I don’t disagree with Prof. Whitman, but the article is really pretty ho-hum. There are dangers that ‘soft’ paternalism will harden over time? That the bureaucrats will merely replace the public’s irrational prejudices with their own? Send for Captain Renault!
It doesn’t matter why the social engineers want the state to be the ‘parent’ to the People’s ‘child’, the fact is that such a relationship is flatly incompatible with the notion of popular sovereignty.
PersonFromPorlock: It doesn’t matter why the social engineers want the state to be the ‘parent’ to the People’s ‘child’, the fact is that such a relationship is flatly incompatible with the notion of popular sovereignty.
Ok- this I want further clarification on. I get what you are saying, I am asking for clarification out of the world of theory. How can true popular sovereignty possibly exist in a condition where the consent to be governed is also true?
I need more time to digest it, but on first scan it looks like a very good article. There’s the slippery slope, there’s the question of why we should expect what comes out of the political process to be any less distorted than the choices people make on their own, and there’s the perennial myopia of creating more political power levers without worying sufficiently about who’s going to use those power levers for what purposes 10 or 50 years from now.
Allan Walstad: the question of why we should expect what comes out of the political process to be any less distorted than the choices people make on their own
Isn’t that what the Framers had in mind with setting up the government? A set of buffers to the whim of the moment? If we are on a slippery slope, we have been since inception, even since the inception of any government.
Having been giving some thought recently to the claimed deleterious consequences of “social engineering,” I find it odd that no one (at least in the material that I have seen) has discussed one of the largest and most expensive social-engineering projects in our society, which is the tax deduction for mortgage interest. It promotes home ownership by making it cheaper than it otherwise would be, thus giving a nudge to people whose budgets would not otherwise allow them to buy a home. By encouraging ownership over rental, it also contributes to suburban sprawl and hurts cities.
It is not clear that tying so much of our resources up in housing is the best public policy to follow. Moreover, a lot of people, even those who could afford to buy without the deduction, might well decide not to do so without the deduction. In any event, this is social engineering at work–using public rules to influence private decisionmaking.
The entire point of his article comes down to the final few sentences: building a “slope-resistant” framework instead of a “paternalism-generating” framework. But there’s nothing in there about what a ‘slope-resistant framework’ is. Is there an article about that forthcoming? What does a slope-resistant framework look like?
R. Nebblesworth: The entire point of his article comes down to the final few sentences: building a “slope-resistant” framework instead of a “paternalism-generating” framework.But there’s nothing in there about what a ‘slope-resistant framework’ is.Is there an article about that forthcoming?What does a slope-resistant framework look like?
That’s kind of where I’m going. I don’t think there can be one. It’d be like denying that markets are irrational or saying that markets here are ‘free’.
PersonFromPorlock: It doesn’t matter why the social engineers want the state to be the ‘parent’ to the People’s ‘child’, the fact is that such a relationship is flatly incompatible with the notion of popular sovereignty.
PersonFromPorlock: It doesn’t matter why the social engineers want the state to be the ‘parent’ to the People’s ‘child’, the fact is that such a relationship is flatly incompatible with the notion of popular sovereignty.
This assertion is, flatly, nothing but hot air. A lot of the policies that we have adopted are “incompatible with the notion of popular sovereignty”–tax increases, free-trade agreements, bank bailouts, undeclared warfare, and so on. Whether right or wrong, they would flunk a popularity poll at some point, and they would also affect society at least as much as policies that are dubbed to constitute “social engineering.”
In fact, it is hard to think of a public policy that does not incorporate some elements of social engineering. It seems to me that that the proper discussion should be over what is good social engineering and what is bad social engineering.
troll_dc2: In fact, it is hard to think of a public policy that does not incorporate some elements of social engineering. It seems to me that that the proper discussion should be over what is good social engineering and what is bad social engineering.
Good social engineering is the social engineering I like. Bad social engineering is the social engineering I don’t like.
troll_dc2: the tax deduction for mortgage interest [...] promotes home ownership by making it cheaper than it otherwise would be, thus giving a nudge to people whose budgets would not otherwise allow them to buy a home.
That just isn’t true. The deduction causes higher (nominal) home prices, since the seller knows about the deduction, as do the prospective buyers who are competing for purchasing a home. The higher prices eat up most of the value of the deduction.
The equivalent is true, BTW, of college loans and grants.
Malvolio, you may be right in terms of economics, but the deduction still acts as an incentive. The sense of an incentive may be irrational, but I have seen it in operation.
Malvolio: I don’t think that’s quite true. I would expect the buyer and the seller to split the tax benefit. In fact, if the seller kept all the benefit, then the buyer is also buying the ability to reap that benefit when he sells — so the benefit would still go to the buyer. ;)
The effect is that financed home ownership is cheaper compared to other possible solutions, such as renting a home from someone who has paid it off. People will tend to finance their homes more than they would have, and part of that benefit would go to home sellers. That is, arrangements that involve paying more interest on a home loan would be preferred in the market over those that don’t.
However, it is not a zero-sum game. There is a tax benefit to be apportioned among those who owned or will own homes.
David V: Ok– this I want further clarification on. I get what you are saying, I am asking for clarification out of the world of theory. How can true popular sovereignty possibly exist in a condition where the consent to be governed is also true?
The power of the sovereign is the power to destroy; because the People can withdraw their consent to be governed, destroying the government’s legitimacy if not its actual substance, they remain sovereign.
David Schwartz, it manifests in higher home price (seller) and a greater willingness to pay a higher price (buyer). There is no conscious decision regarding allocation nor must there be.
Is the New Paternalism worse than the Old Paternalism (marijuana, sexual preference, Blue Laws, abortion, censorship, “God” in the pledge)? Should we address the Old Paternalism, whose slopes have already slipped, first?
Anonsters: It’s not like the right of revolution has been preserved, so I’m interested in hearing people’s answers to this one.
There’s as much ‘right of revolution’ as there ever was: just be sure to win. Even short of a shooting war, the Constitution allows for the states’ forcing a constitutional convention which could, in principle, dissolve the Union.
Article V
The Congress…on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which…shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress
The effect is that financed home ownership is cheaper compared to other possible solutions, such as renting a home from someone who has paid it off.
There is a somewhat counterintuitive argument that the mortgage interest deduction actually just puts the homeowner on an equal footing with the renter.
Even though a renter doesn’t get an interest deduction(1) the landlord does, not to mention deductions the homeowner doesn’t get, like maintenance costs, depreciation, and even utilities included in the rent. Surely some of this tax benefit flows through to the tenant in the form of lower rents.
(1) Even if the building is paid for, there is an implicit deduction of the interest the landlord would have earned on the cash put into the building.
