The debate on the effectiveness of gun control measures to reduce firearm violence distracts attention from the real motive behind gun control. Nobody wants more gun violence, so focusing on gun violence shifts the debate in favor of gun control. What the proponents of gun control really want is control, and the gun violence argument is merely a means to the end that they actually seek–a disarmed population. Arguments that look at the facts to see whether gun control achieves those ends are ineffective persuaders, because gun control advocates want regulation, regardless of its effectiveness.

It should be obvious that proposals such as those to tax ammunition sales will be ineffective controls on firearm violence. Can anyone really think that someone intent on illegally using a firearm would be deterred because ammunition is so expensive? For people who know little about firearms, limiting the number of rounds a magazine is capable of holding may sound promising, but magazines can be swapped out in seconds.

Focusing the debate on gun violence rather than on individual rights gives a debating advantage to gun control advocates, because nobody wants more gun violence. The argument shifts to whether regulations are effective rather than on preserving the rights of citizens. Arguing that proposed gun control measures would be ineffective cannot persuade gun control advocates, because that’s not their big concern. Their ultimate objective of gun control advocates is not safety. They want control.

The post The Name Says It All: Gun Control Isn’t About Reducing Firearm Violence; It’s About Control appeared first on The Beacon.

That definition of court packing, once generally accepted, is now being challenged by those on the left. At Project Syndicate, Elizabeth Drew writes, “Trump Packs the Court His Way.” How did the president do this? By appointing judges and justices to fill court vacancies when they arose. If the left is able to use an Orwellian redefinition of court packing to convince the public this has already occurred, they can justify their attempt to pack the Supreme Court by adding justices, just as Roosevelt attempted to do.

Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court because it “invalidated a number of New Deal laws.” Drew offers the same justification, saying “the greatest threat to Biden and any progressive government for a long time to come will emanate from the Supreme Court.” The solution is to pack the court, as Drew claims Trump has already done.

Essentially, Drew argues that the Supreme Court is in a position to check and balance the power of an executive branch headed by Biden, should he win the election. The idea, once celebrated, of checks and balances to control government power, is now loathed by those who hope to gain government power.

Drew claims “Senate Republicans are already plotting how to undermine a Democratic majority,” but she doesn’t say how. Meanwhile, she makes an argument for undermining the long-standing precedent of maintaining nine Supreme Court justices by redefining court packing to claim that Trump has already done this.

Would a Democratic administration actually add justices to the Supreme Court? My guess is they would not, but they are politicians and I wouldn’t put anything past politicians of any party. More likely, they will use the threat to try to push the existing nine justices toward decisions they would favor, as Jeannie Suk Gersen suggests in this article in The New Yorker. That seemed to work for Roosevelt.

In what has been called “the switch in time that saved nine,” some observers have suggested that after Roosevelt’s failed court-packing scheme, the existing nine justices were less inclined to rule against Roosevelt’s policies. Gersen’s article cited in the previous paragraph suggests other actions Congress might take to limit the court’s power, including limiting types of cases over which it has jurisdiction and requiring supermajority approval of the justices to decide cases. Just the threat of such action might make the existing nine more cautious in their rulings.

But those are details. The larger point is that the left is attempting, in Orwellian fashion, to redefine terms in order to justify their overturning long-standing institutions in American government—to undermine the checks and balances designed by the Founders.

Ironically, coming from members of the Democratic Party, those Democrats are not actually democrats. They are saying that if the outcomes of democratic decision-making do not meet with their approval, they are open to changing the rules to get what they want.

The post Court Packing: The Left’s Orwellian Redefinition appeared first on The Beacon.

...insist on making me a party man, and I am not...the only passions I have are love of liberty and human dignity.

Tocqueville knew all too well that history is littered with examples of once-free democracies that degenerated into tyrannies, where the people were equal in misery instead of liberty. Yet he praised the democracy practiced in America during his travels throughout our young Republic in 1831 and 1832 because it was characterized by ordered liberty:

The Revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and reflecting preference for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence. It contracted no alliance with the turbulent passions of anarchy, but its course was marked...by a love of order and law (Democracy in America, Vol. I, Ch. V).

Tocqueville also praised Americans’ dedication to local governance (Democracy in America, Vol. I, Ch. V), as well as our system of constitutional federalism (Democracy in America, Vol. I, Ch. VIII).

Still, Tocqueville has rightly been called prophetic for warning about the threat to liberty posed by the democratic tendency toward centralizing power (Democracy in America, Vol. I, Ch. 5). For example, when people fear for their security:

...the democratic tendency...leads men unceasingly to multiply the privileges of the state and to circumscribe the rights of private persons. ... the dread of disturbance and the love of well-being insensibly lead democratic nations to increase the functions of central government as the only power which appears to be intrinsically sufficiently strong, enlightened, and secure to protect them from anarchy...all the particular circumstances which tend to make the state of a democratic community agitated and precarious enhance this general propensity and lead private persons more and more to sacrifice their rights to their tranquility (Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ch. IV).

