For many of those who have a more statist bent, I think they look at the countries (and until recently, perhaps, the US states) with more robust state capacity vs the ones that are closer to anarchy. Comparing the outcomes, it's easy to conclude that "doing something" is a general rule that gives good results.
Obviously there are many confounders here, as well as a chicken-vs-egg problem about whether it's success that causes more state capacity. But the politicians you're talking about, and their supporters, are noticing real empirical facts that seem to favor their approach on the face of it.
If we did a very detailed tally, I think it would be hard to argue government doesn't do more good than harm. What would we have if government did nothing?
It is true that government has an incentive to do too much and we have to do our best to prevent this but the alternative is not nothing.
We'd have plenty. Virtually every function of government with the possible exception of criminal law enforcement and national security has and is done by private enterprises all the time. Governments often declare that a private enterprise has a monopoly on providing some good or service in place of a government entity performing the same function, or contracting out for services. Now there may be arguments regarding efficiency of some functions being performed by multiple private enterprises in competition, or economies of scale for non-monopolies, or instances where it's simply infeasible for a private entity to raise sufficient capital due to unprofitability but saying that essential functions would simply not be performed unless the government did them doesn't square with the way we see government working (or not)
"Virtually every function of government with the possible exception of criminal law enforcement and national security”
Really.
Maybe you think we have answers to some of the following today but keep in mind there needed to be answers 100 or 200+ years ago too.
1 civil law, property rights, land deeds, individual identification.
2 when do you think we would gotten railroads without land grants to the companies that built them? What would our road system look like? Would we have anything like interstate highways? Who would manage airspace? What would or transportation system look like?
3 what would our monetary system look like? How much trust would there be in other currencies?
4 electric, water, sewer, (50 years ago also cable, telephone, and mail) - much of this is privately constructed and run. Do you expect there would be competition? Would utility monopolies set their own prices? Or does government need to limit what they charge?
Re: "in active voice, it means giving ordinary, flawed human beings the power to intrude into the lives of their fellow citizens. And once we formulate the issue in those terms, the attempt to use government to solve the problem becomes less appealing."
The illustrations — intrusive search, censorship, and medical rationing boards — involve diffuse vulnerability of residents, 'speakers,' patients to interference. Perhaps the thought is: It could be me.
Nonetheless we observe ample (and ever more) regulation and taxation, which often amount to intrusion.
A corollary of Arnold's point is that citizens accept intrusion if they think the intrusion targets others (esp. firms) or protects themselves, insiders, from intrusion (e.g., codes that favor extant homeowners), or if they fear they must work the system for themselves (make others pay) because everyone does.
And majorities often don't mind tyranny of the majority.
I think what you are really complaining about are mot passive-voice statements *per se*, but statements that some desirable result should be brought about (whether or not the agent is specified), when the (unspecified) *means* would produce also overwhelmingly bad side effects.
Knocking on completely random doors. Lol. We are so, so far from that. Start with the low-hanging fruit then. All those people that law enforcement touch.
Something is surely cattywampus with this story, for instance, from the local news: "..... [South Texas Mexican restaurant chain] has been sued by 25 former employees, who allege the company committed fraud and age discrimination ... In a lawsuit originally filed Aug. 31 in Hidalgo County District Court, the plaintiffs argue the McAllen-based company cooked up a scheme to help employees acquire bogus Social Security numbers so they could work there ..."
Now it is a curiosity when the government goes after a small business in this way - the owner must have made an enemy somehow - but somehow the result will not be deportation but merely making the immigrants "legible" by giving them standing to sue in court.
Or, take a win that would be celebrated by the left: "decarcerate" to the extent of deporting all the illegal immigrants serving time in American prisons. Save money, accidentally remove a whole lot of gang members, slightly ease the job of prison officials!
Or: every single time someone gets into an accident with somebody who can supply no insurance. Instead of this being an accepted norm - shake it off! - about which nothing is done, have law enforcement check into that and act accordingly.
