Socialists on Chavez

When Venezuela's Hugo Chavez died, conservatives and libertarians cheered while Democrats mourned. But with so many on America's right decrying Chavez as a socialist, what did the actual self-proclaimed socialists think of him?

Not much. The Socialist Equality Party newsletter, available online at the Bellingham Politics and Economics blog, has this to say about him:

Chavez's nationalist rhetoric, his government's diversion of revenues from the country's protracted oil bonanza to pay for social assistance programs and its forging of extensive economic ties to China earned him the hatred of both Washington and a fascistic ruling class layer in Venezuela. They did not, however--as both he and his pseudo-left supporters claimed--represent a path to socialism.

Chavez was a bourgeois nationalist, whose government rested firmly on the military from which he came and which continues to serve as the crucial arbiter in the affairs of the Venezuelan state.
...
Both the share of the country's economy controlled by the private sector and the portion of national income going to employers as opposed to labor were greater under Chavez than before he took office. An entire new ruling class layer--dubbed the boliburguesia-- was spawned by chavismo, growing rich off of government contracts, corruption and financial speculation.

 While I'm a bit late for commentary on Chavez, I found this interesting, as it is not the first time I've found the Socialist Equality Party agreeing with the conservative mainstream...

On Drones and Droning On

Yesterday, Rand Paul gave an old-style filibuster where he talked on the Senate floor for 12 hours and 54 minutes about drones and executive power. At first, Paul wanted the Obama administration to come out and say that it is unconstitutional for the government to kill American citizens on American soil without due process. Obama's response: "No comment."

Later, Paul was willing to compromise and end the filibuster for a vote on a non-binding "sense of the Senate" resolution that "the use of drones to execute or target American citizens on American soil who pose no imminent threat clearly violates Constitutional rights." Democrats (in particular, Majority Whip Dick Durbin) refused.

Ultimately, Paul ended the filibuster without accomplishing his explicit goals, though he has clearly energized his supporters and apparently turned a libertarian talking point into GOP policy. The Minority Leader Mitch McConnell showed up to explicitly support Paul and encourage other Republicans to do the same.

Not all Republicans agreed, however. Senator Lindsey Graham called the whole thing "ridiculous," and he's right -- it should be. The proper response from the Obama administration would have been, "Of course, it's unconstitutional to kill citizens on our soil without due process." This should not even be a question. Indeed, if they had responded quickly enough, they could have devastated Rand Paul's credibility and painted him and libertarians in general as paranoid freaks. But they didn't, and that really has me puzzled.

Obama had the opportunity to give the Tea Party and libertarians a roundhouse kick to the face on prime time TV, and he didn't. He did nothing, and doing nothing gave Paul an incredible victory. Durbin went even further, and objected to just a vote on a non-binding resolution on the issue. Why are Obama and Durbin (and the rest of the Democrats) willing to hand Republicans such a PR coup just to hold on to a power they claim they don't want to use anyway?

At this point, it would be easy to fall into conspiracy theories, but I suspect the Democrats are being honest when they say they don't want to kill Americans in the streets. However, being in power, they thought they had an opportunity to expand that power, and they took it. Everyone likes to have options. They just didn't think anyone would notice. Once libertarians did notice, the Democrats thought no one would pay attention to the libertarians anyway. Now that Paul has forced the issue and gotten people to pay attention, the Democrats don't want to turn around and admit that he's right, because they think they'll look bad if they do. They don't seem to recognize that digging their heels in and insisting on the right to kill American citizens without due process makes them look even worse.

Now that Paul has everyone talking, it will be interesting to see what he does with it. Can he inspire actual change?

New Open Borders Website

A new website, Open Borders: The Case, started up a few weeks ago (ht Bryan Caplan). The site, run by one Vipul Naik, gathers many of the arguments for and against open borders in one place. Naik's viewpoint is clear-- he supports open borders, and much of the site is dedicated to various arguments for that position. The pages featuring arguments against open borders sometimes include counter-arguments, though not always. Despite his viewpoint, Naik seems to take a special interest in overcoming his own bias, even including a specific feedback form to let him know whether he's treating the other side fairly.

Some highlights:

• Doubling world GDP: Various studies have found that removing barriers to labor mobility would increase world GDP by at least 67% and possibly as much as 147%. [For comparison, world GDP increased about 67% from 2003-2010, and about 147% from 1993-2010. In other words, with open borders we could see an extra decade's worth of economic growth, bringing new meaning to the term "lost decade."]
• Competitive government: Free movement between US states allows Americans to "vote with their feet," putting a check on state and local government power. Open borders would do the same to national governments.
• The Gumball Video: Since I wrote my own response to Roy Beck's gumball video last year, I found it interesting to read Naik's response, which is somewhat more kind to Dr. Beck than I was.
• Interesting analogies: In making the moral case for open borders, Naik raises some interesting thought exercises, such as Starving Marvin, which asks whether it's right to use force to keep a starving man out of a grocery store; John and Julio, which asks what level of force is appropriate to keep a competitor out of a job interview; and the Drowning Child, which asks whether we can use force to prevent someone else from saving a drowning child.

