Regarding constitutional order, one thing that bothers me is that our checks and balances don't work as well anymore. They are designed around competition between different branches or houses of government and between state and federal government, but loyalties these days are more to political party than to those things. Maybe we need more formal checks and balances between the parties. We already have some of that, with many government commissions and legislative committees having members assigned by party. Maybe we need more of that. The thing I *don't * like about that is that it would lock in the two main parties even more. Just throwing out ideas, I have no solutions.
You hit the nail on the head. The founders feared the power of "faction" (what we call "political party"). Alas, they did not figure out how to neutralize faction reliably. Party allegiance can undermine separation of powers, if one party develops a majority in each of the separate powers. The result is tyranny of the majority.
That's a common misstatement of some parts of the Federalist papers but it fails on closer examination. The Founders were well acquainted with combinations of interests as the entire Constitutional framework is a series of compromises between large urban and small rural states, slave vs free states, and so on. Multiple Founders were involved in the creation of the first US party system. Their definition of 'faction' was not political party per se but something a lot closer to 'ideology', essentially combinations that coalesced around ideas that did not represent concrete interests that might be amenable to compromise solutions but which were held to dogmatically.
In the Federalist paper Publius (Madison?) writes:
"By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
(Fed. 10, 57).
Publius and other founders used the classical tripartite set of motivations — interests, passions, reason (impartiality, justice) — rather than the posterior concept, ideology, to interpret behavior.
It seems that the term "ideology" was coined c. 1796 by a French philosopher, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, compte de Tracy, to denote an academic discipline, "the science of ideas":
The term acquired its modern meaning in the 19th century.
See also Alan Gibson's specific discussion of faction, in his chapter, "Madison's Republican Remedy," in Rakove & Sheehan, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Federalist (Cambridge U. Press, 2020) pp. 263-301.
My Chartertopia elects three winners from each district, and they cast all the votes they won in the legislature. All voters can nominate a volunteer, one is drawn at random (and has to agree and be eligible) to be an amateur legislator who casts all remaining votes. Yes, they have to add up all those weird numbers for every vote. No more voice votes or raising hands; they have to go on record for every vote. It takes 2/3 approval to pass bills, by both those proxies and by headcount.
* It makes vote trading harder and confuses pundits.
* It encourages voting even when your favorite is behind in the polls.
* It turns legislators into true representatives. Even the amateur is a better representative, since anyone who volunteers is something of a maverick, and everyone who did not vote for any of the winners would probably rather be represented by the amateur.
* It slows down party politics and makes consensus much more important. Especially combined with needing 2/3 to pass bills and 1/4 of the headcount being amateurs, it makes party control difficult.
The reasons checks and balances have broken down are multifaceted within each branch. The presidency paradoxically holds too much executive power in some areas while being unable to control unaccountable executive branch agencies. Congress is too polarized and full of people who are either stupid, extraordinarily petty, Machiavellian, or all three. The executive branch has also grown beyond the scope of what congressional committees can reasonably oversee, although hopefully, the end of Chevron deference leads to some positive changes. Unfortunately, the judicial branch is the least degenerated of the three and also the most unpopular. It would also be nice if the federal judiciary was willing to constrain executive power once in a while beyond halting executive orders that leftist judges read about in the Washington Post while sipping their morning coffee.
One thing that would be good here is for Congress to stop delegating so much power to the executive, in the interest of political expediency (avoiding tough votes).
Unfortunately, the only likely way for that to happen would be for SCOTUS to force them to take back said powers.
Throwing out Chevron deference, and making up the non-delegation and major questions doctrines are the most hopeful signs I've seen in ages. But it's too late to roll back the past abuses, like Wickard or the Slaughterhouse cases.
Very much agree. I'm tired of both major parties' behavior and performance and would like to see enhanced restraints (checks & balances). A couple of ideas that sound promising but maybe hard to do include ranked choice voting, which might encourage candidates building broader coalitions, and enhancing independent oversight bodies, such as the Governmental Accountability Office, the CBO and Inspector Generals. Would love to see how it is possible to achieve these.
Any oversight from the government itself is just begging for more corruption and needing more levels of oversight. Who watches the watchers, and all that.
I can't see any solution less than the people themselves having full transparent access to all government spending records, and full authority to prosecute on their own. One of my pre-Chartertopia ideas was that any citizen should be able to challenge any law or regulation to be judged by 12 random competent adults.
* Put them all in separate rooms with the law or regulation, a pad of paper, a pen (not pencil, and no eraser), and whatever technical dictionaries or manuals deemed necessary.
* Have them either write down their own interpretation of the law or regulation, or answer a specific question, such as "Does this insurance policy cover a skydiver blown off course who drowned in a pool?".
* Compare them all. If more than one or two differ too much from the others, the law or regulation is unclear, confusing, etc; throw it out and tell the legislature or agency to try again.
Naturally there are complications. Who picks those 12 random competent adults? Who compares their results? What qualifies as "different"?
But those are no worse than modern courts. There is something wrong with juries having to decide unanimously with only the judge to clarify questions, then a appeals court splits 2-1 in spite of taking a year with the brightest law clerks, best legal libraries, and all the amicus briefs people can supply; then the full court takes another stab at it and reverses themselves 7-8, and then the Supreme Court takes another year or two to reverse 5-4.
If a judicial question is so confusing that appeals courts split like that, then the underlying question is not falsifiable and ought to be resolved against the government.
It has to be out of the government's hands, otherwise it is just government defining its own limits, and that is the road to tyranny.
Loyalty is more to the bureaucracy than the party, but turns into party loyalty when expanding the bureaucracy becomes a partisan divide.
My Charteropia tries to solve the problem by literally putting the legislature under the voters' control. Every district can have its own elections, and those elections vote on bills which voters submit and which governments have no say in; they cannot reject any or revise them or postpone them. One of the things these "direct democracy" bills do is schedule legislature elections, and if they skip elections and have no representatives, legislation does not apply in their district. DD bills can also override legislation -- change tax rates, repeal legislation, or do things the legislature refused to do.
