Yoo's Back

John Yoo, Chief architect for the George W. Bush administration's more novel views on the constitution and presidentialauthority not found written down anywhere, is sharing his thoughts on the National Security Agency and revelations that the agency, via the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, can collect information on whomever it wants, whenever it wants, regardless of whatever medium humans can communicate through.

Mr. Yoo is against putting the NSA in an "impossible position", because "we are placing these kinds of domestic law-enforcement standards on a foreign intelligence function. With domestic law enforcement, we want the Justice Department to monitor one identified target (identified because other evidence gives probable cause that he or she has already committed a crime) and to carefully minimize any surveillance so as not to intrude on privacy interests.

Once we impose those standards on the military and intelligence agencies, however, we are either guaranteeing failure or we must accept a certain level of error. If the military and intelligence agencies had to follow law-enforcement standards, their mission would fail because they would not give us any improvement over what the FBI could achieve anyway."

What Mr. Yoo fails to grasp is that the government, whether domestic law enforcement, the military or intelligence agencies, is covered by the same standard.  Namely that the government does not have the right to search a person, his house or his "effects" without a warrant and that warrants may only be issued upon probable cause.  The "reasonable suspicion" standard that allows police to detain a suspect temporarily doesn't cut the mustard here.  There are no hidden, secret codicils that say the president gets to do whatever he wants under certain circumstances.  And if the government, all in the name of protecting us, gets to pick and choose what authority it has and what what rights the people get to enjoy under specific circumstances, the whole system has failed.

It is a point I have made before and feel obligated to repeat: in our system, the people are the sovereign, the government is the servant.  Executives, legislators and bureaucrats do not have the authority to decide what powers they have.  This is kind of important.

Don't Call it That

I like language.  I'm not an expert, rather a hobbyist.  I like to play with words in order to convey meaning, tone, emotion and I enjoy writers who do well what I attempt futilely.

I like the utility of words and appreciate the development of contemporary communication, save the text lingo and obsessiveness with acronyms, but that is a fight for another day.

But sometimes, I find, that we don't have words to describe certain things or events.  Neologisms come and go, but it's weird to stumble upon needing a word to describe a thing or event that has been around since civilization dawned.

Take, for instance, when the military in Egypt overthrew the popularly elected government of Mohammed Morsi and suspended the constitution a few weeks ago.  I could have sworn that there was a phrase that we had, of French origin, that described perfectly what that is ("overthrow" is too prosaic).  I scanned wikipedia, I flipped through dusty old books, I meandered through the local library and I couldn't find the words that I was certain existed.

Someone foolishly suggested that the words I was looking for were "coup d'etat," the definition of which is (from dictionary.com):

a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force.

But that can't be it, because the United State Department of State says unequivocally that what happened in Egypt is not a coup d'etat.  Because if it was, according to the law that authorizes the disbursement of financial and military aid to Egypt if the military overthrows the government, then the more than $1.2 billion dollars that our government takes from current and future taxpayers and sends to Egypt each year would automatically be cut.

So my search continues to find out what to call what happened in Egypt.  Any help would be appreciated.

Head Slap Special

President Obama is "pivoting" again, trying to bring attention to the economy.  Which might night be such a hot idea because, in this arena, he's an idiot.

And I don't say that because he's a socialist who like to "spread around" other people's wealth, though that does not help his score here.  I say that because he doesn't know how markets work.  And if you don't know how markets work, you shouldn't try to focus attention on the fact that markets aren't working very well and that the reason they aren't working as well as they ought is directly related to policies promulgated by like-minded intellectual pygmies.

The best part is that he thinks his speeches will help his cause, and if his cause is helped, more of the policies he supports will be put in place and then the economy will perform better.  Let's never mind that this is the heighth of hubris that Hayek addresses in the quote cited on the banner, but just mind that liberal policies are the worst thing you can do to an economy.

