A frustration

One of the central dynamics involved in studying economics as it relates to human behavior is that human beings will respond to incentives. And one of the frustrating aspects of political decisions as they relate to economics is that these decisions to implement policy rarely take these into account when they are formed and enacted. Almost nowhere does this appear more evident than the politics surrounding environmentalism.

A variety of problems occur which should be evident and obvious. A law or regulation is passed which mandates higher energy efficiency standards or fuel economy. The result is that people use more energy or drive more. People will often have in mind a relative fixed budget for energy expenses and when they are below it, it is possible that they will seek to consume the rest of that budget than to seek to save it. Or they may also think that their more efficient vehicle or appliances entitles them to use these devices more often because they will be doing so more effectively than their neighbours. While this may be perfectly reasonable from an individual experience, it has rather unpleasant ramifications if it applied at a social level. Wherein it allows us to claim victories on environmental policies without having actually achieved them. This is not unusual where a policy is passed with the explicit claims of victory over some vast social ill, and then very little is done to assure that indeed that policy did achieve those aims. But since environmental policies and responses relating to climate change could have rather more significant consequences than say, abortion policy, we may want to be sure we are getting something useful for our buck and make sure we are getting something at all.

Suppose we mandate that fuel efficiency standards are high. Many people buy more efficient cars as they need a new vehicle. In theory this should reduce energy consumption. In practice, people then drive them more often (on average). This increases traffic and congestion costs for everyone, including the people who have less efficient vehicles. Traffic and congestion are clear costs to productivity and time, but these costs are not paid by the people imposing them. If you are in a traffic jam, you are part of the problem, but it does not seem obvious that this is true because there are hundreds of others also involved in being part of the problem. None of these people will have good incentives to seek to reduce these costs because they can point to all of those people instead. An economic solution would be to impose congestion-adjusted tolls on controlled access roads (highways), which would assure that when there is high volumes of traffic, the costs will be paid by those accessing the road and it may deter people from driving when they otherwise would. This idea is of course unpopular. Or it could instead be the idea to reduce the incentives for housing to be located away from denser urban areas such that fewer people must commute by car and can commute instead by buses or trains (or even walk to work). Again, this is unpopular.

There are a couple of obvious possible reactions to this. 1) The ideas of economists must not very good solutions; otherwise they would be more popular. 2) The reason they are not popular is they are not pushed forward by other elites (scientists or politicians say), and the rather simple story as to why they are more effective than mandating somebody else pay the cost also provides a clear incentive to individual people (use less energy by driving around less, or at different times, and you will pay less). Economic solutions tend not to get very much airplay and explanation for the general public to discuss and digest them, and this is in part because where environmental policies are concerned, economic solutions require individual people, both as businesses and households, to pay something rather than expecting someone else to do all the heavy lifting. Regardless of who does the lifting however, or even if nobody does any lifting, individual people are paying the costs. Be it in the form of increasingly unpleasant weather conditions or traffic congestion or in not recouping long-term investment costs for energy efficient adjustments to a home or property.

Another example. Suppose we encourage individual people through social coercion or some tax incentive to place solar paneling on their homes as part of a way to avoid using carbon based energy to power their homes (not coal or natural gas). What inevitably happens is that many people respond to that social coercion as the incentive rather than the underlying environmentalist demand that created it. That is: they may ostentatiously display these panels by putting them on the side of the home facing a street to show everyone they did it (and yay for me!). And not placing them on the most beneficial side of the home facing the sun during the core part of the day. This also means that a variety of energy efficient modifications that are not visible, but which may have much higher returns than using current solar technology in most parts of the country, are not used. Such as by well-insulating the property or using a variety of heating and cooling design setups and materials when the home is renovated or constructed. Very rarely is this allowing people to obviously demonstrate their environmentalist concerns in a way that a solar panel does, despite the fact that it may have much better benefits for the environment. If we want a coercive social demand or incentive to work, it should target the actual interest that we want to coerce people into doing and do so fairly directly. A carbon tax does this pretty easily as it directly discourages the consumption of energy produced by burning carbon-based fuels. People might then seek to ameliorate this cost, while still consuming a comfortable energy demand for their homes, by placing solar panels up effectively or by adjusting the design of properties under construction or just by properly insulating a building.

Consider a final point about incentives. One thing that is not often taken into consideration is the demand to do something. If there are not restrictions preventing a project (a business or set of homes) from being built anywhere, they will be built somewhere. It would seem logical for environmental policy that we want these projects and homes built in places where it is efficient for people to live in; that is where the climate is relatively stable and reasonably warm, where there is access to sufficient supplies of clean fresh water, and so on. So, we would prefer that most people probably live in portions of the Midwest or along coastal areas and rivers than in the American Southwest (West Texas, Nevada, Arizona, etc) which is hot and dry, and that we accordingly can place projects to encourage people to live and work in those areas. But if we have rules and regulations that only account for the potential environmental damage of a project going into one place, and not where it will be built instead if it is diverted away from that place, we are failing to account for the potential damage and may end up needlessly restricting construction in one way rather than another. A fairly recent example of this is the Keystone XL pipeline. There are potentially very good economic reasons to object to it, and some philosophical arguments relating to property rights and so on that may be quite good at providing objections. But there aren't actually very great environmental reasons not to simply because it seems clear that human beings (or at least Canadians) are intent on supplying and refining the oil from tar sands projects and a pipeline represents a safer and cleaner alternative to transportation of the materials involved than trains or trucks. The actual source of the damage is not the pipeline itself. It's the continued use of oil as a fuel. If we wish to stop that, then the basis point would be to discourage the use of oil as a fuel (through carbon taxes or higher gasoline taxes at least) or provide better alternatives (cleaner fuels).

The appeal of thinking apocalyptically

There seems to be no limitation to the ability of humans to conceive of ways that their own generation will be the last generation of humans to exist and flourish. I can conceive myself of a myriad of destructive forces that could signal the end of modern civilization. I am not certain that most of them pose us a grave risk in our lifetimes. This does not mean that investment in multi generational solutions is not worthwhile; it simply means that our imagination of time is far too limited. Studies of history would rather quickly show us that many things we take easily for granted are very recent, and that (positive or negative) social changes can happen more rapidly than we anticipate. Studies of other cultures would rather quickly show us some people still don't know of their benefits at all and live at a much more marginal subsistence level. We ourselves often as not have already developed such specialised economies surrounding these benefits that most of us could not replicate them outside of that society of specialisation as we lack any of the required training or aptitude.

Of these world ending scenarios I can think of perhaps four that are worthy of our concern.

1) Asteroids or other large deep space objects colliding with the Earth (or the Moon if they were big enough). - There's a lot of stuff out there and the Earth is a fairly large gravitational influence to pull in objects that pass very close to us. The easiest way to start on this project is to set out to assure we can detect random space particles of asteroids or comets that may pass nearby. And then from there figure out what we would need to do to repel, divert, or even destroy those that pose a greater threat of damaging our environment or potentially impacting near a population center.

2) Nuclear warfare, particularly on a large scale. - There's still enough nuclear firepower in even some of the tertiary nuclear armed countries to annihilate most of human civilisation in minutes. This is to say nothing of the American or Russian arsenals that could (still) do so several times over. The easy way here is to reduce the size of those arsenals overall. That is unlikely for political reasons beyond a certain point. One good incentive of doing so though is the materials used to detonate a large city can also be repurposed to power a large city relatively cleanly, with at least much less of a footprint environmentally than a coal power plant. More countries will occasionally consider this an acceptable possibility.

3) Biological pandemic. - I do not think we're about to have a zombie plague breakout at all, but it is very possible for a virus to wipe out large numbers of people and create a social panic far exceeding the absurd levels of panic we generated over a few religious fanatics and their rejection of modern society via terrorism. We have various methods of response already available to research and cure or treat some diseases. Probably the biggest problem is actually identifying when something is a serious risk of becoming an international pandemic capable of killing or incapacitating tens or even hundreds of millions of people. Even something that could kill a million people a year is a serious problem (and there are diseases that do so right now, but they generally don't have a transmission vector that poses a serious risk to developed societies like the US, so nobody really gives a shit). The tricky bit there is then to do so before it ever reaches that point. And then actually being able to show the counterfactual of mass chaos and biological devastation was true instead of a false alarm.

I think this is somewhat less likely than is historically the case to be a serious concern. Humans live in somewhat more removed circumstances from livestock/poultry (not everywhere), which were the pathogenic sources for killer diseases like smallpox in our past. We also live in a more connected society which means that most of us have been exposed to more varied diseases and developed a broader immune spectrum. Smallpox was still potentially lethal to Europeans but vastly more so to aboriginal peoples in North and South America precisely because these peoples had had no exposure to it and no time to develop it (and in not a few cases, because the Europeans accelerated the plague by spreading it deliberately). Something generally ignored is that the introduction of small pox to the western hemisphere is estimated to have killed off millions of people in less than a century and certainly tens of thousands were dead within a few short years. This is far, far more destructive than AIDS, or Ebola, or even the famous influenza outbreak during the WW1 era as a matter of perspective. Whole villages or towns were wiped out or ceased to function. In order to repeat this, we would most likely require a viral or bacterial agent that acts lethally, spreads easily, and for which humans have no current immunities (meaning it would be unlike other infectious agents). That can happen. Viruses and bacterium can mutate and adapt, and our overuse of antibiotics as a society is not helping by potentially forcing such mutations forward faster than we can adapt our medical knowledge.