The legislature is entirely a subset of the DD bills. Legislatures can't do anything the DD bills can't do. Their only difference is being faster acting and it being legislators' full time job.
And there's no President. If the legislature wants a commander in chief for some war, or someone to head the National Park Service or run the FBI, they have to interview candidates and hire the executives themselves, per ordinary contract which they can cancel at any time. It has always struck me as schizoid how the President nominates agency heads, Congress interviews them and votes on hiring them, grills them as if they were their bosses, yet they legally answer to the President. It's as if they have two bosses. I say get rid of that middle man the President and make Congress their boss in name as well as fact.
A lot more too, and it's all fantasy, but it's my fantasy and been a lot of fun :-)
I listen to a lot of Russian-related content, and Kasparov's proposal is part of a broader response to, or backlash against, the reelection of DJT by the expat Russian 'intelligentsia,' of which Kasparov is a prominent member. This backlash is motivated partly, if not mostly, by the expat Russian intelligentsia's response to the Trump administration's shift in policy towards Russia, in particular, the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Russia in an effort (so far mainly fruitless) to clean up the mess of the Ukraine conflict left by the Biden administration. I will address my comments to this response, and to the anti-Putin Russian diaspora more generally, rather than to AK's list of the causes he is for. It is noteworthy that Kasparov, in common with other expat Russians who have been speaking out in recent weeks (WSJ's Trofimov, Kara-Murza), is of partly Jewish ancestry. I am not going to go into the significance of that, except to say it is probably more common than one might think and probably not a coincidence.
I lived in Russia during the early transition period, and that experience permanently cured me of any illusions I may have had about remaking Russia in America's image. To those Russian expats who dream of Russia becoming a democracy, 'free society,' or whatever they want to call it, I say good luck with that, but leave my country out of it. Don't expect America to be either the world's policeman or the world's savior, and to expend blood and treasure rescuing Ukraine or Russia from Putin. We've been trying to do that for more than 3 years now, and it has been a spectacular failure. More importantly, having failed in your efforts to turn Russia into a 'free society,' please spare us and don't redirect your energies into saving freedom and democracy in the United States. Thanks, but no thanks. I see from the first comment that Kasparov apparently has drawn some comparisons between the Putin and Trump 'mob families,' and Russian and American 'oligarchy.' I call BS on that. Russia is not like the United States, but conversely, the United States is not, nor will it ever be, like Russia, Trump notwithstanding.
The only specific objection Kasparov raises in his piece concerns the detainment and effort to deport foreign students like Khalil. Kasparov is careful to say he is against the radical beliefs of students like Khalil, but like Patrick Henry, he wants to defend free speech and objects to Trump's 'authoritarian methods.' Others have commented on this topic in an eloquent and more nuanced way than I could (try Hanania), so I'll just say stuff it, Garry. American Jews already have people like Peter Beinart speaking out in defense of Hamas, so we don't need any additional help from the likes of Garry Vainshtein (see Wiki -- fyi, it was not uncommon for Russians to take their mother's last name when the father's last name was obviously Jewish).
From various quarters (and in one case from a real, live Russian) I hear, "you Westerners will never understand; Russians *want* a Tsar." Do you believe that's true? Would love to hear some specific anecdotes from the transition that cured you of your illusion that Russia could be liberalized. I recently read Figes' Story of Russia and he makes the case that at several junctions, it could have gone either way.
Well, you are one up on me, as I never heard a live Russian tell me Russians want a Tsar. Too simplistic for my tastes. And Russia is certainly more liberalized than it was under Soviet Communism. For example, Russians no longer go to prison simply for engaging in private, for-profit economic activity. I don't think the anecdotes I could tell would convey the gut feeling I got from living there for several years. I would say there was an obvious difference between Eastern European countries like Poland and Russia. Poland was under Soviet occupation, and Poles hate Russians for historical reasons (and also because they just do), so when Poland and other Eastern European states were liberated from Soviet domination, they viewed the West in general, and the US in particular, as their savior, and were much more open and receptive to Western influence, values and investment, and were willing to adopt investor-friendly policies and business arrangements to attract FDI. Russians were also receptive to, and benefited from, Western business knowhow and technology transfer, but they were never as enthusiastic and accommodating as the Eastern Europeans tended to be. Foreign control of key assets, such as in the oil and gas sector, was never in the cards. Obviously, I'm generalizing here, but I think that is a fair generalization.
Thank you for your wisdom and common sense. Since I discovered you in the early days of blogging I think that you have had a bigger and better influence on my thinking than any other writer. I'm sure that many others have been similarly enriched. I hope that you feel a deep sense of pride (consistent with humility!) in knowing how much you have made the world a better place. Thank you!
I took a skim through that "better regulatory state" page. I especially take issue with the idea that urbanization requires regulation: "In a city, it matters whether the owner of the lot next door puts up a family residence, a psychiatrist's office, a 24-hour convenience store, or a night club." This strikes me as not much different from people worrying about Walmart or Home Depot setting up a big box store in a residential neighborhood. It's nonsense; the infrastructure won't support it, and that's one thing that seems to be forgotten, that private investors aren't going to waste their money on such loony locations.
I've lived in cities with mixed stores and apartments. I fail to see how a psychiatrist's office can be a problem. Neighbors came and went and had visitors all the time. A fresh patient every hour or half hour would be no different.
24 hour convenience stores are no different than big box stores; they aren't going to open where there's no clientele, and if there's enough clientele to stay open 24 hours a day, then they are obviously wanted.
And a nightclub? In a residential neighborhood? Same story. They self-select for areas where the clientele and infrastructure support them and allow making a profit. It's not like there's so much demand that they'd pop up on every block if the regulators disappeared. Costs matter too, and industrial districts are cheaper, have better parking at night, and don't have to worry about neighbors holding them accountable for vomit and cigarette butts.
I really don't like the whole attitude in that article that people are incapable of being responsible on their own, or that they are incapable of holding the irresponsible ones accountable on their own. But I only skimmed it once I got to that urbanization line.
“People who regard profit-seeking as immoral and working for non-profits or government as morally superior have it exactly backwards.”