What’s more, over time:

...the principle of public utility is called in, the doctrine of political necessity is conjured up, and men accustom themselves to sacrifice private interests without scruple and to trample on the rights of individuals in order more speedily to accomplish any public purpose (Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ch. VII).

Even the noble democratic desire to improve the plight of the disadvantaged can threaten liberty given the tendency to believe the state and public subsidies are the “solution.” Tocqueville explains that this desire:

... extends to a thousand different objects...especially to those changes which are accompanied with considerable expense, since the object is to improve the condition of the poor. ...to satisfy these exigencies recourse must be had to the coffers of the state. ... As it frequently changes its purposes, and still more frequently its agents, its undertakings are often ill-conducted or left unfinished...the state spends sums out of all proportion to the end that it proposes to accomplish...[and] the expense brings no return (Democracy in America, Vol. I, Ch, XIII).

As Tocqueville concludes: “In this manner popularity may be united with hostility to the rights of the people, and the secret slave of tyranny may be the professed lover of freedom” (Democracy in America, Vol. I, Ch. 5). He recommends:

...most especially in the present democratic times, that the true friends of the liberty and the greatness of man ought constantly to be on the alert to prevent the power of government from lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals to the general execution of its designs. At such times no citizen is so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed; no private rights are so unimportant that they can be surrendered with impunity to the caprices of a government (Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ch. VII).

In our present time, “democratic” socialists are pushing policies that amount to far more than, as the Cato Institute puts it, “a beefed-up” safety net. Their demands for a mandatory minimum wage, as well as “free” education, child care, and health care, for example, amount to a “scenic road to serfdom,” say Jeffrey Miron and Ryan Bourne. While the kind of socialism favored by advocates today doesn’t involve gulags, it nevertheless requires bigger, more intrusive government to regulate the economy, raise taxes, and redistribute people’s earnings.

Tocqueville was no stranger to this brand of socialism. In fact, he spoke against it as well as plans to continue government jobs programs and a mandatory minimum wage. While socialism pretends “to be the legitimate continuation of democracy,” says Tocqueville:

Democracy and socialism have but one thing in common—equality. But note well the difference. Democracy aims at equality in liberty. Socialism desires equality in constraint and in servitude.

Whether it’s Venezuela or Sweden, all socialist regimes share a leading characteristic as Tocqueville explains, namely:

... a profound opposition to personal liberty and scorn for individual reason, a complete contempt for the individual. They unceasingly attempt to mutilate, to curtail, to obstruct personal freedom in any and all ways. They hold that the State must not only act as the director of society, but must further be master of each man. ...They call, in fact, for the forfeiture, to a greater or less degree, of human liberty...to the point where, were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom.

Tocqueville also admonishes lawmakers who:

... abandon freedom because they think it dangerous...[or] because they hold it to be impossible. ... I wish that they would...set less value on the work and more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens (Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ch. VII).

Almost two centuries ago Tocqueville observed that the “political world is metamorphosed [and] new remedies must henceforth be sought for new disorders.” He insisted that those remedies must strive:

To lay down extensive but distinct and settled limits to the action of the government; to confer certain rights on private persons, and to secure to them the undisputed enjoyment of those rights; to enable individual man to maintain whatever independence, strength, and original power he still possesses; to raise him by the side of society at large, and uphold him in that position; these appear to me the main objects of legislators in the ages upon which we are now entering (Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ch. VII).

Prophetic, indeed.

The post Alexis de Tocqueville on “Democratic” Socialism appeared first on The Beacon.

If Facebook users were harmed by the unauthorized data sharing, why does the federal government get the money? Why doesn’t it go to the users whose data was shared?

Think about it. If no harm was done because of Facebook’s sharing of user data, the restrictions on the data sharing would be a needless cost imposed on business, with no offsetting consumer benefit. If users were harmed when Facebook engaged in unauthorized data sharing, the settlement should compensate users for the harm done to them. Why would the federal government have any legitimate claim to the settlement?

If the federal government was really looking out for our well-being, then when companies violate the law and harm us, the government would see that those companies compensate us for the harm they have done. There is no justice in a settlement that sends all the money to the U.S. Treasury and does nothing to compensate those who are harmed.

The post The Facebook Settlement: Is This Justice? appeared first on The Beacon.

In the absence of rule of law, institutions favor some people over others, and entrepreneurial individuals have the incentive to look for ways to join the favored group and to benefit themselves through activities that impose costs on others. Rule of law removes the opportunity to prosper through connections and cronyism, and creates opportunities to prosper through mutually-advantageous exchange.

