In a recent post in The Beacon, I contemplated whether I should wear a mask to class. Throughout campus, there are signs that say Face Coverings are Expected, but as I noted, not mandated. Classes are now back in session, and that decision was easier than I contemplated.

When I got to campus, few people were wearing masks outside, and many were maskless inside the building. In my classes, only about half of the students wore masks. With half the class unmasked, there seemed to be little point in my wearing one, so I didn’t.

Subsequently, I received an email (to all faculty) from the president of the faculty union noting that “students are not following FSU’s ‘expectation’ that masks are to be worn indoors” and asking me to sign a petition to the university’s president and Board of Trustees making masks mandatory.

I doubt that many readers are interested in my own personal experiences, but I do think it is interesting to see (1) how things are playing out in a state that prohibits mask mandates, and (2) how college students view an expectation that they wear masks indoors.

From their own actions, it is clear that many students resist attempts to pressure them into wearing masks. Some students who were wearing masks told me that they did not care whether others wore them, but chose to wear one just to prevent other people from feeling uncomfortable. Among college students, anyway, masks and mask mandates are not popular.

Meanwhile, in a state that prohibits mask mandates, some people in positions of authority (university administrators, a faculty union president, and school boards across the state) are demanding and in some cases implementing their own policies that violate the governor’s policy.

The policy prohibiting mask mandates comes from the governor. So, I do find it interesting that the president of our faculty union will present a petition to the university president and Trustees, rather than to the governor.

Suppose they were to succeed, resulting in a mask mandate at the university. Would those on campus then recognize the authority of the president and Trustees and mask up, or would they recognize the higher authority of the governor and claim it is still their choice?

My previous post on the subject referred to some people as anti-authoritarian authoritarians. They seem to be trying to claim authority over those below them while trying to undermine the authority of those above them. I’m watching with interest.

The post To Mask, Or Not? A State of Resistance appeared first on The Beacon.

The political elite have every incentive to push this propaganda about democracy on the masses, because it legitimizes their use (and abuse) of power. They make the claim that they are carrying out the will of the people, as revealed through the democratic decision-making process.

In fact, elections are simply the mechanism that determines which members of the elite have the power to impose their mandates on the masses. The idea that somehow the political elite are accountable to the masses is an illusion. The masses have no power, even though they far outnumber the elite.

Public policy, by necessity, can be made only by a small group of individuals because the group of people who make public policy must be small enough for them to negotiate with each other. To use economic jargon, for political bargains to take place requires low transaction costs, which means small numbers of negotiators. The masses face high transaction costs and can never be members of the group that makes public policy.

That small group–the elite, the 1 percent–includes legislators and high-level bureaucrats, and lobbyists who buy their way into the low-transaction-cost group. They make policy; the masses must follow their mandates.

There is a discontinuity in political power, unlike with economic power. A person with $20 has twice the economic power of someone with $10. A person with $10 million has ten times the economic power of someone with $1 million. But ultimately, when Warren Buffet walks into Starbucks, his $10 carries the same economic power as your $10.

People who have little economic power and want more can get it. They can work some overtime, take a second job, or look for a higher-paying job. People who have little political power have no good way to get more. They can donate to a political campaign, work for a party, or contribute to lobbying organizations, but they still have no power. They just give more power to those they contribute to and work for.

The reason goes back to high transaction costs. If you’re like me, you have no way to enter into negotiations to change public policy. You can vote, but when you do, you’re simply expressing a preference for which member of the elite will exercise the coercive power of government. And really, your one vote carries no weight. No matter who you vote for, or whether you even vote at all, the same people will be elected.

The ideology of democracy conveys legitimacy to those who are elected, because it suggests that they were chosen because their views correspond with those of the electorate. But the government is run by an elite few, and democratic elections do not alter that plain fact. Thinking otherwise simply conveys more legitimacy, and more power, to the elite few who already have too much power.

Democracy does not give citizens control over their governments. It is a method for determining which elites have the power to rule the masses.

The post Democracy: Ideology and Reality appeared first on The Beacon.

“You can’t control the weather but you can prepare for these weather events,” the governor told reporters. “Let me make this crystal clear: we failed to predict and plan for these shortages and that’s simply unacceptable. I’m the governor. I’m ultimately accountable and will ultimately take responsibility.” The governor left out another reason the new round of blackouts is unacceptable.

Last November, Gov. Gavin Newsom named his cabinet secretary Ana Matosantos the new state “Energy Czar.” Gov. Newsom is on record that Ana is a “genius” and a person of “unrivaled professional accomplishment.” Whatever Matosantos did since November failed to prevent the current round of rolling blackouts. That should come as no surprise.