If I could change only one thing about the average midwit leftist, it would be to insert this idea into their brains.
That they have this idea wrong is the single biggest reason why Richard Hanania is wrong to claim that the Dems are the party of Elite Human Capital.
In fact, it only just occurred to me now the irony of the phrase itself: since Richard’s definition of it includes all those midwit leftists, in fact most of those he claims are Elite Human Capital… don’t actually believe in capitalism!
In re Honesty-Humility "Everyone I feel close to is high in this trait. My sense is that every President in this century has been low in this trait."
I don't think it is just Presidents of the 21st century that are low in this trait. I think most politicians are, as are many business leaders. The incentives for success in politics and large company management seem to select for people who are low in this.
Some tensions and tradeoffs I see in this list: Greed Avoidance v Profit Seeking, Modesty v Intellectual Prestige Hierarchy. Not irreconcilable, but real conflicts I think.
Strict originalism about the Constitution is a good thing, but it needs to be an originalism that fully takes into account the later amendments, especially the Reconstruction amendments. See the work of Akhil Amar.
"I think that some of our experiments with sexual behavior, gambling, and recreational drug use are not working well."
Whether this is true or not, it seems a little ironic that small government proponent wants something in this area that can only be accomplished by more government.
I don't know. Things like that are usually accomplished by social norms, not government. But many of our social norms have changed in unfortunate ways. I don't think that government could mandate better social norms...
I suppose so. I would argue that outlawing gambling and drugs is an attempt to mandate particular social norms, but was never very effective. It seems like most people agree that alcohol prohibition caused more problems than the alcohol did, and that may also be true of gambling and drug prohibition. They both feed large amounts of money to organized crime.
I just meant that the criminalization was never able to eliminate them. I'm sure you're right that it did reduce their prevalence. But it also increased the power and prevalence of organized crime.
“My subjective opinion is that the ability of government to impact these activities is at least an order of magnitude larger than cultural.”
I'm not at all sure about that. Take smoking. It has gone from ubiquitous to something only low class people do. Certainly government had a hand in that, bans on smoking in indoor public places, etc. But I wouldn't give government 91% of the credit.
Or drunk driving. There's a lot less of it than there used to be. A major reason is lowered blood alcohol limits and increased enforcement. But a lot seems to be endogenous social change. Something I'd like to know: where did the idea of a "designated driver" come from? Some creative guy in a D.O.T.? An ordinary person lost to history?
Legalized sports gambling does seem to have lead to a major increase in people gambling on sports--and a major increase in the amounts bet. It will be interesting to see what the cultural reaction will be.
I won't make the mistake of saying you are wrong. Indeed, much of what you say is true. But here's a bit of counter-argument.
A cultural shift that makes it easier to change laws is still government action, not culture change.
Drunk driving fell much more among 18-20 year olds who had their legal drinking ended. For adults above the drinking age, I'd argue it was almost all due to stiffer penalties and more enforcement, or at least the perception of more enforcement and penalties.
As for cigarettes, I'd argue that the biggest change, by far, was banning smoking in public places. This is what made it less acceptable.
On that last note, I think it would be interesting to ban serving alcohol in public places, or at least limit it to beer and wine served with meals (strict limits on alcohol % on each, maybe quantity limits too). This might largely avoid the illegal supply problem.
That's an interesting question. What if there's a completely cultural shift against drunk driving People then pressure their legislatures to lower blood alcohol limits and enforce more strictly. This then leads to a further cultural shift against drunk driving.
Or what if there's no cultural shift. But experts come to feel that lower limits and enhanced enforcement are necessary and legislatures and governors listen to them and enact that. Which then leads to a cultural shift.
Is the first 100% cultural and the second 100% government? Or do we have to say it's both? And if so, is it possible to divide up the responsibility?
No doubt this is an unanswerable question. Not sure we need to. It's certainly not important in regards to where this thread started. I noted the role of government action in reducing these vices. No matter which is the chicken or egg, government action plays a critical role in all of the examples discussed.
“My subjective opinion is that the ability of government to impact these activities is at least an order of magnitude larger than cultural.”
To the extent that I think you mean can have more short-term impact more quickly/easily, than I agree with you.
But by definition the much harder cultural change would in almost all cases have the larger impact in the long term.
And while I do think you’re right about what AK has suggested re: drugs and especially gambling in the past is correct, he’s also never said he is a Bryan Caplan or David Friedman and believes in extremely limited government and ultimately anarcho-capitalism.
In fact he’s recently advocated for “state capacity libertarianism“ in a way that is a bit too big a role for government for my personal tastes, although one I find interesting and at least reasonable
I'd bet that legalizing sports gambling to states that had none resulted in a many fold increase. Maybe we couldn't get back to the previous state by making it illegal again but I don't see cultural making even close to as much difference. I'd say this applies to lotteries even more strongly.
On the rest I’m having trouble following what you’re saying.
Because of course there will be less gambling if it is illegal. But that’s not the relevant question.
The question is will there be less *harmful* gambling, and less *harm* (in toto) from gambling if it is illegal. Given the Prohibition example, that is far less obvious. But yet that is your case when you say “big government” making stuff illegal will have more long term impact than changing the culture.
Yes, the harms of the same amount of illegal vices are greater.
Not sure why you agree more on lotteries.
Agreed prohibition muddies the water. The bigger issue is that almost everyone wants it legal. Far more than gambling or other drugs. That said, I don't think there is any doubt the harms of legal drinking are greater. We have a problem today that was surely far smaller during prohibition. How many would die of drunk driving if alcohol were illegal?
All I have to add is YES. Quite close to what I think.
While I admire Madison, “constitutional” and other legal and political constraints on the federal government are a product of 19th developments. See North-Wallis-Weingast’s framework. Madison did not anticipate the development of modern political parties (vs “factions”).
"People who regard profit-seeking as immoral and working for non-profits or government as morally superior have it exactly backwards."
-
While this may not be exactly true, by economic and attention-based measures, I would assume that it's mostly correct. This is a non-binary issue.