PersonFromPorlock: Even short of a shooting war, the Constitution allows for the states’ forcing a constitutional convention which could, in principle, dissolve the Union.
That’s not really a revolution, though, is it? It’s just a constitutional convention. I was going to add that I thought that would be the closest thing to “revocation of consent.”
PersonFromPorlock: There’s as much ‘right of revolution’ as there ever was: just be sure to win.
I’m wondering if anyone really thinks there are any plausible scenarios in which random people could revolt and take on the collective force of the U.S. military and win.
(Note, for answering the above, the emphasis on “plausible.”)
byomtov: Even though a renter doesn’t get an interest deduction(1) the landlord does, not to mention deductions the homeowner doesn’t get, like maintenance costs, depreciation, and even utilities included in the rent. Surely some of this tax benefit flows through to the tenant in the form of lower rents.
But those are costs that the renter doesn’t deduct, so he’s paying the same taxes the homeowner is.
Byomtov: I don’t think so. Higher home prices benefit both the buyer and the seller. The seller gets more money, the buyer gets more money when he in turn sells. Higher home prices, as far as I can tell, provide no benefit whatsoever to the renter, and in fact just result in higher rental prices.
Davidicus: I agree. Costs are almost never consciously allocated but automatically allocated by the market. If it costs more to make something, prices will rise. How far they will rise will depend on all kinds of details about how that product competes with others in the market, but the market’s machinations will automatically assign that rise to buyers and sellers as appropriate. A specific agreement to allocate the cost change is the exception.
With respect to paternalism I think we just need to insist that the first round of paternalist proposals include the right to opt out of Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment taxation in exchange for a waiver of any benifits under those programs. It would be nice if there were credits for waiving corporate imposed accidential dismemberment/disability insurance.
The mortage interest deduction mainly benifits banks who charge a higher interest rate. Higher home prices benifit the political chronies who leach off the resulting higher property taxes; inhabitants would be better off with more affordable homes.
Anonsters: I’m wondering if anyone really thinks there are any plausible scenarios in which random people could revolt and take on the collective force of the U.S. military and win.(Note, for answering the above, the emphasis on “plausible.”)
Anything is plausible, or implausible, depending on how you constrain the hypothetical. Sure, it’s completely implausible that you and your neighborhood watch association, armed with deer rifles and handguns, would “win” a traditional, straight-up engagement out in the open with the U.S. 1st Cavalry’s 2BCT. By the same token, it’s completely plausible that a popular uprising consisting of half or more of the citizenry could deal a defection-depleted U.S. military a sufficient number of setbacks to force the political class to the bargaining table, notwithstanding the asymmetries of the conflict.
Davidicus: As a result of the tax benefit, more people are positioned to afford any given home which leads to marketwide greater demand and higher prices.
But that doesn’t seem like an unintended consequence; I was under the impression (and I’m not a homeowner) that most government regulations – from zoning to the tax deductions in dispute – were consciously designed to prop up prices in homes.
But those are costs that the renter doesn’t deduct, so he’s paying the same taxes the homeowner is.
No, he doesn’t deduct them directly, but the fact that the landlord does lowers the rent the tenant pays. IOW, the deductions the landlord takes lower the landlord’s costs, and this affects the rent charged.
David Schwartz,
I don’t follow. You seem to be saying the deduction is a wash as between buyer and seller, because the buyer is ultimately a seller. Why that invalidates my argument about rental rates is not clear to me.
byomtov: No, he doesn’t deduct them directly, but the fact that the landlord does lowers the rent the tenant pays. IOW, the deductions the landlord takes lower the landlord’s costs, and this affects the rent charged.
If a homeowner spends $100 a month on maintenance, he pays that with after tax dollars. If a landlord pays the same $100 a month, he pays no taxes, and passes that $100 to the tenant, who pays it in after tax dollars, same as the homeowner. If the landlord didn’t get the deduction, he’d have to pass $100 plus his tax rate to the tenant, and the tenant would be worse off.
Anonsters: I’m wondering if anyone really thinks there are any plausible scenarios in which random people could revolt and take on the collective force of the U.S. military and win.
yes, any scenario that involves the military (or portions thereof) refusing to fight, or siding with the people.
I thought the mortgage deduction was only for your residences, not for rental property. (That, and there’s a cap on it.) I’d think that a lot of rental property wouldn’t be subject to the mortgage deduction.
BC: By the same token, it’s completely plausible that a popular uprising consisting of half or more of the citizenry could deal a defection-depleted U.S. military a sufficient number of setbacks to force the political class to the bargaining table,
I will have to disagree. Within a state, maybe somewhat plausible, but given the sheer size of the population in the US, I have to say that it is not plausible. And my opinion comes from the idea that the overwhelming majority is completely fine with a paternal relationship with the government, regardless of wether it is right or wrong. It has been sold as ‘being good’ for so long (centuries) that getting 1/2 of the US to go along with such a massive change is out of the realm of possibility.
Fedya: I thought the mortgage deduction was only for your residences, not for rental property. (That, and there’s a cap on it.) I’d think that a lot of rental property wouldn’t be subject to the mortgage deduction.
Not a tax pro, but I’d imagine most interest would be deductable as a business expense of some sort, no?
Allan Walstad: David V: Yeah, I’d try to avoid greasing the skids any farther.
Are you saying you believe, give the current facts of existence on this tiny little ball, we need no government?
That wasn’t what I said. I would like the scope and expense of coercive government to shrink by a long way, then let’s see after that. By not greasing the skids any farther I just meant not expanding the scope of government paternalism.
troll_dc2: I oppose the mortgage interest deduction. But the reason we have all those loopholes lies in the political game-playing that goes along with high taxes in the first place. Abolish the income tax and all those loopholes go with it.
SuperSkeptic says:
Isn’t a “slope-resistant framework” a Constitution?
Anonsters: I’m wondering if anyone really thinks there are any plausible scenarios in which random people could revolt and take on the collective force of the U.S. military and win.
(Note, for answering the above, the emphasis on “plausible.”)
Considering the events in the Soviet Bloc of twenty years ago, I’d say there are scenarios which are not merely plausible but time-tested.
The mortgage interest deduction is an interesting one, but the question remains WHY we have it. Why should homeowner’s get a deduction? In the first place, it skews the market — and it’s debatable as to who actually gets the benefit. We know that the loser is the government, because it loses tax revenue. That means the revenue has to be made up somewhere else, and so the renter loses both ways — no tax deduction, and higher taxes to recover the lost revenue.
As for paternalism, we have a host of zoning laws that actually prevent the type of housing patterns many Americans would like — dense urban living patterns, or at least higher density than one house per half acre. It adds to our costs of living through more energy use, forced automobile ownership (try living in the burbs without one) and lose of time in commuting and doing chores.