Matosantos has a degree in political science and feminist studies but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her state finance director, a post more suitable for a proven expert with advanced degrees in economics. Blacked out Californians might also wonder about her energy experience.

In 2016, Congress passed the PROMESA legislation to deal with Puerto Rico’s $72 billion debt, and the legislation created the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi favored Matosantos for a board post, and she was duly appointed. It was not disclosed that she was also on the board of the Matosantos Commercial Corporation, owned by her wealthy family, with deep interests in the energy business on the island.

According to Christopher D. Coursen, former counsel of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, the Oversight Board “has been a complete failure and has not achieved anything of significance.” Because of conflicts of interest, Coursen recommended her removal. That did not prevent Gov. Gavin Newsom from bringing Matosantos aboard and proclaiming her state “Energy Czar.”

The rolling blackouts of 2003, Californians might recall, were a factor in the recall of Gov. Gray Davis. He gave way to Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, who first picked Ana Matosantos. In energy and politics, what goes around rolls around.

The post California “Energy Czar” Failed to Prevent New Round of Power Blackouts appeared first on The Beacon.

One important difference between those two types of power is that economic power is exercised only through voluntary cooperation with others. Political power is exercised through the threat of force against those who do not comply.

Even the most powerful corporations cannot obtain resources from others unless those others voluntarily agree to transact with it. Of course, those with economic power can use some of it to buy political power to force people to deal with them, but economic power by itself operates through mutually agreeable transactions.

Political power operates by threatening force against those who resist it. Even for those who are fully supportive of government action, government still threatens them if they do not pay their taxes, or if they do not abide by government regulations. That’s true for those who favor the taxes and regulations and for those who oppose them.

If economic and political power do become separated, there is always the tendency for them to recombine. They can do so through cooperation between the economic and political elite–cronyism–and they can also do so if those who have political power use it to confiscate resources from those who have economic power, as happened in Cuba in 1959, in the formation of the Soviet Union in 1917, and more recently in Venezuela.

The challenge is how to keep them separated, to produce progress and prosperity.

The relative importance of factors of production has a substantial impact on the ability of those with political power to also acquire economic power. I discuss this in detail in my book, but here’s a quick overview. Thinking of factors of production as land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship:

In pre-agricultural societies, labor is the primary factor of production, and power is not clearly differentiated. All power is social power: power over others. But there is a check on the abuse of power in pre-agricultural societies, because its members can easily leave, and when they do, they take their labor with them.

The agricultural revolution, which began more than 10,000 years ago, made land the primary factor of production, and those who controlled the land also controlled the people who worked on it. Those people could not easily leave, because they could not take their land with them.

Those who controlled the land had, as a result, both economic and political power. Political motives tend to dominate economic motives. Those with power wanted to keep it, which meant maintaining the status quo. Agricultural societies are stagnant societies because those with political power also have economic power.

Capital is the primary factor of production in capitalist economies, and capital is mobile, unlike land. Even if it cannot be physically relocated (a factory, for example), it depreciates if it is not maintained, so the use of political power to confiscate economic power ends up eroding the economic power, as happened in the Soviet Union, in Cuba, and in Venezuela.

The mobility of capital, and the even greater mobility of entrepreneurship, offers some (but not complete) protection against its confiscation. Those with political power fare better using it to protect economic power, and taxing it.

Even this is no guarantee that these two types of power will remain separated, as I’ve already noted. Those with political power do sometimes use it to confiscate economic power, and the cronyism in contemporary capitalist economies shows that those with economic power can use it to buy political power. The cooperation of the economic and political elite combines them and leads to stagnation.

Joseph Schumpeter talked about the creative destruction of capitalism. Those who want to build economic power in a capitalist economy are the creators, but creative destruction threatens to destroy those who are already established. They want stability, not the creative destruction of capitalism.

Preserving that separation between economic and political power is a major challenge to those who want a classical liberal social order. That’s an overview of some issues I discuss in Coordination, Cooperation, and Control.

The post Coordination, Cooperation, and Control: The Evolution of Economic and Political Power appeared first on The Beacon.

The logic behind that prohibition was straightforward. In anticipation of hospitals becoming overburdened with COVID-19 patients, states prohibited hospitals from performing non-essential procedures to free up beds for those with COVID-19. As it turns out, fewer people were hospitalized with COVID-19 than forecast, so many hospitals now have empty beds and are losing revenues. Rural hospitals appear hardest hit, and in the midst of a pandemic they are laying off staff because of falling revenues, as they operate well below capacity. Many may end up closing for financial reasons. It is very clear, in this case, that government restrictions went too far, to the extent that they have damaged the health care system they intended to preserve to fight the pandemic.