The sticking point here is that lots of productive work can only start in a non-profit capacity, even if inevitably, the organization which begins such work quickly devolves into a very different enterprise that still uses the same logo, call to action, and mission statement. This same paradox can describe various federally funded research initiatives as well as religious and “truly” charitable institutions. The list is very long.
Good people have a difficult time saying things like this out-loud, assuming that other people will throw themselves into the fire before they do, and we can just free-ride on their daring. This tiny statement of support is my small contribution on top of yours.
Has nothing to do with nonprofit status, tax write-offs, etc. for any number of reasons, people take on projects at various points in their life where profit is not the main driver. They just wanna get something done. Look at Steve Balmer‘s current project with a national 10k (USAFacts)(*). He’s not looking to make bank. Good luck in getting something like this done trying to make money.
Some people actually do care about what they’re working on in life and making money is not the most important element. Not for profit status means so much more beyond claiming profitability and what to do with proceeds. The difficult thing is that it’s these factors that often provide perverse incentives for others to get involved. For instance, countless people want to “hop on” various boards of directors even if they don’t know what the organization exactly does. It looks excellent on a résumé to be on numerous boards.
I suppose I sort of understand what I think you want to mean. But it doesn't answer the question of why non-profit matters. If all Steve Ballmer cared about was not making a profit, he could give away his fortune. The fact that he didn't start this project until he had a fortune tells me more that he doesn't really believe his project could stand by itself.
Profits are not just a way to make money. They are a signal that you're doing something right. When you refuse to care about that signal, it means you don't care if you could be doing better.
I used to take long bicycle rides and a friend suggested I enter some time trials, where everyone starts a minute apart and all times are compared when the last rider finished. I didn't like them. My measurement of success was not comparing myself to others, but to my subjective comparison with past rides. I still had my profit, so to speak.
But I don't see how that can work for any kind of organization involving lots of other people. If the head honcho feels great about it, but the staff are just in it for the paychecks, I doubt he's getting as much objective good out of it as he could. Either he's willfully blind to that inefficiency, or he knows and doesn't care that he could be doing better, or his secret goal is to provide paychecks for sloppy work, or ... something.
I don’t think we’re connecting on this. Doing big projects that require more than one person typically need business entities to get people paid, etc. Some people want to get really big things done and not everyone has the luxury of working for free. I don’t know why you may be looking for a reason why Steve Ballmer may have other, untoward intentions but you’re free to come up with your own example in this situation.
Dude, his primary point is that if something can’t make a profit it is generally not serving other people. Or at least not serving them as well as it could.
Even if there are exceptions to this rule, and even if your Ballmer example happens to be one of those exceptions.
And I’ll note that these people you say have to get paid, well unless they are willing to work for something at or close to minimum wage, it means they don’t believe in said project enough either to vote for it with their own money and time.
And so Charteropia’s point is right: Ballmer is just giving away his money to others. In this case, he is willingly giving it to highly paid people who don’t believe in his pet cause as much as he does, because they have to be paid a lot of money to be willing to devote their time to it.
Most people who work at non-profits don’t make much money at all, never mind the countless writers who (rightfully) obsess over Healthcare executives and other major industry abuses. There is no way Bill and his ex wife’s foundation could hire the talent they needed in short time by telling all applicants they need to earn minimum wage. This is a dumb argument for us to be having.
But it’s true that working at non-profits often provide a sense of social status or other feelings I’d associate with showing up to church on time.
All of this gets further from my comment on Klings post, mostly (but not entirely) concurring that some people have their heads on entirely backward.
Your last paragraph about the comments being “right”, that Steve Ballmer is just giving his money away and that because others aren’t doing it for free (like the guy who founded it worth 125B) means they don’t really care as much as he does (?) is not my responsibility to refute. This is where I get off. I just don’t agree.
I'm not trying to explain why Steve Ballmer does anything, what his ultimate motivation is. I'm only puzzled about why the lack of profit is so important.
* How does doing it as a non-profit makes the end product or service better than if he'd done it for profit?
* Profit is one signal for how well your organization is working. It's not a perfect objective measurement, but it's better than just emotions.
We could all quibble over various things on the list but that would miss the bigger question. How do we get there?
We can all agree it would be great to have less poverty, homelessness, hunger/malnutrition, untreated medical conditions, etc. but addressing these issues is difficult and everyone has a different idea on how is best. Many things on your list are probably even more difficult.
Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply he was at fault for what he provided or didn't provide. And there's nothing wrong with looking further at what he said but I chose not to do that here or now. I thought it was more worthwhile to mention that the difficult part is putting it into action.
Shortly after Obama was first elected, I read Audacity of Hope. At first I was amazed how much I agreed with him. At some point before I finished the book, I realized I agreed with his identification of various problems but his book said nothing further and we almost certainly disagreed on many of the causes and almost completely disagreed on how to address the problems he identified. I went from seeing what we had in common to realizing we agreed on almost nothing. I'm not saying I'm equally far from agreement with AK but then again, maybe I am. IDK.
Regarding constitutional order, one thing that bothers me is that our checks and balances don't work as well anymore. They are designed around competition between different branches or houses of government and between state and federal government, but loyalties these days are more to political party than to those things. Maybe we need more formal checks and balances between the parties. We already have some of that, with many government commissions and legislative committees having members assigned by party. Maybe we need more of that. The thing I *don't * like about that is that it would lock in the two main parties even more. Just throwing out ideas, I have no solutions.
You hit the nail on the head. The founders feared the power of "faction" (what we call "political party"). Alas, they did not figure out how to neutralize faction reliably. Party allegiance can undermine separation of powers, if one party develops a majority in each of the separate powers. The result is tyranny of the majority.
That's a common misstatement of some parts of the Federalist papers but it fails on closer examination. The Founders were well acquainted with combinations of interests as the entire Constitutional framework is a series of compromises between large urban and small rural states, slave vs free states, and so on. Multiple Founders were involved in the creation of the first US party system. Their definition of 'faction' was not political party per se but something a lot closer to 'ideology', essentially combinations that coalesced around ideas that did not represent concrete interests that might be amenable to compromise solutions but which were held to dogmatically.