Or: the state just attempted a cleanup of voter rolls and identified thousands of non-citizens. Those registrations come with addresses. Who cares about voting? Who cares if they even wanted to vote (probably not! why would they need to? the status quo is perfect!). Find and deport them.
But of course the latter will be spun - is currently being spun - as an *American civil rights* issue. Thanks to libertarians. You think LULAC had the brains to come up with that?
In a comment section, it is impolite to use an acronym that most readers won't immediately recognize. I'll bet most people here don't know that LULAC is the League of United Latin American Citizens.
NUH! Not Understood Here! I thought of that yesterday when you policed another commenter’s acronym, which I did not know but it didn’t bother me. As it seemed intended for effect.
I have to push back. I think not knowing LULAC would be akin to not knowing the NAACP or SPLC. Or more likely, that they know the acronym and not the actual name.
However, I am equally annoyed by acronyms in other contexts. I saw someone using CR yesterday. That irked me.
I read Homage to Catalonia not long ago and even though Orwell himself joked about government - or revolution - by acronym, in the book, I was actually kinda weary of his own incessant acronym use.
Maybe because POUM is such a particularly tedious acronym it seemed to me it would have been easier just to call them by a name.
If you live near the southern border, you probably know what LULAC is. If you don't, you probably don't. From things you've written, I gather you live in Texas.
a) "Something will be done" would be an even better translation for most of Böll's famous little piece 'Something is going to happen' aka "Action Will Be Taken" - original: "Es wird etwas geschehen" ;)
Excerpt (in a job interview):
"Question No. 3: How do you spend your free time?
My answer: “I no longer acknowledge the term free time – on my fifteenth birthday I eliminated it from my vocabulary, for in the beginning was the act.”
I got the job. Even with nine telephones I really didn’t feel I was working to capacity. I shouted into the mouth-pieces: “Take immediate action!” or; “Do something! – We must have some action – Action will be taken – Action has been taken – Action should be taken.” But as a rule – for I felt this was in keeping with the tone of the place – I used the imperative. " end of quote from https://anarchistwithoutcontent.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/action-will-be-taken-an-action-packed-story-by-heinrich-boll/ as always read the whohe thing ;)
b) The German teacher in me has to correct: "In passive voice, it becomes unclear who is the actor."
In passive voice (if used properly), the actor is either unknown (A ring was stolen) or unimportant (The screws were fastened) OR is not intended to be named (At the XXIV. party conference, the personality cult was criticized.)
The benefit of the active voice being to focus on the actor, perhaps we might consider how aggregation, like the passive voice, serves to distract from a focus on the actor, and disaggregation, like the active voice, encourages a focus on the actor. I attempt such a demonstration in a diatribe regarding Kling's aside about costly, low benefit medical procedures. https://cleisthenes1.substack.com/p/a-focus-on-the-actor?r=4dddp0
- Someone should do something about over-prescription of opioids.
- Someone should do something about car break-ins and shoplifting (San Fran, for example).
Or maybe we should get rid of all laws against abortion, including elective ones, up until birth. Make all partial birth abortions legals too. We can't expect anyone to enforce abortion restrictions, right?
I'm pretty sure I get your point but you've stated it in a way that sounds like you don't want government to do anything. That's not libertarian, it's chaos. Government is necessary. It's necessary for it to interfere in our lives. Deciding when, where, and how is difficult and we are never going to agree on the specifics or the right balance but it is necessary for a functioning society. The way you've stated it ignores that.
I should probably stop there but I'll comment on two of your examples.
1 While not all-encompassing, govt already has a huge say in deciding what medical procedures can be done. It approves drugs and medical devices. Medicare and Medicaid decides what it will pay for and how much it will pay (even if it doesn't negotiate drug prices). Doctors are limited in what they can try under threat of losing their license to practice. Private insurance pays in large part based on standards of practice which government partly sets. Sometimes these restrictions are overly strict and more often they are not strict enough but it's far from nothing. I'd say way better than nothing to.