This is easy to see in hindsight, so I’m not saying the fears of those who promoted the prohibition on non-essential procedures were unfounded. But the policies themselves already have proven counterproductive, so states are looking to once again allow non-essential procedures–procedures like colonoscopies, mammograms, and elective surgeries. It also is now apparent that one problem with these government mandates . . . is that they are government mandates.

Because non-essential procedures are prohibited by the government, an underutilized hospital just can’t say they have the capacity and are going to start doing them again. They need the government’s permission, and governments are slow to act, and tend to be cautious. If they are too restrictive, that’s just keeping people safe, preventing dire consequences that might occur without the restrictions. If they are less restrictive and problems arise, government decision-makers take the blame. So, they err on the side of caution. Besides, people in government like to tell people what they can and cannot do.

That works for those who impose the mandates. Governors, legislators, and bureaucrats keep their jobs regardless of the economic effects on others. Meanwhile, those whose lives are being severely impacted, not by the virus but by the economic policies governments have enacted in response, suffer from those policies that, in hindsight, have been too restrictive.

Let’s look at this specific case of banning non-essential medical procedures to see what alternative policy would have worked better.

Rather than government banning non-essential procedures, it could have made the recommendation that hospitals curtail them, and left it up to the hospitals to make that decision. If that were the policy, hospitals with the capacity to do so could resume elective procedures without waiting for government permission. In hindsight, it would have been better to let the hospitals decide for themselves, informed by government recommendations.

Now let’s apply this reasoning to government restrictions more generally. Rather than shutting down restaurants, barber shops, and dentist offices, make strong recommendations but leave it up to individual businesses to decide whether to shut down, and leave it up to individual customers to decide whether to go. The government could strongly recommend against eating in restaurant dining rooms, or against visiting a dentist, but let individuals decide for themselves. Lots of people would follow the recommendations, but others could take their chances if they were so inclined.

I’m confident that restaurants, movie theaters, and dentist offices would not be overcrowded with this policy. The warnings, and the news, has scared many people to the extent that they are afraid to venture into crowds, or into situations where they are in close proximity to strangers. But for those who are ready to do so, or want to return to their jobs just to put food on the table, we claim that this is a free country.

Yes, that could allow the virus to spread more rapidly, but that is not necessarily bad. The idea behind the restrictions was to “flatten the curve” so that the health care system would not be overwhelmed, but flattening the curve means it will take longer to develop herd immunity so the “crisis” will last longer. Flattening the curve does not mean fewer people in total will catch the virus; it just spreads those cases out over more time.

The response of the media may influence policy too. In the states that have had the least restrictive policies, their governors have been criticized for being insufficiently totalitarian.

In this one instance–the prohibition on non-essential hospital procedures–it is already apparent that a better policy would have been for governments to recommend against them but leave the final decision up to hospitals. Extending this lesson to other government restrictions, a better policy might be for government to make recommendations, but allow individuals to make their own decisions.

We can see the economic damage and the loss of liberty that has resulted from government’s severe restrictions on individual freedom during the pandemic. But those who make the rules will tend to err on the side of caution, and those who have power will always be inclined to use it. We can already see the poor results in the prohibition on non-essential hospital procedures.

The post Government Restrictions Have Gone Too Far appeared first on The Beacon.

There is another trade-off that seems to be neglected in the discussion: liberty. Even as President Trump pushes to try to re-open the economy, the rhetoric is a weighing of the economic costs of government policies versus protecting Americans from the pandemic. As the president said, “To preserve the health of our citizens, we must also preserve the health and functioning of our economy.”

I’d prefer to see more emphasis put on liberty.

The protesters cited in the article linked in the first paragraph are, essentially, protesting against the government’s infringement of their liberty, although they are not phrasing it that way. They want the right to return to their jobs, to leave their homes, and to make their own decisions about how to protect their health. They are protesting government restrictions on their freedom.

These protesters are not a part of an organized group and do not have leaders and spokesmen who are crafting their message, which is why their plea for liberty does not come across clearly. Press coverage tends to focus on immediate goals such as returning to work or being able to spend time with friends and family. But while individuals have many different immediate goals, they all have the same long-run goal of being able to make their own choices, rather than having government mandates restrict what they can do.

People are protesting against government mandates that have compromised their liberty.

I’m not taking a stand on whether the government’s policies are warranted in response to a global pandemic. Rather, I’m saying that we have not properly framed the trade-offs. There is more to evaluating those policies than just looking at the health consequences versus the damage being done to the economy. Another cost of those policies is their reduction in liberty, and the protests against government policies reflect that.