In the Federalist paper Publius (Madison?) writes:
"By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
(Fed. 10, 57).
Publius and other founders used the classical tripartite set of motivations — interests, passions, reason (impartiality, justice) — rather than the posterior concept, ideology, to interpret behavior.
It seems that the term "ideology" was coined c. 1796 by a French philosopher, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, compte de Tracy, to denote an academic discipline, "the science of ideas":
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ideology/
The term acquired its modern meaning in the 19th century.
See also Alan Gibson's specific discussion of faction, in his chapter, "Madison's Republican Remedy," in Rakove & Sheehan, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Federalist (Cambridge U. Press, 2020) pp. 263-301.
My Chartertopia elects three winners from each district, and they cast all the votes they won in the legislature. All voters can nominate a volunteer, one is drawn at random (and has to agree and be eligible) to be an amateur legislator who casts all remaining votes. Yes, they have to add up all those weird numbers for every vote. No more voice votes or raising hands; they have to go on record for every vote. It takes 2/3 approval to pass bills, by both those proxies and by headcount.
* It makes vote trading harder and confuses pundits.
* It encourages voting even when your favorite is behind in the polls.
* It turns legislators into true representatives. Even the amateur is a better representative, since anyone who volunteers is something of a maverick, and everyone who did not vote for any of the winners would probably rather be represented by the amateur.
* It slows down party politics and makes consensus much more important. Especially combined with needing 2/3 to pass bills and 1/4 of the headcount being amateurs, it makes party control difficult.
The reasons checks and balances have broken down are multifaceted within each branch. The presidency paradoxically holds too much executive power in some areas while being unable to control unaccountable executive branch agencies. Congress is too polarized and full of people who are either stupid, extraordinarily petty, Machiavellian, or all three. The executive branch has also grown beyond the scope of what congressional committees can reasonably oversee, although hopefully, the end of Chevron deference leads to some positive changes. Unfortunately, the judicial branch is the least degenerated of the three and also the most unpopular. It would also be nice if the federal judiciary was willing to constrain executive power once in a while beyond halting executive orders that leftist judges read about in the Washington Post while sipping their morning coffee.
One thing that would be good here is for Congress to stop delegating so much power to the executive, in the interest of political expediency (avoiding tough votes).
Unfortunately, the only likely way for that to happen would be for SCOTUS to force them to take back said powers.
Which is at least plausible with this SCOTUS.
Throwing out Chevron deference, and making up the non-delegation and major questions doctrines are the most hopeful signs I've seen in ages. But it's too late to roll back the past abuses, like Wickard or the Slaughterhouse cases.
Very much agree. I'm tired of both major parties' behavior and performance and would like to see enhanced restraints (checks & balances). A couple of ideas that sound promising but maybe hard to do include ranked choice voting, which might encourage candidates building broader coalitions, and enhancing independent oversight bodies, such as the Governmental Accountability Office, the CBO and Inspector Generals. Would love to see how it is possible to achieve these.
Any oversight from the government itself is just begging for more corruption and needing more levels of oversight. Who watches the watchers, and all that.
I can't see any solution less than the people themselves having full transparent access to all government spending records, and full authority to prosecute on their own. One of my pre-Chartertopia ideas was that any citizen should be able to challenge any law or regulation to be judged by 12 random competent adults.
* Put them all in separate rooms with the law or regulation, a pad of paper, a pen (not pencil, and no eraser), and whatever technical dictionaries or manuals deemed necessary.
* Have them either write down their own interpretation of the law or regulation, or answer a specific question, such as "Does this insurance policy cover a skydiver blown off course who drowned in a pool?".
* Compare them all. If more than one or two differ too much from the others, the law or regulation is unclear, confusing, etc; throw it out and tell the legislature or agency to try again.
Naturally there are complications. Who picks those 12 random competent adults? Who compares their results? What qualifies as "different"?
But those are no worse than modern courts. There is something wrong with juries having to decide unanimously with only the judge to clarify questions, then a appeals court splits 2-1 in spite of taking a year with the brightest law clerks, best legal libraries, and all the amicus briefs people can supply; then the full court takes another stab at it and reverses themselves 7-8, and then the Supreme Court takes another year or two to reverse 5-4.
If a judicial question is so confusing that appeals courts split like that, then the underlying question is not falsifiable and ought to be resolved against the government.
It has to be out of the government's hands, otherwise it is just government defining its own limits, and that is the road to tyranny.
Loyalty is more to the bureaucracy than the party, but turns into party loyalty when expanding the bureaucracy becomes a partisan divide.
My Charteropia tries to solve the problem by literally putting the legislature under the voters' control. Every district can have its own elections, and those elections vote on bills which voters submit and which governments have no say in; they cannot reject any or revise them or postpone them. One of the things these "direct democracy" bills do is schedule legislature elections, and if they skip elections and have no representatives, legislation does not apply in their district. DD bills can also override legislation -- change tax rates, repeal legislation, or do things the legislature refused to do.
The legislature is entirely a subset of the DD bills. Legislatures can't do anything the DD bills can't do. Their only difference is being faster acting and it being legislators' full time job.
And there's no President. If the legislature wants a commander in chief for some war, or someone to head the National Park Service or run the FBI, they have to interview candidates and hire the executives themselves, per ordinary contract which they can cancel at any time. It has always struck me as schizoid how the President nominates agency heads, Congress interviews them and votes on hiring them, grills them as if they were their bosses, yet they legally answer to the President. It's as if they have two bosses. I say get rid of that middle man the President and make Congress their boss in name as well as fact.
A lot more too, and it's all fantasy, but it's my fantasy and been a lot of fun :-)
I listen to a lot of Russian-related content, and Kasparov's proposal is part of a broader response to, or backlash against, the reelection of DJT by the expat Russian 'intelligentsia,' of which Kasparov is a prominent member. This backlash is motivated partly, if not mostly, by the expat Russian intelligentsia's response to the Trump administration's shift in policy towards Russia, in particular, the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Russia in an effort (so far mainly fruitless) to clean up the mess of the Ukraine conflict left by the Biden administration. I will address my comments to this response, and to the anti-Putin Russian diaspora more generally, rather than to AK's list of the causes he is for. It is noteworthy that Kasparov, in common with other expat Russians who have been speaking out in recent weeks (WSJ's Trofimov, Kara-Murza), is of partly Jewish ancestry. I am not going to go into the significance of that, except to say it is probably more common than one might think and probably not a coincidence.