PersonFromPorlock: Considering the events in the Soviet Bloc of twenty years ago, I’d say there are scenarios which are not merely plausible but time-tested.
Do you think the U.S. government is plausibly comparable to the Soviet government?
byomtov: I don’t follow. You seem to be saying the deduction is a wash as between buyer and seller, because the buyer is ultimately a seller. Why that invalidates my argument about rental rates is not clear to me.
Because a renter is neither a buyer nor a seller. The net effect of the allocation of the tax benefit is that home prices are higher, which hurts the renter. Not all rental properties are mortgaged, and owner-occupied homes are advantaged as well.
Davidicus:As a result of the tax benefit, more people are positioned to afford any given home which leads to marketwide greater demand and higher prices.
I guess I’m not sure what we disagree about. Do you agree that the buyer and the seller split the tax benefit? And that it’s not a zero sum game — both the buyer and seller can benefit?
Randy: That means the revenue has to be made up somewhere else,
No, it doesn’t. THat claim assumes that there’s a fixed number of things the government wants to do, and so if tax revenues drop in one area, they need to be “made up” elsewhere. In reality, the government simply wants to spend as much as it takes in.
As for paternalism, we have a host of zoning laws that actually prevent the type of housing patterns many Americans would like — dense urban living patterns, or at least higher density than one house per half acre.
No; the latter is the housing pattern that many Americans would like. That’s the reason for the zoning laws — because so many people want that pattern that they want to move to suburbs that have it, but if they do, then they destroy the pattern.
If so many people wanted high density housing, then there would be new construction in that pattern, in places where it hasn’t yet been zoned out. And the people who live in those places would be happy to see more people move in.
The concept that old school paternalism isn’t alive, well, and flourishing on the Far Right and in the Tea Party Movement is asinine. It’s hiding its male WASPishness under a bush, but it is still there.
And the Left is just as guilty through this standards doublespeak that they throw out.
Either way you look at it, it is like dating someone who tells you that you are perfect and, then, trys to change you.
Anonsters: Do you think the U.S. government is plausibly comparable to the Soviet government?
I did not make any comparison between America as it is now and the governments of the Eastern Bloc countries as they were then; I merely pointed out that the history of their removal provides exactly the ‘plausible scenario’ for removing a modern, continental regime that you asked for.
PersonFromPorlock: I merely pointed out that the history of their removal provides exactly the ‘plausible scenario’ for removing a modern, continental regime that you asked for.
Except that I wasn’t asking for a plausible world scenario. I was asking for a plausible scenario involving the United States. So, do you think it’s plausible that, in your lifetime say, the United States government comes to resemble Soviet bloc governments?
Arguing that preferences should be “respected” just because they are “customary” is just so much question-begging. The behavioral economist’s view is that preferences are shaped by the context inwhich choices are presented. If preferences have become embedded without the peference-holders having been aware of the context in which they made choices (the “choice architecture,” in Sunstein and Thaler’s words), there’s no great reason to assume that preferences would remain stable once that architecture is revealed. The article to which you linked amounts to a defense of “customary” preferences on the ground that the author prefers customary preferences to the alternative.
So, do you think it’s plausible that, in your lifetime say, the United States government comes to resemble Soviet bloc governments?
[If I might butt in...] A most sobering question, Anonsters. Mechanisms of thoroughgoing government control are being created. Who will use them for what purposes, and when? Totalitarianism in the USA? It will be laughably implausible to almost everybody, unless and until it happens. Then it will be a bitch. Well, I’m kinda getting along in years, so hopefully not in my lifetime anyway.
Anonsters:
Except that I wasn’t asking for a plausible world scenario. I was asking for a plausible scenario involving the United States. So, do you think it’s plausible that, in your lifetime say, the United States government comes to resemble Soviet bloc governments?
I’m not really an expert on the events in the Soviet Union in the late 80′s – early 90′s. But from what I’ve heard, the collapse of popular support for the Soviet government wasn’t so much about huddled masses yearning to be free as it was about the paternalistic governments failure to provide the economic benefits that state socialism had promised.
I can certainly see the US government being unable to meet its paternalistic commitments in what remains of my life time, and I’m on the downhill slope. As to what the political consequences of that might be, I don’t know.
I can think of one big part of the paternalism-generating framework that Whitman missed pointing out: the assumption that the government (and their academic advisors) should be weakening the economy by taking the people’s money and trying to manipulate choices in the first place. Beyond a very low level, taxes weaken the economy. If more of the public understood that these bureaucrats and politicians were making everyone poorer by taking their tax money and in effect playing with and experimenting with it, a lot of this would go away.
It’s really an imposition for them to think that they should be taking people’s hard-earned assets to play with things like this in the first place. If they feel passionate about issues like this they should start charities educating about issues like this – with their own money and freely given donations. Or better yet, start their own more healthy twinkie or soft drink companies. Or financial planning companies. They wouldn’t be trying to interfere with, hinder, or prevent free choices, and most importantly they wouldn’t be weakening the private economy by taking assets from it. In the case of the businesses, they would actually be strengthening the economy instead.
I realize this is completely antithetical to the current outlook and operation of academia. And I realize that thinking about government and choice is what this part of academia does. But something has to be said about the notion that the private economy – and the hard-earned assets it consists of – is fair game to be taken for experimenting, playing, and tinkering. A good test of this is whether the individuals advocating the seizure of these assets would do the same thing with their personal money and time if they didn’t have the option of taking the public’s money to do it.
It doesn’t matter why the social engineers want the state to be the ‘parent’ to the People’s ‘child’, the fact is that such a relationship is flatly incompatible with the notion of popular sovereignty.
I’m curious about your usage of the term popular sovereignty here. Do you mean that in a sense of popular democracy? If so, aren’t a lot of these paternalistic efforts an outgrowth of that?
It’s interesting that this effort to allegedly optimally engineer choices grows out of a situation where it seems the default choice that has been engineered is that they should be allowed to take the public’s money and engineer choices with it.
If preferences have become embedded without the peference-holders having been aware of the context in which they made choices (the “choice architecture,” in Sunstein and Thaler’s words), there’s no great reason to assume that preferences would remain stable once that architecture is revealed. The article to which you linked amounts to a defense of “customary” preferences on the ground that the author prefers customary preferences to the alternative.
What about the choice architecture that the paternalists should be permitted to take money from the private economy to engineer and tinker with choices in the first place?
Allan Walstad: It will be laughably implausible to almost everybody, unless and until it happens.
What do you see that currently points at totalitarianism in the US?
The most obvious recent signs are the increasing arbitrary executive power (or claim thereof) to spy on everybody, detain indefinitely, kill at will. All the drug war stuff, like heavily armed federal thugs bashing in people’s doors before dawn hoping to keep somebody from flushing drugs. Indeed, how many different federal police-type organizations are there now? The total trashing of constitutional limits on the feds, with the health care takeover only the most recent example. The push for a national ID. The secrecy.