Last week, President Trump tweeted support for the protesters, saying “LIBERATE Minnesota,” followed by “LIBERATE Michigan,” and more ominously, “LIBERATE Virginia, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” While this falls short of an articulate defense of liberty, I do give the president some credit here for using the language of liberty in support of easing back on government restrictions.

Restrictions on liberty are clearly evident in the short run. The longer-run issue is that once governments have established the power to restrict liberty in this way, there is a tendency for those who have the political power to use the precedent of past government actions to justify similar actions in the future.

Compromises in liberty today make it easier to restrict people’s liberty tomorrow. Protesters around the nation are reacting to their loss of liberty and coverage of the protests should be framed that way. Let’s recognize these protests for what they are: people protesting against government policies that compromise their liberty.

The post Health, Wealth, and Liberty in the COVID-19 Era appeared first on The Beacon.

Abetted by technologies that increase the reach and power of smear campaigns and by mechanisms that allow far more money to be spent on them, not to mention the mushrooming of “fake news,” electoral politics has became an even more intense mud pit of attacks and finger-pointing about every conceivable issue, along with “O yeah?” responses, counterattacks, and bare-knuckle brawling among partisan spinners. And that was before the general election campaign, which can double down on duplicity and deception.

The incredibly bitter, and often deplorable, invectives and the constantly generated attacks, often created out of innuendo or whole cloth, as we have observed, has in my mind elevated C.S. Lewis to the rank of the most accurate, though accidental, commentator on the current state of politics even though he wrote over a half century ago.

The Screwtape Letters is written as a series of letters of instruction from an experienced devil (Screwtape) to a junior tempter (Wormwood) on how to successfully tempt humans. In one particularly notable letter, Screwtape described how to inflame domestic hatred between a mother and son:

When two humans have lived together for many years, it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unenduringly irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy—if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her.

In civilized life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far from a blow in the face. To keep this game up you . . . must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother’s utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: “I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper.” Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.

But with a few alterations Lewis seems to describe current American politics equally well:

When two [political candidates or parties have campaigned against one another] for many years, it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unenduringly irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your [partisan] that particular lift of his [opponent’s] eyebrows which he learned to dislike . . . and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that [his opponent] knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy—if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy [the other side].

In civilized [politics] hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far from a blow in the face. To keep this game up you...must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your [partisans] must demand that all [their] utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all [their opponents’] utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. [Their opponents] must be encouraged to do the same to [them]. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent . . . Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of [both sides] saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offense is taken.

Lewis hit the current state of politics on the head. Screwtape’s strategy has increased in prominence with every recent campaign, and a virulent strain has now even spread to every crevice of day-to-day government and commentary. The consequence has been to move government and battles to control it far closer to what Lewis called the “lowerarchy” of hell. This strategy has done far more to retard than advance either integrity or the general welfare, moving our focus from James Madison’s famous statement in Federalist no. 51 that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary” to the nature of government when many participants act in a more devilish manner.

Originally posted to Mises.org.

The post What C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Teaches Us About Politics appeared first on The Beacon.

While a new story here, the problem of police planting drugs on people, leading to their arrest for drug possession, has been reported in Baltimore, Los Angeles, and other places (see here and here for other examples).

The war on drugs is misnamed. Drugs are an inanimate object. It is really a war against people. At one point I characterized it as a war against people who buy, sell, or use drugs, but these examples show I was too narrow in identifying the targets of the war on drugs. People who have nothing to do with drugs can become victims as police frame them for “crimes” they did not commit.

All victimless crimes are an attack on liberty. Government is violating people’s rights, not protecting them when activities that do no harm to third parties are criminalized. But criminalizing drug possession has another negative aspect: No other people are involved, so there are no other people who are in a good position to speak up for the accused.

When crimes have victims, like robbery, assault, or rape, victims will need a consistent story for charges to hold, and even for victimless crimes like prostitution, a case is likely to fall apart if the other party denies that the activity took place. (That’s why police will often use undercover law enforcement personnel to entrap people into trying to engage in victimless crimes.)

With drug possession, however, it’s the word of the police officer against the word of the accused. Even if other people are with the accused, it’s easy to make the case in court that just because those others didn’t know the accused had illegal drugs, this doesn’t outweigh the “fact” that the police officer found them.

Among the many problems that come with the war on drugs, one is that it makes it too easy for corrupt police officers to plant evidence on people because there is no good way for the accused to provide evidence of their innocence.

The post Another Problem with the War on Drugs appeared first on The Beacon.