Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs is interviewed on “Government’s Intrusions Threaten Economy.” Interviewed by Steve Stanek of the Heartland Institute, Dr. Higgs explains that the government’s growing intrusions into the economy—bank bailouts, economic stimulus, interest rate manipulations and credit expansion by the Federal Reserve, increased business regulations—could eventually lead to soaring price inflation and interest rates and another, far worse economic downturn. The solution is to move deliberately to end such policies and the accumulation of federal bureaucratic programs, controls and taxes on Americans.

[audio:2010_06_03_higgs_heartland.mp3]
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Please also see the following books by Dr. Higgs:

Depression, War, and Cold War: Challenging the Myths of Conflict and Prosperity

Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government

Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government

Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society

Today, in a 5-4 decision, the Court issued an opinion in Berghuis v. Thompkins.  The Court held that that a defendant who refused to sign a waiver form after being advised of his Miranda rights, and then was silent for most of a three-hour custodial interrogation before incriminating himself in a shooting, had waived his right to remain silent.  The Court averred that person given Miranda warnings must invoke Miranda’s right to silence “unambiguously.”

Officers approached Thompkins, read him his rights, but Thompkins refused to sign the waiver form.  Eventually the officers asked him if he believed in God and prayed.  Thompkins said yes.   Thompkins began to shed tears.  Then the officers inquired if he asked God’s forgiveness for murdering the victim.  Thompkins said that he did.  This statement was used against him at trial.  He was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.

The Court concluded that Thompkins, who “did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk” had not unambiguously invoked the right to silence.  The Court rejected Thompkins’ argument that the police were required to obtain a waiver of his Miranda rights before questioning him.

This decision makes sense to me.  All Thompkins has to do was tell the officers that he did not want to talk or ask them for an attorney.  Had he done so, the interrogation would have stopped. “Miranda rights” are of judicial creation anyway.  No harm is done in requiring the accused to actually invoke the protections before deciding to suppress evidence.

What gives some people the right to rule others? At least since John Locke’s time, the most common and seemingly compelling answer has been “the consent of the governed.” When the North American revolutionaries set out to justify their secession from the British Empire, they declared, among other things:  “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” This sounds good, especially if one doesn’t think about it very hard or very long, but the harder and longer one thinks about it, the more problematic it becomes.

One question after another comes to mind. Must every person consent? If not, how many must, and what options do those who do not consent have? What form must the consent take ― verbal, written, explicit, implicit? If implicit, how is it to be registered? Given that the composition of society is constantly changing, owing to births, deaths, and international migration, how often must the rulers confirm that they retain the consent of the governed? And so on and on. Political legitimacy, it would appear, presents a multitude of difficulties when we move from the realm of theoretical abstraction to that of practical realization.

I raise this question because in regard to the so-called social contract, I have often had occasion to protest that I haven’t even seen the contract, much less been asked to consent to it. A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration. I’ve never received an offer from my rulers, so I certainly have not accepted one; and rather than consideration, I have received nothing but contempt from the rulers, who, notwithstanding the absence of any agreement, have indubitably threatened me with grave harm in the event that I fail to comply with their edicts. What monumental effrontery these people exhibit! What gives them the right to rob me and push me around? It certainly is not my desire to be a sheep for them to shear or slaughter as they deem expedient for the attainment of their own ends.

Moreover, when we flesh out the idea of “consent of the governed” in realistic detail, the whole notion quickly becomes utterly preposterous. Just consider how it would work. A would-be ruler approaches you and offers a contract for your approval. Here, says he, is the deal.

I, the party of the first part (“the ruler”), promise:

(1) To stipulate how much of your money you will hand over to me, as well as how, when, and where the transfer will be made. You will have no effective say in the matter, aside from pleading for my mercy, and if you should fail to comply, my agents will punish you with fines, imprisonment, and (in the event of your persistent resistance) death.

(2) To make thousands upon thousands of rules for you to obey without question, again on pain of punishment by my agents. You will have no effective say in determining the content of these rules, which will be so numerous, complex, and in many cases beyond comprehension that no human being could conceivably know about more than a handful of them, much less their specific character, yet if you should fail to comply with any of them, I will feel free to punish you to the extent of a law made my me and my confederates.