As I put it earlier, the instruments of total control are being created. The only question is who will be using them for what purposes in ten or fifty years.
American Psikhushka: I’m curious about your usage of the term popular sovereignty here. Do you mean that in a sense of popular democracy? If so, aren’t a lot of these paternalistic efforts an outgrowth of that?
‘Popular sovereignty’ means that government is created by the people and is subordinate to them. Representative democracy is our way of implementing it.
The reason paternalism is incompatible with this is that we can’t simultaneously maintain that the people are wise enough to judge their representatives and foolish enough to require great gobs of government supervision. The fact that we do try to have it both ways – face it, government help can be damned convenient – is just one more example of human fallibility.
The reason paternalism is incompatible with this is that we can’t simultaneously maintain that the people are wise enough to judge their representatives and foolish enough to require great gobs of government supervision.
Does the critique have to get much more complex than simply: “we don’t need great gobs of expensive and intrusive government supervision, especially when it weakens the economy and infringes on individual liberty, rights, privacy, and choice”? Or does that get you too uncomfortably close to being a libertarian and you need to throw some “social” language in like “popular”, “democracy”, etc.? ;)
The fact that we do try to have it both ways — face it, government help can be damned convenient — is just one more example of human fallibility.
Yes, it can be convenient. It’s especially daunting when pretty legitimate government functions like essential services (police, fire, EMS, courts, national security) get mixed in with the paternalism, meddling, and nannystating. And it’s a travesty when the government gets so involved in the expensive, abusive, and unnecessary nannystating that it doesn’t or can’t perform the legitimate essential services it’s supposed to perform no matter what.
Anonsters: I’m wondering if anyone really thinks there are any plausible scenarios in which random people could revolt and take on the collective force of the U.S. military and win.(Note, for answering the above, the emphasis on “plausible.”)
Aside from scenarios where much of the military either stands aside or joins the revolution? Those aren’t plausible here and now, but there are long-standing trends that tend to drive a wedge between the political class and military personnel. Our most recent Republican president was rather less conservative than the average soldier. Bush also cut benefits while asking for great sacrifices from military personnel. Now he has been replaced by a man who hobnobbed with retired terrorists and spent much of his Senate career running down the military. Keep up this trend and someday the troops will be ready to join a revolution.
Second, assuming the mighty American military remains loyal to the government, it is mighty only as long as it continually receives massive shipments of supplies. A rifleman can fire all the ammunition he can carry in less than an hour. Tanks require huge amounts of fuel, as well as specialized ammunition, and many spare parts. As an old Air Force technician, I know quite well that fighter jets can eat their own weight in fuel and spare parts in a day of hard training – not even counting the munitions needed for combat. They also need about a hundred man-hours of maintenance for every hour in the air, and all those ground crewmen must be fed, and must have relatively safe areas to eat and work.
What has made the American military so mighty is that it can draw those logistics requirements from the richest country on Earth – and that it hasn’t fought a war on it’s own territory since the War of 1812. Very little of what’s required can be made in a combat zone. The South failed to keep it’s troops supplied in the Civil War, and they were still using muzzle-loaders.
A million Americans with just pistols and hunting rifles could bring the military to a halt. To start with, hijack or wreck the trucks bringing supplies to the military bases. Sabotage factories and warehouses providing specialized military materiel, from complex electronics to artillery shells. The military would have to react by sending out patrols to collect fuel, ammunition, and food. They would have to try to re-open factories to produce their specialized requirements and to guard the shipments of parts to these factories as well as the product to their bases.
And from here on, it depends on what the bulk of the population thinks about the conflict. If they are firm supporters of the government, they might forgive rough tactics by foragers, and enough people might volunteer to work in defense plants and drive trucks, in spite of some danger in these jobs. OTOH, if they are initially indifferent, they will be angry at uniformed armed robbers, and unwilling to work where they might become targets of the revolutionaries. And then the military will draft workers to keep their supply lines running, and the revolution will gain many more recruits, while more of the military will wonder if they are on the wrong side…
No, it’s not really as easy as that. I’m ignoring the police, who only really need access to a gas station and the Walmart gun department to function effectively for quite a while. I’m ignoring Marines, Rangers, etc., who are trained to walk a hundred of miles and put up quite a fight with only what they can carry. And I’m ignoring the loyal citizens that might break out their own rifles and go radical-hunting. But given some disaffection in the ranks, much of the military and police might find that logistical difficulties make an excuse to sit out the conflict. There would be ex-Rangers among the revolutionaries (although I’d certainly have to find a way to sort the real ones from the hordes of mentally unstable wanna-bes). There’d probably even be Rangers that would go on a long-range patrol and change sides. And there would probably soon be tens of millions of citizens who might be unwilling to fight but would be willing to hide revolutionaries.
It would be a real mess, and nearly reduce us back to the stone age – at which point the fighting gets down to infantry squads battling with knives and a few rounds. It’s likely that finally there’d be no winners left, like Somalia. You’d have to be nuts to try it. But we’ve no shortage of nuts…
Malvolio: That just isn’t true. The deduction causes higher (nominal) home prices, since the seller knows about the deduction, as do the prospective buyers who are competing for purchasing a home. The higher prices eat up most of the value of the deduction.
It all goes back to Econ 101. The incidence of a subsidy — like that of a tax — depends on the relative elasticities of demand and supply. You are assuming — unjustifiably — that the supply curve for housing in the U.S. is inelastic. You only need to drive around the so-called exurbs to see this isn’t true. There are many new homes under construction (or were, anyway, before the housing bubble burst) in previously vacant land. This implies a more elastic supply curve which means more of the benefit of the subsidy accrues to the demand-side or the home-buyers.
In Manhattan or the Bay Area, you have a case. There is little scope for new construction in these places. But in the rest of the country with all its wide-open spaces, not so much. Any increase in price caused by the subsidy will tend to be offset by new home construction.
American Psikhushka: Does the critique have to get much more complex than simply: “we don’t need great gobs of expensive and intrusive government supervision, especially when it weakens the economy and infringes on individual liberty, rights, privacy, and choice”? Or does that get you too uncomfortably close to being a libertarian and you need to throw some “social” language in like “popular”, “democracy”, etc.? ;)
I’ve often said I’d be a libertarian if I could figure out how to become a virgin. And “we don’t need” arguments are always vulnerable to “yes you do” replies, at which point ‘social language’ and fancy words come into play.
I’ve often said I’d be a libertarian if I could figure out how to become a virgin.
Not following your reasoning here. What does being a virgin have to do with being a libertarian?
And “we don’t need” arguments are always vulnerable to “yes you do” replies, at which point ‘social language’ and fancy words come into play.