4) Global warming. - Of the four of these, this is probably the only one that actually requires amendment of human behavior in any way. It's also probable that unless it generates very catastrophic results (possible), that mostly richer countries could adapt to climate changes and circumstances without a major impact on well-being and lifestyle for most of their citizens even as climate is shifting. The problem isn't the billion or 3 people living in the rich or near rich world. It's the other 3-4 billion who are living in societies that are closer to subsistence levels or abject poverty. Their lives can be ended, their countries destroyed or chaotic, and so on. I regard that as a very serious matter that people of Bangladesh would be impacted and it does not seem sensible that we should do nothing as a society or individually in response. But that leads to the actual and more sensible debate, "so, what do we do about it now?"

I've seen or encountered a lot of arguments and they come from both the local, individual level, and the societal, governmental level.

• Stop burning coal. Easier said than done, but I agree. Coal is the most bad option here to power a modern society used in large amounts. To do so you'd have to change the price of burning coal to be less profitable ALL over the globe, not just here, where coal use is actually going down already, or change the price of alternative fuel sources (natural gas for example) to be cheaper options. 
• Use and fund alternative energy projects. I suspect a far stronger argument could be to stop funding "dirty" energy projects or fuel use with substantial subsidies first rather than trying to redress this balance by funding yet more energy projects. 
• Apply some kind of externality (as "net zero" income tax) onto existing fossil fuel consumption and sale. For the most part if we could pass a pretty clean bill to do this, and the tax wasn't used to build new infrastructure (unless it is upgrading existing infrastructure or a distribution system for new or cleaner fuels), this would be my favored approach at the policy level. I have little confidence such a bill would be clean and that there would be all manner of carve outs. The basis for this working would be that most people could avoid the tax by reducing their individual energy footprint, which in turn should make it easier to pay for any consequences of climate shifts as they may be reduced (and thus less tax would need to be raised). 
• Localvore food consumption. For the most part I think this is a silly idea and that it may even be counterproductive environmentally. Maybe not on climate change but on water pollution from agricultural run-off of nitrates or disease vectors from using manure. Which in turn requires feeding and care of large animals, who themselves are a considerable source of pollution. I think this argument rests on several concerns; that trade from elsewhere is somehow inefficient, which is usually false, I see no problem if I have to buy my grapes from California or Chile and I am greatly improved as an individual to have a large array of possible produce and meat to sample and enjoy in my daily meals. We are all also greatly improved to buy things from other people by selling them things that we are ourselves effectively producing rather than trying to consume them all ourselves. Trade works and is almost always a good in improving our lives to let things be grown or produced in places that can do so far more effectively than we can ourselves. The major flaw of that argument is it dramatically underestimates that the environmental impact of modern agriculture is almost entirely at the production stage (especially for meat), and not at the shipment, storage, and distribution stage. Which is pretty small for most things. Even if it is not zero, it is the act of large scale farming (even local farming) that does most of the work. It is generally more efficient and much less damaging to have a large farm, even a local one, going out and fertilizing and producing food and flora and fauna for sale than to have lots of people gardening. The reason people should garden should not be that they believe they can save the planet. The reason should be that it is something they enjoy doing or enjoy the (literal) fruits of. As related concerns, many people have gone into buying things that are "organic" or "natural", with similar environmental justifications that are usually equally flawed. The reason human beings should consume these things in their diet has little to do with the environment and more to do with the fulfillment they receive from production of the food stuffs and the overall reliability of the food chain if they feel they know where something came from rather than an impersonal package of meat or vegetables. If the environmental impact is, as I think it is, actually somewhat negative, it's fairly negligible at the individual level to have a garden versus trying to buy local produce from farms that can be grown half way around the world for a quarter of the environmental cost. 
• At an individual level many people may seek to reduce their energy use, or to use alternative sources of energy themselves. Unfortunately there appears to be a large signaling effect at play rather than an effective result. People and companies sometimes install wind turbines that have to be powered to spin because there is inadequate wind to turn them most of the time, and then wastefully power them anyway. Solar panels are more frequently deployed on the side of the house or business facing the street, regardless of whether that is the side which would generate the most electrical power. Recycling rates are far more likely in the US to be reasonably high if the collection of recyclable goods and materials is public. People who own more fuel efficient cars on average drive them more often which leads to larger traffic snarls and jams, which in turn leads to more pollution and higher energy consumption rates, for not only themselves but for other drivers. Governments respond to this last by building more roads, which paradoxically can increase traffic and energy use further by providing more routes, if not also more destinations. 
• By far the most significant thing at an individual level (here at any rate) that could be done is to do away with the home mortgage interest deductions in the US (actually this is government having to do something, but it would change individual behavior significantly). This would help to encourage urban density instead of suburban life; which nobody seems to actually want so much as they may find the cities unpleasant right now. We would need some governmental actions to reduce rent controls or property constraints such that more people could live vertically, thereby reducing commuting and concentrating our energy demands, densifying populations and destinations to make public transit much more viable, and so on. 
• Tax congestion on roads by instituting variable tolls on controlled access roads (highways). 
• We may want to combine that with an effort to allow for more telecommuting work and flexible scheduling. 
• Another strong individual level constraint would be to have more energy efficient objects, put in insulation, design homes and offices to be heat/cooling efficient, unplug things more often, compost food waste, and so on. Most of this is invisible and inconspicuous consumption. That makes it difficult to signal. Which implies that maybe we need conspicuous signs that we've done it that come along with these projects and maybe more people would investigate these options. 
• Geo-engineering experiments to alter weather or sunlight absorption patterns. These are uncertain, but in my view are at this rate the most likely options to proceed forward and be carried out, somewhere, by someone. 

The individual arguments arise primarily out of frustration that the societal level few things are being done. I find that there are two basic attitudes to really any large scale societal issue.

1) Most people expect someone else to do all the work of fixing it. This may be a consequence of specialisation. Climate modeling or weather and climate analysis and geological histories are complicated subjects and can involve a great deal of the dreaded "math". It is assumed that because this is a "science" problem, that scientists will solve it for us. In repeated polls I think the average American expects that whether we are faced with a plague or widespread drought and heat waves/cold snaps from climate shifts, we would have smart people somewhere stashed working on solving the problem and they would invent something that wouldn't require us, as individuals, to really fundamentally alter how we live in a "negative" way. Innovation must be a part of our problems and their solutions, but innovation sometimes requires that we will eat some vegetables for a while before it gets into the wild as a tamed beast with applications ready to go. It is not as clean and tidy as is believed, and it often involves an iterative process of fits, starts, failures, and restarts. And then even if it is ready to get something off the ground and working, someone could try to squash it politically anyway. 

2) Everyone else then basically expects that somehow nobody will ever do anything about a major problem at a large enough scale and that preparation for imminent disaster and societal collapse is an immediate priority. Or if not taken on that scale, that we should adopt fairly radical and often ineffectual behaviors to moderate our worst and most destructive impulses, without properly and empirically seeking out a way of identifying what those are. In other words, "we should all do what I say, because I don't like X." Whether or not X is actually a problem or not or whether solution Y is itself any more desirable is not important to discuss. The important thing is to be seen as "doing something" about the problem, and often as a corollary to loudly proclaim that whatever that something is, it's probably what you are doing about it.

The advantages of both of these systems is that it allows the measure of blame to be mostly shifted away. And for complex scenarios for which the individual's merit and demerit is very small, elections, pollution, water or antibiotic overuse, etc, it is in fact the case there isn't much incentive to making significant changes in your own behavior.

The question mark is what happens when the cumulative incentives are bad such that little or no change is made, in an area something must be changed or calamities are at risk of occurring. The best bet is to look for a way to change the game and rig the incentives. But if we think we're about to destroy the world and no longer have the incentive of "future generations" toward which we are abstractly connected through children or grandchildren, nobody has any incentive to change the game. They actually have a strong incentive to hold out for a better deal to do what they want. Apocalyptic thinking is the self-important way to examine the situation, the flexibility of the status quo, and determine (or pre-ordain really) that the world probably won't spin on without me and my kind in it anyway, so why should I care what happens to it now.

This is a reality based outgrowth of my disdain for the common belief in supernatural afterlives. The world is here, now. We have some responsibility to do things with the people in it, and to interact and attempt, if often poorly, to share their concerns and affections. The thinking that the world won't be here tomorrow, or that there's some better world out there instead, destroys these moral obligations to one another in the face of potential catastrophes. It may accelerate their comings and goings rather than give us breaks and stops on that path. 