But if we put aside the trade-off between the costs versus benefits of wealth-transfer schemes, avoid the discussion of whether the distribution of income is even a concern of the federal government and shy away from rhetoric such as (from the president's speech yesterday at Knox College, emphasis added):

"In the period after World War II, a growing middle class was the engine of our prosperity.  Whether you owned a company, or swept its floors, or worked anywhere in between, this country offered you a basic bargain -- a sense that your hard work would be rewarded with fair wages and decent benefits, the chance to buy a home, to save for retirement, and most of all, a chance to hand down a better life for your kids.

But over time, that engine began to stall -- and a lot of folks here saw it -- that bargain began to fray.  Technology made some jobs obsolete.  Global competition sent a lot of jobs overseas.  It became harder for unions to fight for the middle class.  Washington doled out bigger tax cuts to the very wealthy and smaller minimum wage increases for the working poor."***

And

"So in many ways, the trends that I spoke about here in 2005 -- eight years ago -- the trend of a winner-take-all economy where a few are doing better and better and better, while everybody else just treads water -- those trends have been made worse by the recession.  And that's a problem.

This growing inequality not just of result, inequality of opportunity -- this growing inequality is not just morally wrong, it’s bad economics.  Because when middle-class families have less to spend, guess what, businesses have fewer consumers.  When wealth concentrates at the very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy.  When the rungs on the ladder of opportunity grow farther and farther apart, it undermines the very essence of America -- that idea that if you work hard you can make it here."

You can look at actual facts, like:

    (source)

Yes, the president and his supporters are correct.  The middle class is shrinking.  More people are becoming wealthy and slightly fewer people are as poor as they were.  But why let facts get in the way of dulcet, but fatuous, rhetoric.


***Please see here for a partial antidote to this paragraph.  There is so much wrong in his speech and this paragraph is the lodestar for its sophistry.

Of Course He's Smiling. He's Probably Drunk

I'm agnostic on the current immigration debate.  I am for almost completely unfettered open borders, specifically so far as a source for employees is concerned.  If someone can pass some form of security background check, welcome in.
This would work, of course, so long as we were to get rid entirely of the wealth-transfer schemes dressed up as social welfare.  But that is a fight for another day.
The reason I am agnostic is that if the matter is to be addressed by our legislators, I am reasonably certain that the result will be ineffective and expensive.
But God bless Harry Reid for giving me the best reason of all not to support the legislation currently under consideration:

The First Tea Party was Hosted by a Madman

It hasn't happened for a while, but I have occasionally been asked for my thoughts on the "Tea Party" movement.

At first, I thought there might be something to it.  Without knowing what those that identified themselves as tea-partiers stood for, I only knew that people like Keith Olbermann and Aaron Sorkin hated them and called them racists.  Based on that alone, you could have colored me a supporter.

But upon examination, the movement, such as it is, revealed itself to be entirely lacking in any sort of credibility or coherent political philosophy that demonstrates a scintilla of rigorous thought.  I think contemporary progressivism (modern "liberalism") is intellectually offensive and an insult to human dignity; contemporary conservatism is morally bankrupt and clings to impotent nostrums.  But as Walter  Sobchak says in the Big Lebwoski



The Tea Party is an ephemeral trifle.  Hastening itself to its rightful place in forgotten lore, one of the groups that constitutes the movement, the Tea Party Leadership Fund, is pushing for Sarah Palin to run for Senate.  Well done.

Celebrating Diversity

The gay marriage debate is front and center.  I posted my two cents on the matter here over four years ago and, revisiting it today I'd say certain excessive flourishes aside, I stand by what I wrote.

I am a libertarian and hold dear to the notion that behavior by one's self or between consenting adults that does not harm another person or his property is of no concern whatsoever to the state.  I don't know what's best for you, you don't know what's best for me and together we don't know what's best for the other guy.  And this applies to Michael Bloomberg, too.

To recap, I have no problem with gay marriage.  But I am willing to argue the matter with those who may not agree with me.  And I do not think opponents of gay marriage, whatever reason they may have for their opposition, are arguing in bad faith.  So you see how wonderful I am, right?