I don’t know about that. I think if a large portion of the population knew that – in addition to being annoying, harassing, rights-violating, rights-eroding, and intrusive – the nannystating/etc. also tremendously weakens the economy a lot of the “yes you do” arguments would fall on deaf ears.
PersonFromPorlock says:
I don’t disagree with Prof. Whitman, but the article is really pretty ho-hum. There are dangers that ‘soft’ paternalism will harden over time? That the bureaucrats will merely replace the public’s irrational prejudices with their own? Send for Captain Renault!
It doesn’t matter why the social engineers want the state to be the ‘parent’ to the People’s ‘child’, the fact is that such a relationship is flatly incompatible with the notion of popular sovereignty.
April 5, 2010, 2:45 pmDavid V says:
Ok- this I want further clarification on. I get what you are saying, I am asking for clarification out of the world of theory. How can true popular sovereignty possibly exist in a condition where the consent to be governed is also true?
April 5, 2010, 3:02 pmAllan Walstad says:
I need more time to digest it, but on first scan it looks like a very good article. There’s the slippery slope, there’s the question of why we should expect what comes out of the political process to be any less distorted than the choices people make on their own, and there’s the perennial myopia of creating more political power levers without worying sufficiently about who’s going to use those power levers for what purposes 10 or 50 years from now.
April 5, 2010, 3:23 pmDavid V says:
Isn’t that what the Framers had in mind with setting up the government? A set of buffers to the whim of the moment? If we are on a slippery slope, we have been since inception, even since the inception of any government.
April 5, 2010, 3:28 pmAllan Walstad says:
David V: Yeah, I’d try to avoid greasing the skids any farther.
April 5, 2010, 3:31 pmtroll_dc2 says:
Having been giving some thought recently to the claimed deleterious consequences of “social engineering,” I find it odd that no one (at least in the material that I have seen) has discussed one of the largest and most expensive social-engineering projects in our society, which is the tax deduction for mortgage interest. It promotes home ownership by making it cheaper than it otherwise would be, thus giving a nudge to people whose budgets would not otherwise allow them to buy a home. By encouraging ownership over rental, it also contributes to suburban sprawl and hurts cities.
It is not clear that tying so much of our resources up in housing is the best public policy to follow. Moreover, a lot of people, even those who could afford to buy without the deduction, might well decide not to do so without the deduction. In any event, this is social engineering at work–using public rules to influence private decisionmaking.
April 5, 2010, 3:38 pmDavid V says:
Are you saying you believe, give the current facts of existence on this tiny little ball, we need no government?
April 5, 2010, 3:39 pmR. Nebblesworth says:
The entire point of his article comes down to the final few sentences: building a “slope-resistant” framework instead of a “paternalism-generating” framework. But there’s nothing in there about what a ‘slope-resistant framework’ is. Is there an article about that forthcoming? What does a slope-resistant framework look like?
April 5, 2010, 3:53 pmDavid V says:
That’s kind of where I’m going. I don’t think there can be one. It’d be like denying that markets are irrational or saying that markets here are ‘free’.
April 5, 2010, 4:01 pmSuperSkeptic says:
So is all government then, no?
April 5, 2010, 4:04 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Isn’t a “slope-resistant framework” a Constitution?
April 5, 2010, 4:05 pmtroll_dc2 says:
This assertion is, flatly, nothing but hot air. A lot of the policies that we have adopted are “incompatible with the notion of popular sovereignty”–tax increases, free-trade agreements, bank bailouts, undeclared warfare, and so on. Whether right or wrong, they would flunk a popularity poll at some point, and they would also affect society at least as much as policies that are dubbed to constitute “social engineering.”
In fact, it is hard to think of a public policy that does not incorporate some elements of social engineering. It seems to me that that the proper discussion should be over what is good social engineering and what is bad social engineering.
April 5, 2010, 4:10 pmAnonsters says:
Good social engineering is the social engineering I like. Bad social engineering is the social engineering I don’t like.
Problems solved!
/Sarcastro’d.
April 5, 2010, 4:18 pmtroll_dc2 says:
Anonsters: and how do you determine what you like?
April 5, 2010, 4:20 pmAnonsters says:
If it tastes like cheesecake, I like it.
April 5, 2010, 4:22 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Pick your favorite philosopher…and/or grab a gun….
April 5, 2010, 4:22 pmMalvolio says:
That just isn’t true. The deduction causes higher (nominal) home prices, since the seller knows about the deduction, as do the prospective buyers who are competing for purchasing a home. The higher prices eat up most of the value of the deduction.
The equivalent is true, BTW, of college loans and grants.
April 5, 2010, 4:23 pmSuperSkeptic says:
I mean vote! Vote! Democracy!
April 5, 2010, 4:23 pmtroll_dc2 says:
Malvolio, you may be right in terms of economics, but the deduction still acts as an incentive. The sense of an incentive may be irrational, but I have seen it in operation.
April 5, 2010, 4:27 pmDavid V says:
Black Forrest cheesecake?
April 5, 2010, 4:35 pmAnonsters says:
The adulteration of pure, plain cheesecake is a crime against humanity.
April 5, 2010, 4:40 pmtroll_dc2 says:
Perhaps that was a form of antisocial engineering.
April 5, 2010, 5:01 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Malvolio: I don’t think that’s quite true. I would expect the buyer and the seller to split the tax benefit. In fact, if the seller kept all the benefit, then the buyer is also buying the ability to reap that benefit when he sells — so the benefit would still go to the buyer. ;)
The effect is that financed home ownership is cheaper compared to other possible solutions, such as renting a home from someone who has paid it off. People will tend to finance their homes more than they would have, and part of that benefit would go to home sellers. That is, arrangements that involve paying more interest on a home loan would be preferred in the market over those that don’t.
However, it is not a zero-sum game. There is a tax benefit to be apportioned among those who owned or will own homes.
April 5, 2010, 5:13 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
The power of the sovereign is the power to destroy; because the People can withdraw their consent to be governed, destroying the government’s legitimacy if not its actual substance, they remain sovereign.
April 5, 2010, 5:18 pmDavidicus says:
David Schwartz, it manifests in higher home price (seller) and a greater willingness to pay a higher price (buyer). There is no conscious decision regarding allocation nor must there be.
April 5, 2010, 5:22 pmDavid V says:
In the real world, in the US, how would(does) this manifest?
April 5, 2010, 5:58 pmAnonsters says:
It’s not like the right of revolution has been preserved, so I’m interested in hearing people’s answers to this one.
April 5, 2010, 6:25 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Is the New Paternalism worse than the Old Paternalism (marijuana, sexual preference, Blue Laws, abortion, censorship, “God” in the pledge)? Should we address the Old Paternalism, whose slopes have already slipped, first?