Quiz it

There's a political quiz here: http://www.isidewith.com
Which appears designed to deal with the problems routinely found in an uninformed electorate voting wildly upon issues that they may or may not care much about for candidates that may or may not actually share those views or act to carry them into law.

I went through and took this. For the most part, I find that the questions lack enough sophistication for more nuanced positions, more radical positions, or more... unique positions.  I have some quibbles with the scoring system as well, but not many. They seemed for instance to properly identify Obama as a drug warrior rather than as a drug-reformer or drug-decriminalisation advocate as is sometimes claimed, nor as an anti-war candidate as was commonly believed during the 2008 election (see Afghanistan), and there doesn't appear to be much "socialist!" idiocy. I also quibble with the fact that there isn't much dealing with the Iraq war or the Libya incursion, at least directly, for foreign policy.

Going through, these would be my more specific responses. (And short version, they didn't get into monetary policy enough for me to greatly distinguish Ron Paul from Gary Johnson and that abortion and immigration had to be relied upon. But both of them crushed everyone else. This should not be surprising)

Foreign policy

Should the US intervene in the affairs of other countries? I picked the "only if it serves national security", which to me read as the proximate statement for "realist concerns benefiting a strong or vital national interest only". That does not include "humanitarian" missions employing military force use for the most part and definitely doesn't include regime changing occupation missions.

How should the US deal with Iran? I went with "Maintain diplomacy while discouraging the use of nuclear weapons" My actual position would be something akin to "continue to attempt to slow development if possible or practicable of actual weapons, and use international law/treaty and diplomacy to enforce non-proliferation rather than military force". I'm not sure what "discouraging the use of nuclear weapons" means in practical terms but it could mean providing a nuclear deterrent against their use (M.A.D style?), or it could mean arms reduction treaties to limit the scope and size of any possible nuclear wars along with disarmament or IAEA/NPT compliance for other countries. Given that there's a lot of preposterous fear mongering relating to Iran's technical capacities for missile launches and conventional payloads (both of which might at best represent threats to Israeli security, for which they are amply supplied to defend or counter by themselves, and neither of which represents any severe danger to American security), I'm guessing that only our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have prevented outright warfare by diminishing the public appetite for additional conflict.   

Should the US maintain a presence at the UN? "Yes". Generally speaking diplomacy is cheap, even if it doesn't always provide gains to us, and as a "great power", we have veto powers to prevent things that we perceive as against our interests from happening through diplomatic means (much as China and Russia do). As a realist, while I recognize the international community won't always function according to legal dictums, it serves our interests to a) appear to go through the motions such that when rare actual forceful actions are necessary, as they might appear to be motivated by more noble concerns and thus shared in by others (obviously this has not been the case in our choice of recent actions), b) to use the existing structure to preserve or achieve power by avoiding tedious and expensive wastes of conflict for our blood and treasure by securing interests in other ways, and c) to provide diplomatic channels to secure and demonstrate alliances of convenience to hegemonic power or to cushion the decrease in relative power to a multi-polar world.

Should the US end the war in Afghanistan? "Yes". I also went with a stronger constraint on the War Powers Act, such that wars should be declared more affirmatively by Congress and only carried out by the CINC powers of the Presidency. Drone warfare should be included in this, even if it has more vague powers of declaration associated with it. The idea that "military leaders" should be allowed to determine whether any political or national interests are served by continuing a conflict is totally ludicrous to me. They can tell us whether those missions of vital interest could be carried out, what resources are required, and engage in military discipline and strategic planning with some latitude, but deciding whether or not to stay in a country for us? Stupid.

Should the US continue to support Israel? "No". In so far as we should provide aid if they were attacked and invaded (foolishly) by a rival country, fine. I can see that argument, much as we might if Western Europe or Australia were attacked by some (largely fictional) enemy. Those scenarios are extremely unlikely given the relative power of any allied military to their enemies for possible invasion (even South Korea could win against North Korea rather handily, just the terribly high cost of civilian infrastructure and population in the South prevents such a conflict). I can see arguments for sharing intelligence on terrorist networks for global purposes also. In so far as we should unilaterally or even tacitly support whatever Israeli policies are internally, or projected into Palestinian occupied territories, no.

How should the US handle the genocide in Sudan? "Don't get involved". I'm not sure how our involvement would or could resolve the situation. See Kosovo or Somalia for how interventions don't work out. Or Libya for a more recent example. Sudan also sounds like less of a regime matter and more a local tribal conflict that the regime has exploited and expanded, and which would require a very considerable investment on our part to dial down successfully (essentially a large occupation/peacekeeping force positioned for an indefinite period and effectively supporting one or more of the rival factions). To boot, the US does not have substantial diplomatic ties with the current Sudanese government on which to carry any influential weight as it is in the Chinese or Russian sphere of influence. Official US policy should be non-intervention. Private citizens may lobby the Chinese if they want as was done with a modest success in the South Sudan situation.

Should the United States end its trade embargo and travel ban on Cuba? Generally I am opposed to embargoes on any country. The type of country which a trade ban or boycott or other restriction is likely to have useful effect is likely to be the sort of country we are unlikely to use such things against (that is: a country with a democratically accountable government and a large developed economy). There are types of embargoes that may more penalise the intended targets (such as by trying to track and freeze the assets of corrupt regime leaders when moved to foreign and aligned countries, which limits opportunities for investment and growth of those private assets), but wide scale embargoes accomplish little but to impoverish, even starve or otherwise endanger, the general public of a rival country at the expense of providing a cheap propaganda point on which a dictatorial leader may rally support against our initiatives. For no probable gain on our behalf. Eg, they are counter-productive. It is sensible that US interests may be served by limiting military technology or friendly espionage with rival countries, but this is not what the trade and travel bans intend. Trade and travel restrictions should really only be used during a time of active war and conflict.

Immigration

Should children of illegal immigrants be granted citizenship? I went with "yes if they were born here." In general I see citizenship as distinct from open borders policies for residency or trade and labour. People should want to definitively associate themselves as "Americans" to participate fully and for civic purposes in our society as citizens. But in so far as it would then be necessary to make distinctions from current American citizens being born here instead of just getting citizenship, I don't see any reason to make such a distinction to shut off immigrants receiving citizenship at birth in the same way that other residents do.


Should illegal immigrants be given access to paid health care? "Yes". Medical ethics demands this to some extent. I am not convinced that this is a substantial driver of costs (The "ER use" mythology is very powerful). Essentially I think the same arguments against immigrants being denied care would have to apply to any poor person or anyone who lacked insurance, etc.

Should illegal immigrants working in the US be granted temporary amnesty? Again, yes. I would prefer some combination of the following: auctioning off work visas to businesses rather than requiring businesses to prove need, increased allowances for entrance through this means, and especially a simplified means of accessing citizenship rather than extension hoop jumps we use now. We are generally enriched by immigration for cultural and economic reasons and I don't see a reason to reduce this enrichment by worrying about boot millions of people out of country.

Science

Do you support the Theory of Evolution? I suppose this is a proxy for other social conservative value assessments. (Eg, a way to provide additional emphasis to anti-gay or anti-abortion stances). Otherwise, I'm not sure what filtering value this question serves. Being anti-rational or anti-humanist isn't exactly an unpopular political view in the US, and is actually something that takes the format of being influenced by other political ideological views. Liberals end up being more likely to take views opposing GM foods or vaccinations or nuclear power with more seriousness because they hold anti-corporate views just as social conservatives take creationism and abortion and homosexuality with more seriousness than the science would indicate is deserved because of faith-based views. 

Should the federal government fund stem cell research? If the grant proposals involved in such research are very promising, I suppose a case can be made here. I'm skeptical that this is actually the case for much stem cell research that the government needs to be encouraging it in some special way that the private market doesn't have incentives to do already. The question here also simplifies the disparity between adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells; which is where most social conservatives seem concerned, though for my purposes, it doesn't matter. I'm opposed to subsidizing this sort of thing not on moral grounds but on economic grounds. There are more promising or more directly practical lines of medical and genetic research available to lavish with public monies.

Should the US increase our space exploration efforts and budget? Other than satellite surveillance or communications, or things like GPS, I'm not convinced the US requires a public space programme. If private enterprise wants to do space tourism, exploration, or maintain orbital platforms for their own use, I'm fine with that. I don't think this should be a NASA centric effort and there are other ways to exhort Americans to take up the cause of science and mathematics in ways that they presently do not.


Health Care


Should marijuana be legalised in the US? Yes. With the additional requirements of a) a regulated open market, including possible medical uses for anyone and recreational use for adults and b) the reduction or elimination of criminal penalties for nonviolent offences associated with marijuana (or other narcotic substances).