(3) To provide for your use, on terms stipulated by me and my agents, so-called public goods and services. Although you may actually place some value on a few of these goods and services, most will have little or no value to you, and some you will find utterly abhorrent, and in no event will you as an individual have any effective say over the goods and services I provide, notwithstanding any economist’s cock-and-bull story to the effect that you “demand” all this stuff and value it at whatever amount of money I choose to expend for its provision.

(4) In the event of a dispute between us, judges beholden to me for their appointment and salaries will decide how to settle the dispute. You can expect to lose in these settlements, if your case is heard at all.

 In exchange for the foregoing government “benefits,” you, the party of the second part (“the subject”), promise:

(5) To shut up, make no waves, obey all orders issued by the ruler and his agents, kowtow to them as if they were important, honorable people, and when they say “jump,” ask only “how high?”

Such a deal! Can we really imagine that any sane person would consent to it?

Yet the foregoing description of the true social contract into which individuals are said to have entered is much too abstract to capture the raw realities of being governed. In enumerating the actual details, no one has ever surpassed Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who wrote:

To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.  (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Beverley Robinson. London: Freedom Press, 1923, p. 294)

Nowadays, of course, we would have to supplement Proudhon’s admirably precise account by noting that our being governed also entails our being electronically monitored, tracked by orbiting satellites, tased more or less at random, and invaded in our premises by SWAT teams of police, often under the pretext of their overriding our natural right to decide what substances we will ingest, inject, or inhale into what used to be known as “our own bodies.”

So, to return to the question of political legitimacy as determined by the consent of the governed, it appears upon sober reflection that the whole idea is as fanciful as the unicorn. No one in his right mind, save perhaps an incurable masochist, would voluntarily consent to be treated as governments actually treat their subjects.

Nevertheless, very few of us in this country at present are actively engaged in armed rebellion against our rulers. And it is precisely this absence of outright violent revolt that, strange to say, some commentators take as evidence of our consent to the outrageous manner in which the government treats us. Grudging, prudential acquiescence, however, is not the same thing as consent, especially when the people acquiesce, as I do, only in simmering, indignant resignation.

For the record, I can state in complete candor that I do not approve of the manner in which I am being treated by the liars, thieves, and murderers who style themselves the Government of the United States of America or by those who constitute the tyrannical pyramid of state, local, and hybrid governments with which this country is massively infested. My sincere wish is that all of these individuals would, for once in their despicable lives, do the honorable thing. In this regard, I suggest that they give serious consideration to seppuku. Whether they employ a sharp sword or a dull one, I care not, so long as they carry the act to a successful completion.

Addendum on “love it or leave it”:  Whenever I write along the foregoing lines, I always receive messages from Neanderthals who, imagining that I “hate America,” demand that I get the hell out of this country and go back to wherever I came from. Such reactions evince not only bad manners, but a fundamental misunderstanding of my grievance.

I most emphatically do not hate America. I was not born in some foreign despotism, but in a domestic one known as Oklahoma, which I understand to be the very heart and soul of this country so far as culture and refinement are concerned. Moreover, for what it is worth, some of my ancestors had been living in North America for centuries before a handful of ragged, starving white men washed ashore on this continent, planted their flag, and claimed all the land they could see and a great deal they could not see on behalf of some sorry-ass European monarch. What chutzpah! I yield to no one in my affection for the Statue of Liberty, the Rocky Mountains, and the amber waves of grain, not to mention the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County. So when I am invited to get out of the country, I feel like someone living in a town taken over by the James Gang who has been told that if he doesn’t like being robbed and bullied by uninvited thugs, he should move to another town. To me, it seems much more fitting that the criminals get out.

“[P]rogress marches with tragedy[;] … new capacities breed new horrors,” as T. J. Stiles writes on page 67 of his masterful biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt titled The First Tycoon (Knopf, 2009).

Mr. Stiles refers in that passage to the death and destruction caused by a series of regrettable accidents at the dawn of the Age of Steam. On May 16, 1824, as he reports, the boilers of the steamboat Aetna erupted in flames in New York Harbor. Not much more than a year later, on June 2, 1825, the Legislator blew up while building up a head of steam at its dock in New Brunswick, NJ, killing in the ensuing hailstorm of superheated water and metal shards three passengers, two African-Americans and one white person, along with one member of the ship’s crew.