April 5, 2010, 6:29 pmBC says:
Probably like this. Over and over and over again.
April 5, 2010, 6:40 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
There’s as much ‘right of revolution’ as there ever was: just be sure to win. Even short of a shooting war, the Constitution allows for the states’ forcing a constitutional convention which could, in principle, dissolve the Union.
April 5, 2010, 6:43 pmbyomtov says:
David Schwartz,
The effect is that financed home ownership is cheaper compared to other possible solutions, such as renting a home from someone who has paid it off.
There is a somewhat counterintuitive argument that the mortgage interest deduction actually just puts the homeowner on an equal footing with the renter.
Even though a renter doesn’t get an interest deduction(1) the landlord does, not to mention deductions the homeowner doesn’t get, like maintenance costs, depreciation, and even utilities included in the rent. Surely some of this tax benefit flows through to the tenant in the form of lower rents.
(1) Even if the building is paid for, there is an implicit deduction of the interest the landlord would have earned on the cash put into the building.
April 5, 2010, 6:57 pmAnonsters says:
That’s not really a revolution, though, is it? It’s just a constitutional convention. I was going to add that I thought that would be the closest thing to “revocation of consent.”
I’m wondering if anyone really thinks there are any plausible scenarios in which random people could revolt and take on the collective force of the U.S. military and win.
(Note, for answering the above, the emphasis on “plausible.”)
April 5, 2010, 7:00 pmShelbyC says:
But those are costs that the renter doesn’t deduct, so he’s paying the same taxes the homeowner is.
April 5, 2010, 7:06 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Byomtov: I don’t think so. Higher home prices benefit both the buyer and the seller. The seller gets more money, the buyer gets more money when he in turn sells. Higher home prices, as far as I can tell, provide no benefit whatsoever to the renter, and in fact just result in higher rental prices.
Davidicus: I agree. Costs are almost never consciously allocated but automatically allocated by the market. If it costs more to make something, prices will rise. How far they will rise will depend on all kinds of details about how that product competes with others in the market, but the market’s machinations will automatically assign that rise to buyers and sellers as appropriate. A specific agreement to allocate the cost change is the exception.
April 5, 2010, 7:13 pmDavidicus says:
I was referring to your statement, “I don’t think that’s quite true. I would expect the buyer and the seller to split the tax benefit.”
As a result of the tax benefit, more people are positioned to afford any given home which leads to marketwide greater demand and higher prices.
April 5, 2010, 7:29 pmDan Lavatan says:
With respect to paternalism I think we just need to insist that the first round of paternalist proposals include the right to opt out of Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment taxation in exchange for a waiver of any benifits under those programs. It would be nice if there were credits for waiving corporate imposed accidential dismemberment/disability insurance.
The mortage interest deduction mainly benifits banks who charge a higher interest rate. Higher home prices benifit the political chronies who leach off the resulting higher property taxes; inhabitants would be better off with more affordable homes.
April 5, 2010, 7:32 pmBC says:
Anything is plausible, or implausible, depending on how you constrain the hypothetical. Sure, it’s completely implausible that you and your neighborhood watch association, armed with deer rifles and handguns, would “win” a traditional, straight-up engagement out in the open with the U.S. 1st Cavalry’s 2BCT. By the same token, it’s completely plausible that a popular uprising consisting of half or more of the citizenry could deal a defection-depleted U.S. military a sufficient number of setbacks to force the political class to the bargaining table, notwithstanding the asymmetries of the conflict.
Define your scenario.
April 5, 2010, 7:58 pmSuperSkeptic says:
But that doesn’t seem like an unintended consequence; I was under the impression (and I’m not a homeowner) that most government regulations – from zoning to the tax deductions in dispute – were consciously designed to prop up prices in homes.
April 5, 2010, 8:05 pmbyomtov says:
Shelby,
But those are costs that the renter doesn’t deduct, so he’s paying the same taxes the homeowner is.
No, he doesn’t deduct them directly, but the fact that the landlord does lowers the rent the tenant pays. IOW, the deductions the landlord takes lower the landlord’s costs, and this affects the rent charged.
David Schwartz,
I don’t follow. You seem to be saying the deduction is a wash as between buyer and seller, because the buyer is ultimately a seller. Why that invalidates my argument about rental rates is not clear to me.
April 5, 2010, 8:06 pmShelbyC says:
If a homeowner spends $100 a month on maintenance, he pays that with after tax dollars. If a landlord pays the same $100 a month, he pays no taxes, and passes that $100 to the tenant, who pays it in after tax dollars, same as the homeowner. If the landlord didn’t get the deduction, he’d have to pass $100 plus his tax rate to the tenant, and the tenant would be worse off.
April 5, 2010, 8:14 pmShelbyC says:
yes, any scenario that involves the military (or portions thereof) refusing to fight, or siding with the people.
April 5, 2010, 8:21 pmFedya says:
I thought the mortgage deduction was only for your residences, not for rental property. (That, and there’s a cap on it.) I’d think that a lot of rental property wouldn’t be subject to the mortgage deduction.
April 5, 2010, 8:31 pmDavid V says:
I will have to disagree. Within a state, maybe somewhat plausible, but given the sheer size of the population in the US, I have to say that it is not plausible. And my opinion comes from the idea that the overwhelming majority is completely fine with a paternal relationship with the government, regardless of wether it is right or wrong. It has been sold as ‘being good’ for so long (centuries) that getting 1/2 of the US to go along with such a massive change is out of the realm of possibility.
April 5, 2010, 8:39 pmShelbyC says:
Not a tax pro, but I’d imagine most interest would be deductable as a business expense of some sort, no?
April 5, 2010, 8:40 pmAllan Walstad says:
From several hours ago (sorry):
That wasn’t what I said. I would like the scope and expense of coercive government to shrink by a long way, then let’s see after that. By not greasing the skids any farther I just meant not expanding the scope of government paternalism.
troll_dc2: I oppose the mortgage interest deduction. But the reason we have all those loopholes lies in the political game-playing that goes along with high taxes in the first place. Abolish the income tax and all those loopholes go with it.
A constitution if you can keep it, man.
April 5, 2010, 8:41 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Considering the events in the Soviet Bloc of twenty years ago, I’d say there are scenarios which are not merely plausible but time-tested.
April 5, 2010, 10:22 pmRandy says:
The mortgage interest deduction is an interesting one, but the question remains WHY we have it. Why should homeowner’s get a deduction? In the first place, it skews the market — and it’s debatable as to who actually gets the benefit. We know that the loser is the government, because it loses tax revenue. That means the revenue has to be made up somewhere else, and so the renter loses both ways — no tax deduction, and higher taxes to recover the lost revenue.