On the whole, the site is still very new. Many of its pages are just short blurbs, especially in the list of objections. Bryan Caplan quotes also dominate quite a few pages; at times, you could be forgiven for thinking Caplan set up the site himself. But websites unfortunately don't spring forth fully formed from the internet ether, so hopefully both of those issues will fade away as the site matures.

The case presented is explicitly based on libertarian, utilitarian and egalitarian reasons to support open borders. Those with strong objections to one or more of those philosophies might not find the site as interesting as I did. Either way, the site certainly has the potential to become a valuable resource to anyone who wants to learn more about the issue, and I will definitely be keeping an eye on it as it grows.

The Libertarian Purity Test

Bryan Caplan, who blogs at EconLog, has a "Libertarian Purity Test" that I decided to take. Out of 160 points, I scored a measly 47, four points below his threshold for "medium-core libertarian." For scores between 31-50 points, he says, "Your libertarian credentials are obvious. Doubtlessly you will become more extreme as time goes on."

Some of the answers, especially in Part III, that he considers "libertarian," I would consider straight up "anarchist." I think libertarianism is distinct from anarchism in that libertarianism realizes there are some legitimate roles for government, while anarchism does not. While Caplan would consider a score of 160 a "perfect libertarian," I would consider that person an anarchist, not a libertarian. Otherwise, why the need for two separate words, other than branding?

Part I has 30 questions, and I answered "yes" for 25 of them. Below are the five questions for which I answered "no" for various reasons.

Are worker safety regulations too strict? I have no idea one way or the other. Back in my factory days, I remember safety was usually heavily emphasized, and I don't know how much of that was due to regulation or not. On the other hand, a heavy emphasis on safety seemed appropriate.

Does the Federal Reserve have too much discretionary power? It may, although I don't think it should follow some programmatic rule. On the other hand, I don't feel like I've researched "free money" theories adequately enough to be comfortable supporting them.

Should marijuana be legalized? If I was building society from scratch, I would probably make it mostly legal, and I think it at least should be allowed in certain medical situations with the same oversight as other prescriptions. On the other hand, I'm not persuaded by most of the arguments of the pro-legalization crowd; I think they tend to overlook path dependency.

Should all sex between consenting adults be legal -- even for money? Leaving aside the issue of prostitution, there are cases I believe where sex between consenting adults should not be legal -- for instance, between a police officer and someone they have under arrest.

Does the U.S. intervene too much in other countries? Perhaps, although there are also cases, such as Syria at the moment, where I think the US does not intervene enough.

Part II has 20 questions, and I answered "no" for 16 of them. Most of these questions take the form "Should we abolish X?" Although I believe many of these things should be curtailed, sometimes dramatically, I don't necessarily support complete abolishment. Some questions where I want to comment, including the four for which I answered "yes":

Should we abolish Social Security? Should we abolish Medicare? I think both of these programs would be dramatically improved through privatization and some kind of personal account scheme along the lines of the Chilean model. I'm sure progressives would call it abolishment, but I wouldn't. Privatization of these programs, which would ultimately move them completely off-budget since the personal accounts would pay for themselves, also allows me to answer "yes" to the two questions about reducing taxes and spending by 50%, when combined with some other reasonable cuts.

Would you abolish at least half of existing federal regulatory agencies? Yes, although this is mostly because I think we should consolidate many of the regulatory agencies to eliminate overhead.

Should immigration laws be abolished? I interpret this narrowly as laws regarding actual immigration. That is, I do not think governments have any business saying where people can live or work based simply on where they were born. On the other hand, I do think there is a role for border security, although I would prefer it to be far less intrusive and arbitrary than it currently is.

Should the Supreme Court strike down economic regulation as unconstitutional? While I'm tempted to say yes, I don't know enough about what would constitutionally be considered "economic regulation" to be comfortable actually saying yes. Constitutional law has some bizarre definitions from an economic viewpoint, like the tax/penalty distinction.

Part III has 14 questions, and I answered "no" for 12 of them. The two for which I answered "yes":

Should highways and roads be privatized? I'm not sure they all necessarily should, but in general I think we'd be better off with more privatized infrastructure.

Is it morally permissible to exercise "vigilante justice," even against government leaders? Certainly not always, and not in general. But in certain very narrowly-defined cases, I would say yes, it may be morally permissible. For example, most people probably consider Claus von Stauffenberg a hero, even though what he tried to do amounts to "vigilante justice" against a government leader.