2 While it would be great to end crime, nobody expects that's entirely possible. In that spirit, it's a little absurd to suggest we have to go door to door to enforce immigration laws. While I'd probably maintain unfettered access to schools, hospitals, and police protection, I'm skeptical we can't figure out how local law enforcement could check immigration status when stopped for other infractions and that we can't make it harder to hire illegal residents. We don't have to find them all. If we made it more difficult to stay illegally, many would leave. I'm not saying we have to or even that we should, just that we could. Note: I realize it would get complicated. For example, I have no idea how to best handle adult illegal residents who came here as children. Maybe we give them some legal status. IDK. But what we have now is complicated too.
I imagine most people, even politicians or commentators trying to speak euphemistically, do this unintentionally. They typically don't teach this to most high school or even undergraduate students. It took until grad school before I saw professors marking down or failing papers for consistently writing in the passive voice.
Recently I saw an official from the Secret Service being asked: “who is holding the SS accountable for the Trump assassination attempt ?“
A: “We are holding ourselves accountable.”
Plural active is close to passive. To avoid responsibility and any bad consequences as a result of being held accountable.
At least the head of the SS did resign.
I don’t think anybody resigned or was fired for the huge toxic spill of chemicals from the EPA a few years ago.
A huge reason that private companies are more responsible, over time, than govt, is that it’s far easier to get people fired in private orgs. Firing top people “most responsible” for the bad decisions made is the best way known to minimize bad decisions. That’s a true advantage for benign dictators, even over a slower acting market (of billions of human decisions with small influence)—tho the dictators make far more mistakes themselves than the markets.
Too many Big Government supporters immediately say that “govt should do something” whenever there’s a problem. Society would be better in most of those cases if instead the people prayed to God for Devine action, and more human faithfulness and more following of God’s laws.
… and the market/=billions of humans, make decisions to reduce the problem.
“I am making a point here in favor of libertarianism.” I’ll go a step further and make a point in favor of personal accountability and creativity, i.e. first person active voice. Rather than say, “that’s not my responsibility” or “someone should do something about that,” the accountable libertarian asks “How can I make this better?” “What can I do to help?” “How can I fix this?” He then thinks of positive, win-win-win solutions and takes action.
“I am going to do something about this problem.”
“I am going to take small positive steps to change this situation.”
“I am going to start a business that solves that problem”
“I am going to sue the government in order to enforce the rule of law.”
“I am going to write an essay explaining why a Kamala Harris presidency would be inferior to a Donald Trump presidency and why Donald Trump presidency would be inferior to an Arnold Kling presidency.”
Essay - if you can do that from the perspective of voters "in the middle" while acknowledging the weaknesses of Trump and strengths of Harris (as seen by the middle), that sounds great. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't be accomplishing anything.
While I think it would great if someone compared the pluses and minuses of each candidate from the perspective of someone in the middle, I don't think I have the skill set to capture everything. Maybe I could make an 80% first cut (maybe not that good) but I think to do it right needs some brainstorming and discusion from a group willing and able minimize bias.
One of the best, two minute samples of libertarian philosophy. If you’ve got more than two minutes, I highly recommend Kling’s short book, The Three Languages of Politics. Pundits and university students alike oftwn choose to get caught up in tactical debates about who “should” pay for police, fire departments, this and that - tactical issues and suggestions (passive commentary) rather than approach basic principles and strategy from the front. Do this more.
The politician’s fallacy:
Something should be done.
This is something.
Therefore,
It should be done.
For many of those who have a more statist bent, I think they look at the countries (and until recently, perhaps, the US states) with more robust state capacity vs the ones that are closer to anarchy. Comparing the outcomes, it's easy to conclude that "doing something" is a general rule that gives good results.
Obviously there are many confounders here, as well as a chicken-vs-egg problem about whether it's success that causes more state capacity. But the politicians you're talking about, and their supporters, are noticing real empirical facts that seem to favor their approach on the face of it.
