| Political thoughts |
[Apr. 25th, 2009|03:05 am] |
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Since I am sometimes placed in the somewhat difficult position of explaining what I think about 'politics', I thought I would write a blog post about it. My Facebook political views - "pravda" - are probably thoroughly unhelpful at best and misleadingly Communist-sounding at worst, so no help there. (In fact, it's sort of a vaguely ironic joke since I am thoroughly anti-communist - because I think it rests on a thoroughly un-truth-y understanding of reality. But mostly it was because "Other" is boring.)
I suppose if I had to describe myself in a word, it would be conservative. Or Liberal. Or should the capitals be the other way around? It's sort of a problem. Anyway - as most of you know - I have always been vaguely libertarian, and sometimes even thoroughgoingly ideological about my Rothbardian anarchocapitalism. Mmm. I still respect (real) libertarianism (as opposed to the Libertarian Party, which is like the GOP for even stupider people) for internal consistency and steadfast principles and all that good stuff; but lately I have becoming increasingly disenchanted with the sort of thought coming out of those quarters. (On the other hand, I disagree with the actual political parties in the US about almost everthing.) Anyway, aside from petty topical disagreements (for example, while I am generally opposed to gun control laws on various practical grounds, I don't really care that much either way and think the common argument that outlawing handguns and rifles will somehow make it more difficult for US citizens to resist the US military's cruel, evil oppression is kind of laughable; and even though I appreciate its historical validity, it's really time to move on from the whole states-rights thing, since the idea that the USA is somehow actual meaningfully federal anymore is at least as hilarious, although I am certainly always in favor of local government and the devolution of political power and so on) I think libertarianism as a whole generally falls prey to the same arguments that undermine other radical political movements; which is to say that it ignores the actual world as it is in favor of dreamland.
Let's back to being a conservative, though. Before y'all get your panties in a bunch, let me explain. Unlike most so-called "conservatives," who mostly seem these days to be Christian theo-fascists, war-lovers, big-business profiteers, or simply generally dunderheaded, I am not an idiot or a bigot. (By the latter I mean that I am extremely "socially liberal.") What I mean by conservatism is the idea that the government has a specific purpose: to preserve the body politic. (Even though social contract arguments are at least as unconvincing as the various sorts of specific natural rights arguments employed by libertarians in an attempt to show that the structure of the universe ineluctably leads to the conclusion that anarchocapitalism is the best form of political organization, this doesn't mean that abstractions like "body politic," "nation," etc., are invalid, since it is simply a fact of the world that, whether actually possessed of a sovereign state at this point in time, there are such things as 'the nation' which can have concerns of their own that are not necessarily composed of the summation of their citizen-constituents' concerns or interests.) This means not only defending it against external threats, but also regulating the public interactions of its citizens.
For example, earlier today I was reading an article attacking the Quebec language laws. Apparently, in Quebec, it is illegal to have commercial signage which does not give precedence to the French text, to sell French films under an English title (for example, the Criterion Collection DVD of J-L Godard's Breathless cannot be sold in Quebec because it does not have the French title prominently displayed), etc; and everyone is required to send their children to a French-speaking school until they are so-and-so years old, and so on. In effect, the argument against such laws is: regulating language use is inappropriate because it unduly infringes (say) the rights of parents to decide what language their children should speak. Or it infringes the right of a store-owner to self-expression, or whatever. (Actually, I understand the law used to be that only French could be used on signs, but the Supreme Court of Canada struck that down and said that the most Quebec could do was require French to be the most prominent language. But I digress.) I find this unconvincing because it seems to me perfectly reasonable to say: well, you are in Quebec now; and we speak French, so everyone has the right to conduct their public business solely in French. (I think the law goes too far, and leads to ridiculous situations like with Breathless, but the principle is sound.) But it does not (of course) criminalize speaking in English in public if two Anglophones happen to be meeting for business or whatever, for example, which would obviously be ridiculous. (Also, since Quebec is still a part of Canada they obviously have to follow the Canadian constitution which requires that English and French be parallel languages and so on, so I believe that even the Quebec provincial government has to for example allow you to speak English in court and things like that.)
