"Arbitrarily deciding that one group of people (private industry) is good and another (government) is bad really just doesn’t make much sense"

Sean DeCoursey on 124 Monkeys:

"Waste, fraud and abuse are endemic to everything( TRUE )

Posted by: Sean DeCoursey in Politics

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Michael Sherer of Time put this post up on the Swampland blog yesterday, and it contained the following quote: “Republicans also have the ability to recast themselves as reformers( IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE MAYBE. THEY COMPLETELY BUY INTO THIS HYBRID SYSTEM ), as the loyal opposition to the waste, fraud and abuse that is endemic to government,”. This really jumped out at me because it’s such a distillation of the conservative, small government ideology.

The small/anti-government types really do believe that government by its nature is incompetent and prone to abuse, waste, and attracts only the morally unsound and incompetent who want a job they can’t be fired from. The other side of this belief, that private industry is some kind of magical paragon of virtue and industriousness has to be adopted to support the first view.

Well, in case anyone hasn’t been paying attention to the economy for the last few months, waste, fraud, and abuse are just as endemic, if not moreso, in private industry( TRUE ). Actually, if you look at it, you know who corrupts the government into waste, fraud, and abuse when it does happen? Private industry.

Any organization made up of people who want to advance/make money/achieve influence/whatever is subject to corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse. There’s nothing new about this. It’s been going on for pretty much forever. Arbitrarily deciding that one group of people (private industry) is good and another (government) is bad really just doesn’t make much sense. At all. In fact, it’s fairly asinine( OK ).

I know that many conservative thinkers/writers/whatever would argue that they do have empirical, non-arbitrary evidence that government is prone to waste, fraud, and abuse. Fine, I cede the point. It is. But again, so is private industry. The current state of the economy (and the reasons for it) are pretty much all the evidence of that anyone could ever require.( ON THIS POINT I AGREE )

Personally, I think government should do handle infrastructure, defense, insurance, education, and give everyone a level playing field( OK ). Everything else, a regulated free for all - basically the level playing field( OK ). Do I expect all of this to be accomplished without waste, fraud, and abuse? Yes. Do I think it will happen without waste, fraud, and abuse occuring? No. But that doesn’t mean we should just be like “Screw it. I’m outtie.” ( TRUE )

And that’s really what the conservative/small government position on this boils down to. It’ll be partially not perfect, so forget it, we’re not going to do it at all. It’s like a doctor saying he won’t operate on a someone who only has an 80% chance to live. Or a patient who’s lost an arm but can be stabilized and saved. It’s an abandonment of responsibility combined with an admission of cowardice and failure( IT'S MORE BS PR ).

I think I may have ended up rambling a bit and repeating myself some on this post, but the absurdity of the concept demanded it. I think."

I generally agree. Private Enterprise is simply more useful for some things. I probably would like less government than he does. But vice is endemic to all human endeavors.

"The net effect is again an increase in polarization."

Nolan McCarty on Party Polarization:

"Polarization

By Nolan McCarty on December 24, 2008 9:51 AM | No Comments

In the aftermath of the 2006 election, the era of polarization was declared over in such astute analyses as this one:

The impetus behind such conclusions was the extraordinary success of "Red State" Democrats such as Jon Tester and Heath Shuler. But few pundits took note of the fact the these Red Democrats were only moderate or conservative on a few social issues, but quite populist on economics and trade( TRUE ). Even fewer considered the consequences of the extinction of "Blue State" Republicans for polarization in Congress.

But now that Congress has adjourned sine die, Keith Poole has fired up the NOMINATE machine, and we can look at what impact, in any, the 2006 elections had on the level of party polarization in the House and Senate.

This first figure is an update of the data presented in our book with Howard Rosenthal showing the average difference between Democrats and Republicans on the DW-NOMINATE conservatism scale.

Do you see the dramatic collapse of polarization in congressional term beginning in 2007? Me neither. In fact, polarization rose in the 110th Congress just as it has almost every term since 1975. The House had set a record for polarization in the 109th, but the 110th broke it. The Senate broke its own record set in 1867.

So what might the future bring? To get a prediction that is hopefully at least as accurate as Joe Klein's, I have forecast the average conservatism of Democrats and Republicans for the next congressional term in the following way:

1. Assigned all returning members their DW-NOMINATE score from the preceding term.
2. Assigned all new members the average DW-NOMINATE score for their party and region. In other words, a new Democrat from the Midwest gets the average of all midwestern Democrats and a new Republican from the South is assigned the average of all southern Republicans.