As for paternalism, we have a host of zoning laws that actually prevent the type of housing patterns many Americans would like — dense urban living patterns, or at least higher density than one house per half acre. It adds to our costs of living through more energy use, forced automobile ownership (try living in the burbs without one) and lose of time in commuting and doing chores.
April 5, 2010, 10:27 pmAnonsters says:
Do you think the U.S. government is plausibly comparable to the Soviet government?
April 5, 2010, 10:36 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Because a renter is neither a buyer nor a seller. The net effect of the allocation of the tax benefit is that home prices are higher, which hurts the renter. Not all rental properties are mortgaged, and owner-occupied homes are advantaged as well.
I guess I’m not sure what we disagree about. Do you agree that the buyer and the seller split the tax benefit? And that it’s not a zero sum game — both the buyer and seller can benefit?
April 6, 2010, 4:12 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
No, it doesn’t. THat claim assumes that there’s a fixed number of things the government wants to do, and so if tax revenues drop in one area, they need to be “made up” elsewhere. In reality, the government simply wants to spend as much as it takes in.
No; the latter is the housing pattern that many Americans would like. That’s the reason for the zoning laws — because so many people want that pattern that they want to move to suburbs that have it, but if they do, then they destroy the pattern.
If so many people wanted high density housing, then there would be new construction in that pattern, in places where it hasn’t yet been zoned out. And the people who live in those places would be happy to see more people move in.
April 6, 2010, 5:44 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » “The Rise of the New … | Information Security Resources says:
[...] here: The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » “The Rise of the New … AKPC_IDS += "609,";Popularity: unranked [...]
April 6, 2010, 6:15 amMark Anderson says:
The concept that old school paternalism isn’t alive, well, and flourishing on the Far Right and in the Tea Party Movement is asinine. It’s hiding its male WASPishness under a bush, but it is still there.
And the Left is just as guilty through this standards doublespeak that they throw out.
Either way you look at it, it is like dating someone who tells you that you are perfect and, then, trys to change you.
April 6, 2010, 8:32 amPersonFromPorlock says:
I did not make any comparison between America as it is now and the governments of the Eastern Bloc countries as they were then; I merely pointed out that the history of their removal provides exactly the ‘plausible scenario’ for removing a modern, continental regime that you asked for.
April 6, 2010, 10:08 amAnonsters says:
Except that I wasn’t asking for a plausible world scenario. I was asking for a plausible scenario involving the United States. So, do you think it’s plausible that, in your lifetime say, the United States government comes to resemble Soviet bloc governments?
April 6, 2010, 10:12 amRunape says:
Arguing that preferences should be “respected” just because they are “customary” is just so much question-begging. The behavioral economist’s view is that preferences are shaped by the context inwhich choices are presented. If preferences have become embedded without the peference-holders having been aware of the context in which they made choices (the “choice architecture,” in Sunstein and Thaler’s words), there’s no great reason to assume that preferences would remain stable once that architecture is revealed. The article to which you linked amounts to a defense of “customary” preferences on the ground that the author prefers customary preferences to the alternative.
April 6, 2010, 11:12 amAllan Walstad says:
[If I might butt in...] A most sobering question, Anonsters. Mechanisms of thoroughgoing government control are being created. Who will use them for what purposes, and when? Totalitarianism in the USA? It will be laughably implausible to almost everybody, unless and until it happens. Then it will be a bitch. Well, I’m kinda getting along in years, so hopefully not in my lifetime anyway.
April 6, 2010, 11:31 amDavid V says:
What do you see that currently points at totalitarianism in the US?
April 6, 2010, 12:17 pmAndy Rozell says:
I’m not really an expert on the events in the Soviet Union in the late 80′s – early 90′s. But from what I’ve heard, the collapse of popular support for the Soviet government wasn’t so much about huddled masses yearning to be free as it was about the paternalistic governments failure to provide the economic benefits that state socialism had promised.
I can certainly see the US government being unable to meet its paternalistic commitments in what remains of my life time, and I’m on the downhill slope. As to what the political consequences of that might be, I don’t know.
April 6, 2010, 12:50 pmAmerican Psikhushka says:
I can think of one big part of the paternalism-generating framework that Whitman missed pointing out: the assumption that the government (and their academic advisors) should be weakening the economy by taking the people’s money and trying to manipulate choices in the first place. Beyond a very low level, taxes weaken the economy. If more of the public understood that these bureaucrats and politicians were making everyone poorer by taking their tax money and in effect playing with and experimenting with it, a lot of this would go away.
It’s really an imposition for them to think that they should be taking people’s hard-earned assets to play with things like this in the first place. If they feel passionate about issues like this they should start charities educating about issues like this – with their own money and freely given donations. Or better yet, start their own more healthy twinkie or soft drink companies. Or financial planning companies. They wouldn’t be trying to interfere with, hinder, or prevent free choices, and most importantly they wouldn’t be weakening the private economy by taking assets from it. In the case of the businesses, they would actually be strengthening the economy instead.
I realize this is completely antithetical to the current outlook and operation of academia. And I realize that thinking about government and choice is what this part of academia does. But something has to be said about the notion that the private economy – and the hard-earned assets it consists of – is fair game to be taken for experimenting, playing, and tinkering. A good test of this is whether the individuals advocating the seizure of these assets would do the same thing with their personal money and time if they didn’t have the option of taking the public’s money to do it.
April 6, 2010, 3:44 pmAmerican Psikhushka says:
PersonFromPorlock-
It doesn’t matter why the social engineers want the state to be the ‘parent’ to the People’s ‘child’, the fact is that such a relationship is flatly incompatible with the notion of popular sovereignty.
I’m curious about your usage of the term popular sovereignty here. Do you mean that in a sense of popular democracy? If so, aren’t a lot of these paternalistic efforts an outgrowth of that?
It’s interesting that this effort to allegedly optimally engineer choices grows out of a situation where it seems the default choice that has been engineered is that they should be allowed to take the public’s money and engineer choices with it.
April 6, 2010, 3:53 pmAmerican Psikhushka says:
Runape-
If preferences have become embedded without the peference-holders having been aware of the context in which they made choices (the “choice architecture,” in Sunstein and Thaler’s words), there’s no great reason to assume that preferences would remain stable once that architecture is revealed. The article to which you linked amounts to a defense of “customary” preferences on the ground that the author prefers customary preferences to the alternative.
What about the choice architecture that the paternalists should be permitted to take money from the private economy to engineer and tinker with choices in the first place?
April 6, 2010, 3:57 pmAllan Walstad says:
The most obvious recent signs are the increasing arbitrary executive power (or claim thereof) to spy on everybody, detain indefinitely, kill at will. All the drug war stuff, like heavily armed federal thugs bashing in people’s doors before dawn hoping to keep somebody from flushing drugs. Indeed, how many different federal police-type organizations are there now? The total trashing of constitutional limits on the feds, with the health care takeover only the most recent example. The push for a national ID. The secrecy.