I picked that example to illustrate more or less the boundaries of what I think is appropriate state control. The right of a Francophone political community to require that its citizens provide (at least) French communication of everything in public is a fine balance between the ability of a government to do whatever it wants and its obligation to respect the rights of individuals (to speak whatever language they please, say). Stepping over the line, I am opposed to regulating all sorts of things that go on in private. For example, I think anti-sodomy laws are absurd; but equally, I think that anti-drug laws should be struck down. (This is another example of an issue I don't really care that much about - since I don't really plan on shooting up heroin any time soon - but it is another good case study. Most people of all political persuasions would probably agree that heroin should be illegal but alcohol should be legal for people over age X, but no one can ever advance any particular justification for this discrepancy. The justification behind anti-drug laws is that it is somehow the government's job to protect people from themselves, but I find that astonishingly unconvincing. The only difference between heroin and alcohol, from this perspective, is how quickly they kill you; and alcohol was after all once illegal. So it does not require much of an imagination to think that one day the government might think it is okay to advance its public health mission further by, say, criminalizing non-exercise or overconsumption of Doritos. There is simply no difference of kind between banning heroin and banning Doritos, only one of degree. On top of restoring internal coherence to our laws, ending the drug war would save however many billions of dollars we waste on it, plus it would more or less instantly destroy the vast majority of gang- and organized-crime-related violence.)
Moreover, I strongly believe that the government has an obligation to be fiscally responsible. I support things like education (including publicly-funded research - some people whinge about building supercolliders and so on, but I didn't see them complaining when federal science research helped win WW2, just as an example likely to appeal to most of them), public works (roads, etc.), and so on, but in most cases it is probably more efficient to subcontract them out to companies that already have experience doing whatever is at hand. (But at the same time, I don't hold truck with the idea that as an absolute principle governments shouldn't have or are incapable of running business-like entities.) Furthermore, most of the federal government is obviously a giant waste of money that could be much better spent otherwise. And since we are in the middle of a rather bad recession, I should also point out that government meddling in the economy is rarely going to end well. What has mostly gone unmentioned in the furor to blame the dirty capitalists on Wall Street is that the "sub-prime" lending crisis is mostly the government's fault from back in the 90s when the Clinton administration and the GOP congress pushed Fannie and Freddie into making said sub-prime loans regularly. And while the media successfully managed to portray the 'gold standard' etc. as thoroughly crackpot during Ron Paul's presidential campaign, it is nevertheless worth noting that wild fluctuations in the money supply (not to mention its steady expanse) are a Bad Thing. The business cycle is at least partly related to central banking and extensive governmental intervention in The Economy, although it is also worth observing that there were periodic economic crashes in the 19th century, before the Federal Reserve was established, and I am not necessarily satisfied with the explanations advanced by Austrian economists for these (although I have also not looked into it too much). Lastly, governments often engage in subsidizing various industries and doing other things of this sort. This is ill-advised since, first of all, it creates the appearance of more demand than actually exists, which lures more producers into the market, etc., which creates instability (which requires eventual correction - again, see current recession) and, second, it is essentially anti-Robin-Hooding; governments are, after all, funded by taxation, and if The People thought that a particular activity (say corn farming) were all that important they would buy more corn, and it is nothing but injustice to take their money and spend it on corn they didn't want.
However, as I hope is clear, unlike more hardcore free-marketeers, I don't think that the free market or maximum economic efficiency are the ultimate goals of society and find it entirely likely that most people would agree that a government should have other priorities. This just seems to be something that the libertarian crowd fundamentally doesn't understand. For example, I think that protecting the environment from pollution, preserving national parks, and so on, are important social goods, and even if it means lowering the GDP by a billionth of a percent I will always agitate against, say, strip-mining Yosemite or whatever.
Well anyway, I suppose I could say an awful lot more, but that should do for now. In essence, I find no inconsistency in simultaneously thinking that the state should act with maximum restraint and balance in restricting individual rights, while at the same time having wide-ranging powers to secure whatever Good Things - such as education, exciting campgrounds, and a national language - its body politic should will. I think both Burke and Rousseau would be, if not happy, at least vaguely content and not rolling over in their graves, if I were appointed dictator of the universe. |
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