I lived in Russia during the early transition period, and that experience permanently cured me of any illusions I may have had about remaking Russia in America's image. To those Russian expats who dream of Russia becoming a democracy, 'free society,' or whatever they want to call it, I say good luck with that, but leave my country out of it. Don't expect America to be either the world's policeman or the world's savior, and to expend blood and treasure rescuing Ukraine or Russia from Putin. We've been trying to do that for more than 3 years now, and it has been a spectacular failure. More importantly, having failed in your efforts to turn Russia into a 'free society,' please spare us and don't redirect your energies into saving freedom and democracy in the United States. Thanks, but no thanks. I see from the first comment that Kasparov apparently has drawn some comparisons between the Putin and Trump 'mob families,' and Russian and American 'oligarchy.' I call BS on that. Russia is not like the United States, but conversely, the United States is not, nor will it ever be, like Russia, Trump notwithstanding.
The only specific objection Kasparov raises in his piece concerns the detainment and effort to deport foreign students like Khalil. Kasparov is careful to say he is against the radical beliefs of students like Khalil, but like Patrick Henry, he wants to defend free speech and objects to Trump's 'authoritarian methods.' Others have commented on this topic in an eloquent and more nuanced way than I could (try Hanania), so I'll just say stuff it, Garry. American Jews already have people like Peter Beinart speaking out in defense of Hamas, so we don't need any additional help from the likes of Garry Vainshtein (see Wiki -- fyi, it was not uncommon for Russians to take their mother's last name when the father's last name was obviously Jewish).
Wait, has Richard Hanania defended deporting Khalil? That is not what I'd expect his opinion to be about that matter.
From various quarters (and in one case from a real, live Russian) I hear, "you Westerners will never understand; Russians *want* a Tsar." Do you believe that's true? Would love to hear some specific anecdotes from the transition that cured you of your illusion that Russia could be liberalized. I recently read Figes' Story of Russia and he makes the case that at several junctions, it could have gone either way.
Well, you are one up on me, as I never heard a live Russian tell me Russians want a Tsar. Too simplistic for my tastes. And Russia is certainly more liberalized than it was under Soviet Communism. For example, Russians no longer go to prison simply for engaging in private, for-profit economic activity. I don't think the anecdotes I could tell would convey the gut feeling I got from living there for several years. I would say there was an obvious difference between Eastern European countries like Poland and Russia. Poland was under Soviet occupation, and Poles hate Russians for historical reasons (and also because they just do), so when Poland and other Eastern European states were liberated from Soviet domination, they viewed the West in general, and the US in particular, as their savior, and were much more open and receptive to Western influence, values and investment, and were willing to adopt investor-friendly policies and business arrangements to attract FDI. Russians were also receptive to, and benefited from, Western business knowhow and technology transfer, but they were never as enthusiastic and accommodating as the Eastern Europeans tended to be. Foreign control of key assets, such as in the oil and gas sector, was never in the cards. Obviously, I'm generalizing here, but I think that is a fair generalization.
Thank you for your wisdom and common sense. Since I discovered you in the early days of blogging I think that you have had a bigger and better influence on my thinking than any other writer. I'm sure that many others have been similarly enriched. I hope that you feel a deep sense of pride (consistent with humility!) in knowing how much you have made the world a better place. Thank you!
I took a skim through that "better regulatory state" page. I especially take issue with the idea that urbanization requires regulation: "In a city, it matters whether the owner of the lot next door puts up a family residence, a psychiatrist's office, a 24-hour convenience store, or a night club." This strikes me as not much different from people worrying about Walmart or Home Depot setting up a big box store in a residential neighborhood. It's nonsense; the infrastructure won't support it, and that's one thing that seems to be forgotten, that private investors aren't going to waste their money on such loony locations.
I've lived in cities with mixed stores and apartments. I fail to see how a psychiatrist's office can be a problem. Neighbors came and went and had visitors all the time. A fresh patient every hour or half hour would be no different.
24 hour convenience stores are no different than big box stores; they aren't going to open where there's no clientele, and if there's enough clientele to stay open 24 hours a day, then they are obviously wanted.
And a nightclub? In a residential neighborhood? Same story. They self-select for areas where the clientele and infrastructure support them and allow making a profit. It's not like there's so much demand that they'd pop up on every block if the regulators disappeared. Costs matter too, and industrial districts are cheaper, have better parking at night, and don't have to worry about neighbors holding them accountable for vomit and cigarette butts.
I really don't like the whole attitude in that article that people are incapable of being responsible on their own, or that they are incapable of holding the irresponsible ones accountable on their own. But I only skimmed it once I got to that urbanization line.
“People who regard profit-seeking as immoral and working for non-profits or government as morally superior have it exactly backwards.”
If I could change only one thing about the average midwit leftist, it would be to insert this idea into their brains.
That they have this idea wrong is the single biggest reason why Richard Hanania is wrong to claim that the Dems are the party of Elite Human Capital.
In fact, it only just occurred to me now the irony of the phrase itself: since Richard’s definition of it includes all those midwit leftists, in fact most of those he claims are Elite Human Capital… don’t actually believe in capitalism!
In re Honesty-Humility "Everyone I feel close to is high in this trait. My sense is that every President in this century has been low in this trait."
I don't think it is just Presidents of the 21st century that are low in this trait. I think most politicians are, as are many business leaders. The incentives for success in politics and large company management seem to select for people who are low in this.
Some tensions and tradeoffs I see in this list: Greed Avoidance v Profit Seeking, Modesty v Intellectual Prestige Hierarchy. Not irreconcilable, but real conflicts I think.
Strict originalism about the Constitution is a good thing, but it needs to be an originalism that fully takes into account the later amendments, especially the Reconstruction amendments. See the work of Akhil Amar.