If we did a very detailed tally, I think it would be hard to argue government doesn't do more good than harm. What would we have if government did nothing?
It is true that government has an incentive to do too much and we have to do our best to prevent this but the alternative is not nothing.
We'd have plenty. Virtually every function of government with the possible exception of criminal law enforcement and national security has and is done by private enterprises all the time. Governments often declare that a private enterprise has a monopoly on providing some good or service in place of a government entity performing the same function, or contracting out for services. Now there may be arguments regarding efficiency of some functions being performed by multiple private enterprises in competition, or economies of scale for non-monopolies, or instances where it's simply infeasible for a private entity to raise sufficient capital due to unprofitability but saying that essential functions would simply not be performed unless the government did them doesn't square with the way we see government working (or not)
"Virtually every function of government with the possible exception of criminal law enforcement and national security”
Really.
Maybe you think we have answers to some of the following today but keep in mind there needed to be answers 100 or 200+ years ago too.
1 civil law, property rights, land deeds, individual identification.
2 when do you think we would gotten railroads without land grants to the companies that built them? What would our road system look like? Would we have anything like interstate highways? Who would manage airspace? What would or transportation system look like?
3 what would our monetary system look like? How much trust would there be in other currencies?
4 electric, water, sewer, (50 years ago also cable, telephone, and mail) - much of this is privately constructed and run. Do you expect there would be competition? Would utility monopolies set their own prices? Or does government need to limit what they charge?
5 How would polluters be handled?
Or as they say in Washington, "See a headline, pass a law."
Everyone’s favourite… after a very lengthy public enquiry costing £millions the conclusion: mistakes were made; lessons must be learned.
Re: "in active voice, it means giving ordinary, flawed human beings the power to intrude into the lives of their fellow citizens. And once we formulate the issue in those terms, the attempt to use government to solve the problem becomes less appealing."
The illustrations — intrusive search, censorship, and medical rationing boards — involve diffuse vulnerability of residents, 'speakers,' patients to interference. Perhaps the thought is: It could be me.
Nonetheless we observe ample (and ever more) regulation and taxation, which often amount to intrusion.
A corollary of Arnold's point is that citizens accept intrusion if they think the intrusion targets others (esp. firms) or protects themselves, insiders, from intrusion (e.g., codes that favor extant homeowners), or if they fear they must work the system for themselves (make others pay) because everyone does.
And majorities often don't mind tyranny of the majority.
Note its use in the weak or pseudo apology "I am sorry if you were offended," as opposed to "I am sorry I offended you."
I think what you are really complaining about are mot passive-voice statements *per se*, but statements that some desirable result should be brought about (whether or not the agent is specified), when the (unspecified) *means* would produce also overwhelmingly bad side effects.
Knocking on completely random doors. Lol. We are so, so far from that. Start with the low-hanging fruit then. All those people that law enforcement touch.
Something is surely cattywampus with this story, for instance, from the local news: "..... [South Texas Mexican restaurant chain] has been sued by 25 former employees, who allege the company committed fraud and age discrimination ... In a lawsuit originally filed Aug. 31 in Hidalgo County District Court, the plaintiffs argue the McAllen-based company cooked up a scheme to help employees acquire bogus Social Security numbers so they could work there ..."
Now it is a curiosity when the government goes after a small business in this way - the owner must have made an enemy somehow - but somehow the result will not be deportation but merely making the immigrants "legible" by giving them standing to sue in court.
Or, take a win that would be celebrated by the left: "decarcerate" to the extent of deporting all the illegal immigrants serving time in American prisons. Save money, accidentally remove a whole lot of gang members, slightly ease the job of prison officials!
Or: every single time someone gets into an accident with somebody who can supply no insurance. Instead of this being an accepted norm - shake it off! - about which nothing is done, have law enforcement check into that and act accordingly.