In a milieu of short attention spans, sound bites and 24-hour news cycles, nearly every catastrophe, whether it be Mother Nature’s or man-made, is treated by the media as if nothing like it had ever happened before. This Time is Different, as the title of Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff’s virtuoso history of financial crises ironically puts it.

“This time” almost never is different: Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes have scourged humankind throughout recorded history. So, too, have accidents at home, on the road, and in the workplace. Mines have collapsed since the first one was dug. Workers were injured or killed on the job well before the Industrial Revolution began.

But as Mr. Stiles insightfully observes, “new capacities breed new horrors”, the poster child currently of which is the explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico that sent 11 men to their graves and precipitated the worst oil spill since the wreck of the Exxon Valdez.

Finger-pointing predictably is now the order of the day. Who is to blame: BP, its contractor or federal regulators? There should have been a plan in place to respond to the disaster in the Gulf, or so says the conventional wisdom. But new technologies foster new hazards, all of which fallible human beings cannot reasonably be expected to anticipate. That failure certainly is true of governmental regulatory agencies. No bureaucrat has incentive to prepare for or to respond quickly to disasters of any kind, as Hurricane Katrina amply proved.

The pro forma policy recommendation on the part of statists is to fire the head of agency responsible for lax oversight and then to impose more stringent regulations on the firm and industry to which liability opportunistically can be shifted. Ignorant hope apparently springs eternal.

BP, already having spent $1 billion to stanch the oil flow, will pay even more of a price for the disaster in the Gulf, not only in the form of lost market value, but also as a result of damages claimed in follow-on civil lawsuits filed by the families of the 11 workers killed in the oil rig’s explosion and by the shrimpers, oystermen, fishermen and the owners of coastal businesses whose livelihoods have been devastated by the spill.

Whether or not the Obama administration can avoid political penalties for its evident inaction, given that the president has claimed to have been “in charge” from Day 1, will be decided by voters in November. It is important to recognize, however, that if a private, profit-maximizing global enterprise was unable to manage the risks of deep-water drilling, no government agency can do so.

Although there is plenty of blame for the disaster in the Gulf to go around, keep squarely in mind that BP in all likelihood would not have undertaken a project that in hindsight was ill-starred if federal regulations had not placed drilling in shallower waters closer to shore off-limits.

Speaking to CNBC in Las Vegas recently, Steve Wynn, the billionaire developer and operator of entertainment properties, said: “Washington is unpredictable these days. No one has any idea what’s next . . . the uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody, and it’s delaying recovery.” Wynn complains of “wild, uncontrolled spending” and “unbelievable, unsustainable debt.”

Wynn also has operations in China, and he remarks that he “has no qualms about dealing with the Chinese government. Macau has been steady. The shocking, unexpected government is the one in Washington.” Not very long ago, such a statement would itself have been shocking.

The gambling and real estate magnate expresses concerns about inflation, FHA’s making the same mistakes Fannie and Freddie have made, and the business costs arising from the new health-care law. “We’re on our way to Greece,” he declares, “in the hands of a confused, foolish government.” Exasperated, he mutters, “It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop.”

These observations remind me of similar statements made by investor Lammot du Pont in 1937: “Uncertainty rules the tax situation, the labor situation, the monetary situation, and practically every legal condition under which industry must operate.” Even members of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cabinet eventually appealed to him to clear the air in which private investors were finding it difficult to breathe, but he refused to do so, preferring to plunge ahead with the New Deal and to publicly blame “economic royalists” for his policies’ failures.

Du Pont was hardly the only one making such observations in 1937 about regime uncertainty’s negative effect on recovery, and Wynn is hardly the only one now making such observations.

Here is The Onion-SPAN2 satirically reporting on a “hearing” for the emergency bill H.R. 323 (under the provisions of the National Emergency Legislation Act) that has been proposed by a bipartisan group of congressmen, “The IHOP Should Stay Open All Night So That We Can Get Some Pancakes Act.” Submitted the previous night at 3:33 a.m., the bill would require the payment for monorail transportation from the Black Sheep Pub to all IHOP restaurants in Washington, D.C., and includes a $2 million earmark to study whether pancake and waffle batter are the same thing. The Committee on House Administration is chaired by Rep. Robert Ingersol.