Do you support the PPACA (Obamacare)? There really wasn't a good response here. My preference is a universal catastrophic coverage system provided by the government in exchange for taxes or mandated medical savings, basic subsidies for people who are poor or lower income or medically disabled, and then open it up from there to anyone who wants first dollar coverage or augmented elements to the private insurance market (which should be cheaper to provide if catastrophic care is augmented with government payments). This idea is some version of Singapore, Wyden-Bennett, and to some extent the Ryan plan. This also feeds into the next question...

Should we expand or dismantle our medicare programme? To which I would reply dismantle. It is an unsustainable economic model in the American polity to ask poorer working young people to pay for the health care of richer retired old people. Asking working people to pay for health care for poor people might be a justifiable system. Asking them to pay for the elderly on the basis of an arbitrary retirement age being reached is stupid. This idea should be phased out, starting with means testing benefits, then a general overhaul of medical insurance structure such that people when they retire ought to have some amount of funding available for their own needs privately held (eg, mandated HSA style accounts). This is but one example of vast transfers of wealth from poor to rich within our system (Home mortgage interest deductions are another), an idea which is both socially unjust and economically unsustainable.

Domestic policies 

Do you support increased gun control? I am opposed on some general liberties and Constitutional rights, and am agnostic about the efficacy of gun control setups that have been used. Some were genuinely bad and counterproductive, others seem to have at least "noble" goals and had minimal harm on the public they were enforced against (assault weapon bans for instance or constraints on ex-felons or mentally ill). I am however not all that fond of a social mindset that sees guns in the home and on one's person as essential. I just don't see that there are many sensible legal ways to restrict this attitude. Other than to make it less feel less essential (eg, make people aware that crime is rare, for instance, for most of us). So "no".

Do you support the Patriot Act? There are probably some provisions in there that were or are still of actual utility (some position of unified intelligence and intelligence sharing between various bureaus for example, if they were ever to use such a system might be beneficial. They do not appear to have done so very efficiently). But most of it read like a laundry list of law enforcement wants that exceeded Constitutional mandates, and offered little actual anti-terrorism effects. The general effect of security theater policies, especially in the formation of the Homeland Security cabinet position and the arbitrary methods of the TSA, does little to inspire confidence that other government provisions were of any necessity either. So "no".

Should the government regulate the internet to deter online piracy? Generally no. I am opposed to stronger intellectual property rights defenses, and support weakening of public domain laws and patent trolling powers. I do think that piracy of movies and music, along with video games, is a legitimate concern for those industries, but it does not appear to cause sufficient harm to their abilities to make creative works, distribute them, and to profit by them. Indeed, piracy itself seems heavily related to either a) distorted price controlled markets or b) items of considerable popularity. That is: something being pirated a lot ought to tell us that something is really, really popular already and is probably already making a lot of money. It would better if people weren't pirating it.. but the music industry finally seems to have twigged to resolving a partial solution by using digital distribution methods like itunes, and movies or TV shows will eventually concede to things like Netflix streaming or ala carte cable subscriptions as a method of generating revenues for consumption of their works. These methods do not eliminate piracy, but seem to alleviate it by offering ways to buy into the market and participate as a consumer without the old methods of having to consume entire albums, or to purchase on reserve copies of DVD/Blue-Rays for movies and shows that we may enjoy but probably don't want to own.

Are you in favor of decriminalising all drugs? Yes. As with marijuana, the problem is generally medical, not legal. It should be treated as such rather than as locking up addicts and providers with no other basis. I am skeptical that mere possession ought to be a basis for sending people off to drug treatment centres either (seems like a wasteful lack of filtering), but this is quite a bit better than locking such people up in prisons and jails and implementing invasive and aggressive police tactics to deal with non-violent criminals. If drug dealers are killing each other or their violence and aggression challenges a neighbourhood for other reasons, we should naturally be concerned. But just selling and possessing and using things ought not to automatically concern us.

Should we limit federal funds to public schools that do not meet performance standards? If we had some means of school choice, I should think this would be handled by parents and markets without need for federal decisions for implementing standards based testing that is probably counterproductive to providing a broad based general k-12 education and lacks effective enforcement methods at this time. I see several problems with this: one the current methods are ineffective, two, it's difficult to present what federal standards ought to be, or a basis for why they should override local or state standards, and three, who monitors these standards and how is a punitive method by reducing funds to a trapped school district a means of effectively improving the quality of education available to students and parents in that neighbourhood or city?

Do you support affirmative action programmes? "No, but we should offer social programmes to address poverty regardless of race or ethnicity". I see this as far more useful than automatic assistance to ethnic minorities. Given that there are disproportionately poor minorities, poverty based assistance would still provide substantial racial disparity in public benefits, without assisting people who have limited need of our public aid. The "sin of slavery" is an important historical reference point, but it should be possible to redress it by alleviating poverty and opportunity inequalities in occupation and education for all people.

Environmental issues


Is Global warming a threat to the environment? Yes. But I'm not sure what government plans would do much to help with it. The US already is among the largest reducers of CO2 reduction in the developed world for example by way of reducing CO2 intensity in our economy. Without much in the way of direct intervention and in spite of still substantial government largess for fossil fuel production (coal and oil) and use (highway subsidies rather than congestion pricing). There are existing government policies that should be abolished that may be exacerbating the problem as a result rather than a pressing need for additional government policy. A carbon tax or congestion pricing or gasoline tax would be probably sufficient if more action is necessary after those actions are taken (in exchange for reductions in other taxes at the federal or local level). A greater emphasis on densification rather than current policy favoring suburban settlement would also help (ideally we would do little to encourage either. Better schools and lawns provide incentives to live in the burbs, while access to culture, "public" transit, and other creative class benefits should provide incentives to live in cities).

Should we expand our offshore drilling? Generally speaking we should stop promoting it with additional support in the form of subsidies but other than basic regulation of environmental damage, I'm not sure we should be preventing it either. Without government support, it's possible these would still be economically useful to energy companies, but I'm not concerned if that were to be the case or not. The government should neither support nor oppose much offshore drilling.

Economic issues


Should the government raise the federal minimum wage? No, the federal government should abolish federal min wage standards altogether. These have the effect of depressing low skilled employment. Competition among such jobs would ensure that wages would not be "too low". What would be of greater importance is a general welfare reform that takes on the format of a universal basic income or negative income tax, such that people would receive transfer payments in cash rather than most in-kind forms of assistance for housing, food, and to some extent health care, etc. This would remove some of the inefficiencies in the design of these programmes such that they would not "phase out" when people cross income thresholds and allow people to earn additional income without fear of losing essential public benefits. 

Should Congress raise the debt ceiling? Yes. My preference is for Congress to reign in spending of all kinds and conduct an extensive tax reform. Since it won't do those things, I would prefer we not default on debts. Any ideas that we can cut spending without touching defence, and entitlements are absurd as is most "balanced budget amendment" talk. This is pandering rather than solutions. That money is already effectively spent and accounts for the overwhelming percentage of our expenses.

Should the US have bailed out the major banks during the financial crisis of 2008? Not as such. What should have been done was a NGDP target, or at least an inflation target that the Fed actually tried to hit, combined with a negative interest rate on reserves. This might have meant that some big banks would fail, or be broken up, but it would have discouraged hording of money by large institutions of all kinds (regular corporations for instance) at a time when the economy required liquidity and a higher velocity of money. Simply giving money to businesses that made very poor decisions does acknowledge some amount of government complicity in those decisions (eg, that they were encouraged to make them), but it doesn't do much to resolve the underlying problem that they were in fact poorly run institutions that made stupid decisions.

Do you agree with President Obama's 2009 stimulus plan? They probably should have provided more specifics here, but in general the answer was no. Things like unemployment compensation to some reasonable extent are uncontroversial in my view. And the sort of ad hoc manner that states would balance budgets by slashing payrolls in police or teaching would not be carried out in the most effective manner (by firing and retiring ineffective or abusive members of those institutions for example; partly because the methods of dismissing public employees are already fraught with legal complexity). But infrastructure spending is by now fraught with all manner of complicating and competing regulation fights that make it inefficient stimulus and to boot wasn't in most cases all that well designed to get projects of necessity off the ground. An ideal infrastructure stimulus programme involving infrastructure could have been to improve and maintain the already existing infrastructure rather than to supply incentives to produce more.  Of an often dubious utility. This would have had the advantages of more immediately providing work to people in a heavily displaced economic sector and providing some benefits in a more functional road network, efficient electrical grid, or updated water or sewer lines, some of which date to the 19th century, and so on without the need for boondoggle projects in high speed rail or subsidized clean energy.

Should the federal government subsidize farmers? Nope. Next question.

Should we keep or dismantle our Social Security programme? I think this can function as a mandatory retirement savings system if reformed. It is less economically insane than medicare for example that old people should draw an income in their retirement than that we should then also provide medical care for all such people. I am however very skeptical that it should be monopolized and run by the government to the exclusion of other options (in the same way that I do not think a monopoly on schools is satisfying to the public externality of providing a quality education). Some variety of asset distribution or private control would be preferred here. Arguments like "look what happened to the stock market" do not concern me much here. In general that bashed the public's retirement assets because people who are retired shouldn't have very much money left in stock anyway and the problem was financial illiteracy and complexity of financial instruments. That is a separate if related issue but one which isn't as easily resolved as the relative freedom to do with money as we see fit money which is designated to be our own at a later date. Note: that could include investment in public bonds or allowing the government to manage the money in exchange for a possibly lower return on investment.