Essentially, this procedure captures the effects of the regional distribution of partisan seat shifts. A seat shifted from Republicans to Democrats in the Northeast increases polarization whereas a Democratic pickup in the South decreases it. So here is what the House and Senate may look like next term.

In each of the figures, the red line is the average conservatism of Republicans, and the blue line is the average conservatism of the Democrats for each term since 1969. The triangles are my prediction for the next term. The Democratic average is expected to change very little, but the Republicans will be considerably more conservative. This, of course, is due to their continued hemorrhaging of seats outside the South. The net effect is again an increase in polarization.

All of this is predicated on the assumption that there will not be any major deviations from recent historical patterns. Of course, things could change. In the conclusion of our book (written in January 2005), Keith, Howard, and I speculate that a financial crisis triggered by a housing bubble might lead to a swing in the public's partisanship and ideology that might cause the Republicans to moderate. So we have the crisis, a modest swing in public attitudes, but if the congressional votes on the bailouts are any indication, the Republicans haven't take that last step."

A very interesting analysis.

"always seeking to avoid the zero profit outcome through unfair market advantages and the stifling of competition."

Jesse's Cafe Americain has a post that I've been thinking about that Cate liked as well:

"There is a ideology that would like to believe that all people are naturally good and rational, and that markets are therefore naturally efficient and free if just left alone to themselves and allowed to function without regulation or management."

From my perspective, such views are what I call Kantian. They have uses for Political Theory and Economics, but are simply of limited value in Politics and Political Economy. One book that I really enjoy is David Friedman's "The Machinery Of Freedom" 2nd Ed. It is valuable as Economics and Political Theory, but I don't agree that it would be feasible.

"This line of argument is often pursued by certain faux conservatives when arguing that the police should be dismissed and the locks removed from the doors, in advance of a period of sustained looting of the common folk by the wealthy elite."

These are people that I'm not familiar with.

"One thing almost all idealists have in common is that their work exists largely on paper, and is rarely to be found in practical implementations over any sustained period."

I would say that idealists are people who don't accept the distinction that I drew above.

"That is why there are so few farmers and women in this camp of free market idealists because their daily struggle with disorder and decay teaches them that nothing goes the way of order and productive results without plenty of hard work, repeated effort and at least occasional observation."

Free Market Idealists tend to be few and far between. There are people who use various free market ideas that, upon closer examination of their actions, are clearly not free market idealists.

"It is the man in his easy chair reading his books that believes that the dishes clean themselves, the clothes are self-folding and storing, and the children organize their rooms and personal hygiene willingly without 'interference.'"

Wait a second. That sounds like me.

"This romantic belief in natural goodness is a great fallacy underlying the Greenspan-Reagan doctrine of trickle down easy money and the prima facie good of boundless deregulation."

These people tend to be a little too intent on imprisoning people who commit crimes to believe that people are naturally good. They do believe in law and order.

"It is similar to the belief in the natural goodness of all men and the self-ordering of large societies towards justice and equality without effort. It sounds nice, but in practice it is just ridiculous and almost utterly without support except in the minds of its philosophical adherents. No one who has ever driven in a major metropolitan area can possible believe it."

Self-Ordering has limits.

"What people forget is that it takes rules and referees and a great deal of hard work and repeated efforts to create and maintain a fair game and a level playing field for the many who may wish to play."

This is true.

"So too with the notion of a natural tendency to free markets. Its just not true. Markets tend to gravitate to oligopoly, insider dealing, fraud and utter inefficiency. Free market capitalists quickly come to hate competition with their success, and are always seeking to avoid the zero profit outcome through unfair market advantages and the stifling of competition."

This is true. That's why they tend not to be free market adherents in practice.

"Markets can be over-regulated by central planners, and it is always the road to ruin. But they can also be under-regulated and allowed to degenerate into the same awful excesses that governments and peoples fall into at various times in their history, periods of seemingly collective madness, disregard for the individual, and the rise of the will to power."

This is also true.

"Government is best that governs least indeed, but with the appropriate level of government to uphold the principles under which people come together to interact in a society and avoid despotism and anarchy. There is a range of good and evil in people, and they join in society for their mutual protection, and the accomplishment of efforts requiring a broad participation."