"I think that some of our experiments with sexual behavior, gambling, and recreational drug use are not working well."
Whether this is true or not, it seems a little ironic that small government proponent wants something in this area that can only be accomplished by more government.
I don't know. Things like that are usually accomplished by social norms, not government. But many of our social norms have changed in unfortunate ways. I don't think that government could mandate better social norms...
I only meant that governments have legalized more gambling and more recreational drugs, which has no doubt increased use.
I suppose so. I would argue that outlawing gambling and drugs is an attempt to mandate particular social norms, but was never very effective. It seems like most people agree that alcohol prohibition caused more problems than the alcohol did, and that may also be true of gambling and drug prohibition. They both feed large amounts of money to organized crime.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by effective but legalizing drugs and gambling results in them being far more prevalent.
I just meant that the criminalization was never able to eliminate them. I'm sure you're right that it did reduce their prevalence. But it also increased the power and prevalence of organized crime.
Arguably less government, less nanny, where drug use is concerned.
“ that can only be accomplished by more government.”
But that’s not true that that is the ONLY way to accomplish AK’s goals.
They can also be accomplished by changing the culture.
Which is the positive vision of what he is for that AK is advocating.
It is only ironic when a small government advocate asserts that the answer is more government. AK did not do this.
My subjective opinion is that the ability of government to impact these activities is at least an order of magnitude larger than cultural.
Agreed AK did not specify here but my memory is he has spoken against increased legalization in the past.
“My subjective opinion is that the ability of government to impact these activities is at least an order of magnitude larger than cultural.”
I'm not at all sure about that. Take smoking. It has gone from ubiquitous to something only low class people do. Certainly government had a hand in that, bans on smoking in indoor public places, etc. But I wouldn't give government 91% of the credit.
Or drunk driving. There's a lot less of it than there used to be. A major reason is lowered blood alcohol limits and increased enforcement. But a lot seems to be endogenous social change. Something I'd like to know: where did the idea of a "designated driver" come from? Some creative guy in a D.O.T.? An ordinary person lost to history?
Legalized sports gambling does seem to have lead to a major increase in people gambling on sports--and a major increase in the amounts bet. It will be interesting to see what the cultural reaction will be.
I won't make the mistake of saying you are wrong. Indeed, much of what you say is true. But here's a bit of counter-argument.
A cultural shift that makes it easier to change laws is still government action, not culture change.
Drunk driving fell much more among 18-20 year olds who had their legal drinking ended. For adults above the drinking age, I'd argue it was almost all due to stiffer penalties and more enforcement, or at least the perception of more enforcement and penalties.
As for cigarettes, I'd argue that the biggest change, by far, was banning smoking in public places. This is what made it less acceptable.
On that last note, I think it would be interesting to ban serving alcohol in public places, or at least limit it to beer and wine served with meals (strict limits on alcohol % on each, maybe quantity limits too). This might largely avoid the illegal supply problem.
That's an interesting question. What if there's a completely cultural shift against drunk driving People then pressure their legislatures to lower blood alcohol limits and enforce more strictly. This then leads to a further cultural shift against drunk driving.
Or what if there's no cultural shift. But experts come to feel that lower limits and enhanced enforcement are necessary and legislatures and governors listen to them and enact that. Which then leads to a cultural shift.
Is the first 100% cultural and the second 100% government? Or do we have to say it's both? And if so, is it possible to divide up the responsibility?
No doubt this is an unanswerable question. Not sure we need to. It's certainly not important in regards to where this thread started. I noted the role of government action in reducing these vices. No matter which is the chicken or egg, government action plays a critical role in all of the examples discussed.
“My subjective opinion is that the ability of government to impact these activities is at least an order of magnitude larger than cultural.”
To the extent that I think you mean can have more short-term impact more quickly/easily, than I agree with you.
But by definition the much harder cultural change would in almost all cases have the larger impact in the long term.
And while I do think you’re right about what AK has suggested re: drugs and especially gambling in the past is correct, he’s also never said he is a Bryan Caplan or David Friedman and believes in extremely limited government and ultimately anarcho-capitalism.
In fact he’s recently advocated for “state capacity libertarianism“ in a way that is a bit too big a role for government for my personal tastes, although one I find interesting and at least reasonable
I'd bet that legalizing sports gambling to states that had none resulted in a many fold increase. Maybe we couldn't get back to the previous state by making it illegal again but I don't see cultural making even close to as much difference. I'd say this applies to lotteries even more strongly.
On state run lotteries I indeed agree with you.
On the rest I’m having trouble following what you’re saying.
Because of course there will be less gambling if it is illegal. But that’s not the relevant question.
The question is will there be less *harmful* gambling, and less *harm* (in toto) from gambling if it is illegal. Given the Prohibition example, that is far less obvious. But yet that is your case when you say “big government” making stuff illegal will have more long term impact than changing the culture.
Yes, the harms of the same amount of illegal vices are greater.
Not sure why you agree more on lotteries.
Agreed prohibition muddies the water. The bigger issue is that almost everyone wants it legal. Far more than gambling or other drugs. That said, I don't think there is any doubt the harms of legal drinking are greater. We have a problem today that was surely far smaller during prohibition. How many would die of drunk driving if alcohol were illegal?
All I have to add is YES. Quite close to what I think.
While I admire Madison, “constitutional” and other legal and political constraints on the federal government are a product of 19th developments. See North-Wallis-Weingast’s framework. Madison did not anticipate the development of modern political parties (vs “factions”).
“talking about it as a “trait” makes it sound hard-wired. Maybe we should call it a virtue instead.” Seconded. I’m for virtue.
Aristotle thought that virtues are acquired traits. Split the difference...
With big hope, checked Kasparov's The Next Move. Disappointing, he is a lefty. He really doesn't get it, though his TDS is only 66.5% on Karpov scale.
Arnold, I like your response, even if it was prompted by such an inane word salad post.
“People who regard profit-seeking as immoral and working for non-profits or government as morally superior have it exactly backwards.”