Do you believe the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 should be extended? They should really also be called the Bush tax cuts of 2010 and, probably 2012. But okay. The answer is I don't care about the Bush tax cuts one way or the other. My real concern with the tax code is that it should be simplified and greatly reformed. A general tax structure in my ideal world would include any or all of the following:
A huge reduction or elimination in all federal corporate taxation combined with both
A relative increase in the rate of capital gains and dividend earnings taxation to be closer to that of regular wage income (retaining the same sort of progressivity, and thus ending the private equity trader exclusions of carried interest also and the absurd manner in which middle class stock earnings can be taxed at regular rates while actual investment income is not)
And elimination of most forms of corporate welfare

An overall shift toward consumption taxation, possibly with a graduated effect from earnings potential (again, including capital gains type earnings) and income excluded from taxation for basic needs. This might include a VAT, carbon or gasoline taxes, other excise taxation (alcohol, narcotics, expensive first dollar health care insurance, etc). It could also included a heavily modified (less regressive scale) version of the Fair Tax proposals generally replacing income taxation of any kind.

Abolition of many tax exclusions like home mortgage deductions combined with a roughly flatter and lower overall tax rate on the increased base of money available to be taxed (this is essentially what was done during the Reagan years but not during the Bush years and also during the Kennedy and Coolidge administrations). 

No tax proposal is going to actually abolish the IRS. A bureau will exist to enforce tax laws and collect revenues. It might be smaller, and it might have very different mandates to carry out, perhaps against different sectors of the economy than the manner of taxing income. But the tax men are still going to exist. Sorry to disappoint.

Social issues.

Should abortion be outlawed in the US? No. I am persuaded that varieties of birth control access (making it OTC for example would help in addition to subsidies or cash transfers for the poor), more comprehensive sex ed, streamlined adoption methods, and other social services could actually help achieve the purported goal of reducing the likelihood and frequency of abortions. Bans would also reduce these but at the cost of increasing risks to women's health through illegal markets for provision of abortion and decreased ability to carry out medically necessary abortive procedures for the preservation of a woman's life as well as carrying enforcement costs, probably through invasive and insensitive police tactics made necessary to insure things like miscarriages are not actually abortions, etc. If the goal is actually to reduce abortions, there are better ways than by imposing enormous limitations on the liberty of women to conduct their health and sexuality (with no such restrictions imposed upon men), both for personal liberty and economic reasons I oppose bans even before entering into other moral arguments. There I favour allowing people to make complicated moral decisions themselves without fear of penalty so long as the harms committed to other human beings are limited. I am further persuaded that there is little moral certainty or clarity  that fetal and embryonic development is a "person" endowed with unalienable rights and much scientific evidence to suggest otherwise through the persistence of pregnancy difficulties in other formats, like miscarriages and failures to implant fertilized embryos in the uterine walls, to suggest that nearly any time frame of "person" prior to birth is inherently arbitrary. Positions of viability are possibly instructive as providing points of limitation and restrictive access, but not total bans.

Should gay marriage be allowed in the US?  Yes. Federal policy should be amended to provide federal legal benefits in accordance with state laws and licensing at the very least. It is also possible that federal policy should need to be amended under equal protection clauses in the 14th amendment such that ALL states would need to legalise such arrangements but I am content that demographic change on this issue will suffice to provide it in the near future to enough US residents and citizens as to make it universally approved.

Should the government require health insurance companies to provide free birth control? In general I oppose the government mandating what insurers must provide. I think the government's role here would be to provide sound scientific or transparent evidence that provision of particular methods, medications, etc is medically sound and reasonably cost effective such that insurers ought to do this. But I don't see why, say, a woman in her 50s should be receiving an insurance plan that automatically covers birth control (maybe there's some medical reasons, but it wouldn't be what we traditionally associate with the drugs and devices) simply because the government has decided that insurance companies need to provide it. I also disagree with first dollar insurance for health care more broadly anyway and think of things that are usually only modestly expensive and regular expenses (check-ups, birth control, etc) to be things that we ought to simply budget for yearly rather than to expect anyone else to pay for us. It ought to be reasonable socially or culturally to expect men and women to share the costs of provision while in a regular sexual relationship also. As an additional step, birth control of many varieties could be made OTC, which would render it cheaper and more accessible to millions of women, men, and their families or significant or occasional others by eliminating a largely extraneous step of seeing a doctor to obtain it. Women with specific and significant health risks could be filtered out by pharmacists issuing the drugs, prior consultations with doctors,etc (and the primary risks of note are "do you smoke?") without imposing costs on the vast majority of the population.

Where this became an issue politically was not mentioned in the question. The problem is that many Americans receive their insurance through their employers and employers then get to exercise their own moralising impulses upon their employees types of plans. I do not see a basis for preventing people from opting out of mandates of this kind (as opposed to more general mandates for health care provision of any kind), nor for preventing them from accessing types of care and coverage that they find perfectly acceptable when they work with or for people who do not feel likewise. The problem is more the employer provision in my view here and less the mandates.

Something occurs to me

I, as a political outcast (and thereby nutcase), have my own numerous bones to pick with the current administration. What is interesting me upon reflection is that conservatives have at least two ready made bones in the form of political missteps, or even scandals if they wish to label them as such, on which to pick their teeth and I've heard very little out of their candidates and spokespeople on these issues.
1) Fast and Furious, the DoJ gun-running to Mexican criminal gangs.
2) Solyandra, the DoE running money to specific firms.

As far as the second, it is kind of a complicated argument to say that the government shouldn't be involved in industrial policy by picking winners and losers within in a particular industry by favouring those firms with money or grants. Economics is already hard enough to explain without the specifics of complicated interactions and distortions behind government involvement in this way. Generally speaking, while I don't favor massive subsidies to green energy programmes and firms involved in said programmes, I'm not sure that a generally opposed view would conclude that the US government, or even the several states, should not be involved in sponsoring research into fields like solar panels or other forms of cleaner energy or otherwise incentivizing American businesses and citizens to adopt stronger energy efficiency in their methods or even providing a clearer disincentive to their consumption of less clean energy sources. I think better cases for clean energy than the methods being used by the administration are made when pointing out the difficulties of getting lower level forms of currently available energy generation off the ground. For instance, we have thousands of small dams that generate no electricity or could use smaller nuclear reactors (of the sort used to power our submarines as but one example) than are industrially sound within the energy sector and both of these, while not costless environmentally, are far better than coal and are possible to generate without substantial trade deficits (which I think are largely meaningless but which are politically unpopular). Or a better case is made when pointing out the distortions caused by substantial subsidies for housing and highway development increasing energy footprints, or local and state environmental legislation, however well-intended, which moves relatively useful development in desirable, low-footprint, locations like California into less desirable and high energy locations like West Texas or Arizona. I also think better cases are made by pointing out the inefficiency of our current and often substantial subsidies to ethanol, gasoline, oil, and coal and that negating many of these would have the, presumably, desirable effect of increasing the economic competitiveness of cleaner energy (and at the very least pushing us toward more efficient ethanol production than corn based fuels). I suspect then the reason this one gets no play is that
a) it's hard to explain to most people why it's a problem and Democrats can try to play the "we're trying to create green jobs" card in response. Which has actually very little to do with what they were doing in this instance.
b) A fuller explanation involves generally core Republican sponsors in the energy sector (oil and ethanol, though the latter is the bipartisan "corn"/agricultural lobby) getting screwed by a better and more efficient policy than we currently have. Meaning they're not going to bite the hand that feeds them. That presumably applies also to nixing the massive economic and environmental distortion that is the home mortgage interest deduction. That's not happening either.
c) It also generally is politically advantageous to continue to allow the wacky state level legislation to preference development and industry in moderate to heavily Republican states like Arizona or Texas as opposed to California. 

As far as the first scenario. I think honestly this ought to be a major liberal selling point against Obama more so than conservative. It involves guns, crime, the drug war, and immigration. Conservatives aren't going to make much hay on this because, until recently, most of the people who died were Mexicans or other Central Americans rather than "Americans", and thus are often viewed as unworthy of any humanity to their base. It involves guns and the presumed public response to any form of gun violence is something like "tighter gun laws" (the actual appropriate response to this case would be "don't use the government to encourage the selling of weapons to known criminals"). It involves the massive violence revolving around the American war on drugs and its spillover effects in places like Colombia, Afghanistan, or especially Mexico, and that war is, for whatever reason, very popular among conservatives. And so on.