It's finding the appropriate level that's hard because it takes compromise.

"It is no accident that Jefferson was one of the framers of the Constitution, which although remarkable in its simplicity is ingeniously complex in its design, and fine balances of powers that endure with the commitment and sacrifice for the greater good of each succeeding generation."

I think that what I disagree with is that the people who are the most egregious perpetrators in this crisis don't believe in free markets in the same way as the people at Cato and Reason. They believe in a system that responds to interests as well as to other factors. That's why, in my little reference system, interest groups are a major part of political parties. I don't find such people idealists, but, on the contrary, realists, whose views about being bailed out if things went sideways on them are being borne out as we speak. They are the ultimate realists, because they're the ones actually in power. Not us.

"In truth, neither party is nor can be a pure expression of ideology in the American electoral system."

Patrick Deneen with an interesting post:

"In truth, neither party is nor can be a pure expression of ideology in the American electoral system. This is actually a good thing - it is a major contributor to the American resistance to ideology - but it can sometimes be ignored or wished away during election season, when ideology becomes more evident (exacerbated by our Primary system) and reified above all in symbolic politics. It has been made worse - much worse - by the contemporary emphasis on policy-making through the Courts (liberal bear a particular responsibility here), that institution through which ideology can be most coherently advanced. Conservatives have themselves in turn concentrated on achieving victories in the Courts, and to do so have increasingly adopted their own forms of ideological reasoning in order to get a hearing within a legal system that only recognizes a such reasoning. Many of our conservatives today speak like Kantians rather than like Burkeans or Chestertonians. Certainly there are ideological tendencies and major policy differences between the parties, but what this most recent election has made possible - and what I hope will occur - is the possibility of at least modestly disassociating conservative commitments from easy identification with the Republican party."

I agree with this. Political Parties are coalitions comprised of:

1) Policies
2) Interest Groups
3) Ideologies
4) Cultural views

There's no one to one correlation between these elements. A conservative could feel comfortable with some of these elements in the GOP, and not others. Also, I don't know enough about Chesterton, but Conservatives now are not Burkeans.

"Many have become lazy, or simply habituated, into thinking that they are the same, but enough evidence can be gathered from recent political history to suggest that conservative ends are alternatively pursued and betrayed by both Parties. Those who maintain a deeper philosophical and theological allegiance to certain conservative beliefs should be wary of this close identification with one party, and even the dangerous ideological belief that one's goals can be achieved through a political program. Frankly, the truth is that the conservative view is likely to be a permanent minority voice in modernity, and thus must maintain the capacity to be poised in opposition, and to work - where possible - with the dominant forces. This means developing the difficult capacity to be somewhat apart, yet avoid complete disengagement."

I would extend this to liberals, moderates, and libertarians. No group should see their allegiance to a political party as anything more than a convenient compromise in order to get certain policies actually implemented.

"Social conservatives should understand that in American politics - and all modern politics, really - they will never have a true "party." Particularly in modernity, a time shaped to repudiate many of the basic commitments of conservatives (indeed, a time that gave rise to the peculiar beast called "conservatism") there will always be a degree of political homelessness. Conservatives should aim to achieve some political ends, but understand that those aims will always be partially or imperfectly reflected in the commitments of all modern parties, and should seek, where possible, to reinforce or extend those commitments where they can be found. There is an odd willfulness on the part of many so-called conservatives to damn every action and word of Obama even as they excuse the actions of Bush. This reflects, in my mind, the sad reality that the Will to Power has deeply infiltrated itself within some thoughtful people who ought rightly to be the greatest opponents of that Nietzschean ambition. "

As I say, this should be extended to libertarians. I disagree about Nietzsche. The Will To Power is a way of being, in my opinion. Strictly speaking, it is not, in his view, an ambition, but an explanation.

As Johnson said:
Dr. Johnson now said, a certain eminent political friend of ours [Burke] was wrong, in his maxim of sticking to a certain set of men on all occasions. "I can see that a man may do right to stick to a party," said he; "that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars, it may be wrong. He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks to be sure; and they cannot be well separated. But, to blind one's self to one man, or one set of men (who may be right to-day and wrong to-morrow), without any general preference of system, I must disapprove."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

"Conservatives and libertarians sometimes face a disadvantage in policy arguments."