Well, the rest of what you wrote might be all well and good, but the above means you should be cancelled.
You are obviously an oppressor and not on the side of the non-straight, non-cis, non-male BiPoC oppressed…
I have been reading and enjoying Arnold’s posts since his AIMST series.
"People who regard profit-seeking as immoral and working for non-profits or government as morally superior have it exactly backwards."
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While this may not be exactly true, by economic and attention-based measures, I would assume that it's mostly correct. This is a non-binary issue.
The sticking point here is that lots of productive work can only start in a non-profit capacity, even if inevitably, the organization which begins such work quickly devolves into a very different enterprise that still uses the same logo, call to action, and mission statement. This same paradox can describe various federally funded research initiatives as well as religious and “truly” charitable institutions. The list is very long.
Good people have a difficult time saying things like this out-loud, assuming that other people will throw themselves into the fire before they do, and we can just free-ride on their daring. This tiny statement of support is my small contribution on top of yours.
Thanks,
"lots of productive work can only start in a non-profit capacity"
Why? What do non-profits bring to the table except a tax writeoff?
Has nothing to do with nonprofit status, tax write-offs, etc. for any number of reasons, people take on projects at various points in their life where profit is not the main driver. They just wanna get something done. Look at Steve Balmer‘s current project with a national 10k (USAFacts)(*). He’s not looking to make bank. Good luck in getting something like this done trying to make money.
Some people actually do care about what they’re working on in life and making money is not the most important element. Not for profit status means so much more beyond claiming profitability and what to do with proceeds. The difficult thing is that it’s these factors that often provide perverse incentives for others to get involved. For instance, countless people want to “hop on” various boards of directors even if they don’t know what the organization exactly does. It looks excellent on a résumé to be on numerous boards.
(*) https://fedscoop.com/steve-ballmer-wants-usafacts-10-k-report-government/
I suppose I sort of understand what I think you want to mean. But it doesn't answer the question of why non-profit matters. If all Steve Ballmer cared about was not making a profit, he could give away his fortune. The fact that he didn't start this project until he had a fortune tells me more that he doesn't really believe his project could stand by itself.
Profits are not just a way to make money. They are a signal that you're doing something right. When you refuse to care about that signal, it means you don't care if you could be doing better.
I used to take long bicycle rides and a friend suggested I enter some time trials, where everyone starts a minute apart and all times are compared when the last rider finished. I didn't like them. My measurement of success was not comparing myself to others, but to my subjective comparison with past rides. I still had my profit, so to speak.
But I don't see how that can work for any kind of organization involving lots of other people. If the head honcho feels great about it, but the staff are just in it for the paychecks, I doubt he's getting as much objective good out of it as he could. Either he's willfully blind to that inefficiency, or he knows and doesn't care that he could be doing better, or his secret goal is to provide paychecks for sloppy work, or ... something.
I don’t think we’re connecting on this. Doing big projects that require more than one person typically need business entities to get people paid, etc. Some people want to get really big things done and not everyone has the luxury of working for free. I don’t know why you may be looking for a reason why Steve Ballmer may have other, untoward intentions but you’re free to come up with your own example in this situation.
Dude, his primary point is that if something can’t make a profit it is generally not serving other people. Or at least not serving them as well as it could.
Even if there are exceptions to this rule, and even if your Ballmer example happens to be one of those exceptions.
And I’ll note that these people you say have to get paid, well unless they are willing to work for something at or close to minimum wage, it means they don’t believe in said project enough either to vote for it with their own money and time.
And so Charteropia’s point is right: Ballmer is just giving away his money to others. In this case, he is willingly giving it to highly paid people who don’t believe in his pet cause as much as he does, because they have to be paid a lot of money to be willing to devote their time to it.
Most people who work at non-profits don’t make much money at all, never mind the countless writers who (rightfully) obsess over Healthcare executives and other major industry abuses. There is no way Bill and his ex wife’s foundation could hire the talent they needed in short time by telling all applicants they need to earn minimum wage. This is a dumb argument for us to be having.
But it’s true that working at non-profits often provide a sense of social status or other feelings I’d associate with showing up to church on time.
All of this gets further from my comment on Klings post, mostly (but not entirely) concurring that some people have their heads on entirely backward.
Your last paragraph about the comments being “right”, that Steve Ballmer is just giving his money away and that because others aren’t doing it for free (like the guy who founded it worth 125B) means they don’t really care as much as he does (?) is not my responsibility to refute. This is where I get off. I just don’t agree.
I'm not trying to explain why Steve Ballmer does anything, what his ultimate motivation is. I'm only puzzled about why the lack of profit is so important.
* How does doing it as a non-profit makes the end product or service better than if he'd done it for profit?
* Profit is one signal for how well your organization is working. It's not a perfect objective measurement, but it's better than just emotions.
In some endeavors, it’s not the lack of profit that’s important.
In some endeavors, It’s the profit that’s not important.
To think that only for-profit ventures provide good results is pure ignorance.
Excellent. Maybe your best posting yet.
Perhaps you’re a new reader.
:)
We could all quibble over various things on the list but that would miss the bigger question. How do we get there?
We can all agree it would be great to have less poverty, homelessness, hunger/malnutrition, untreated medical conditions, etc. but addressing these issues is difficult and everyone has a different idea on how is best. Many things on your list are probably even more difficult.
But the OG Kasparov point is to start with a positive vision - what you are for vs what you are merely against.
That is what AK is doing here.
He never suggested that it was the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything.
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P.S. that answer is 42
Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply he was at fault for what he provided or didn't provide. And there's nothing wrong with looking further at what he said but I chose not to do that here or now. I thought it was more worthwhile to mention that the difficult part is putting it into action.
Shortly after Obama was first elected, I read Audacity of Hope. At first I was amazed how much I agreed with him. At some point before I finished the book, I realized I agreed with his identification of various problems but his book said nothing further and we almost certainly disagreed on many of the causes and almost completely disagreed on how to address the problems he identified. I went from seeing what we had in common to realizing we agreed on almost nothing. I'm not saying I'm equally far from agreement with AK but then again, maybe I am. IDK.