Or: the state just attempted a cleanup of voter rolls and identified thousands of non-citizens. Those registrations come with addresses. Who cares about voting? Who cares if they even wanted to vote (probably not! why would they need to? the status quo is perfect!). Find and deport them.
But of course the latter will be spun - is currently being spun - as an *American civil rights* issue. Thanks to libertarians. You think LULAC had the brains to come up with that?
I stated similar elsewhere but one caveat to your examples would be not to use police against the illegal resident when they are the victim.
To add to what you said, I'd bet a statistical study (or AI) of Social Security records could identify suspicious payments into SS.
Yes, agreed. Although that sentiment has been disingenuously deployed by those who don't care about crime within immigrant communities.
In a comment section, it is impolite to use an acronym that most readers won't immediately recognize. I'll bet most people here don't know that LULAC is the League of United Latin American Citizens.
NUH! Not Understood Here! I thought of that yesterday when you policed another commenter’s acronym, which I did not know but it didn’t bother me. As it seemed intended for effect.
I have to push back. I think not knowing LULAC would be akin to not knowing the NAACP or SPLC. Or more likely, that they know the acronym and not the actual name.
However, I am equally annoyed by acronyms in other contexts. I saw someone using CR yesterday. That irked me.
I read Homage to Catalonia not long ago and even though Orwell himself joked about government - or revolution - by acronym, in the book, I was actually kinda weary of his own incessant acronym use.
Maybe because POUM is such a particularly tedious acronym it seemed to me it would have been easier just to call them by a name.
If you live near the southern border, you probably know what LULAC is. If you don't, you probably don't. From things you've written, I gather you live in Texas.
Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
...
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
(Cavafy)
Statements in the passive voice do not really imply corresponding statements in the active voice in which *the government* is the actor.
a) "Something will be done" would be an even better translation for most of Böll's famous little piece 'Something is going to happen' aka "Action Will Be Taken" - original: "Es wird etwas geschehen" ;)
Excerpt (in a job interview):
"Question No. 3: How do you spend your free time?
My answer: “I no longer acknowledge the term free time – on my fifteenth birthday I eliminated it from my vocabulary, for in the beginning was the act.”
I got the job. Even with nine telephones I really didn’t feel I was working to capacity. I shouted into the mouth-pieces: “Take immediate action!” or; “Do something! – We must have some action – Action will be taken – Action has been taken – Action should be taken.” But as a rule – for I felt this was in keeping with the tone of the place – I used the imperative. " end of quote from https://anarchistwithoutcontent.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/action-will-be-taken-an-action-packed-story-by-heinrich-boll/ as always read the whohe thing ;)
b) The German teacher in me has to correct: "In passive voice, it becomes unclear who is the actor."
In passive voice (if used properly), the actor is either unknown (A ring was stolen) or unimportant (The screws were fastened) OR is not intended to be named (At the XXIV. party conference, the personality cult was criticized.)
The benefit of the active voice being to focus on the actor, perhaps we might consider how aggregation, like the passive voice, serves to distract from a focus on the actor, and disaggregation, like the active voice, encourages a focus on the actor. I attempt such a demonstration in a diatribe regarding Kling's aside about costly, low benefit medical procedures. https://cleisthenes1.substack.com/p/a-focus-on-the-actor?r=4dddp0
Maybe you want to add these to your list?
- Someone should do something about over-prescription of opioids.
- Someone should do something about car break-ins and shoplifting (San Fran, for example).
Or maybe we should get rid of all laws against abortion, including elective ones, up until birth. Make all partial birth abortions legals too. We can't expect anyone to enforce abortion restrictions, right?
I'm pretty sure I get your point but you've stated it in a way that sounds like you don't want government to do anything. That's not libertarian, it's chaos. Government is necessary. It's necessary for it to interfere in our lives. Deciding when, where, and how is difficult and we are never going to agree on the specifics or the right balance but it is necessary for a functioning society. The way you've stated it ignores that.
I should probably stop there but I'll comment on two of your examples.