What is left over instead is a sequence of increasingly absurd notions like a "war on religion". Something the Obama administration has actually been relatively good for the religious side of that "war" on (with a few notable exceptions like the weirdness of our health care insurance distribution system involving employer based exemptions on things like birth control, something that really shouldn't even be an issue because employers shouldn't be providing health insurance as a primary mode of receiving it in the first place and is thus hardly a religious issue but rather an economic efficiency problem). Or the more bizarre suppositions that he's some sort of secret Muslim (as though that would be unconscionably bad, and really the Islamophobia industrial complex is by far the most damning element of the right's behavior over the last several years. "Death panels" and a smattering of racist or horribly sexist remarks are serious issues for them, but not like this one), or some other secret form of non-American. Or that he has been "apologizing" for America. Even though he's expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen, started a war in Libya, might still start something in Syria or Iran, and had Osama and several other prominent terrorists killed. Most of those complaints don't even make any logical sense and are directly refuted by easily available evidence. They're not even weak campaign messages as a result because they rally few, if any, independent voters to their cause and, in some cases, can work to actively repel them.

If this is the best they can do, I'd have to say, my usual course of throwing away my vote on third party candidacies is looking quite good (of course, I was intent on doing so years ago, to say nothing of months ago when this particular primary season began). I think they'd do better if they adopted even small portions of the two above problems and treated them with greater seriousness than to have CSPAN attention for a few Congressmen. Maybe that will happen in the general election but I rather doubt it given the list of candidates likely involved.

Things of notice

1) Cain dropped out. Finally. I'm still waiting for the moment I can also ignore Newt or Perry or Bachmann again. That day will come however. The thing that bothers me most about the Cain mutiny is that it took a supposed affair to sink him. Apparently payouts for sexual harassment, accusations thereof, and an accusation of sexual assault to boot are non-issues to conservatives. Cain's media and public defences were so ill-handled that this itself should have been judged as a basis for dismissal from the field of "candidates sane persons will support". Either I've over-estimated the number of remaining sane conservatives or there's a much greater insular tendency of conservatives to live in the world pre-determined for them by their faith and their faith in Faux News media worlds. Actually, given Cain's so implausibly stupid policy proscriptions, combined with powerful allergies to declaring a working knowledge of anything at all,, even the most basic facts available, I suspect both are true possibilities. Presumably he is much smarter than he was made to look by all of this, but I doubt the media bubble he has lived in and was working within that insulated him from having to think hard about issues was doing him any favours. 

In related election cycle news, it's starting to sound like Gary Johnson may end up mounting a Libertarian candidacy because Republicans as a party haven't had his back in these debate exclusions. If so, I'll at least have someone to vote for for once. Which is a lot more fun than choosing between candidates whose policies I actively despise. I'd be happier if Huntsman was higher in the polls than Romney. But I'm not a conservative or a Republican either. Huntsman's non-foreign policy (with the crucial exception of Iranian policies), non-entitlement/defence cut related policies don't exactly enamor me to him either (everyone since Reagan, maybe even since Roosevelt, has said they would cut agricultural subsidies, I'll believe it when I see it. And running away from NCLB would be a whole lot nicer if he also backed tax credits for education to create educational markets. Turning it over to local and state boards terrifies me just as much as the intrusions of federal controls that Gingrich, for instance, wants). I'd prefer cutting and abolishing corporate income taxes instead of capital gains and dividends for instance. Income inequality being what it is after all. But he's otherwise the most solid candidate they have over there. I'm assuming his tone is why liberals aren't running terrified at his stances on social conservative issues (where he's more conservative than most) and also is why conservatives hate him (for the: he doesn't piss off liberals!, He must not be a conservative! logic). And hence why I don't have to think too much about him until 2016. This has been the post about Jon Huntsman for the year of 2011 in other words.

2) Georgia should not even be up for discussion as included in NATO. The fact that Rubio has been trying to bring that back up as a topic indicates that the neo-conservative base is still alive and well and strong. A puny disorganised country that picks a fight with a much larger and powerful nation on its borders under the logic that it has received assurances of support from distant and vaguely aligned nations (but who have no treaty obligations to fulfill and no actual national interests at stake) is not a nation-state that belongs in a mutual defence treaty of any kind. Much less a complex (and mostly defunct) arrangement like NATO. I don't care if the much larger powerful nation is Russia. In fact. That's probably an even better reason to ignore Georgia than it is to ally with it. The historical impetus to oppose Russian affairs diplomatically and militarily (for whatever military force projection Russia has anymore outside of regional affairs), is already strong enough without needing alliances with participants in actual shooting wars with Russia in the recent past. Particularly those who STARTED said wars. We should regard anyone who does that, that isn't us or China, as criminally insane.

3) I really liked the recycling toxic waste part. But then I'm already a nuclear power hawk. Personally I'd rather we have a use for the stuff we don't want relating to the already running nuclear power plants than have to figure out how to store the shit for 20000 years. Somehow this doesn't seem like a compelling argument to nuclear power doves. I guess I understand why people fear invisible neutrons bombarding their bodies, but when I look at the death tolls annually from coal and oil and even hydroelectric power, and I look at the cost of solar technology and the present utility of wind (and batteries), I have to say, nuclear looks a lot safer, cleaner than the carbon fuels, and it's at least cheaper than solar. And if we can expand it to include using military grade depleted fuel stocks, so much the better.

4) This is fascinating. Essentially justice and vengeance are viewed as the same by people who find apologies and forgiveness unappealing. Coincidentally, I would expect that these are exactly the sort of people whose main role model was putatively based around the concept of forgiveness. The self-esteem model makes intuitive sense. I'm surprised that people are that surprised that "justice" is viewed in conflict with "contrition" though. Considering the views many people have on crime and criminal penalties (death penalty for drug smugglers!), I would be surprised if people were able to hold these two concepts simultaneously.

What occurs to me

While watching Ken Burns Prohibition series, they tailed off toward its end with the flyby version of the FDR depression. There was, in that, one rather curious phrase which was uttered. That FDR's demands of Congress whilst awaiting inauguration included
1) The legalisation of beer (which turned into the 21st Amendment legalising all alcohol production and sale at the federal level, if not the state)
2) Banking reforms to stablise the banking sector, which was chock full of bank runs in the early 30s.
3) Budget cuts to balance the budget.

Yes, you read that third line correctly. Not only is that what Burns' used, but that's a core plank that FDR ran on; that Hoover was busily spending too much money. Earlier in there was this idea that FDR was running on repeal of Prohibition, or at least part of it, in part because it would give the government new sources of revenue to spend money. But since Hoover had passed a massive tax increase and a massive tariff increase, this wasn't likely to be a core problem for FDR. The fact that Hoover had also passed theretofore massive spending increases for social assistance was. Indeed what more he hadn't passed had been stymied by a hardcore resistance by Democratic members of Congress/Senate. I don't look at this record and think "well then, Hoover wasn't as bad as all that", I think it makes him look worse still, because of what he was spending on, how he raised taxes, etc. But it doesn't jive with the traditional story of the Depression era and the New Deal, so it gets glazed over in favor of a story where somehow FDR ran on a campaign in 1932 to massively increase government spending and involvement in the economy. He didn't.

While watching Ides of March (not terrible, but not very good either as movies go, there've been much better political intrigue movies). The line that gets oft repeated by many of either political party and stripe came up in its way. Somehow the logic goes that if we don't need to buy oil, we won't be our funding enemies and terrorists.

I recognize these nation-states as problems for American interests and sometimes supporters of things like terrorism, while also being significant oil producers.
1) Saudi Arabia (state sponsors terrorism, mostly against other Muslim countries, plus wealthy oil barons who also sponsor such actions)
2) Iran (sponsors Hez'ballah and Syria especially)
3) Russia (mostly annoying, much less so than 25-30 years ago)
4) Venezuela (mostly annoying, less so than Russia)
5) Iraq (just.. a complete mess)
6) Sudan (also messy, oil is somewhat diminished by the separation of South Sudan)
7) Libya (not clear how the revolt shakes out, but I'm doubtful for improvements)
8) Syria (not clear how the revolt shakes out, but very doubtful for improvement)

I don't put on the list as supposedly evil Muslim-Middle Eastern nations: Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt (Egypt is a mixed bag on the whole terrorism issue though), and then one could throw in as problems Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, North Korea, Cuba, Yemen, Palestine, parts of Lebanon, Myanmar, Colombia, etc. So far as I'm aware, none of those are major oil producers but yet often engage in a whole range of devious actions. 

So even if one adds up all the oil being bought in this way from these states by Americans, it's something like less than 20% of our domestic oil consumption. The other 80% comes from ourselves, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Norway, UK, etc (the argument against Mexico being included as a problem is that many of Mexico's problems are directly caused by the US drug war policies and related meddling). There are other countries which are far more dependent on oil from these hostile nation-states. Most of them as a result have very interesting foreign relations. But they don't get a ton of flashback terrorism from it. Therefore, the problem is not a) American energy requirements and trade, but rather something closer to b) American occupation and intense domestic involvement of other countries. I'd hardly say oil is the currency of terror given the number of countries running around without it causing similar problems.