My Division of Labour co-blogger Noel Campbell hits a home run with today’s post on immigration. Two key quotes:

Arizona doesn’t have an illegal immigration problem; Arizona has an organized crime violence problem. What created the incentives for organized crime (and its penchant for violence) to develop? Well, the War on Drugs, of course.

The United States doesn’t have an illegal immigration problem; it has a government entitlements problem.

The whole thing is here. My most recent Forbes.com piece was a contribution to this symposium on immigration. Here’s an earlier Forbes.com contribution on immigration.

Today’s test is to read the following news report, and identify its logical fallacy:

“Loss of Species After Ice Age Seen as Warning,” by David Perlman, San Francisco Chronicle Science Editor, May 24, 2010

You have 30 minutes.

…

OK, time’s up.

A) The article cited above says:

Fossils of small mammals excavated around a Shasta County cave tell a remarkable story of animal diversity and its loss when the Earth warmed abruptly after the last major Ice Age ended some 12,700 years ago.

If the earth warmed (and cooled) in the past—before human activity produced the levels of CO2 purportedly responsible for today’s—what caused it, and why is human activity deemed responsible for any “climate change” today?

B) The article cited above also quotes the researcher conducting the study:

“In fact, the degree of climate change that occurred after the Ice Age is very similar to the rise in the world’s temperature that has been predicted for the next century.”

From, “Q&A: Professor Phil Jones,” director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), chief proponent of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), and central character of Climategate:

[Question:] Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

[Answer, Dr. Jones]: …the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.

[Question]: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?

[Answer, Dr. Jones]: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant…

[Question]: Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

[Answer, Dr. Jones]: No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

Meanwhile, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change, has said:

The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

If warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940, and 1975-1998 are identical, why is the warming of 1975-1998 attributed to human activity that must be centrally controlled? If there is currently a “lack of warming”—there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and, while not characterized “statistically significant,” the trend has been negative since 2002—on what are predictions of continued warming based?

C) Compare and contrast the article above to those about such curiosities as medieval farm implements being uncovered as glaciers recede in Greenland.

Note Greenland’s recorded temperatures since 600:

Why do scientists—and journalists—force every finding of historical, natural warming into support of modern, anthropogenic global warming (AGW)? Could it be that grants for research supporting findings for AGW are plentiful, such findings win Nobel Prizes and garner academic favor, while “skeptics” (and isn’t the scientific method supposed to require evidence proving a hypothesis prior to its acceptance?) are ridiculed as “flat-earth deniers”, and alarmist global warming headlines sell newspapers?

Turns out the Transportation Security Administration maintains a secret list of people who “make its screeners feel threatened.” The database, reports USA Today, records incidents including “threats, bullying or verbal abuse, remarks about death or violence, brandishing a real or fake weapon, intentionally scaring workers or excessive displays of anger such as punching a wall or kicking equipment, the report says.” I suppose that “verbal abuse” includes things like asking if one is legally required to answer the screener’s questions.

Why have such a list? “The database was created in late 2007 as the TSA launched a program to prevent the nation’s 50,000 airport screeners from being attacked or threatened, agency spokeswoman Kristin Lee said. At the time, TSA officials voiced concern about passengers disrespecting screeners, and they began issuing new uniforms with police-style badges pinned to shirts.” Jawohl, mein Kommandant! Oh, by the way, most of the incidents are actually cases of screeners threatening other screeners. (Via View from the Wing.)

A satirical news clip from the Onion is titled: “Obama To Create 17 New Jobs By Resigning And Finally Opening That Restaurant.” The irony is that, of course, the economy would in fact thrive much better if such politicians spent their time in the private sector, creating wealth, rather than in the public sector, destroying it. This fake quote from Obama sums up this economic reality:

“The hope is that this bold initiative will demonstrate to other American business owners that it is possible to break the cycle after they somehow get sucked into politics and things snowball so fast that they lose sight of what’s really important, like serving people the best slice of pecan pie they’ve ever tasted at a price that can’t be beat.”