Megan McArdle with an interesting post:

"Conor wrestles with Bastiat Beasts.

Conservatives and libertarians sometimes face a disadvantage in policy

arguments. We're attuned to the indirect effects and unintended
consequences of certain policies, whereas our liberal interlocutors
concern themselves primarily with direct effects. Why is this a
disadvantage? Because the liberal can say, "Look at David from Detroit,
who is going to lose his job, and his home, if GM goes bankrupt."
Whereas the best conservatives and libertarians can do is to say,
"Somewhere in America there is an unknown person who will lose their
job, and their home, if the automakers are bailed out, due to the
inevitable effect of egregious economic inefficiencies that will course
through the financial system."....

The person who is hurt in the
liberal narrative and the one hurt in the conservative narrative are
both real human beings. But the fact that the former is identifiable is
often used by liberals as an emotional bludgeon.

Freddie responds.

I'm still struggling with whether I think the tyranny of the specific hard case makes conservatives systematically worse off in argument; I think it does, but I'm not ready to commit on that yet. Surely on taxes, for example, it works the other way around."

Here's my response:

It's an interesting debate, but I was hoping the debate was between Conor Cruise O'Brien and Freddie Meadowes.

Posted by Don the libertarian Democrat | November 17, 2008 12:17 PM

"the much-hyped conservative infighting has actually been extremely tame"

Matt Yglesis on Conservative Punditry Wars:

"Begun, These Pundit Wars Have Not

I think Ross Douthat is right about this and the much-hyped conservative infighting has actually been extremely tame. I think he’s further correct to say that this is probably a bad thing for the movement. Sometimes it’s helpful to have a good intra-party fight. It doesn’t need to be a fight to the death, but I think something like the Iraq hawk/dove fights of the past several years had a useful impact on progressive politics. The issue was never “resolved” as such and people on both sides of the divide are still in the coalition. But the balance of power was renegotiated, some key players switched sides, and ultimately a standard-bearer with a different kind of record rose to the fore."

Here's my comment:

1. Don the libertarian Democrat Says:
   November 11th, 2008 at 12:44 pm

   I’m a big Darth Maul fan. Can’t I send him to the Conservative side to stir things up? Darth Don the libertarian Democrat

"The consensus was that this was not a mandate for Democrats"

It's not a Mensa meeting, for sure. From David Weigel on Reason:

"The American Spectator's Philip Klein reports from a meeting of the conservative movement's old Reaganite hands in Virginia.

There's a strong feeling, [Spectator Editor R. Emmet] Tyrrell said, that social conservatives, free market conservatives, and national security conservatives will all be able to work together.

He also said that "there's a sense that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are freer of wobbly-kneed Republicans than they were before the election."

[Spectator Publisher Al] Regnery said, "The consensus was that this was not a mandate for Democrats, that this country is still center-right. The overriding fear was that the Republican Party does not represent conservatives," and there was a desire to get behind genuinely conservative candidates."

Here's my comment:

Don the libertarian Democrat | November 7, 2008, 3:48pm

"The consensus was that this was not a mandate for Democrats, that this country is still center-right"

It might be more useful if this consensus was among the citizenry, rather than a small group of biased ideologues trying to make themselves feel better.

"Obama was the true conservative, the Burkean"

Jeffrey Hart on why he voted for President Obama. He's a conservative. In my sense of conservative, I agree:

"Republican President George W. Bush has not been a conservative at all, either in domestic policy or in foreign policy. He invaded Iraq on the basis of abstract theory, the very thing Burke warned against. Bush aimed to turn Iraq into a democracy, "a beacon of liberty in the Middle East," as he explained in a radio address in April 2006.

I do not recall any "conservative" publication mentioning those now memorable words "Sunni," "Shia," or "Kurds." Burke would have been appalled at the blindness to history and to social facts that characterized the writing of those so-called conservatives.

Obama did understand. In his now famous 2002 speech, while he was still a state senator in Illinois, he said: “I know that a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, of undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without international support will fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda. I'm not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.”

Burke would have agreed entirely, and admired the cogency of so few words. And one thing I know is that both Nixon and Reagan would have agreed. Both were prudential and successful conservatives. But all the organs of the conservative movement followed Bush over the cliff—as did John McCain."

This is a theme I'd like to develop more. In any case, it's why I'm not worried about President Obama's economic plans, and support him on so many others issues completely.