There are sensible reasons to reduce our dependence on oil for energy, and to reform energy use generally toward other sources (wind, solar, natural gas, nuclear, etc). But terrorism is hardly even worth mentioning as one of them. National security is barely worth mentioning even. Energy independence is not worth mentioning. And so on.

Basically. I really dislike it when our media narratives take on false and misleading messages that are already popular, but still completely wrong.

Politics as usual

So there's some scandals out there finally.

1) HPV vaccination mandates and Rick Perry. I don't think of this as a major issue. For starters, the vaccine mandate as written had an opt-out clause for conscientious objections (religious mostly, though presumably people who can't get vaccinated for medical reasons as well) . For another, it wasn't passed. That sounds to me like the proper processing, the system decided to reject some unilateral attempt to act. Finally, I while I have kind of mixed opinions on whether such a vaccine actually should be mandated in the first place, I'm not that concerned if its so strongly recommended that is "mandated" with an opt-out clause. Basically what the vaccine really prevents, or reduces the risk of anyway, is a type of cancer. If you can prevent cancer, even if it is treatable, that has all sorts of nasty side effects (such as infertility), and you can do it essentially by giving people a shot well before they would ever develop it, by all means. This is an entirely sensible approach to health care. Prevention is much cheaper than the cure.

What seems to rile people up is the idea that somehow this vaccination will encourage young people to have sex with each other. I think this is neglecting that young people (especially boys of course), have all sorts of already existing reasons to want to have sex with others, and have very poor assessments of long-term risk. Particularly when opportunities to have sex arise. In other words, we already have very scary diseases that are transmitted sexually (HIV), and some less scary but annoying ones (herpes), and our kids still go out in overwhelming numbers to have sex either a) before they are married or b) before they are 18. Whatever "encouragement" would exist from this medical procedure is therefore limited to a much smaller population of teens than people think it is; essentially teens who are good at long-term risk assessments. Good luck finding those.

More sensible objections to Rick Perry emerge for me in any of the following
a) his handling of death penalty processing in Texas. Particularly for personally quashing a review board into a case where it appears the conviction was based on faulty evidence. I'm not morally opposed to the death penalty (I am practically opposed because it costs too much). But people should not cheer killing others for one (thanks conservatives for looking like as big assholes as libertarians did for cheering letting sick people die), and they shouldn't appear to be so eager to kill people that due process is washed aside. His overall handling of civil liberties doesn't impress me here.
b) His jobs record is largely phony. He basically poaches jobs from other states. That's not going to work at the national level. Also one of the most effective reasons Texas didn't go into a tailspin is that it had a sensible (dumb) regulation concerning home mortgages (20% down rule) that for some reason had been largely abandoned elsewhere. This kept home prices more reasonable and construction from being a total boom-bust cycle. A GOP politician isn't going to run on "we should have more effective regulations" (note: not more regulations, smarter regulations) but that's kind of a nice part of the Texas jobs' story.
c) His budget record is pretty bad, or at least weak. Some of that is constrained by Texas having a pretty weak governor and very weak controls over some fiscal matters (taxes for instance)
d) if people are concerned about women's health issues (like the HPV vaccine), Perry just slashed the budget for such spending in a state that already had a pretty weak health care provision.
e) Presumably conservatives will be up in arms over his immigration record. I'm not.
f) Crony capitalism. While it's unlikely that that bill is a source of such things, much of what Perry did was effectively recruit companies to come to Texas by offering them all sorts of sweetheart deals. Some of that is sweetened more by Texas' business friendly regulatory and tax environments. But not all of it. Offering special breaks to specific companies is not a very free market idea.

2) Solyndra.
I think the most proper assessments here are as follows
a) Crony capitalism. Governments favoring specific businesses with special benefits is always a problem and always has costs. Not just when it blows up very publicly in that government's face by having the business they favor implode. (See also: the end result of the Kelo decision).
b) Generally opposing the effectiveness of the green jobs movement. I'm not sure that the "green jobs" movement is a fine place to set American hopes for job creation anyway. That said, I'm not opposed to use of cleaner energy. But I'd say we'd be better off starting by nixing all the subsidies we have to non-cleaner energy (coal, oil, ethanol) than by handing out even more money to clean energy folks. Basic R&D, sure. Picking companies or even whole industries like we often do, not a great idea.
c) Generally opposing the stimulus bill. There's a whole range of things that were in that bill that don't appear to have been all that stimulative. Or rather, what they were was palliative care to an economy that got very sick. We basically put a washcloth on our heads for a migraine headache. Or a stroke even. Passing out money to companies to do specific things might have kept some of those companies afloat. But guess what: banks are supposed to do that. So the appropriate response was from monetary policy (not banking bailouts, see Bank of America's continued floundering about). And not stimulative care. Most of the money actually went to help state governments stay afloat (see, Perry and Texas for this, as an example). Another big chunk went to tax cuts of various sorts (yes it did). Another to help the unemployed by passing them out money (which wasn't as helpful as passing out to companies wage insurance like the Germans did). And then some went for long-term infrastructure projects rather than simpler things like fixing roads and bridges or updating/fixing water and sewage lines. Long-term infrastructure projects like, say, putting a bunch of solar panels up (or attempting to build a bunch of high speed rail lines in places that it wouldn't be economically sustainable without a large set of reforms to pre-existing infrastructure subsidies in the form of eliminating HMI deductions and cutting new highway spending). While this might have been politically necessary to pass the bill to put these sorts of projects in, it's not exactly "stimulative" even in the Keynesian sense to spend a bunch of money down the road sometime to do something eventually. Spending a bunch of money now to have people do things now is the theory. The bill they passed a couple years was essentially an omnibus bill not a stimulus bill. It isn't a question of it not being big enough. It's a question of what was in it in the first place.


Update: Perry's comments on Israel-Palestine the other day give me a tremendous amount of proof that his foreign policy is liable to be more unpleasant even than the Obama administration (and that he's more than willing to pander to the Zionist voting bloc of Christian conservatives in this country rather than demonstrate what our foreign policy actually is already, which is pretty much what he says it should be). Great. No thanks. Have a seat sir.

Deficit deals, or are they?

So after a couple months of handwringing, and intense debates over what qualifies as a "tax increase", and intimations that our most significant spending programmes (entitlements/defence) were on the slab for cutting and reform, we got (insert blank).

Right. That's it.

To resolve the American debt crisis, three things needed to happen.
1) Taxes needed to be reformed. This would include for some people, increases in taxes because of exclusions and subsidies that need to disappear. For all the railing the conservative apparatchik does about wasteful stimulus spending, it engages in the most detestable forms of hand waving when it occurs that a) their proposed reforms to entitlements are basically tax increases themselves or b) their protected tax exclusions and subsidies are forms of government expenditure to protect favoured constituencies. The essential nature of the Simpson-Bowles compromise on taxes would have worked for me. Get rid of the HMI deduction and some other tax expenditures (especially corporate welfare programmes), and generally lower rates correspondingly. I would also favour getting rid of the corporate income tax and replacing it by abolishing the distinction between capital gains and income (with perhaps a carve out for direct property sales by individuals and businesses). But since none of this happened even under the most severe circumstances, and indeed, most all of it wasn't even up for discussion at any time, I grow concerned.
2) Entitlement reforms. Particularly with medicaid (block grants), and the reform of medicare and social security into means tested programmes operating as actual social safety nets instead of as middle class entitlements. Progressives rightly fear what would happen if we took these programmes away from the middle class, particularly the upper-middle class (the near universal support they enjoy presently would disappear). Nevertheless in their current form they are unsustainable boondoggles. And depressingly, were never seriously debated. Conservatives had a few proposals floated to reform these (as did the moderate Democrat wing), but none were all that serious and none enjoyed even considerable Republican support. After all, all those old white people who lean right vote also.
3) Defence cuts. After the entitlements, this represents a massive proportion of the budget. Ending or curtailing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan would certainly decrease this expenditure. But so would drawing back our deployed armies in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Naval patrols to help deal with piracy in the Red Sea/Horn of Africa region make sense. That's an international concern that directly impacts American interests. And intelligence or even special operations missions dealing with terrorist groups around the globe make sense. Again, an international concern that directly impacts our interests. Neither of these interests require the American public to have a military budget that is roughly half of the global military expense, with our closest allies (NATO europeans, South Korea, Israel) accounting for another ~25%. Even if China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela/Cuba were all to band together somehow into a coherent and cooperative military alliance against us (something that their competing self-interest and global displacement as well as force composition make an exceedingly dubious proposition), and this alliance were to gang up somehow exclusively on America with no international aid to our defence, we would be more than capable of defending ourselves and would probably end up with a couple of new states/protectorates in Cuba for our trouble at our current levels (assuming that nuclear deterrence kept the war conventional, a strong likelihood). What concerns me most with this point is that INCREASES in spending are depicted in the media as DECREASES. While there are real spending dollars (inflation) to consider, even inflation does not increase at the rate our military budget has over the last decade even excluding our active military operations. I would slash this budget to the EU level of about 1.5% of GDP instead of 4%+ as it is currently. But even cuts to the 2.5-3% level would be a significant achievement and go a long way to cutting our deficit with a minimal impact on the real US economy. This too was never up for debate. (Note, there is a proposal to cut almost 350B over ten years from the defence budget if no future deal is arrived on for cuts. I consider this an unlikely prospect that no future deal will emerge with cuts to something else. But it is always possible that the GOP caucus will remain fixed on cutting planned parenthood, NPR, and ObamaCare, and not on things where actual deals are possible. If so, larger defence cuts will be mandated however, a deal which I imagine will motivate enough Republicans and Democrats alike to come up with something because such spending is taboo to cut for political reasons. Even with these relatively large dollar amounts in cuts, the amounts are still very small relative to what is available in the overall defence budget, perhaps 10% would go. Woo-hoo...)