As I put it earlier, the instruments of total control are being created. The only question is who will be using them for what purposes in ten or fifty years.
April 6, 2010, 5:05 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
‘Popular sovereignty’ means that government is created by the people and is subordinate to them. Representative democracy is our way of implementing it.
The reason paternalism is incompatible with this is that we can’t simultaneously maintain that the people are wise enough to judge their representatives and foolish enough to require great gobs of government supervision. The fact that we do try to have it both ways – face it, government help can be damned convenient – is just one more example of human fallibility.
April 6, 2010, 6:26 pmAmerican Psikhushka says:
PersonFromPorlock-
The reason paternalism is incompatible with this is that we can’t simultaneously maintain that the people are wise enough to judge their representatives and foolish enough to require great gobs of government supervision.
Does the critique have to get much more complex than simply: “we don’t need great gobs of expensive and intrusive government supervision, especially when it weakens the economy and infringes on individual liberty, rights, privacy, and choice”? Or does that get you too uncomfortably close to being a libertarian and you need to throw some “social” language in like “popular”, “democracy”, etc.? ;)
The fact that we do try to have it both ways — face it, government help can be damned convenient — is just one more example of human fallibility.
Yes, it can be convenient. It’s especially daunting when pretty legitimate government functions like essential services (police, fire, EMS, courts, national security) get mixed in with the paternalism, meddling, and nannystating. And it’s a travesty when the government gets so involved in the expensive, abusive, and unnecessary nannystating that it doesn’t or can’t perform the legitimate essential services it’s supposed to perform no matter what.
April 6, 2010, 7:09 pmmarkm says:
Aside from scenarios where much of the military either stands aside or joins the revolution? Those aren’t plausible here and now, but there are long-standing trends that tend to drive a wedge between the political class and military personnel. Our most recent Republican president was rather less conservative than the average soldier. Bush also cut benefits while asking for great sacrifices from military personnel. Now he has been replaced by a man who hobnobbed with retired terrorists and spent much of his Senate career running down the military. Keep up this trend and someday the troops will be ready to join a revolution.
April 6, 2010, 9:55 pmmarkm says:
Second, assuming the mighty American military remains loyal to the government, it is mighty only as long as it continually receives massive shipments of supplies. A rifleman can fire all the ammunition he can carry in less than an hour. Tanks require huge amounts of fuel, as well as specialized ammunition, and many spare parts. As an old Air Force technician, I know quite well that fighter jets can eat their own weight in fuel and spare parts in a day of hard training – not even counting the munitions needed for combat. They also need about a hundred man-hours of maintenance for every hour in the air, and all those ground crewmen must be fed, and must have relatively safe areas to eat and work.
What has made the American military so mighty is that it can draw those logistics requirements from the richest country on Earth – and that it hasn’t fought a war on it’s own territory since the War of 1812. Very little of what’s required can be made in a combat zone. The South failed to keep it’s troops supplied in the Civil War, and they were still using muzzle-loaders.
A million Americans with just pistols and hunting rifles could bring the military to a halt. To start with, hijack or wreck the trucks bringing supplies to the military bases. Sabotage factories and warehouses providing specialized military materiel, from complex electronics to artillery shells. The military would have to react by sending out patrols to collect fuel, ammunition, and food. They would have to try to re-open factories to produce their specialized requirements and to guard the shipments of parts to these factories as well as the product to their bases.
And from here on, it depends on what the bulk of the population thinks about the conflict. If they are firm supporters of the government, they might forgive rough tactics by foragers, and enough people might volunteer to work in defense plants and drive trucks, in spite of some danger in these jobs. OTOH, if they are initially indifferent, they will be angry at uniformed armed robbers, and unwilling to work where they might become targets of the revolutionaries. And then the military will draft workers to keep their supply lines running, and the revolution will gain many more recruits, while more of the military will wonder if they are on the wrong side…
No, it’s not really as easy as that. I’m ignoring the police, who only really need access to a gas station and the Walmart gun department to function effectively for quite a while. I’m ignoring Marines, Rangers, etc., who are trained to walk a hundred of miles and put up quite a fight with only what they can carry. And I’m ignoring the loyal citizens that might break out their own rifles and go radical-hunting. But given some disaffection in the ranks, much of the military and police might find that logistical difficulties make an excuse to sit out the conflict. There would be ex-Rangers among the revolutionaries (although I’d certainly have to find a way to sort the real ones from the hordes of mentally unstable wanna-bes). There’d probably even be Rangers that would go on a long-range patrol and change sides. And there would probably soon be tens of millions of citizens who might be unwilling to fight but would be willing to hide revolutionaries.
It would be a real mess, and nearly reduce us back to the stone age – at which point the fighting gets down to infantry squads battling with knives and a few rounds. It’s likely that finally there’d be no winners left, like Somalia. You’d have to be nuts to try it. But we’ve no shortage of nuts…
April 6, 2010, 10:51 pmRicardo says:
It all goes back to Econ 101. The incidence of a subsidy — like that of a tax — depends on the relative elasticities of demand and supply. You are assuming — unjustifiably — that the supply curve for housing in the U.S. is inelastic. You only need to drive around the so-called exurbs to see this isn’t true. There are many new homes under construction (or were, anyway, before the housing bubble burst) in previously vacant land. This implies a more elastic supply curve which means more of the benefit of the subsidy accrues to the demand-side or the home-buyers.
In Manhattan or the Bay Area, you have a case. There is little scope for new construction in these places. But in the rest of the country with all its wide-open spaces, not so much. Any increase in price caused by the subsidy will tend to be offset by new home construction.
April 7, 2010, 6:47 amPersonFromPorlock says:
I’ve often said I’d be a libertarian if I could figure out how to become a virgin. And “we don’t need” arguments are always vulnerable to “yes you do” replies, at which point ‘social language’ and fancy words come into play.
April 7, 2010, 8:41 amAmerican Psikhushka says:
PersonFromPorlock-
I’ve often said I’d be a libertarian if I could figure out how to become a virgin.
Not following your reasoning here. What does being a virgin have to do with being a libertarian?
And “we don’t need” arguments are always vulnerable to “yes you do” replies, at which point ‘social language’ and fancy words come into play.
I don’t know about that. I think if a large portion of the population knew that – in addition to being annoying, harassing, rights-violating, rights-eroding, and intrusive – the nannystating/etc. also tremendously weakens the economy a lot of the “yes you do” arguments would fall on deaf ears.
April 7, 2010, 1:01 pmAll Slippery Slopes Lead To Robert Young « Around The Sphere says:
[...] Eugene Volokh [...]
April 10, 2010, 6:39 am