do not overlap or contradict each other is a nearly impossible task, much less than making trade offs between which goal is more important.
Private businesses run into these problems all the time at a much smaller scale, as different groups and sub-businesses have their own rules and processes that conflict so any decision that touches more than one or two takes nearly forever to implement. All those problems without different organizations even being able to dictate by force of regulatory law what the others must do.
In the small world I’ve a window into my experience is that agencies don’t tend to talk to each other, and they can have different work cultures so that one is ready to go and on top of things while the other doesn’t answer the phone, or workflow stops because one particular person is on leave, etc. It’s like you need to find the fixer, and when you do, hope that they don’t retire or get promoted out of reach.
And I hate to say it but having a large number of people in the workforce who routinely vanish from their jobs for maternity leave or other (but not only health reasons ; federal workers in the sphere I’m speaking of, all go offline during training periods of a week and more, just as if a gov’t. shutdown had occurred), is never going to be very efficient. Which may be worth it anyway. Even in the non-government way: my husband mentioned that they got an email that a new coworker would be out on leave. “I haven’t even met her yet,” he said. As she was brand new (maybe a week on the job) we thought that there must have been some terrible medical emergency (such is HIPAA, giving rise to gossip that frankness would prevent lol).
A few weeks after, I inquired how she was doing, had he heard if she was okay?
Oh yeah, it’s fine.
You can guess why she was out and why she would be out for a further 3 months, having never worked at the place.
You need to accept that this is not going to be a wholly serious way to run an organization, or a country. And plan accordingly, not to let other countries leverage the difference.
Yea, a lot of people where I work pull that kind of annual FMLA vacation regularly. I can't help but think a lot of those sorts of things require people who would be embarrassed to take advantage of them, but, alas, that seems to be the minority. Male or female, it is worth noting, but then the plan I am at runs about 65% male.
FMLA = Family Medical Leave Act
"The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is a United States labor law requiring covered employers to provide employees with job-protected, unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons." wikipedia
Sorry yea, I got used to using the acronym without explanation. Thanks for clarifying that.
"The idea is that instead of losing all your benefits as soon as you cross some income threshold, you would only gradually lose those benefits."
I'd like to hear the explanation of how one gradually loses Medicaid or public housing.
I suppose your rent or premiums could increase (perhaps from zero).
What if when we read the pieces we agree with, we wonder, “What would someone who doubts this think? "
When I read a piece that says something I'd like to share with someone on the other side, I usually don't because it says things I know they would disagree with. I may even disagree. Either way, it would be impossible to get them to consider the part I want them to.
"elected officials in a hurry to do something often seek ways to bypass existing public sector institutions"
Elected officials typically have no idea who or how to accomplish what they want. At least at the federal level legislation near always lacks any specifics. Political appointees rarely have the expertise to determine the specifics. That's at least another level down, sometimes many levels.
Working for a “prime” contractor for the federal government, I see a lot of what I can only charitably call “other policy considerations” driving a lot of the decision making. If the primary goal is X, achieving it is burdened by also have to achieve Y and Z, which are often detrimental in achieving X.
I expect I'd still get thrown out of that woman's class, if she needs - or expects - me to be on a "side".
A pastured-for-its-whole life beef cow has what is to me the greatest life. Outdoors, lazing in the sun, feeling the breeze, generally among friends, eating the grass or if the grass runs out, the hay. At length succeeded by a scary few hours (days? I dunno) and grim death - but grim death awaits nearly all and overall the cow has enjoyed what seems to me an awesome time on Earth, free of psychic pain until the end.
The dairy cow's life could be sweet like that, but is marred by the sadness of having its calf taken away. Should the world maybe consider doing with marginally less dairy so that the cow suffers less? I remember once being at the store, asking for my favorite spreadable strawberry goat cheese, which came from a small farm in East Texas. The stocker replied, apologetically, that it was the season the goats nursed their kids (I had to look that up, couldn't remember what a goat baby is called).
On the other hand, factory-farmed chickens' lives mostly suck. The work is routinely regarded as "dehumanizing" - potentially even more dehumanizing than a 7th grade class discussion lol. But keeping it that way gives our country a reason to import people, which is supposed to be very humanizing of us. I'm confused, teacher.
But it makes me so sad to see the chickens stacked in the trailer, on the first, last, and only ride of their lives, looking about them as if with wonderment. And actually, those chickens have their beaks, so I guess they are the humanely-raised ones. Should my feelings ever be a guide to ... principles I might adopt? Or should I always stop short and only entertain "doubts"?
Oh yeah, teach - I notice that all our stories and lessons seem to end in deifying the "unfortunate" and condemning "society" which at any moment is about to institute a weird lethal lottery or otherwise destroy a young person's innocence, sometimes in the form of a beautiful wading bird.
Over a third of Americans eat fast food every day, overwhelmingly those of "lower SE status". Are you suggesting that those people should be made to change their habits? Or is it vegetarianism for me, but not for thee? McDonald's - at least in the past, before corporate decided to make this weird alliance with gas stations - was always considered to be extremely clean, efficient, and about the least wasteful food delivery mechanism on the planet.