Among other cuts, nothing was mentioned about Homeland Security funding or the War on Drugs. Little was mentioned about eliminating or even reducing agricultural or energy subsidies (some on oil or coal came up, but didn't go anywhere). Wasteful education spending? Nope. Rent controls? (admittedly a usually local concern but often supported directly through the HUD architecture of low income housing subsidies). Not really. And so on down the line.

Instead, a new law came up in the House which effectively requires ISPs to spy on their customers in order to protect against "child predators". All their customers. Not just the ones the police or FBI tell them to keep tabs on. Nor does the law limit authorities' inquiries to child pornography. Any request for information is sufficient and no justification is required. Anybody care to guess where and for what that will be used? In what ways has the PATRIOT act been used for aside from its more explicit supposed use of anti-terrorism? (the list is numerous). This is even less safeguarded than the FBI's use of NSLs under the FISA directives.

Pathetic.

Further note: I don't support a balanced budget amendment. Two reasons.
1) The government operates more like a corporation than individual household budget. Loans, often large loans, are par for the course. Reasonable constraints to real spending come in the form of the requirement of paying back such loans, and servicing the national debt can be an especially pricey prospect. The reason entitlements and tax reform must be on the table is to deal not with the immediate and admittedly pressing problem of the current national debt, but to keep the expense of future national debt (as well as swelling entitlement costs) from engulfing the entirety of the federal budget. This was a long-term economic disaster that bond markets and other players have every right be concerned about. The immediate prospect of a default is child's play next to a much more massive government in the US's future defaulting or being rendered unable to perform its basic duties.
2) One of those duties is on some level to operate a social safety net structure. In times of recessions, such safety nets require more funding than is usual and induce deficits. What should be required instead of permanent balancing is that governments should be prevented in "good" times from expending more than they take in. The impetus to spend the cash it is flush with when the economy (and therefore the tax base) grows is very strong. If it spends this money on basic infrastructure (or repairs to such) or on educational reforms, and not on providing money to favoured constituencies and the middle class, then there is at least some form of capital available afterward (physical or human) that can be drawn upon instead in recessionary periods. Spending on tax cuts likewise isn't all that useful. Money should be horded so that it is available when times are bad. For governments at least. Expansion of services when times are good merely means that there are, as now, much larger expectations of government provision when things are bad. That's a huge problem. Something like an unbalanced budget amendment instead makes more sense to deal with the very real problem of counter-cyclical budgeting. Countries like Norway or China or Germany who have budget surpluses, usually from exports and higher tax bases, are more than capable of stashing some of that cash and then expending it on the natural emergencies of any state. Why are we not doing the same? Why was it necessary to cut taxes in 2001 when we still had such a surplus for example?

Random tidbits from the week

"energy independence, the idea that Americans should not buy from abroad what they can produce more expensively at home." - A lovely problem with comparative advantages. We used to produce oil pretty cheaply and even though we consumed quite a lot relative to the rest of the world, we were net exporters of energy. The reason was that we had considerable infrastructure available to find and drill wells, and a lot of space, where other countries lacked these. Now. Most of the oil exporters get to benefit from our infrastructure or expertise and have wells which are easier to find or run than American oil reserves are. This isn't that complicated a problem. Even opening up offshore drilling and/or various spots in Alaska and letting Shell or Texaco make up their own regulatory rules isn't really a "solution" to energy independence. It's the idea that somehow the oil that is within our borders is imbued with some magical qualities that make it cheaper.

It is not. This is to say nothing of other energy sources like nuclear (fraught with regulatory problems, not to mention populist opposition), the expense of developing high quality solar or wind power (or especially better battery technology), or especially the silliness of burning corn in order to make fuel. At least natural gas makes some sense economically, and is more environmentally sound than coal, and we have quite a lot of it. Though I cannot imagine how giving it the same sorts of subsidies that we already give to ethanol, not to mention coal or oil makes much sense.

Speaking of crappy economic policies. ... "So not only have we been subsidizing cotton farmers but we have been paying Brazil to allow us to keep subsidizing cotton farmers". Part of the Senate's attempt to cut subsidies got rid of the payments to Brazil as part of a WTO settlement for the US's improper trade subsidies for American cotton farmers. But they kept the improper trade subsidies themselves in the budget.

So we saved a couple hundred million dollars. That we will have to pay anyway because it was a fine. In order to keep spending billions of dollars that make no economic sense. Great job Congress. Keep up the good work.


And then there was another The gay marriage train marches on. I'm still of the opinion that the state really shouldn't have to promote contractual arrangements like marriages. Maybe we should have a default contractual set of spousal rights that come with a marriage and if you want something specific you go to a lawyer, but otherwise what's the state's interest in your private affairs? Some notes though: federal policy still creates problems with things like immigrating a spouse when that spouse is married through a homosexual arrangement. There isn't a citizenship path conferred for such things relative to heterosexual partnerships which does strike me as a serious problem. This was also noted in the now famous Vargas article in the NYT, as an illegal immigrant (brought here as a child from the Philippines) his problems would have been a lot easier to resolve if he were a straight male. No immigration benefits and protections, much less citizenship priorities, are provided for homosexual "partners". That much at least ought to be reasonably easy to fix assuming DoMA goes down in the courts as it should.

News at 11, the death penalty is really expensive. And I mean really expensive. Like a hundred million a pop. This is still to me the most salient objection to the problem of death penalty punishments. Most cops acknowledge it has little or no deterrent value as far as reducing crime. It has some value as leverage against an accused criminal, and especially convicted criminals, but this has little use in preventing new crime. There's some level of conferred justice demanded where some heinous crime is committed where the victims may wish for the most severe penalties imaginable. But prison for life (without parole) is no picnic either. And it's just not that expensive relative to the amount of due process required to just take life without parole and keep a prisoner in chains and behind bars for 40 or 50 years than to go through the trouble of proving that not only did they commit some terrible crime, a brutal murder or some such, a situation which is actually relatively difficult to the point of removing any doubt whatsoever (reasonable doubt standards apply but in a death penalty case, more reasons can be manufactured), but that they also deserve our social scorn to the point that we should execute them. All of that work is not cheap.

And our robot overlords prepare to strike.... Or at least Nevada has started to pave the way. I for one welcome this process. There's a ton of wasted productivity involved in actually driving a car. One can sleep, listen to music, converse (including on phones or computers), drink/eat, do paperwork, catch up on news and so on without having to pay attention to the road if a computer can do the driving. There's also less need to detail police to patrol for things like speeding, drunk driving, traffic accidents, etc. And there's the added bonus of reducing the impact of congestion (something which can be further decreased by using congestion pricing around cities and high traffic areas instead of making highways free as much as we do). It will be a while yet before the idea is made clear that such vehicles are safe enough to operate, but from what I understand the biggest problem is likely to be GPS navigation issues. Computers don't tend to understand construction and roadblocks, or weather issues like expected quality of road conditions from snow or ice storms, essentially anything that requires re-routing very well. They can run into waypoint locks and can refuse to improvise the way a human operator might, where they are familiar with the area for example. But this technology is also improving. So there's hope. It also occurs to me that if we're ever going to have flying cars, we'll need to have robot cars first. I don't think most humans are naturally skilled 3-dimensional thinkers the way a flying car might require. You would have to keep track not only of cars next to, in front of, and behind, but also above and below and at angles. We use complicated FAA schemes right now to keep skies around airports relative sane already. Imagine rush hour traffic resembling Coruscant in Star Wars. Perhaps, as with the improvement in hand-eye coordination from years of children growing up playing video games (more of them than were possible from sports anyway), we would see some comparable improvement in 3D thought emerge as a social conditioning effect from dealing with objects moving in space like traffic.

But I'm not holding my breath for that to be a very sudden development in our evolution either. It takes a lot of practice for reaction times and coordination to improve and it is being undertaken by children and teenagers playing sports or video games. I don't see us giving children keys to cars in order to play in... err practice 3D navigation in traffic.