I was cruising the internet today and I saw this headline at the Huffington Post (here is the story).

I don't really care about the story, it was the headline that grabbed me.  Because places like the Huffington Post (among many other sources) not too long ago bemoaned the "epistemic closure" on the right (Julian Sanchez, libertarian and Cato research fellow, got the ball rolling here and here).  If you don't feel like wading through the morass, it boils down to the fact that conservatives are closed-minded.  Sanchez was making, to my mind, a legitimate critique on contemporary political philosophy. Contemporary in the sense that he was using examples from the (then) current headlines.  The liberals went nuts and ran with the meme, missing the point that this is an issue of contemporary political philosophy, not merely conservatism.

Anyway, the headline reminded me of all this because if you are a Republican who agrees that gays should be allowed to get married, you are either related to someone who is gay or you are truly open-minded.  But if you are a Democrat who opposes either gay marriage or federal intervention into state matters or what have you, you are an embarrassment.  Open-mindedness has nothing to do with considering opinions that you may not necessarily agree with, it means agreeing with liberals (n.b.- Jonathan Chait makes the point that fans of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck would be well-served to read the Huffington Post or other liberal sources, because the practice of listening to opposing view is essential to good citizenship; he does not provide the same advise to devotees of the New Republic or MSNBC, which is surprising).

Diversity of thinking is a beautiful thing, so long as you agree with me.

Foolish Thinking



I love this crazy lady

 

 

Elizabeth Warren says that minimum wage should be $22/hour.  Well, she doesn't say it, she says someone else says it would be if wages kept pace with productivity.  And apparently she agrees.  And when you are on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, when you agree with something this stupid, the rest of us had better hold on to our wallets.

 

Let's put aside the notion that legislators, most of whom haven't the foggiest idea how to create and/or adhere to a budget much less about crazy things like marginal productivity, have insight into what the minimum amount a worker should be paid regardless of that worker's marginal productivity (i.e., no matter what value is produced by a given worker for that hour of labor, we will pay him $x because... well, because that's what's fair!, until, of course, it isn't fair anymore).  Got it?  Let's just ignore all of that.

 

Let's concentrate on productivity.  Labor is a factor of production, labor does not equal production.  The factors of productivity (Y) are Labor (L), physical capital (K), human capital (H) and natural resources (N).  So the production function would look like this: Y = f(L, K, H, N), because productivity is a function of its factors.

 

But what about technology?  Technology has its own variable, A, and technology is not a factor of production.  It is a variable that increases (or decreases, let's not forget the Dark Ages), the effective productivity of all factors as the variable increases (or decreases).  So the real production function looks like this:

 

Y = A f(L, K, H, N)

 

What this means, simply, is that there is no direct correlation between the increase in productivity and the marginal contribution of any particular employee's labor, and a general increase in Y has no direct correlation to the quantity of L in the macroeconomic sense.  So when they stopped using people to connect phone calls through switchboards and moved over to computers, this increase in productivity (more phone calls being routed quickly, efficiently and correctly all around the country) was not the result of "better labor" or an increase in the marginal production of the labor force.  What the productivity function shows is that productivity can increase even if a particular factor decreases or remains unchanged.

 

So the question is, is the marginal product of the burger-flipper $22/hour?  Of course it isn't.  How can I say that so easily?  Because the market doesn't pay $22/hour to uneducated, unskilled people to flip burgers.  Because that would be an inefficient allocation of resources.  Resources that must be taken from elsewhere to make up the difference to the person not contributing $22 worth of goods or services per hour of labor to the market.

 

So even if $7.25 seems unfair please note that fairness is a matter for philosophers and priests and seek counsel from them.  Because $7.25 is also a distortion, just not to the degree, that $22/hour or $100/hour minimum wage would be.

 

See here, here and here for further readings.  And call you congresscritter and ask humbly that the minimum wage be abolished.