Won't bringing in more poor people from around the globe result in less vegetarianism, not more? Since I know people of your class/education level support that, does that mean your vegetarianism is merely a highly-developed disgust thing, or a boutique preference which is not based in ethics?
Do Americans need to eat *quite* so much animal protein? I mean, my ancestors of course kept chickens and they certainly didn't eat it 3 or four times a week. Far from it. Is there a middle ground here, or does my suggesting the middle ground, restraint, make me - a conservative? Or am I a closet Commie?
I wear glasses, like Piggy ...
Temple Grandin, a very high functioning and pretty autistic person, has designed most of the cattle slaughterhouses in the US. She deliberately makes the beef cow's last hours not scary. Each is led, as if it were the most ordinary thing, to an area it cannot see until it gets there. It's head is gently immobilized, and a bolt is fired into its brain, making it lose consciousness almost instantaneously. She is quite proud of what she has done.
(She's quite a celebrity in some circles and describes this in one of her earlier books. I haven't read any of the later ones. Wow, looking at amazon just now, she seems to have become a minor industry.)
Yes, I know about her/that and find it all admirable. I was referring in a general way to its being pulled from the pasture into the unfamiliar and uncomfortable, at the time of slaughter.
I think Grandin's idea was that cows get moved all the time, e.g., from outside to inside at night, and she tried to make their last journey subjectively the same, as familiar and comfortable as possible.
Somehow her supposed autism combined with her bent for writing at a moment when the public especially women enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell-type just-so stories (though she may predate his celebrity) combined to make hers an intervention everyone applauded. It has not seemed to lead to anything more in the way of a campaign for animal welfare, a subject usually treated with derision or as the province of wackos.
It seems to me that proceduralism is inevitable as the scope of government expands as a way of counterbalancing the expanded scope.
As I recall, that has a lot in common with James Q. Wilson in Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do And Why They Do It.
Incentives for work: Substitute a VAT for the wage tax and make health insurance subsidies flow to the person, not through a firm that employs them (which would make firms more willing to hire low wage people). Making the EITC more like an individual wage subsidy would help, too.
The Constitution gives the government 18 enumerated powers and no others. Many proponents of the Constitution said that this substantially limited the government. Enough others were afraid that the first Congress proposed twelve amendments, ten of which became the Bill of Rights. Ten pretty specifically says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Nine says, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
However, those amendments have pretty much been interpreted away. And the enumerated powers have been interpreted to include almost anything. E.g., the power "to regulate interstate commerce" has been interpreted to mean "the power to regulate anything affecting interstate commerce", which is just about everything.
Quite a bill of particulars. A few points:
1) To say that the Constitution all along was meant to create a government of unlimited powers is to say that the People who wrote and ratified the Tenth Amendment were either frauds or were hoodwinked. I don't believe that. I believe most of them really thought that the document created a government of limited powers. And at least until the Civil War, they were correct. In fact one could argue that until the New Deal, they were correct, at least as involves peacetime.
2) As I understand it, people at the time did not believe Hamilton's words in Federalist #41 meant what you say they do. They did not believe they were okaying a government with pretty much unlimited powers.
3) Article I (not II) section 8 lays out the enumerated powers. The first clause says, "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." This could be construed as being a backdoor grant of unlimited power since anything could be said to "provide ... for the general welfare". But this was certainly not how people at the time saw it.
4) After 18 enumerated powers, the last clause of Article I section 8 says that Congress shall have the power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
The "necessary and proper" clause highlights the importance of interpretation, what standards are used, and who is doing the interpretation. Both words can be interpreted narrowly or broadly. Arnold Kling (or Thomas Jefferson?) might find little that was necessary or proper. Robert Reich (or Alexander Hamilton?) might find little that wasn't.
I think it is significant that the modern "model" of the Constitution--that it creates a virtually unlimited government that is however limited by not being able to interfere with "civil liberties"--is only as old as the Twentieth Century and didn't become law until the 1930s. Until then, to a large extent, the law said government couldn't interfere in what we today call civil liberties not because that was a limit on otherwise unlimited powers but because the government simply didn't have enough power in the first place. It's a complicated history most people don't know. You might be interested in Ken Kersch's "Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law".
I remember actually reading the Constitution in high school history and being told that the enumerated powers were in the first article, which was the legislative branch, because the framers thought that the legislative branch would be the most important and powerful. It makes all laws; the executive branch simply carries them out.
Obviously, that is not true today, partly because of technology. Prior to the railroads--and typewriters, telegraphs, and telephones--there weren't any large long-lasting bureaucratic organizations. Even absolutist governments like France's Louis XIV were pretty small.
Thanks for this discussion. I have long puzzled over why enumerated powers has proven to be inadequate assurance of liberty. This discussion seemed to start with the lack of specific prohibitions of authority and wind up at baked-in unlimited powers. So I guess that leaves us with lop off 90 per cent? That would be revolutionary. Those are good paying jobs that would not transfer to the private sector becuase they are not productive. I think that’s why so many people hate libertarians.