A legal system designed to protect individual rights will rest heavily on restitution for victims who have had their rights violated. This is explained well by Bruce Benson and Murray Rothbard, among others. Justice is served when people who have had their rights violated receive restitution as compensation for the harm they suffered.

Government legal systems are typically designed to punish those who violate the rights of others, not to provide restitution to their victims. If a person is assaulted, has a family member murdered, or is injured by a drunk driver, the legal system will punish the rights violator, but provides no compensation for those whose rights are violated.

The motivation for law enforcement for those in the ruling class is to produce an orderly society of compliant citizens. The ruling class needs a productive economy to produce tax revenues they can spend, and needs compliant citizens who will pay those taxes when asked, and who will obey government regulations when they are issued. They accomplish this by clearly displaying that when people violate the rules, they will be punished.

Compensation for victims provides no real benefit to the ruling class. The ruling class benefits from “law and order,” and receives no benefit from justice. The ruling class wants citizens to believe that they will suffer if they violate the rules, but has nothing to gain if people believe that they will receive restitution if their rights are violated.

If rule of law means an objective set of laws that apply to everyone, that does not specify what those laws are. A rights-based approach to legal design would focus on compelling rights violators to provide restitution to their victims, but the ruling class has little incentive to design rules that provide justice to the masses. Their incentive is to maintain law and order so that citizens will fear the consequences of violating government’s rules. This is why government law is oriented toward punishment, not restitution.

The post Rule of Law: Order Versus Justice appeared first on The Beacon.

Being nearly the same age and with similar doctoral training in economics, Fred at the University of Virginia (UVA), me at Texas A&M, we later became intellectual soulmates, although I hasten to emphasize that I am not a lawyer. Fred was: He held a Juris Doctorate from the University of Miami’s Law School and had been counted among the first generation of students to graduate from the program created by then-Dean Henry Manne to produce lawyers with Ph.D.-level knowledge of microeconomic theory. Joint economics Ph.D.-J.D. degree programs are now thriving at George Mason University, New York University, and other schools, but Fred was on the leading edge of Henry Manne’s curricular innovation.

It soon became apparent to me, if as something of a surprise, that Fred McChesney could think like a lawyer, but never lost the ability to think like an economist. That was perhaps Fred’s greatest gift, which led us eventually to collaborate on research projects of mutual interest grounded mostly, but not exclusively, in our experiences at the FTC.

Our first joint project might never have gotten off the ground, though, without the encouragement of Bob Tollison, who mentored both of us early in our careers and for throughout the remainder of his too-short life (Bob passed away at the age of 73, on October 24, 2016). Our coedited book, The Causes and Consequences of Antitrust: The Public-Choice Perspective, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1995, is dedicated to Bob as the “intellectual middleman” who brought the two of us together.

Fred and I later published several journal articles and book chapters on various aspects of antitrust law enforcement in the United States and in Europe, collaborating fruitfully on separate occasions with David Haddock and Michael Reksulak. In addition, I contributed a few chapters to a 1998 Wiley book by Fred that grew out of a special issue of Managerial and Decision Economics he had edited in 1996.

That list just scratches the surface of Fred McChesney’s curriculum vitae, which includes Antitrust Law, a textbook he wrote with UVA’s Charles Goetz (now in its fifth edition, with third collaborator Thomas Lambert), a two-volume collection of Henry Manne’s papers published by Liberty Fund, Money for Nothing: Politicians, Rent Extraction, and Political Extortion (Harvard University Press, 1997), and countless articles in leading law and economics journals on topics as far afield as the origins of municipal fire-fighting departments, the counterproductive policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the effects of the Federal Trade Commission’s “Funeral Rule,” enforcement of the commission’s truth-in-advertising regulations, and the influence of special interest groups on the FTC’s decisions to challenge proposed mergers or not.

Before moving to Northwestern University, where he held joint appointments in the law and business schools, Fred taught law at Cornell and Emory. He returned to the University of Miami in 2011. Fred served “of counsel” to the Southern Economic Association. In that capacity, he attended meetings of the Board of Trustees regularly; his advice was indispensable in shepherding the transfer of the association’s legal domicile from Oklahoma to Tennessee. He was for many years a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.

Fred was an attentive student of American history, with particular interest in the Civil War era. Whenever we talked (and no one ever could have had a dull conversation with him) about what we currently were reading, Fred invariably mentioned books about the War between the States. Our collaboration on The Causes and Consequences of Antitrust made great strides during a trip Fred made in the early 1990s from Chicago to my home in Oxford, Mississippi, touring the Shiloh battlefield along the way.

He was an erudite rock-and-roll music fan who quoted lyrics from memory and would often use those lyrics in the titles or epigraphs of his scholarly writings, with proper credit, of course, to artists like Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. While working, he frequently would have his radio tuned to an oldies station that specialized in music from the mid-1950s through the ‘70s. He won a number of contests of the “Be the first to call in with ___” (insert name of artist or composer, next verse, etc.) sort, but rarely bothered to collect the prizes.