1 While not all-encompassing, govt already has a huge say in deciding what medical procedures can be done. It approves drugs and medical devices. Medicare and Medicaid decides what it will pay for and how much it will pay (even if it doesn't negotiate drug prices). Doctors are limited in what they can try under threat of losing their license to practice. Private insurance pays in large part based on standards of practice which government partly sets. Sometimes these restrictions are overly strict and more often they are not strict enough but it's far from nothing. I'd say way better than nothing to.
2 While it would be great to end crime, nobody expects that's entirely possible. In that spirit, it's a little absurd to suggest we have to go door to door to enforce immigration laws. While I'd probably maintain unfettered access to schools, hospitals, and police protection, I'm skeptical we can't figure out how local law enforcement could check immigration status when stopped for other infractions and that we can't make it harder to hire illegal residents. We don't have to find them all. If we made it more difficult to stay illegally, many would leave. I'm not saying we have to or even that we should, just that we could. Note: I realize it would get complicated. For example, I have no idea how to best handle adult illegal residents who came here as children. Maybe we give them some legal status. IDK. But what we have now is complicated too.
I imagine most people, even politicians or commentators trying to speak euphemistically, do this unintentionally. They typically don't teach this to most high school or even undergraduate students. It took until grad school before I saw professors marking down or failing papers for consistently writing in the passive voice.
Recently I saw an official from the Secret Service being asked: “who is holding the SS accountable for the Trump assassination attempt ?“
A: “We are holding ourselves accountable.”
Plural active is close to passive. To avoid responsibility and any bad consequences as a result of being held accountable.
At least the head of the SS did resign.
I don’t think anybody resigned or was fired for the huge toxic spill of chemicals from the EPA a few years ago.
A huge reason that private companies are more responsible, over time, than govt, is that it’s far easier to get people fired in private orgs. Firing top people “most responsible” for the bad decisions made is the best way known to minimize bad decisions. That’s a true advantage for benign dictators, even over a slower acting market (of billions of human decisions with small influence)—tho the dictators make far more mistakes themselves than the markets.
Too many Big Government supporters immediately say that “govt should do something” whenever there’s a problem. Society would be better in most of those cases if instead the people prayed to God for Devine action, and more human faithfulness and more following of God’s laws.
… and the market/=billions of humans, make decisions to reduce the problem.
If everybody is responsible then nobody is.
“I am making a point here in favor of libertarianism.” I’ll go a step further and make a point in favor of personal accountability and creativity, i.e. first person active voice. Rather than say, “that’s not my responsibility” or “someone should do something about that,” the accountable libertarian asks “How can I make this better?” “What can I do to help?” “How can I fix this?” He then thinks of positive, win-win-win solutions and takes action.
“I am going to do something about this problem.”
“I am going to take small positive steps to change this situation.”
“I am going to start a business that solves that problem”
“I am going to sue the government in order to enforce the rule of law.”
“I am going to write an essay explaining why a Kamala Harris presidency would be inferior to a Donald Trump presidency and why Donald Trump presidency would be inferior to an Arnold Kling presidency.”
Essay - if you can do that from the perspective of voters "in the middle" while acknowledging the weaknesses of Trump and strengths of Harris (as seen by the middle), that sounds great. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't be accomplishing anything.
Do it.
While I think it would great if someone compared the pluses and minuses of each candidate from the perspective of someone in the middle, I don't think I have the skill set to capture everything. Maybe I could make an 80% first cut (maybe not that good) but I think to do it right needs some brainstorming and discusion from a group willing and able minimize bias.
Even a 50% first cut would be extremely helpful. In My Tribe commenters can fill in the rest if you ask for help.
One of the best, two minute samples of libertarian philosophy. If you’ve got more than two minutes, I highly recommend Kling’s short book, The Three Languages of Politics. Pundits and university students alike oftwn choose to get caught up in tactical debates about who “should” pay for police, fire departments, this and that - tactical issues and suggestions (passive commentary) rather than approach basic principles and strategy from the front. Do this more.