The last picture I have of Fred shows him on the way to a nursing home somewhere in Maryland or the D.C. area, where he was born and reared. He was wearing a Detroit Tigers baseball cap and smiling broadly at the camera. I wondered in an email why a Maryland boy would be a Tigers fan. Our mutual friend and coauthor David Haddock wrote back with the answer: Fred was a paperboy in the D.C. suburbs when the Washington Senators announced that the team was leaving to become the Minnesota Twins. He read that news on his route one morning and immediately sat down on the curb and cried. Legendary right-fielder Al Kaline grew up in Fred’s hometown or somewhere nearby, so Fred decided that if Washington no longer had a big-league team, he would root for Kaline. Fred followed the Detroit Tigers for the rest of his life.

Fred was equally loyal to his many friends and colleagues. The decline in his health over the past several years was very distressing to me, but I harbored hope that his return to the D.C. area from Miami a few weeks ago would, by putting him much closer to his brothers, sisters, and some of his children, turn things around. That was not to be: Sadly, Fred McChesney passed away on October 12, 2017, at the age of 68.

A bright light in the constellation of law and economics scholars has gone out. For those of us who knew him well, his passing is heartbreaking.

The post Fred S. McChesney, Rest in Peace appeared first on The Beacon.

Sanctuary cities could be less confrontational if they dropped the terminology and simply said they enforce their own laws, but they do not enforce the laws of other governments. Sanctuary cities are not shielding immigrants from federal enforcement, they just are not cooperating with the federal government to enforce federal law.

My reaction to this less confrontational view of sanctuary cities is to think that local law enforcement agencies enforce local laws, and it is up to the federal government to enforce federal laws. Why should local governments be required to enforce the laws of the federal government? What’s next? Should local governments also be looking for people who cheat on their income taxes?

Readers can surely see the relationship between sanctuary cities and the consumption of recreational marijuana, which is legal in several states but violates federal law. There is an uneasy tension here between state and federal law, but so far the federal government has not asked state and local governments to enforce its laws against the consumption of marijuana.

To be consistent on the two issues, either the federal government would leave sanctuary cities alone and enforce its own laws without local government assistance, or would require that local governments aid in the apprehension of recreational marijuana users and sellers even in states where state laws allow it.

I will end with a question for readers: Should local governments be responsible for enforcing federal laws?

The post Sanctuary Cities and Recreational Marijuana appeared first on The Beacon.

He and his wife were going through the TSA checkpoint to go to their flight when the TSA found a handgun in her purse. She carries it regularly and had forgotten to leave it home before her flight. The TSA allowed my friend to take his wife’s handgun back to their car in the airport parking lot. A TSA employee accompanied my friend to the car and watched him lock the handgun in the car’s glove compartment. They then left on their flight, gun-free.

My friend’s story reminded me of another story I’d read in the news a few months ago. Guitarist Rick Derringer had been found with a handgun at a TSA checkpoint, was charged, pleaded guilty and was fined $1,000. Some people are charged; some they let go.

There are several differences in the two cases, including the fact that Derringer actually carried his gun on a plane and the TSA discovered it after he arrived in the US on an international flight. Also, Derringer claimed to have carried the gun regularly on past flights, whereas my friend’s wife forgot she had it in her purse. But, if she’d gotten past the checkpoint with the forgotten gun, she also would have carried it on the plane.

I’m not passing judgment here on the TSA, Rick Derringer, or my friend’s forgetful wife. I’m just passing along this story because I thought it would interest some readers of The Beacon.

My guess is that readers will have many different reactions to it, depending on lots of things, including where they are living. I conjecture that people living in rural areas are more comfortable with the idea of people carrying guns, as would be people in the South compared with people in the Northeast or on the West coast.

I’m surely oversimplifying by stereotyping people by where they live, but I will note that my home state of Florida, which has a population of just under 21 million has issued 1.6 million concealed weapon permits. About half the population is under 21 and so not eligible for a permit, so easily more than 10% of the population is permitted to carry a concealed firearm. Not all of them do, of course, but it gives you an idea of the comfort level many Floridians have regarding carrying firearms.

In this context, it is easy to picture TSA employees, many of whom will hold concealed weapons permits themselves, sympathizing with a forgetful woman who had a firearm in her purse as she went through TSA screening, and allowing her husband to take it back to their car.

Some readers will view this as an innocent mistake; others will see it as a violation of the law that should have been punished. I don’t know what the consequences are for people found with firearms by the TSA except in these two cases (Rick Derringer’s and my friend’s). Should they be prosecuted, like Derringer, or let go, like my friend?

What do you think?

The post TSA Treatment of Gun-Toting Travelers appeared first on The Beacon.